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Welcome to "Visionary Voices" the podcast where we dive into the minds of business owners, founders, executives, and everyone in between.
Each episode brings you face-to-face with the leading lights of industry and innovation.
Join us as we uncover the stories behind the success and the lessons learned along the way.
Whether you're climbing the corporate ladder or just starting your business journey, these are the conversations you need to hear - packed with visionary voices and insights.
Let's begin.
So Lindsay, thank you so much for taking the time today and joining me on this episode of
Visionary Voices.
Could you give us a top level view about what it is that you're working on right now and
your journey so
Yeah, big question.
And first of all, thanks so much for having me.
Great to see you.
um Yeah, so what am I working on right now?
Well, I lead uh growth at People Data Labs.
um And I joined PDL right after college.
So I've worn a bunch of different hats along the way.
um
We were a tiny startup when I joined under 10 people.
uh So as the company has, you know, scaled and grown over the past eight years or so that
have been there, uh I've been kind of all over the map, mainly on the revenue side of the
organization.
uh And after a stint as a chief of staff in different ways and shapes and forms, uh I've
landed in sort of the growth marketing org uh and I currently run the marketing team as
well as the sales development team.
So really responsible
for the entire talk-a-funnel right now.
Definitely.
I mean, I love to unpack all of this, but I also want to go to the very start of your
journey, right?
Because right now you're leading a team, you're doing all these amazing things, but what
were you doing originally when you joined the company and what did that look like?
Because of course it's been quite an interesting progression that you've seen over the
last few years.
Yeah, yeah.
So I started as a sales development uh rep.
And funnily enough, I had no interest in being a salesperson long term.
And I was really candid about that when I was uh interviewing.
And I basically said,
I want to become an SDR because I feel like these are all the skills that I'm not that
great at.
Like I want to be able to cold call anybody.
I want to be able to fire off an email super quickly.
I wanted to kind of flex the maybe confidence muscle in in selling because I stylistically
as a as an individual or human being I'm not a super sort of hard seller I would say or a
shark right?
And so
What was great about PDL was at the time our co-founder and CEO ah was super into that.
He was like, hey, we're hiring you for you.
We think you're going to be great at this role.
But also if you wanted to become an engineer tomorrow, if you wanted to move into
marketing, if you wanted to move into becoming a sales engineer, we would back you because
we believe in you.
ah And so that was super cool and kind of unique.
uh
thing that I'll say I fell into, you know, you never know what's gonna happen in your
first roll out of college.
So yeah.
Amazing.
I mean, it's incredible as your first one out of college, right?
And I think this goes to show from a leadership point of view, having those qualities of,
you know what, just because we're hiring for this role, we can also then kind of look at
them as a person, right?
And figure out, might come in for this role, but they might move to somewhere else in the
company once we learn more about them and what their wants are and their skills and
everything like that.
I think it's a really cool learning for people going through that hiring stage right now.
I mean, we're starting to hire more and more people now.
We had a new one that started last week.
And so for me, it's wrapping my head around how do I start building this team?
What do need to look for?
And how do I manage that?
Right.
And so I think it's some great lessons there uh from the hiring side.
And of course now in your role, because you're managing a team, right?
And so are you involved in that hiring process as well?
And are you carrying, I guess, these lessons forward to your role today?
a thousand percent I was just going to hop in and say that.
that moment in my career and interviewing process for that first job out of college has
been such a big impact on the way that I do hiring.
And even when I haven't been a hiring manager or leading a team, I still approached hiring
the same way.
uh
And I think at a certain point in a larger organization, you have to get really, really
specific about the skills that you're hiring for and be a little bit more narrow-minded.
But in startup land where we're still under 100 employees, 250 employees, ah or if you're
a really small org, think hiring for those individuals who are super dynamic and who can
just kind of crush it anything that they do.
um
because they're excited about showing up to work, like solving problems, as kind of cheesy
as that sounds.
They want to be a good teammate and team player.
That level of being dynamic, I think really helps when we can't predict what tomorrow is
going to bring.
Like, your business might pivot tomorrow.
and are you gonna have to hire a new workforce or a new team?
Are you gonna be able to stick with the team that you got because they're willing to roll
the punches or have the skills to kind of move with you?
so yeah, it's the 10 person kind of company hiring style of our CEO at the time is still
the approach that I use today.
And it's actually led to something pretty interesting, I would say on our sales
development team in general, which is
Somehow we've ended up with a team of entirely females, which was not intended, totally
organic, was not the mission.
And most of them have some sort of side hustle or have come from some entrepreneurial
background.
So we're talking published authors on the side, writing sort of...
mystical fiction.
We're talking people who have had run and operated CBD businesses, coming from psychology
backgrounds.
One person on my team is a stand-up comedian, which is incredible.
uh Former professional soccer player and coach on the side.
um Literally every single person on the team is doing something super creative outside of
the SDR role.
And I think it lends itself to a...
really unique group of individuals who have varied backgrounds and can relate with our
customers who are also building really creative things.
Yeah, yeah, amazing.
I've never really looked at that before, Is the work that they might do out of work, how
that affects inside of work as well and how it all links together.
And it seems so obvious, right?
Overall, but it is so true is, yeah, what they're doing outside of work can massively fuel
that creativity, as you said before, into the work they're doing in the day to day to day,
which is really cool.
And then I guess with...
the work that you're doing now, I guess, what's the mission of the company, right?
What are you guys building towards and what are you scaling towards as well?
Because I think it's quite an exciting journey and mission that you guys have put
together.
So I'd love to hear from you.
Yeah, thanks.
ah So at People Data Labs, we build workforce data.
And by workforce data, mean people data, company data, and job posting data.
And all those data sets are tied together.
So they're all linked.
ah And so if you want to understand what's happening in the workforce, you need to
understand what businesses exist, what people exist at those businesses, ah where people
are moving amongst businesses, and what those businesses are hiring for.
And so we work with clients kind of all over the map, mainly in HR tech and recruiting,
sales and marketing tech platforms, investment research, a little bit of like sports
analytics, commercial real estate, things like that.
So it's really, really fun.
All these cases are super different, which makes my job challenging.
It makes onboarding to our company challenging because there's no handbook that I can give
you on day one that says this is every use case you need to know.
and you're gonna be all set.
ah Our customers are constantly coming to us with, or prospects at the top of the funnel
are coming to us with really kind of unique approaches to using data in ways that we've
never thought of ourselves.
So it's super fun and yeah, we're a profitable business and we kind of made that switch to
profitability a couple of years ago and worked really hard towards it.
ah We're staying relatively lean and mean.
from an employee size to ARR ratio.
ah We have a self-serve side of our business and then we have an enterprise side of our
business and we're both trying to push and grow those pretty rapidly.
And yeah, I think we have pretty exciting dreams for where we'd love to land with an exit
at some point in the future.
ah So that's why, part of why I'm still here is the people and the product and then
obviously working towards.
ah
some sort of ending at some point with a positive return.
Definitely, definitely.
I mean, again, a really cool mission and, you know, love seeing the company grow and
everything.
So you mentioned right now with the product, right?
There's so many different use cases.
So that means so many different industries you can serve.
And ultimately that means there's a lot of like ideal clients that you go after.
So how do you kind of marry both the marketing and sales messaging to then having quite a
variety of different ideal clients you can go after?
Because of course, when you're trying to speak to everyone with messaging, it's
Sometimes it falls in deaf ears and you can't speak to no one.
So when it comes down to the messaging and marketing sales, how do you pinpoint that?
And guess tailor it for the entry use cases if it is like so varied.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think there's some things that, I think it's a combination of approaches and pushing
the right levers at the right time.
I would say that we're a little bit more unique in DAS or data as a service versus SAS.
So like our data is not relevant to every single person with a specific title.
that's part of our ICP.
So like we sell to, you know, a lot of product managers, but not every product manager is
selling or building a data-driven product using workforce data, right?
So the spray and pray kind of methodology just doesn't work for us.
It's just not gonna work.
In some ways that's incredible because it means that we can get a little bit more
specific, but it also means that we have to do a little bit more work.
at the uh kind of front end of the project or building our ACP maps or account maps.
um And so it is a little bit of a unique approach and we've had uh lots of people who join
are like, I know how to do this.
And six months in they're like, okay, got it.
It's a humbling experience for sure.
So to get into a little bit more of the specifics of it.
I try to actually dog food around data and or drink around champagne, whatever you want to
call it, use our own product when building our account lists and maps and I'm doing that
with a couple of fields in particular.
Like I'll build my account list by doing some research and really finding the right
accounts to go after.
That's that more manual approach just because I have to do that filtering I was
mentioning.
But then I'll enrich that list, use some of our company data.
And add in fields that help me dive into like our ideal buyer personas.
So uh we have a field that looks at is the headcount, you know, of the organization
growing or decreasing.
OK, but I don't want to look at that in isolation because that's not that's not a
qualifier, right?
um On its own, but in combination with.
uh
What percentage of their company uh is made up of engineers?
That might give me a sense of if they're investing in kind of a data-driven approach,
right?
Do they have the technical capacity to work with a technical product like ours?
ah And then I would filter it.
We have like number of engineers and the percentage of engineers relative to headcount ah
And then we have a sales to engineering headcount ratio field as well ah Which which I
love to look at
And then finally, with our latest release of job hosting data, uh I'm answering the
future.
So what are they investing in in the future?
So we're getting a sense of past, present, and future when I'm building those target
account lists.
uh And then I stack rank those lists for our marketing and sales development teams.
And I literally will sort by some of these columns.
And then we press go.
And we have templates.
You know, for each kind of our buyer personas across the board, kind of a founder persona,
would say, a product manager persona, and then a more technical persona.
um And I do encourage a lot of manual um editing and outreach.
And like, we got to talk like humans.
We need to make an effort to, ah like, karmically, I feel that if you put in a little bit
of effort to your email.
and you put in a little bit of research and show them the time, then a lot of people are
willing to reply.
And it sounds so freaking old school, but it is true and it never fails us.
So that was a long rambling explanation of what we do, but this is one of the hard parts,
like marketing and sales development together.
There's a lot of ground that we cover.
And yeah, we've spent a lot of time figuring it out over the past eight years.
Yeah, for sure.
I think one of the cool learnings there is when it comes down to the outbound motion, a
lot of people look at doing outbound and they think, yeah, here's a job title of this
industry and I'm going to go after them.
But actually there's so many more triggers that you could look at.
So as you said, looking at their sales, engineers ratio, are they hiring more in this
department?
What does that look like?
And breaking down that data that then produces those qualifications, those qualifiers that
this is an account we want to go after.
And to your point, you know, that spray and pray approach, it just, it just doesn't work
anymore.
think there was a period of time where yeah, it worked, it in the inbox, you know, it was
pretty new.
But I think for sure, you know, people are waking up now and they're not replying to it
not engaging with it unless there's value in it.
And, and, know, again, to your point, if you've done the research and you're leading with,
you know, something unique that's in the email, all these different things come into play.
But ultimately, as long as it's valuable to the person reading it, you know, then you will
get some type of response, right?
And that...
Value it I think is such a big scary word right like what is value to to this person and
that's something that's really difficult to figure out I think sometimes because there's a
lot of times we we build You know a messaging and offer whatever based on what we think
that they need but might not actually be the thing that's valuable to them at this moment
in time and I think this This means when it comes down to the data point of view if you
have that data there Then you can figure out what is their need right now, right if
they're hiring in this department in this realm
then they, know, this means X, Y, Z, and this is how your product fits into that, right?
And so you're kind of leading with this data-driven mindset approach on creating the value
rather than just kind of picking it up in there, if that makes sense.
Yeah, absolutely.
And where I'll double tap on that and add a little bit of something I know you're very
passionate about, which is like AI and incorporating it into marketing and top of funnel.
And um so even though I'm asking my my reps and even my marketing team to spend more time,
you know, really focusing on sounding like like human um in our messaging and in our
copywriting, I'm coupling that with.
use AI to do all the research that you want.
Like, make up, use that newfound time that you have from an efficiency standpoint, using
AI to research and search 10Ks for public companies and finding a keyword about data in
there or recruiting or whatever we can.
Those keywords that we know are really important.
The 10Ks are so successful for us.
It's incredible.
It's one of those ones we keep coming back to year after year.
And the second one would be like, you know, using AI to like search their, you know,
website or whatever.
What did they mention?
blah, blah, keywords that are relevant to your organization, or what new products have
they launched recently.
And again, double tapping on those keywords, and then using it in their messaging coupled
with some of that research that I was talking about that we're getting from our own data
set.
And I think the combination of those two things overlapped creates an email that stands
out a little bit, or a LinkedIn message that stands out a little bit.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think it's one of those with AR uh right now where you've got to really find a balance
between both the manual input that you do and then AI generating the piece of content.
Because, for example, LinkedIn right now, when you open it, I feel like every post sounds
very similar.
You can tell it's AI generated.
And so it's the same thing with emails.
You can also tell that you...
I feel like most people can look at an email and tell that's AI or that's not AI.
And so obviously what you need to make sure is, we're using it, but in the right way.
So to your point, yeah, the research is great.
You can do that deep research.
You can create maybe some of those, you know, one line is that you need to add in those
personalization areas, but ultimately you need to have that human element within it at the
same time.
And I think as well, it's going to be interesting, you know, the next five, 10 years as
more and more people use AI and outreach, outbound messaging, marketing, whatever the ones
that don't use it or use it less and have more of human input.
Is that going to be the
the thing that stands out the most, right?
To get the attention.
That's gonna be the interesting, you know, potential pivot or switch that we might see in
the future.
Because I know for what we've tested internally, where we, you know, we have tested AISDRs
and BDRs and messaging and everything, and we can never get it to work or we never get it
to really stick.
And a lot of people seem to wanna jump into those shiny objects, shiny tools, and you
know, kind of jump onto that wave, but.
I just don't think full AI right now is the position we need to be in, especially for
where we're trying to build relationships with these decision makers and everything like
that.
It's not what we want to be working on or focusing on fully.
Yeah, I think we should use all the tools that we have at our disposal, but not sacrifice
on authenticity.
Like authenticity is such a core sort of tenant and value of mine.
And I think it's actually maybe a common thread at PDL in particular, but it is a little
bit, I feel like I'm somewhat ironic sometimes as the marketing leader.
Like I'm not active on very many social platforms myself.
uh
I very specifically don't have a TikTok because I don't want to get addicted to the TikTok
algorithm.
um I, you know, arm's length away.
ah But also on that point, you know, the creators that do really well are super authentic.
ah But then as soon as it turns into a model or, you know, something that's repeatable,
right, and then there's money involved.
all of sudden it starts to lose its authenticity.
So it's something I'm super, super paranoid about.
And obviously the best figure out how to allow both to exist um as they should.
They should be rewarded for making great content.
But yeah, I'd rather post less on LinkedIn and actually have something to say than have AI
write a post for me about what a VP of growth should be saying.
Definitely.
terms of content as well, I'd love to get your take on it.
Where do you foresee content coming into this equation of sales and marketing for B2B
companies over the next five years?
Because I think what we're seeing right now is a lot of founder led brands and profiles
coming up now.
And that seems to be quite a big influence overall.
I mean, had Adam Robinson on my podcast last year.
Yeah, exactly.
mean, he's all about that founder led brand.
Obviously the power of it, went to a few million annual recurring revenue in a very short
amount of time, leveraging just the personal brand of it.
And so we're also seeing bigger companies, enterprises also than hiring strategists to run
the content of the leadership team as well.
And so we're starting to see this pivot and shift into content.
So where do you foresee that fitting into the equation of your plans and what you believe
it's gonna move into?
Yeah, I think it's very similar to what we were just talking about.
I personally feel like you can tell which founders or like, know, Adam has such an
authentic feel and that's because he kind of has a very specific style, which is more of a
spicy style is what I'll say.
I mean, I think I remember back in the start, he like put six cents on blast and that's
kind of how it all.
started um or at least when he was on my radar and um it feels super authentic to him
because it was a pain point that he was going through.
He was frustrated and then he kind of built this amazing brand on top of that.
uh But there's a lot of CEOs of sort of larger, more button-updoor organizations who are
doing the kind of the founder-led approach.
And it, I don't connect with it because it just doesn't feel like there's a person behind
it or it feels too polished.
And I actually don't think it's, you know, much different than different styles of content
that have existed, you know, the decades before a press release or a letter to this, you
know, shareholders or whatever it is.
And obviously those are a little bit more of like button up formats, but as the format and
channels change, I think the same problems exist, which is
like the human elements of authenticity.
Like what are you passionate about?
What are your values with quote unquote within business and with people and within your
community?
Like those things are fundamental and don't change no matter if in the way of AI or back
using typewriters.
Yeah, no, I love that take and I do agree as well as you shouldn't be posting content for
just content sake, right?
There needs to be a reason behind it and to your point, if people can't connect with it,
then what's the point?
It's not gonna get you anywhere.
It's not gonna achieve the mission that you have.
going back to Adam's point, It was very authentic to him at that point in time.
And obviously it was a bit abrasive and people obviously engage with drama.
That's going on, right?
And so that was obviously in there, but.
No, I agree.
And I think as well from, not only that the leadership level, but also from the sales reps
level as well is a lot of the companies I can't remember.
There's one company that I saw.
I can't remember who it was now, but they're doing a really good job with not only
building the personal brands of course, the leadership team, but then the sales reps as
well.
Because obviously when they have some type of brand or some type of, um, you know,
something on, on socials,
it brings brings that authority.
So when they're doing their outreach, they're doing the messaging, they're doing the
calling, whatever, they have some type of authority already.
Is that something you guys have looked to explore?
Or is that again, just like a something that's potentially the pipeline, but not not to
fruition just yet.
Yeah, our COO recently kicked off about maybe four months ago a LinkedIn posting
challenge, which is super old school.
Like this is nothing new, uh what we really wanted to do was kind of capture some of the
internal culture and a lot of the reasons why people actually, like our customers choose
to work with us is who we are as humans.
Like we're a real company.
We build data.
We make the data as usable as possible versus some of maybe the other sketchy data writers
out there.
So we've been really working hard on a brand perspective um of kind of showcasing some of
that internal brand and culture of ours externally.
uh
And that was just something we didn't focus on.
You know, it wasn't something that our founders really believed in at the very beginning
of starting our company.
We were like the data provider behind a lot of these tools that were the forward facing
brands.
And we were a little bit of their kind of secret sauce is what I'll say.
So content was not a big part.
They didn't want us to use their logo.
They saw it as a competitive advantage.
And it's only been really in the past four years or so, I would say that
there's been uh a of a loosening of the ship there where like they've allowed us to use
their logos.
They've been interested in telling customer stories.
So it's really changed for us how much we're willing to kind of post and showcase who we
are.
So we're kind of like coming out from under the rock right now in some ways.
And this LinkedIn challenge has been really fun because as people have been posting and
kind of...
testing the boundaries of what they're willing to talk about as a human or uh in our
industry or what's happening in our business.
uh We just hop in the comments and showcase that quirky culture and inside jokes and we
don't really care if anybody else gets it.
ah Just really relying on that authenticity and hoping that from a recruiting perspective
actually.
people see that and go, that's really cool.
I want to work at a company that engages in posts with this type of content and is blowing
each other up in the comments, which is exactly what we do in the Zoom chat every single
month in our all hands.
The Zoom chat is just flying, right?
So it's bringing that sort of subculture out into the world.
um But yeah, we don't do canned.
sort of, hey, here's, we're going to post this on LinkedIn from like the company page.
Here's your canned response sales team.
uh Very much so leave it up to like, what do you want to talk about?
Are you excited about this product launch?
What interaction have you had with your customers?
uh So that might change in the future.
But for now we're not doing the like any kind of templating or anything like that.
But I'd be curious to see.
uh an example from this company that you mentioned.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
send it over.
I mean, another good company is, is recall.ai.
So they create meeting bots and they're the, again, the secret source to a lot of
companies that are now rolling out meeting bots and meeting recordings.
And we actually use it internally at the pod because when we record podcast introduction
calls, we need to get all the details.
We just send this bot to these meetings so we can then of course get the transcript, get
the recording.
But of course it's all built on this technology by, by Recall and their leadership team
are doing a really good job at
at the content piece.
And so they've grown massively on LinkedIn as well.
But at the same time, they can't really talk about their clients, right?
Because their clients are like, you know, all these different companies.
So uh it's interesting how they've navigated it and how they weave in these stories, but
without actually naming the clients or the types of clients that they're working with.
So I'll send you their links later, but it's very interesting how they've managed to piece
it together and they've seen the, you know, the success of it.
So amazing.
to get around it, right?
Where you're like, we work with the top, you know, three out of five of the top consulting
businesses.
For example.
Definitely.
Definitely.
So I love to touch on, you know, company culture.
I mean, we've spoken about it a little bit so far, but what is company culture to you?
Cause of course, leading a team of sales and marketing, both are quite difficult roles,
especially on the sales side.
It can be very, very challenging.
So how do you maintain this, this, you know, culture that you've created and what is
culture to you, I guess as well.
Yeah, I think of culture as kind of an operating rhythm actually.
ah And that might go back to some of my like chief of staff days, but I genuinely believe
that you should like where you work.
And that's a little bit of a debate amongst some of my friends, I would say.
ah
And I'm not saying every day here is peachy, there's been some really rough times, but as
long as I believed in what we were doing and I kind of saw the future and the vision, ah
most days I really love who I work with and I really love what I get to do.
ah
And so ah that's a little rainbows and unicorn kind of talk, but I believe it.
And I feel like I've gotten a little bit lucky being able to work here.
ah And so we're looking for other people who also want to enjoy where they work ah and who
are we're not just looking for that culture fit, right?
We're looking for the culture ad people with all different backgrounds.
And the way that I usually describe it is that I get to hang out.
and build and have this amazing community with a group of people that I never would have
met socially, which I think is such an amazing experience.
We spend a lot of our time at work and I'm in our small New York office, but um we're a
remote first company.
it's a little bit harder being remote to kind of build that culture and connect with
people.
So we all have to try a little bit harder.
And you have to want to try.
like that's what we're kind of looking for.
I would say from a culture perspective.
um And then there are a few things that I think have ever been true kind of since day one,
which is lack of ego.
Like it just doesn't work here.
It almost finds itself kind of its own way out the door in some ways.
um
If you make it all about you, it just doesn't fly.
People don't want to work with you here.
ah And so I think that's been a big tenet of ours.
ah Being really candid about mistakes and failure, I think is also another one.
I probably haven't done enough of that on this podcast yet, but I love talking about how
much I don't know.
um sure.
I've had an interesting start and I've gotten the chance to wear all these different hats
and uh over the past eight years I feel really uh lucky in a lot of senses.
uh But when I took this role, I was like, I don't think I'm qualified to do this.
And they're like, yeah, but that's exactly why we want you.
uh And so I try to be, I think,
There's a core tenet amongst a lot of people of just being aware of our failures and what
we're good at and what we're not good at.
And that's a kind of ever going journey.
So yeah, I would say that those are some of the things I love the most about working here.
The people, the product, and kind of the possibilities if I had to throw in a full
alliteration there.
Yeah, definitely.
And I love what he said about from the culture point of view is, you you will have, I
guess, high standards, like you're not going to tolerate some of those more negative, um
you know.
things that people can do, right?
As said, like leave the ego out of it, all these different things.
will naturally, just because of the standard that you obviously have in the company,
naturally it will just leave and go out the door, right?
And so I think that's testament to obviously the culture and the fact that everyone's on
that same wavelength, which, it goes back to the recruitment side of things, right?
Is from there, you're obviously hiring a very strong team to then come in and then raise
the ship and all these different things as well.
It's interesting you mentioned, you know, of feeling that, you know, why am I doing this
role?
I'm not qualified for it.
that type of mentality because I think it's something that everyone goes through and it's
really interesting is, you start something new, you enter a new role and it's just like,
why am I doing this type of thing?
And I remember when I started this podcast, I had the same thing, right?
Because I'm very much introverted.
don't like public speak.
I don't like any of these things.
And I was on the train down to this podcast studio in London, recording three of the first
podcasts back to back.
And I was thinking like, why am I doing this?
This is so dumb.
And it's so interesting how things work out.
And then when you look back, you kind of connect the dots.
And it's so interesting the journey then of who you then become off the back of that, off
the back of making that decision, taking that leap as well.
And so I think that the learning point, I'm to summarize it is, when you do have those
opportunities, is sometimes you just got to jump in and you'll figure it out and you'll
build that parachute as you're falling, right?
And then it'll work out in the end as well.
Absolutely, and sometimes it's that no one else is raising their hand and so you're sort
of looking around and you're like, okay, I guess I'll do it.
So be that person that takes that leap and you're like, I guess it won't be for forever.
I could do this for a while.
um
And you know, the other thing that I feel like maybe goes along with the I'm not qualified
to do this, that was really tough in the beginning of my career was I had these really
strong gut instincts.
I don't know if you feel that way, but like maybe that was a gut instinct that you were
like, I'm going to build this podcast and record these back to back and I'm just going to
go for it.
um Yeah, OK.
And and I have these gut instincts, but I didn't know how to communicate them to people
like.
Right.
is the conversation.
I don't think we should do this or I think we should do this and they're like why and I'm
like because I know we should or because I know I think I know what's gonna happen if we
do or don't do it and that was something that was super frustrating for a while.
trying to communicate that with different leaders, different, really important and
cross-functional stakeholders is why do I have the gut instincts?
Why do I know what's going to happen when I don't have that many years of experience?
And so that's been a really interesting sort of journey as well.
And it kind of leads into the marketing role, which is like, well, I'm not qualified for
this.
it's like, no one knows the business from a marketing perspective better than you.
You've done the job of SDR.
already done marketing multiple times, you've done this successfully, like why are you
unqualified for it?
And you're like, yeah, I guess I am qualified.
But I just kind of had to get comfortable with the uncomfortableness and say, okay, I'm
gonna be a quote unquote marketing leader for I don't know how long, sales development
leader, et cetera.
and I'm gonna go off of gut instincts.
I'm gonna listen to my teams, I'm gonna ask a lot of questions, I'm gonna observe, but
ultimately if I follow my gut instincts, like 95 % of the time they're right, and when I
don't follow the gut instincts, that's when I'm cleaning up the messes.
You know, it's like, it's pretty crazy.
Sorry, I'm back now.
Yeah, Wi-Fi cut out for a split second.
Very frustrating.
Okay, all good.
Yeah, it's really annoying.
We moved this new building and every software was cut out and it's just like, I'm not sure
why.
It happens to me literally once a Zoom call right now.
And it's unclear if it's the Wi-Fi or if it's Zoom.
I'm gonna be honest.
Hate to say it.
of those.
Okay, perfect.
Where were we?
What was I about now?
The culture and then saying yes to things.
Yeah.
gut instincts, yeah.
Can I ask you a question?
Is that appropriate?
Okay.
On the gut instincts piece, like do you feel like when you started your business, it was a
lot, it was basically foundational in terms of I'm gonna act on my gut instincts, like I
feel like I can do this or that there's a need or.
Yeah, so great question.
To be honest, I think the initial emotion or feeling was because I'd worked a year in
corporate rights where I did accountancy and I was like, you know, doing this
qualification and like it was the worst year of my life.
And so the initial motivation off the back of that was I just don't want to do that.
So the gut feeling was around like, I don't want to live that life, let's say.
And so
It was, me just try anything I can to like not do that.
But what it has ended up being is it's similar to what you mentioned where, know, on a
long enough time horizon, I know what I'm going to do is right, if that makes sense.
And so then you start trusting your gut more and that kind of builds up.
know, similar to what you said is the times where I've not trusted my gut instinct and
I've, I've made a different decision.
That's when it's not worked out.
And so because that's happened a few times now, when it came to start the business, it was
like, you know,
going away from that negative to what I thought was then going to be the positive.
And you're building on that.
That's happened multiple times now, you know, across the first business I started, second
and third business I started as well, where, you know, things started to move along and
you started getting those wins and, you know, things started working out.
And so now it's at a point where it's like natural, where, you know, any type of
opportunity or decision, you know, like I'm just going to do it.
Although I might be feeling a bit of anxiety around it or bit of apprehension around it
whatever that could be.
you still just get on with it and just do it anyway.
And I think that's, I think it's something that can't be taught.
It comes with just experiencing like time in the game and enough reps of, of kind of doing
it.
But when you do start getting to that rhythm of trusting your own, yourself, it's a really
amazing place to be, right?
Because you kind of, you feel like you can kind of do anything, not from like an
egotistical way, but maybe there is a bit of an ego in that, but you know, you feel you
can do anything, right?
And, and so that's why you would just always put your hand up.
That's why you'd always take the next step and that leap and
and kind of work on what you need to work on.
Yeah, and maybe it's a version of ego which is that you know you can count on yourself and
you know you'll get it done.
Like you'll know you'll put in the time to make it successful.
Like a confidence basically, yeah.
Yeah.
And actually one of my first mentors, yeah, he, because I think I was reading Ego was the
Enemy or something, was telling him about it.
And he was like, well, you do need to have an ego if you're going to be in this business.
Obviously not one which is outward and your voice is all these different things, but one
of, it's your self-confidence, right?
If you don't have like a little ego there of, can beat the competition, I can do better
than them, even though they might be, you know.
a billion dollar company or whatever that could be.
You've got to have some type of ego to say, hey, I'm win, I'm going to beat them.
uh And so I think in entrepreneurship specifically, obviously it needs to be balanced, it
needs to be maintained, but there needs to be some type of ego within, I think the way you
move and the way you work, but obviously it needs to be controlled.
It can't be unrelenting ego, otherwise that just never works.
um So yeah.
Yeah.
And maybe a split between being competitive with oneself and competitive with one's
competitors.
Because I, like going back to the hiring and culture piece, I think if you're mainly
competitive with yourself.
you'll never run out of kind of steam on that.
Whereas if I've seen I've seen some patterns where it's like, okay, we got to take down
the next one and the next one and the next one and it all becomes about taking down the
competitors versus like things can start to degrade internally, for example.
Yeah.
Or you almost give your competitors too much clout, you know, sometimes.
Yeah.
no, no, I agree, I agree.
Okay, perfect.
And then in terms of, I guess, your next steps with your own progression, right?
So you're managing these teams now.
What do you think is gonna be the next evolution for you in your career?
And like, what's the one area that you wanna really build on, let's say as well?
Okay, I have, would say that I have some short term goals and I have some long, long term
goals.
And I don't have...
I think maybe the middle goal I've already talked about, which is at some point we wrap up
this thing with my great friends and amazing coworkers and we get to ride out on a high
and be really proud of what we've accomplished.
I think that's honestly one of the next chapters that's not happening this year or next
year necessarily, but in the next few years.
That would be uh incredible.
I think the brand piece that I talked about, having our, continuing to come out of the
woodworks a little bit, showcasing ah just our amazing teammates that we got to work with.
I'm just like so proud in a lot of ways uh of our teams and our weird quirky culture.
And so just getting to do more of that storytelling and help people on the back end of
that.
just understand data and understand how to work with it in the wave of AI, but also I'm
non-technical.
I can use all of our data.
It doesn't scare me, right?
Like my kind of mission or dream would be that every marketer could come to our site and
understand how to utilize this and build like an account list that I was mentioning.
ah And that's a little bit lofty, but.
ah
I think short term, I'm on a real kick right now.
I'm like being slightly anarchist and I'm like throwing out old confluence pages.
ah I'm like, I need to clean out the cobwebs and the stuff that no longer serves us.
ah You know, walk a little lighter.
And I'm also like in my, both in my professional and personal life, trying to do things
that scare me.
Just to like.
kind of kickstart into that next level of growth.
I don't know what it is around the corner, but usually when I rearrange my uh furniture in
my apartment and I start to do things that scare me, that's my natural sort of rhythm or
cycle that is, know, my subconscious going, okay, we need to shift things around.
We need to create a different environment for whatever is supposed to be coming next.
uh And so, yeah, I'm on a...
little kick of that right now, which is really, really fun, really scary.
um But good.
isn't it?
It's one of those where, again, maybe it's this intuition thing or whatever, but you feel
like a change is coming very soon.
There's gonna be a big pivot, a big shift.
I went through this type of thing quite recently where I just moved to a new city.
So we moved up to Manchester, new flat, new circle, all these different things, which is
really, really amazing and motivating and everything.
But then also signed up to an ultra marathon.
So it coincided with me doing this 75-kilometer trail run around.
the latest tricks.
Bear in mind I never ran like more than 5k a year before.
ultra.
Yeah, so it's 75k.
Yeah, yeah.
not enough, I gotta go ultra.
Yeah, because I booked it a year before because it came out a year before so last
September, August last year it came out and my friend signed up to it, he's a personal
trainer and I was like, well, if he can do it, I can do it.
So I put my name down for it.
And then, yeah, I spent a year obviously trying to build up to this level and I did my
first marathon six weeks before this 75 kilometer one.
And then, yeah, did the 75.
Yeah, yeah, it was intense.
It was intense.
my God, I feel like you could do a whole podcast about training for that.
That's insane.
Did you make it through?
Yeah.
Made it through.
was, uh, cause it was about 2,800 meters in elevation.
Uh, so it took about 17 hours because it was on the trail, right?
So it wasn't a road.
It was just like through the hills and everything.
Uh, but yeah, made it through, finished, which was yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There was honestly, it was crazy as well because the night before the few days before it
was like torrential rain.
So it was like boggy.
It was wet slippery.
I saw someone slip over and like, snap their wrist.
Like it was like really, really intense.
But it was interesting though, because like that coincided with obviously moving up here
and so it was like, I'm going through this huge mental shift right now where I'm going
through this whole 75k, which was again, it kind of changes you as a person.
And then also moving up to a new place as well, right?
And leading up to this, I felt that a change is going to come.
And so I think you're obviously feeling something similar, right?
Where it's like, there's this feeling where something's going to shift very soon.
And when it does, it's an amazing thing, right?
Of what happens off the back of that.
And obviously, as I said before we started this, we've had a record month now in the
company and all these things are now coinciding in a lining.
it's always an exciting time when things start to shift and change.
Yeah, and don't you feel like they stack up?
It's like as soon as you start to do one and then the next one and then the next one,
you're like, okay, what's next?
And you just start to build this insane sort of snowball effect where it's nothing can
stop it.
Not even yourself.
You have no, you can't even control your body or your mind saying sort of no to the next
thing.
You're like, of course I would do that.
Exactly right, it builds that confidence in, which is amazing.
So one of the final questions we always ask guests on the show is if you can go back to
your 18 year old self and only take three lessons with you, whether it's some
philosophical knowledge, some business knowledge, some general advice, what would those
three things be and why would it be those things?
Such a big question.
ah I might have to ask you to repeat the question as we go through, because if we're going
philosophical, I'm going to go down a deep, deep path.
I think, you know, I've said this so many times at this point, but the gut instinct thing.
is pretty foundation.
I feel like that is my life lesson that I am supposed to understand and be challenged and
overcome time and time again.
ah
And it's kind of shifting and molding every single time I'm challenged, like for the rest
of my life, honestly.
ah And so I think telling my 18-year-old self that like this is gonna happen and this is
sort of your mission and you're never going to quote unquote overcome it.
It's just gonna show up in different shapes and forms in different parts of your life and
just get comfortable with that.
ah I think someone saying to me,
at 18 or I guess I'm saying this to myself, ah get comfortable with the uncomfortable.
Seek the uncomfortable moments.
That is where you are going to thrive and shine.
Like that moment where I raise my hand and I say, okay, I'll do it.
Why not?
I could probably figure that out and that's uncomfortable, but sure, why not?
ah So that would be one.
um
I think another one would be ah that there's always space and room for something slightly
different than sort of the typical stereotype.
So like I was attracted to becoming a sales rep because I thought I could do it
differently, but I had no evidence to support that and like be successful at it.
um
And that is super, super fun if you can figure that out.
uh And I'm trying to do that with my team right now.
Every conversation is like, OK, cool, you're interested in product marketing, or you're
interested in customer marketing.
Amazing.
Go learn all about it.
And then we're going to throw that out the door.
And we're going to take the stereotype, and then we're going to figure out where your
unique vantage point is.
And we can create the role or we can create the sort of lane for you as long as it
actually solves for something, it lights you up, right?
Like those are the only two requirements.
The requirement is not that you have to follow what's previously done.
Yeah, makes sense.
And then maybe a third one would be.
Something about
Like, I am cheating because I already said this one, but...
Just having fun, like not taking life too seriously.
um Because the weight of sometimes what we're doing and tackling, especially when we're
doing things that scare us, it's like, holy shit.
We're trying, you know, working in startups, it's like, okay, there's money coming in and
there's money going out.
Like that alone can kind of scare the shit out of you.
ah Or start to weigh pretty heavy.
um So finding those moments of uh fun, of laughter, of silliness, I actually think maybe
is the better word, and kind of a relief valve.
And it's about finding those people that you can do that with really naturally and easily,
both at work and in your personal life.
I think that would be my advice to my 18-year-old self.
Amazing.
Well, thank you so much for joining me on today's show.
I mean, I've enjoyed this conversation.
I'm sure other people have enjoyed it and there's lots of, you know, some good information
packed throughout this, right?
And so there's lots of lessons from take away.
So yeah, thank you so much for taking the time today.
Really enjoyed the, really enjoyed the conversation.
Thanks so much.
This was so much fun.
Perfect.