Investing in Community and Relationships
Celia Fleischaker, CMO at isolved, shares about amplifying an engaged customer community and investing in relationships.
[MUSIC]
>> Welcome to Pipeline Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios,
and today I am joined by special guest, Celia, how are you?
>> Great Ian, how are you doing?
Thanks for having me.
>> Yeah, excited to have you on the show,
chat marketing, chat I solved,
and everything in between.
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Okay, Celia, first question, what was your first job marketing?
>> I did not take a traditional route into marketing.
I was an EA for a VP of marketing at a startup.
And just so God really exposed what marketing was.
And he's like, you should really do this thing.
You should get more involved in marketing.
And so that led me down a path and will work my way into marketing.
So I started as an EA.
>> And now a multi-time CMO and the CMO of I-Solved.
Who would have thunk it, but here you are,
making your CMO fingerprints seen all over the tech world.
>> There you go, no, it's been great.
So yeah, this is my fourth time in CMO.
And I loved it.
I spent a lot of time, I'll say, meeting to be tucking it.
It's been fun.
>> Coming into the fourth time for CMO, anything sort of different that you
approach coming in this time?
>> Yeah, this is, I think how I looked for opportunities this time was maybe
different.
Because you know, going in, you want to be at a company that really appreciates
marketing.
Because companies look at it differently.
And so how that CEO, how that exact team really views what they want out of
marketing was really important to me.
Had that out of benefit coming to I-Solved that I knew some of the team and
kind of knew what they were like to work with.
So culture fit was important to me.
It's just been great.
I've been on board a couple months now and still ramping up.
Obviously, still that's been really good.
>> Yeah, such a cool company, such a cool brand.
And I'm excited to dig in.
Tell us a little bit about the scope of your role as CMO.
>> Yeah, it's full stock.
So what you kind of expect from a CMO role, all of the solutions, marketing,
messaging, positioning, all of the demand and the brand.
Because they are content corporate and then all to support I-Solved, right?
So I saw build HCM technology, human capital management, everyone's familiar
with their HR department, right?
Like we support the heroes of the HR department in 170,000 businesses across
the US.
So if you think about it, it's about that million, I think, employees that we
touch with our solutions.
And then we love it.
I mean, helping out people and employee experience, it's been great.
>> So cool.
And we'll get into all that marketing here.
In our next segment, The Trust Tree, where we go and feel honest and trusted.
And you can share this deepest, darkest, pipeline secrets.
So what types of customers do you have at ISOLF?
>> So they arrange, it could be a handful of employees, up to a few thousands
of employees.
And they span a number of industries.
It could be small manufacturers, quick serve restaurants, professional services
firms.
And we're working with them, like I said, to recruit, retain, develop talent.
And we supply not just the technology to help them do that,
but services and things as well.
>> And those buying committees, obviously, very extremely greatly.
But how do you think about those buying committees?
>> Yeah, and it's definitely a committee.
In those smaller companies, you may not even have a formalized HR function.
You might be selling to an office manager, someone that has multiple
responsibilities.
A lot of times, the owner is going to get involved in those.
And then as you get up into those larger organizations, you've got a head of HR
a chief people officer, and then there are different people with NHRE.
You might be selling to a BP of talents for learning and development or
recruitment.
So the committee can vary depending on the type of company,
size of company that you're going after.
>> I know it's a big question, you could probably spend an hour talking about
it.
But what is your marketing strategy sort of at a top level?
>> We're a growth company.
And so we're definitely focused on acquisition of new logos.
And then certainly it's a expansion within the customers that we have.
If you think about the base that we have of the 170,000, how do we expand?
We've seen our platform expand.
How do we build out and expand within those customers?
Big opportunity for us.
And then from a new local acquisition, whether it's directly,
we also work through a really nice partner channel as well, building that out.
And a lot of the growth and expansion is built through,
and we'll talk about how we think about our customer community, customer
experience,
and advocates we have.
We've done a lot to build that community,
build on the experience that we deliver, and it pays back, which is nice.
So it's kind of a full circle piece.
>> Yeah, I love the community stuff and excited to get into that.
And how do you think about creating demand within that?
>> Yeah, I think this has been such a hot topic around marketing lately.
People kind of, from a demand creation perspective,
they're like, no, you're harvesting demand or no, whatever.
We're still pushing on the demand front to drive demand,
but we are being a lot smarter about it,
trying to engage a customer, a prospect where they are looking at things like
intent,
a lot to drive and determine our next best step with the targets that we have.
But demand, I mean, it obviously features really prominently in it,
and I think just building out more and more sophistication with how we want to
go to market.
And find our companies that are looking for the solutions that we have to offer
who's in market, understanding what they're looking for,
and kind of meeting them where they are.
It's how we think about it.
>> I love it.
All right, let's get to our next segment, the playbook,
where you open up that playbook and talk about the tactics that help you in.
What are your three channels or tactics that are your uncuttable budget items?
>> I mentioned community and customer advocacy, and this for us is just one of
those things
we want to grow and grow and invest in and believe there's such an opportunity
here.
We launched people here as community and have been working on that.
We've got, we're approaching 5,000 people heroes in our community, and this
year alone,
we issue challenges, right?
Whether it's social or reference or asking them questions, learning from them.
We've had 128,000 challenges that they've completed this year alone.
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> That's incredible.
>> It's great.
And it's this level of engagement you're not going to get through other chain
laws.
And so for us, building that community, we've just got this amazing team who
works
and they're building that community, keeping up that engagement and fostering
those relationships
has been really important.
And we just want to see it grow.
It's absolutely something we wouldn't want to cut.
And we want to build on more and more.
Other areas, influence or strategy is one of those areas that we're really
working on.
A lot, we know we've expanded what we're doing with traditional and certainly
we've
bought the PR programs you'd expect.
But HR in particular, I think, has, there's so many people out there that are
influencing
the space, talking about the space, people's strategies and employee experience
are such
big topics right now that we want to make sure that we're working with influ
encers,
building those relationships that helps us from a brand and awareness
perspective.
And we're putting a lot of focus there.
And I think the other piece, not so much I wouldn't say it necessarily a
channel, but
content is really something that we produce a lot of content, but we're
investing more
and more in that.
And a lot of primary research that we're developing, we've found that it
certainly helps us from
a coverage perspective and things, but it also helps us build this point of
view when
we go and talk with our customers and our prospects that is unique because it's
our
research that we've done across these different audiences.
It lets them understand what their peers are thinking and we continue to build
out and invest
in primary research that helps us drive that thought leadership side of things.
I love the primary research stuff.
It's one of my favorite things.
I think it's super under invested.
And I know we can't invest in everything, but when it comes to creating, I
think we spent
so much time creating content rather than actually doing the research and
developing
unique points of view on things and stuff that only way I always say because I
was in
the army, it's a fight where you can win.
It's like, fight where you can win to me in marketing is always like, what do
we have
that nobody else has and first party information like that is the way to go?
I think that, I mean, you're exactly, that is the battle you to win and you're
building
things that you know your audience is interested in.
It's from their point of view, not you just building something that they may or
may not
find interesting.
And so we always get a good reaction to it and we learn a lot internally
because it
shapes not just the content we're building that are messaging and what we're
doing externally
across all of our different channels.
Go back to community first sec.
So you come into the organization as a CMO with a community that's already
engaged, which
is like, I mean, music to any CMOs years, right?
Like, oh, I don't have to build this thing from scratch.
And so I'm curious, like, coming into that, how did you think about, like, okay
, how do
we take this to the next level?
How do we create more engagement?
How do we tell more customer stories?
Like, yeah, what was your thought process?
Yeah.
So my, the, one of the interesting things, the first full week I had on the job
with the
team was at the customer conference.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
And so you show up and there are, you know, lots of people there are both.
So I got to meet the team, a lot of in-person stuff, but then you meet all
these customers
and then you're spending time, like I was doing a lot of meetings with Alice as
well.
And, and the stories that you're hearing and Alice, which are typically, you
know, they,
they hold back.
They kind of cards close to the best.
And we would be meeting with people and they'd be like, oh my gosh, your
customers are so
passionate.
Like, that we're trying to find someone who doesn't like you.
And like, it's just as a CMO, exactly.
You walk into that situation, you know, like that's normally, to me, that's the
foundation
you've built on.
If you've got customers that are happy and they are not afraid to talk about it
, that's
a huge challenge.
Typically, when you come into a role or just how you're going to build
awareness and recognition
and in, that's not our case here.
It's just, it's not a case of coming in where you're fixing.
It's goodness.
Don't break it.
Right.
And how do you build upon it?
Because the community itself is this great piece we're trying to figure out.
Okay.
How do we just strengthen that and build more people into it?
Bring them in.
Because it's not just about them interacting with us.
It's their one peer to peer a lot and learning what others are doing.
And then just how do we raise the awareness?
Like we want our sales teams.
People that are like, what stories can they tell?
How do they talk about how they're solving these challenges?
Because the issues in the HR are pretty universal when they talk about them,
whether they're
you know, how am I attracting talent or retaining talent and getting people to
share that.
How they're using our solutions to help them do that.
But just in general, how they're performing better as an organization.
It's a huge opportunity.
So that that figures into what we're doing from a strategy perspective in
marketing and
it's sales across the board.
Yeah.
One of the things that helped me reframe marketing sort of in the sort of
current marketing,
like landscape or environment is just thinking about how like marketing part of
marketing
job is to help your customers tell their stories better and get those out in
front of
more people and then create opportunities where they can tell other people
about that experience.
Right.
And it's like, that's what community is doing.
That's what content is doing.
That's what digital series are doing.
That's what event series are doing.
And it's like all of that of like creating connections and then amplifying
stories.
And like if you get away from sort of the old, the old way and it's like the
more you can
do that, especially with y'all where you have 170,000 customers.
I mean, like there's so many stories to tell that you, you know, you could
spend a lifetime
and not tell them all.
And we're working to build into the product like systematic ways where they can
track their ROI so that over time they're seeing what the payback because HR, I mean,
sometimes
like it's a related to marketing marketing.
It's my pet peeve and people like, you can make it pretty.
I'm like, you know what, we do so much more than that.
But with HR, it's like, oh, you take care of our people and HR has had this
issue really,
we've talked about is breaking the glass ceiling from an employee experience
perspective,
showcasing the strategic value that HR has.
And I think if we can help our customers do that inside with those business
owners understanding
what it means to the bottom line when you're able to attract better talent when
you're retaining
your account at talent or your attrition rates are lower than your competition
and working
with them to be able to provide those analytics that ROI so that they can
showcase that internally.
It's part of the making them heroes aspect of the role that we talk about.
One of the things that because you all have so many products and services and
there's so
many different things that you do for so many different types of companies, I'm
curious
like, how do you think about sort of so much possibility there?
Yeah, it's funny we just got out of a week or so last week of all these
workshops, like
trying to figure out where the opportunity is, where the impact can be made
from a services
perspective, from a product perspective.
And you know, it's done in conjunction with what we believe, where we think the
opportunity
is HR, there's a lot that's compliance driven that drives a lot of opportunity
that we want
to be on top of and are on top of.
But then also from a customer perspective, it comes back to, you know, we
talked about
the primary research, we've got the advisory boards going, we're talking to the
community
to get their input so that we are kind of pulling that together and then
choosing to
focus.
And so we're not going to recognize there's a lot we could do, but we know that
you're the top three or four things we've got to be successful for customers, but also
for
the company.
What about one thing that you are maybe thinking about that experimental,
experimental 10%
budget, something that you're investing in that's your crazy idea or something
like
that?
I don't know if I call it crazy.
The things that we're looking at, some stuff that we haven't maybe leveraged as
much,
but we're kind of treading lightly, right?
Like in-app opportunities, there's a lot of opportunity to market to them in
the application.
We want to be really careful about that, who we're touching, how we're touching
them,
not overstepping.
And so really thinking about what the options are and then how we do that in a
way that's
then official, so everyone involved is really important.
So that's something newer for us.
And again, it's something we've kind of worked on.
No, we can do some of that, but trying to figure out what's that right?
How far do you go with that without overstepping?
I think it's such a fine line inside that.
And for some apps, it's fine for an enterprise app.
I don't know.
And then experience is something where we're putting a lot more.
We've talked a lot about experience from the standpoint of community and
advocacy.
But we named a chief experience officer recently, which I love.
Love it.
Phenomenal and knows our customer base and then knows our people.
And so we've made a big investment in how do we drive a better employee partner
of a
customer experience?
We're working to build out a full strategy around each of those so that we have
It starts with people, right?
Our people, our customers and then our partners.
And we're working to make sure we understand and measure what their experience
is, that
we build pathways to make sure it's improving.
And then just continue.
We feel like we've got an edge with what we've done, but we know there's so
much more
we can do.
We're pretty excited about that.
What about one thing that you maybe are not investing in or is fading away?
I think I joked about it earlier.
That hard, hard push on Demi and we obviously have a B.D. team and they're
doing calling.
That push on just pure cold calling.
I think it's just not something that I never pick up my own.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
I look at it all the time and I'm like, no, no, that's not it.
So I just, I think stuff like that is just, it's more about the listening,
meeting them
where they are understanding your customer more and that, but leaving behind
some of
the harsher tactics that were there before.
Preach on it.
I am 100% in agreement.
Confirm permission is the way to go.
Huge.
Yeah.
We don't want to, nobody wants to be sold to that way.
Nobody.
Nobody wants to be called five times.
Yeah.
Nobody wants to.
Like P.M. people are like, well, what if that person calling is going to offer
you
some, you know, great thing?
And I'm like, if it's that great, you better figure out another way to get in
front of
me than calling my phone.
Yeah.
And if you meet it, you're going to go look for it, right?
In some way, you're going to show some signal that you need at it.
It's hard to believe that someone could call right at that time that you've
just decided
to purchase something now.
Yeah.
And they interrupt your day.
I mean, that's why, and this is why the great people qualified have such an
amazing product
because like part of the thing is when you go to someone's website, when you're
ready
to do that, if you're in that moment and you're like, hey, right now I am
looking for your
thing.
I want to talk to someone about buying it right the second.
And like, that's what's enough.
Shout out to the good people qualified.
I feel like that's really exciting to me.
The opposite of that is getting cool.
Yeah.
No, you're right.
You exactly agree.
Obviously.
Yeah.
Speaking of that, how do you view your website?
Our website.
I mean, for me, and this has been an in-year role that I've been in at the
website is the
face to the organization.
Most of the companies I've been with that they're not big.
I'll say big brands companies, where you're just investing a ton, external
brands.
And so the website tends to be where people encounter you first.
And so for me, getting that right is really important.
And we've done a lot right here at ISOMD.
And I think there's always opportunity to do more.
So for us, having it adequately today, who we are as an organization and what
we can do
for people is really important.
And I think we're doing that at ISOMD.
We've got work to do.
I think it holds a lot of opportunity for us.
Any trends that are coming that you're excited about or things that you're
following?
For me, this kind of goes with a little bit of what we talked about it in my
background
as well.
I think there's such a cool convergence between customer experience and
marketing.
And I think they're just continuing to get closer and closer.
If, if there aren't where I was before, I worked in the CX phase.
We saw it there a lot of our customers realizing the power of taking customer
experience, customer
service information, blending that from a marketing perspective and the amount
of data
that you get that really points to what you need to be doing for customers,
where they
are at a relationship point.
But do you, and that's what I think with this CXO, we're all the customer
experience, we're
all here taking that, looking at that from customer service perspective, from a
marketing
perspective and pulling things together to look holistically, is what is it
that we can
do both internally and externally to drive a better experience?
And how is that going to benefit, yes, our customers and the satisfaction that
they have,
but from a marketing perspective, there's so much opportunity to better
understand what
your customers are going through and it just puts you in this better position.
So I, I think it's a very cool thing that's happening that you're seeing more
and more
and more discussion about experience and in marketing together.
And I think it just, it keeps going.
It's data gain, I think understanding what's happening with your customers, but
when you
get that right, you're just at this elevated position in terms of how you're
going to
talk to them and interact with them and it's a, it can be a big win.
I love it.
I think customer experience is one of the areas of marketing that is, well, it
's literally
not an area of marketing and also something that we need to be focused on more.
And the reason why, and I know we can't focus on everything, but I think it's
really important
to think about experience because in today's day and age, you know, it's been
said, no,
I didn't think of this, but like your customer service is your brand.
Like that actually is your brand.
Right.
And so how people perceive it or how, how they interact with it.
And I think your content experiences your brand, I think your sales experience
is your
brand, like how you buy, how you go onboard, how, you know, how you renew.
Are you the person that doesn't email them for 11 and a half months and then
says the
renewal coming up, like, or are you sort of with them every step of the way?
And I think it's an opportunity for marketers to find those little, you know,
the quote,
unquote moments that matter and market those, you know, like, hey, month, two
and a half
when, you know, people stopped using the app as much and like, here's, you know
, hey,
the team has proactively did XYZ and it really helped us like drive a lot more
adoption.
And now it's going great.
Like market those moments, tell those stories when things are going bad and you
turn it
around rather than just sort of like the buy, buy, buy, buy, you know, sort of
thing.
I was talking with someone in the past and it was an exact and I was talking
about it.
I was like, how do you work with different reps that you have?
Tell me what's different, what do you like?
And it was really interesting.
He was talking about the fact that, look, this one company, yes, I talked to
them and
they are great at writing an order.
Like, you know, it's, he goes, but you know, I pick up the phone for it's the
person who
calls me and we talk, you know, every other week, but it's, they call me with
an idea for
my business or they call me, right.
This customer has done this.
Have you tried this?
And then yeah, I do buy more from them.
I, I end up buying more because I trust them.
But it's exactly what you said.
It's that sales approach that's more about how do I deliver a consistent, like
value,
dream and set of conversations that I trust them.
They've built credibility and I, I know want to invest more with them.
Yeah.
Because we make a big investment when we buy something and we want to make sure
that, that
we're getting the most out of it.
Like that's, you know, you, you buy the nice car.
You want to get, get miles on those tires.
You know what I mean?
Well, yeah.
And I think especially from like an HR perspective, we, again, back to the
primary research, like
the number one people reason people leave a lot of times is there's a payroll
mistake,
right?
Yeah.
Can't afford to have that happen.
And so making sure that you're delivering the right experience for them, that
you're
delivering it accurately on time is so important.
You know, I had a, I had a really interesting insight the other day.
We had just launched a new podcast for one of our customers and, and I hopped
on, on
a, on a call with him because I wanted to just like hear out when and see how,
you know,
everything was going because it's a pretty stressful time to launch a series,
especially
if like one of your sea level execs is like starring in the show.
I bet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So I just want to talk through it.
And one of the things that came out was I was like, Hey, you know, it seemed
like launch
really went well.
And like congrats, like this is a really good launch, but I'm like, you know,
we just ran,
you know, the first hundred meters of the marathon, like pretty quick.
And like, don't worry about it.
Because if you had walked to the first hundred meters, like it's not going to
affect our time
on the marathon.
And he was like, Oh, I'm so glad that you said that because everything in my
marketing
world is always about launch.
Like in tech, the product launch, how hard it hits, how many people engage,
like everything
is launched, launched launch, but building a series like the exact opposite.
It's like, you know, it is about consistent, repeatable growth over time, not
about making
a huge splash in that exact moment.
And he was just like, I'm just really refreshing to hear that.
I'm like, geez, I should be telling this to more people.
And I, and I often don't do that.
And I probably should.
I love that.
Because it marrows so much like that shift from unprinted fast, right?
Where it was always about the big sale, the sale that you make and you're kind
of done.
And there are eight and so that no one can run.
But now it's, it's a relationship that you're building over time.
It's the marathon.
It doesn't that spread.
Yeah.
Celebrating mile 10 of like, wow, you know, one of the things that, that we
wanted to do,
which we still haven't done, but we, we, we mocked this.
So again, I probably need to do this is like, we wanted to make like a really
big deal out
of people getting to like their first 10,000 listeners or first hundred
thousand listeners
or first million or, you know, things like that.
And especially in marketing where so many of the things that we do, don't get
heralded
at milestones, right?
Because it's just launch and the next launch and the next like campaign is
doing well.
Okay.
What's the ROI?
What's this?
But like actually creating certain tests, especially if like in this series or
things
like that where like, you know, that's a crazy, like, you know, you know, like,
you all hitting 5,000 people in your community, like that's amazing.
Like that is such a crazy high number.
And like that stuff is so cool and should be celebrated.
And yeah, and anyways, we probably need to hear about recognition.
Yeah.
Enjoy the journey.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's get to our next segment.
The dust up, we're going to talk about healthy tension, whether that's with
your board, your
sales teams, your competitors, or anyone else.
Have you had a memorable dust up in your career?
Just flying or.
And I think marketing in general can get into them, right?
Because you have so many interfaces, whether it's with sales, with finance, and
like you
said with the board or your CEO.
And I think there's always a healthy tension there and I'm good with that.
I think for me, this will a few companies ago, but I just have it back and
forth with
the C F's about around how, how I was talking about marketing success.
And they were just like, but no, I don't, this is a, I don't speak in those
terms.
Like, I don't care about this.
And so we literally, we just sat in a conference room, the two of us.
And we had paper in front of us.
It was like, okay, here's what I'm showing you.
You guys see me.
Yeah, but this is what I want to see in it.
Literally like evolving.
Just like, what is it that you need?
And we landed on some, some pipe, like charts and things, but like here's your
delta.
Here's what you built.
Here's what's gone away.
And the pipe like.
Drawing it out by yet.
And then, and he's like, I get this like this is totally, and I'm like, okay,
well, I can,
I can produce this.
If this is in it.
And then that's, that's what we look for with the board.
Like that's what we use going forward.
And to see, maybe a lot of board members come from a finance background and
they were like,
oh, yeah.
So you're not talking to them about MQLs.
You're not talking to them about this funnel in their terms of what have you
brought to
the pipe?
What have you closed out for me?
What have you lost and why?
And it sounded so simple when we got to them results and it was, you know,
worked our way
through it.
But in the end, it was, it worked, right?
They understood what we were delivering.
I understood how to show that.
They were good.
But I do think you end up and if you're not having, whether it's a dust step or
just a
disagreement, then I don't think you're pushing enough, right?
I think something's wrong if you're not having some tension there with all
these different
functions.
It made me think of something that maybe I need to try with the finance people
in the
future, where like, have them walk through the last thing that they bought and
how it
all went down.
When was the like, like, when did you first hear about this?
Have you consumed any content related to this?
Did you research it?
Who else did you talk to?
I mean, like, it's almost like all of these different touch points are all very
important
to the way that you buy something.
And it's pretty hard to measure the impact that that single thing had on you.
But it's like they, they often just like don't understand that things don't
work as if like
a very binary, like, I am buying the software now, like, you know, versus, you
know, like
there's shades to like, they might choose it because the one rep is just nicer
to them.
Like it can get that crazy, you know, we're very emotional people.
I like that.
It puts them kind of in your shoes about thinking about that journey and how
they went through
it and experienced what we deliver.
Yeah, because it is, it is complex how you go about that.
Yeah.
That's a fun one.
I like that you physically had to draw it out.
That's great.
It worked well in the end, but yeah, I mean, typically I'm like, oh, you know,
you bring
your back, you work through it and stop by pictures and it worked out fine.
Okay, let's get to our next, our final segment.
Quick kids, these are quick questions and quick answers.
Just like how qualified.com helps companies generate pipeline quickly tap into
your greatest
essay website to identify your most valuable visitors like the CFOs, the Larkin
Run on
your website and instantly start sales conversations quick and easy.
Just like these questions go to qualified.com to learn more.
Celia, are you ready for quick kids?
I am ready.
Number more.
Do you have a hidden talent or skill that's not on your resume?
I'm a freakishly fast jigsaw puzzle worker and no, it's not on my resume, but I
love them.
Need to bring you on the next family vacation.
Knock out those.
Knock out those.
The excitement in our family, you can tell them on the level.
Do you get crazy with it?
Do you ever do like the circle ones or like the ones where it's like there's no
edges
or do you like those?
They are harder.
The ones I haven't done are like the three new ones.
Those kind of freaked me out.
Okay.
What about a favorite book podcast TV show that you're checking out that you'd
recommend?
I feel like I should sound smart and name a book or something.
I'm, we're binging billions right now, which I hadn't seen.
I'm kind of loving it.
Favorite non-marketing hobby that maybe indirectly makes you a better marketer?
Okay.
It's, I shouldn't put it under the hobby.
I will never hear the end of this for my kids, but I think being a mom, another
marketer,
if you think about you're having to buy your time, you've got a prioriort side,
like all
the things you have to do.
I probably can't claim it as much down.
My kids are at grad school, but I do.
I think it changed how I looked at work, perspective, and just how I approached
things.
I love it.
I couldn't agree more.
I mean, I'm a dad, but same, same diff, somewhat in the universe of close.
If you were not in marketing or business at all, what do you think you'd be
doing?
I looked and I'm not able to be like a spy anymore.
I'm too old, so I wouldn't be doing that.
But I'd be a librarian.
I wouldn't, I love but, which I know I don't have a lot of credibility with it
because
I talked about TV shows I'm binging, but I'd be a librarian.
I think it'd be super fun.
It's exactly what a spy would say.
Right.
I know you're not one.
What is your best advice for a first time CMO?
I think two things.
One, network with other CMOs and people outside your organization that have
been there and
done that.
I think it's probably good.
But then find an advocate in the C suite, an advocate, not just a mentor,
someone that's
going to kind of prop you up when you're not in the room because you're a first
time C
level.
And they're going to talk about you and you want someone in there supporting
you and then
giving you the strong feedback you need to make you better.
And I really benefited from that when I first became a CMO, who was actually a
female CFO
that was just phenomenal.
She gave me the hard talks of things didn't go well in the board meeting, but
she also
advocated for me when I wasn't there and it made a huge difference in my
experience
the first couple of years.
That's all we got for today.
Celia, it's been absolutely wonderful having you on the show for our listeners.
You can go to iSolvedHCM.com to learn more about the company.
You can learn about people, heroes, world and all the cool stuff they're doing
there.
And if your company is looking for HR solutions, check them out.
Any final thoughts or anything to plug?
Hey, you did that for me.
No, thank you.
I appreciate it.
And I love the conversation and really enjoyed it.
So thank you so much.
[Music]
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