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Welcome to Founder-Led, featuring founders scaling 7 and 8 figure companies who share the strategies and mindset driving real growth.
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Rohan
Welcome to Founder Lead. Where we sit down with some of the sharpest founder operators to learn what's working and their business today.
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Rohan
This episode is brought to you by Frontier Studio, a revenue minded content partner helping founders grow their visibility, authority and business from LinkedIn.
00:00:19:20 - 00:00:29:09
Rohan
So if you're ready to join over 30 businesses that are turning conversations like this into real revenue while spending less than a one hour per week of your time.
00:00:29:13 - 00:00:32:23
Rohan
Common frontier below and someone from our team will reach out.
00:00:33:02 - 00:00:34:20
Rohan
Now let's get to today's episode.
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Rohan
Today we're joined by Esther Paulson, founder and CEO of Rare Solutions and The League of Marketers.
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Rohan
Since founding rare in 2004, Esther spent over two decades helping companies across healthcare, finance, automotive and B2B services build smarter marketing operations,
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Rohan
combining CRM, strategy, data analytics, and end to end campaign management to connect brands with their customers.
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Rohan
Her work focuses on the intersection of people, process, and technology,
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Rohan
helping organizations cut through tool sprawl, make sense of their data, and build marketing systems that hold up at scale.
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Rohan
In this conversation, we get into what AI is actually changing in marketing operations. Why most B2B firms are still running their go to market. The same way they did a decade ago.
00:01:24:06 - 00:01:30:01
Rohan
And what Esther's building with a League of Marketers, a new kind of agency model she believes is long overdue.
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Rohan
Esther, welcome to the show.
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Esther
Urgent. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure.
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Rohan
Well, Esther, you are an industry veteran when it comes to marketing and marketing ops. Would love if you can take a couple minutes and share. You know your founder story. And really some of the key learning moments you've had building the agency over the past nearly two decades?
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Esther
Sure, absolutely. With pleasure. So I have had resolutions in various iterations for the last 20, well, almost 25 years. I came from a background in program development and enterprise architecture. So unlike a lot of other agencies as they were, I came really from a tech geeky, nerdy, background and just love data and always worked in that space.
00:02:13:21 - 00:02:35:02
Esther
I never even called myself an agency for the better part of its existence. I just thought of myself as a backend data problem solver, and it and it's grown from, grown from there. So I, I always had a reputation for solving very, very tricky, complex problems and have put together a team of people who have a passion for the craft as much as I do.
00:02:35:04 - 00:02:58:16
Esther
And I am incredibly lucky to have 30 amazing professionals who call Ria home and, and, and work with me on some incredible clients and incredible projects. So, I really it's a testament to them to believing and, and, and this one person who decided to try to go on their own and, and make this model work.
00:02:58:21 - 00:03:05:04
Esther
And so far, so good. So I'm incredibly, incredibly lucky to work with amazing people and amazing clients.
00:03:05:07 - 00:03:10:20
Rohan
Yeah, that's quite, quite the journey. And I know you recently launched The League of Marketers. What is the
00:03:11:00 - 00:03:13:12
Rohan
idea behind that and how is it different from rare?
00:03:13:17 - 00:03:40:23
Esther
Sure. So we have always specialized in the data side of marketing, and my creative juices run really no where past stick figures. But I have had the incredible privilege of working with other agencies, other smaller agencies on projects. So the League of Marketers is really a consortium model where we bring best of best in together on projects and a very bespoke custom way to build better and build smarter, better, faster.
00:03:40:23 - 00:03:47:14
Esther
So we bring the operational expertise and then we bring in agencies, consultants, data
00:03:47:19 - 00:04:15:22
Esther
data scientists, etc., and build custom solutions for our clients that bring that best of best model in, and create it very, very cost effective matter, very, very authentic, transparent. And, and that it allows us to go and create relationships that are larger agencies can do we just feel that we do them, better, smarter, faster and more economically.
00:04:16:02 - 00:04:16:15
Rohan
Okay, great.
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Esther
That makes the trusted partners who really work together to make amazing solutions.
00:04:21:11 - 00:04:36:13
Rohan
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, combining your operational excellence and rigor with, some of the marketing agency services that, these folks can provide. So I want to really, you know, focus on now, you know, I in marketing ops, we have many
00:04:36:17 - 00:04:44:07
Rohan
agency owners, reb ops, owner agency owners, you know, business leaders are trying to figure out how do they get better, smarter
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Rohan
and, more customer centric with their marketing operations.
00:04:48:02 - 00:04:58:17
Rohan
And you've spoken on multiple panels and you work with fairly complex, you know, client engagements. I would love if you can maybe give us a lay of the land around
00:04:58:20 - 00:05:03:00
Rohan
how you're thinking about this. And what are some of the common conversations you're having?
00:05:03:03 - 00:05:25:18
Esther
Sure. For us, one of the things that we have said for many, many years and, you know, as AI has really blossomed in the workspace is one, making sure that it is I often say that AI is like having a super enthusiastic, super smart, but occasionally wildly stupid intern. They require supervision and, and checking.
00:05:25:22 - 00:05:48:20
Esther
The other thing is that, in the process, we use it extensively for validation of, error checking. There's a tremendous opportunity in looking at kind of the, the drudgery of a lot of what we do from, marketing operations standpoint and create efficiencies in that. Smart people and I have I get the privilege of working with some of the most brilliant.
00:05:49:00 - 00:06:00:19
Esther
It's difficult to necessarily dive into the weeds and stare at every single thing to make sure everything is correct. So AI is a great booster and a great support, for skills amplification, not skills replacement.
00:06:00:23 - 00:06:08:13
Esther
In the creative space, there's a big temptation now for, for clients and organizations to say, oh, I'm just going to have the robots figure it out.
00:06:08:16 - 00:06:27:20
Esther
The problem is that there was an old, very, very old meme, that said, none of us is as dumb as all of us. And what happens with AI is that it is really an amalgamation of everything it's learned. And it's not. It doesn't necessarily, at this point have the creative spark, the real, real original thought.
00:06:27:21 - 00:06:55:15
Esther
It's not it's not an original thinker. It is an aggregator thinker, which is great in certain respects, especially when it comes to validation. But when it comes to original, I will get you to a point, but you still need that human factor. And the people who understand that and who understand the proper use of AI in their organizations, and are not afraid to spend and invest the time in and validating the validators, as it were.
00:06:55:19 - 00:07:12:20
Esther
They will be successful. The people who just think that they're going to lift and shift everything into an AI robot and and have it figure everything out. The gonna lose because the people who get that, that's not the right way to do it will beat them every single time. Beat them every single time. Tell a very quick story.
00:07:12:20 - 00:07:39:02
Esther
It did a pitch and, and there's a, that our competitors were very, very much into, you know, the concept of AI. And I had given a real compelling reason to say you've prepared to explain to your legal department that the reason why X happened is because the robot said so. So these are the things that you have to give pause to, from day to day and think through it very, very, very carefully.
00:07:39:06 - 00:08:06:22
Rohan
Okay. So is there a, a framework or a maturity model or, you know, when you're having these conversations and some of these businesses want to adopt, there's a lot of enthusiasm and interest to adopt, but they're not sure where what tool, what layer of the stack. What does that look like? Is there a, a useful like methodology or framework or the way that you explain things to them to know what that entry point, but also what that maturity could look like?
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Esther
Yes. And it's really in doing your process breakdown first. Understanding what is your problem. If you can't define your process then do not touch your AI tools because you will be led astray, right? And taking the time and investing the time to understand what your business process is, what your pain points is, where you enter, where you exit, and who is responsible for it, starting with that.
00:08:31:05 - 00:08:56:16
Esther
And then you can break them down into smaller, smaller chunks. And those are the trunk. Trunk, the chunks that you operationalize. Right. Test and learn. See how they do. Okay. Don't just send it a full force into an into an agent, an agent system, because you're not going to know where the breakdowns are. So it is it has to be methodical in order to be right.
00:08:56:17 - 00:09:19:09
Esther
We've seen too many cases of people who just throw think it's just a matter of throwing everything into ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini or anything like that, and coming out with an answer. You'll have an answer. They'll have an answer, but you won't know what you don't know. And a structured process, across every step of the way, even if you use AI to help you structure the process,
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Esther
creating the structure, and then taking pieces of it and operationalizing it and then checking it is really, really important.
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Esther
People just want to rush into it, and if they do, they're going to make mistakes and they won't know why. They won't know why.
00:09:34:11 - 00:09:41:06
Rohan
Are you noticing? I know you work across different industry verticals, from healthcare to automotive to, you know, B2B services. Are you
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Rohan
noticing faster adoption and in any particular vertical or
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Rohan
stage of business versus others that might be a bit more hesitant?
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Esther
I would say in B2B, that's where there's probably the most acceleration because they're looking for the most operational efficiency.
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Rohan
Yeah.
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Esther
I would say automotive is is discerning, and careful for, for various reasons. They are there's a little bit more conservatism, especially when you're dealing with these aren't $10 coupons that they're that they're sending out. Right. You have to be a lot more discerning. But there is tremendous opportunity and efficiency in creative design. And that I think is, is they're really, really thinking forward.
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Esther
A lot of our agency partners are doing incredible work. And, and, and using AI for more efficient and dynamic and energetic content.
00:10:34:09 - 00:11:02:08
Esther
In healthcare space, there's a tremendous amount being done in research and operationalizing aspects of the market research as well as the clinical research. But again, you know, there's a there's a there is a, there's a lot of concern on privacy, what happens with content that is fed into tenants and making sure that, that privacy and intellectual property is preserved and protected.
00:11:02:10 - 00:11:12:17
Esther
So because of that and any area where there's where there's IP, there's a little bit of reservation to, before really diving headlong.
00:11:12:20 - 00:11:15:06
Rohan
Yeah. Yeah. That makes that makes a lot of sense.
00:11:15:09 - 00:11:18:09
Rohan
Want to kind of shift gears a bit and here,
00:11:18:12 - 00:11:21:03
Rohan
you know, around this idea of like this consortia agency.
00:11:21:08 - 00:11:36:16
Rohan
One thing I've noticed is there are folks that are building either whether it's a collective or, again, in your case, a consortia. But how can you create an ecosystem of agencies with, you know, complementary services or even differentiated services?
00:11:36:16 - 00:11:56:20
Rohan
And, based on a customer lifecycle or journey, be able to introduce these trusted partners where you're ultimately in service to this customer based on this, like trusted talent pool. So talk a bit more about like your thinking there and like where you see the future of agency models. Do you see it being more of a consortia model?
00:11:56:20 - 00:12:00:17
Rohan
Do you see it being less siloed, like how do you see things playing out in the future?
00:12:00:21 - 00:12:21:05
Esther
Well, it's been interesting to me is that there have been more of, an aggregation, especially of very, very large agencies where they're scooping up small agencies and effectively building that model, but building it by buying agencies and bringing them into a single entity. So they're they're actually building that model at the larger scale,
00:12:21:09 - 00:12:25:19
Esther
at the scale that I'm envisioning, a lot of it is, is trust based, right?
00:12:25:19 - 00:12:42:12
Esther
It's not a matter of anybody can call and say, oh, I want to be part of this and plunk down a fee and be part of it. We don't we don't really do that model. I think that the the buy in model begins to introduce other dynamics and other expectations. It is more
00:12:42:15 - 00:12:45:21
Esther
creating a bespoke relationship structure.
00:12:46:00 - 00:13:07:18
Esther
And where we are all unilaterally responsible for the operations. But we have one entity that goes in and manages the contracts. We try to keep the, the, the cost to do so for our partner agencies very low, and it allows us to be very competitive. So we try to strip out, a lot of the, the overhead.
00:13:07:18 - 00:13:29:13
Esther
It's not, it's not designed to be a big fat revenue generator on this side. It's designed for me to get the best people to come in and work on projects, and that's what I want. I just want to work with great people. I want to work with amazing agents. Is amazing experts. And it's really just for to make my life easier and to allow me to create more comprehensive offerings.
00:13:29:15 - 00:13:47:21
Esther
There are companies and organizations that have a similar model where but there's a huge buy in fee and no guarantee of work. And this is built a little bit different, similar to the kind of work that we do with our clients. We are wiring this in to meet the specific needs of the moment,
00:13:48:02 - 00:13:48:12
Esther
and
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Esther
I enjoyed that. And I choose to do it that way.
00:13:52:05 - 00:14:09:10
Esther
And I know there are many other models and that is great. And we're all doing things in the way that we believe as we see fit. And I just choose to work with amazing entities, make it extremely, cost effective to do so for the client and for them and for me.
00:14:09:14 - 00:14:12:02
Esther
And we work our success that way.
00:14:12:07 - 00:14:17:17
Rohan
Okay. Yeah. I was just speaking to a, an agency owner who works with direct to consumer brands,
00:14:17:21 - 00:14:42:07
Rohan
some pretty recognizable, e-commerce brands and CPG. Yeah, products. And they focus on the creative. So whether it's like, you know, labels or a website or this sort of thing and, they basically found built a collective model where they found, you know, trusted operators, whether it's on the paid ad side of things or in the manufacturing or in like three PL
00:14:42:11 - 00:14:47:05
Rohan
and it really is this it's like finding these people that just want to do great work and
00:14:47:08 - 00:14:48:03
Rohan
there's a lot
00:14:48:07 - 00:14:48:17
Rohan
that
00:14:48:21 - 00:14:51:22
Rohan
the customer benefits so much when they can just get an introduction to
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Rohan
a trusted pass person that they know is going to deliver a specific result. And, yeah, that business seems to be working really well. So, yeah, it's just, I think this is really kind of like where things are going, and it's an opportunity
00:15:05:11 - 00:15:11:01
Rohan
to again pass some savings on to the customer as well. And it's really making that trusted network available to them.
00:15:11:05 - 00:15:18:14
Esther
And clients like one, as I say, one throat to choke, as it were. So they don't necessarily in a lot of cases they can't,
00:15:18:18 - 00:15:33:15
Esther
write contracts directly with lots of entities. So in a lot of my engagements, I hold contracts with other entities because it's easier to just run everything through one company with, with low markup.
00:15:33:15 - 00:15:49:09
Esther
And, and we just, we just basically keep everything running, everything running smoothly. And then we handle the contracts. It allows us to build a lot of trust relationships with a lot of providers. And, and it also helps with longevity and, and loyalty over time.
00:15:49:13 - 00:16:02:07
Esther
So it's a great model if you are willing to be smart and ethical about it and, and not, and not try to turn it in, turn it into a higher revenue model than it should be.
00:16:02:10 - 00:16:03:19
Rohan
You're very open to.
00:16:03:23 - 00:16:08:19
Rohan
Yeah. It makes a lot of sense just being that one vendor record. I know oftentimes businesses especially in these
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Rohan
certain industries around health care and more traditional industries, it's really hard to just become a vendor of records. And there's so much paperwork involved there. So
00:16:17:16 - 00:16:22:06
Rohan
what would be a way how do you identify these agencies that you might want to partner with?
00:16:22:06 - 00:16:22:12
Rohan
And
00:16:22:17 - 00:16:29:06
Rohan
again, we have many agency owners that are tuning in. Are there any particular gaps in services that you're looking to fill where the consortium.
00:16:29:10 - 00:17:00:10
Esther
Well, a lot of it is, is project based. And so we look for agencies that, are working. Some of them are working in advanced AI, advanced video. There are and and really it comes to what does our client really need and what are they really looking for? There are we we've worked with agencies that specialize in events and, paid search, in creative.
00:17:00:10 - 00:17:04:23
Esther
And that means across multiple, you know, app development, in,
00:17:05:04 - 00:17:23:16
Esther
television, you know, television ads, etc.. So we have a great base. But we're always looking to talk to, talk to great people. And for us, it's, you know, if you're smart, you're ethical, and you're easy to work with, then those are those are the kinds of people that we invite to the league.
00:17:23:19 - 00:17:46:19
Esther
And a lot of it is really, you know, quiet back end. I mean, I always tell people we what we've looked white labeled our services to others as well as they white label to us. The question for me is, does the check clear? If the check clears, we're good. And I find that that no ego approach to it is, really, really resonates with our clients and it resonates with the trust that we have in one another.
00:17:46:22 - 00:17:47:05
Rohan
Yeah,
00:17:47:10 - 00:17:48:16
Rohan
yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
00:17:48:19 - 00:17:59:23
Rohan
So I know you wrote a book called Second Banana. What inspired the book? What what's the core theme or thesis there? And what's the core message you want to get out from the book?
00:18:00:00 - 00:18:14:04
Esther
Sure. So second, banana is an old vaudeville term. It's for the person who really works at the Star and and helps them look great by either being a straight man or, you know, helping to set up the joke, helping to set up the performance.
00:18:14:09 - 00:18:29:11
Esther
And, my whole career, I've always liked working behind really great leaders, great visionaries and, and, and the ones that also allow me to be, you know, to be that expert for them.
00:18:29:15 - 00:18:53:16
Esther
I don't necessarily have to have my name on the billboard. But, but I find working in that trusted role one is great for longevity, to be trusted for long periods of time. And it also allows me to exercise a form of leadership and a form of, mentoring to people above and below. That has served me very, very well over my career.
00:18:53:16 - 00:19:12:16
Esther
I mean, I've been a business owner in some way, shape or form for over 20 years. But even in my business work, I'm sitting behind great leaders at my clients to help them, you know, be amazing and be even more amazing than they already are. I love that model. I, I I've never liked the term servant leadership.
00:19:12:16 - 00:19:34:13
Esther
I don't really like that. I just like, you know, sitting behind the scenes and making everybody, you know, helping to support their, their brilliance and their execution. And just so I wrote a book about how I got to where I was. I tell stories of childhood. I grew up in a very working class neighborhood in South Philadelphia, Gilberts
00:19:34:16 - 00:19:53:02
Esther
and, and and just sharing the stories of the lessons I learned in my career as, in, the early days of being a female in a very, very male, heavy dominated, it space in the 1990s and really not accepting, certain,
00:19:53:06 - 00:19:57:05
Esther
certain things from people not accepting, being treated
00:19:57:07 - 00:20:02:19
Esther
in a certain way and drawing strength from it. So I just tell the stories and
00:20:02:22 - 00:20:09:19
Esther
I, I enjoyed, the mistakes I've made, you know, the learning from the mistakes I made and, and enjoyed sharing all those stories.
00:20:10:00 - 00:20:14:23
Rohan
From all that experience, you know, and roles. Or you might have been the second banana.
00:20:15:02 - 00:20:27:10
Rohan
What what wisdom or insights could you impart? To almost like, manage up to that leader and really help them be successful and also perhaps be a thought partner or a coaching partner to them? What
00:20:27:13 - 00:20:29:23
Rohan
are some of those three lines that maybe wisdom you can share?
00:20:30:03 - 00:20:48:03
Esther
So, for me, I, and I think maybe it's part of just my personality in the way I grew up, growing up in the in, in an Italian neighborhood, as I did. Yeah, we always spoke the truth. And we were never, ever afraid to pull our punches in telling the truth and speaking truth to power. And,
00:20:48:05 - 00:21:08:05
Esther
And I discovered telling the truth is not going to kill you. And and there's a very funny story about that that I learned at the age of nine. And you just learn and you learn to be you need to give information to people so that they can make good decisions. And likewise, I expect anybody who works with me or for me to do the same thing.
00:21:08:05 - 00:21:33:12
Esther
I don't want things sugarcoat it. I never sugarcoat things to anybody that I speak with. I am pretty plain speaker. I try to be nice about it, but I'm very, very plain about it and I don't hold back. And that's very, very important. You have to be, willing to take the risk to say the hard things, and to, and to be, unafraid to say the hard things.
00:21:33:17 - 00:21:48:17
Esther
And the other thing is that there's always an answer. There's always an answer may not necessarily be the the answer you want, but there always is. I told you in the story that, I was widowed very, you know, a few years ago. And and there's always
00:21:48:20 - 00:21:55:10
Esther
there was the time of my life where the there's always an answer, but the answer isn't I can't change anything that happens with that.
00:21:55:10 - 00:22:14:03
Esther
You have to look at the future with clear eyes and accept that there are things that you just can't fix. But there is an answer, and the answer is finding your way to peace and finding your way to accepting that your life is going to change and and looking at it without,
00:22:14:06 - 00:22:18:12
Esther
you know, longing for something that you can't, you can't fix.
00:22:18:15 - 00:22:35:03
Esther
And sometimes making an answer, whether it's losing a spouse, losing a job or any other life change that you have in your life, it's being just going with the core value of there's always, always an answer to it. And if you have faith in that, you cannot fail.
00:22:35:07 - 00:22:40:10
Rohan
I mean, of course, yeah. When you think of my I think of like my hardest moments, my darkest hours,
00:22:40:14 - 00:22:45:18
Rohan
it was, you know, what was on the other side of that was more growth,
00:22:45:22 - 00:22:47:05
Rohan
more self-awareness,
00:22:47:08 - 00:22:51:13
Rohan
you know, deeper connection to higher intelligence. And so,
00:22:51:16 - 00:22:55:11
Rohan
yeah, you're you're preaching to the choir here. So I appreciate you sharing that.
00:22:55:14 - 00:23:14:09
Rohan
Well, Esther, as you wrap it up here, you know, one question I'd like to ask is if you could put a message on a billboard that gets a lot of traffic, a lot of people walking back and forth, to really reach a lot of people with a certain, you know, message around your movement. What what might that phrase or message be?
00:23:14:14 - 00:23:24:18
Esther
As I had stated before, there's always an answer and my team can help you find it. You know, we we know how there's always a way, to create
00:23:24:22 - 00:23:42:09
Esther
really custom. And we've always played in that custom space of coming up with very original approaches to solving tricky, considered unsolvable problems. There always is an answer, and it sometimes just takes a little bit of looking out of the box.
00:23:42:13 - 00:23:57:15
Esther
Being unafraid to try new things. Dang. Unafraid to take risks and being unapologetic about outcomes even when things don't go the way you expect. If you want to see what truth to power and you want to get to where you want to go,
00:23:57:18 - 00:24:03:13
Esther
there is there's always there are always many, many smart people that can get you where you want to go.
00:24:03:16 - 00:24:04:10
Esther
Just one of them.
00:24:04:14 - 00:24:17:14
Rohan
There's always a way. Esther, thank you so much for joining. We'll make sure to link. Yeah, we'll make sure to link to your website. And also your LinkedIn in the show notes. Is there anywhere else you might want to direct folks if they want to learn more.
00:24:17:19 - 00:24:26:10
Esther
About my book career books.com. And and you can look at, Rare Solutions, our AARP solutions.com, to find out a little bit more about the company.
00:24:26:13 - 00:24:26:20
Rohan
Right.
00:24:27:00 - 00:24:28:02
Rohan
Esther, thank you so much.
00:24:28:07 - 00:24:29:06
Esther
All right. Thank you.