Welcome to Stacking Growth, called to action, a show for the changemakers, trailblazers, and paradigm shifters. Each week, a different marketing hero who is called to make a change in their field will join us to talk through each step of their journey. You'll cover the highs, the lows, and what's coming next. Together, we'll help you find the changes needed for your own business to win.
I'm Steph Krenula here with Evan Hughes, and today we're excited to welcome TaskBover, co-founder of the Scroll Lab, focusing on B2B's SAS landing pages. Tasks' work aligns with Refine Labs' commitment to adapting strategies to match the shift in buyer behavior and where better to root that buyer's journey than your website landing page. Thank you so much for coming on today. Of course, I'm super excited.
First of all, to be called a hero, usually I'm the villain, so let's dive into it. It all depends on who's telling the story, right? Yeah. So you get center stage today, it's your hero's journey.
And let's hear a little bit about where that started. Your path into marketing and maybe some of the experiences you've had in digital marketing before you started the Scroll Lab. Ooh, okay. So I, like many marketers, grew up not knowing that I would get into marketing and specifically not in B2B marketing.
I think I wanted to be a vet and then realized very quickly that blood makes me woozy and so pivoted then into something else. But I remember I used to read a lot and honestly was probably too young for like Sydney Sheldon novels. My mom was like, yay, my daughter's reading. And it was just like very operated novels that I probably shouldn't have been reading as a teenager.
But I love the storytelling. I love to write and I thought that I'd grow up and be a writer, which I guess kind of happened just not in the way that I thought. And so I was very focused on becoming a writer and then slowly transitioned into wanting to be a journalist. And so I went to school for that, which was great.
Everything was fine. I was bored in college because the Indian education system, which is the British education system is very intense. And then when you move into then going to college, you're like, wow, what is this? Why is this so easy?
So I'm going to college and then I asked my dean, I said, hey, can I start my internship early? I'm just kind of bored and like, I could make some extra money. If I could, she was like, yeah, go for it. I'm like, okay.
So I started working for this business publication called the director. And it was, and this was when I was in Thailand. So I grew up in India, moved to Thailand. And it was a business publication for ambassadors in Thailand.
So foreign ambassadors, right? And my boss who was editor, shout out Gareth, he was awesome, Scottish. And in a very Scottish way, he told me, you're very good at what you do. You're very good at the writing.
But listen, you're going to hate writing for someone else. And I'm like, don't tell me what to do. What the heck? And he's like, listen, listen, just go back to school.
It's your first year. When you go back, change your major, broaden it up, make it something more communications related just in case so you can pivot. And then you'll back up, make sure that it's something technical or hard skill that you can apply just in case the communications thing doesn't work out. I'm like, wow, I've never had someone believe in me less than Gareth.
Okay. But he already knew from the start, like, oh, she's got attitude problems. She's not going to like take direction very well. And so, begrudgingly and annoyed, I went back, I changed my major.
I broadened it up and then I took marketing as a minor, but then I did a computer science front end as a focus. So very much around websites and things like that. Unfortunately, I hate being wrong, but Gareth obviously called it because now my entire career is marketing and websites. So he did it.
And so it was so funny because after I graduated, I moved to the US, held back home being a journalist, got a job at an NBC TV station writing for them overnight. So I would listen to the ticker, hear all the stories coming in, write for the website. And halfway through, I was like, wow, this sucks. And you know, there was just like, it was just boring.
It's like, oh, yeah, accident on frickin' I-80. Like, blah, blah, blah. It was just like, oh my God, this was the worst. And then towards the end of that year, what happened was I'm writing and then they started installing this TV behind my desk and I'm like, no one tells me what's going on, right?
It's an entry level position. Why would they have a consult with me on anything? And then I turn around and then the next day on the screen is this tool called like Chartbeat. Okay, pre-GA, it was Chartbeat.
And I have real-time analytics on the stuff that I am writing. And I can see people on the website real-time. And this was like 15 years ago, okay, my brain was like, oh. I think that, like, honestly, I tell my husband sometimes I'm like, I don't remember the time, the moment I fell in love with you, but I do remember the moment that I fell in love with marketing.
Sorry. And so when I turned around and I saw this, I was like, so I would like publish and then I would just like turn around and watch it because it was insane. It was like this dopamine hit and I could not get enough. And so, but I still hated the writing portion.
When my editor was like, listen, Rod, I can't do this anymore. Okay, like I'm dying. I just like, obviously being dramatic, you know, I'm like, I can't, this is the worst time of my life. And he's like, okay, listen, if you don't like it, that's fine.
We actually have an opening in the marketing department upstairs. And I'm like, but will I have access to like, chart me, you know, up there? Like, he's like, oh, yeah, they got everything. And I was like, hell yeah.
And that was kind of how I pivoted into I was like the digital sales specialist. So I would help all the account executives when they would sell campaigns for the station. I would build them. So I was building ads, building emails, creating the spots on the website, the website traffic, doing the analysis.
I mean, I was totally in my element. And again, 15 years ago, these businesses had no idea what a website even was. So the AEs would take me because they were all TV AEs. They're like, who's going to explain the importance of digital and websites.
And I was so into it. So I was like, listen, telling this like 70 year old business. And I'm like, you need a website, you got to do a website. Like that's how people do stuff now.
And he's like a web what now. And so I started creating websites on the side for them, so that making a little like money, but also so that we could sell them then on the digital packages. So like that's kind of how it went into it. And then finally, my sales manager was like, do you just want to sell?
So you can actually make commissions off of the stuff that you're helping these AEs. I'm like, hell yeah. And then I was an A for three years hardest job ever sucked. We'll never do it again, but so glad that I did it as a marketer.
So that's kind of like, and then it went full into digital marketing after that. The teams joined a bunch of teams and then eventually led digital and website teams myself within B2B companies. And so my claim to fame is that I have somehow managed, run, redesigned 400 websites in my career. Wow.
That's insane. Yeah. That's the backstory. Also probably the most interesting backstory I have heard.
And I think it all starts with hating so many elements of your early career, like just absolutely like full honesty of this is fucking terrible. Don't want to do this anymore. How do I pivot? But also just like the, I kind of applaud the newsroom for putting up analytics behind you to create that dopamine hit of like, holy shit, I'm going to produce faster.
I got to do more. I got to do more. It's just like any algorithm today or any analytics tool we look at, right? It's like that or just to want to beat your yesterday's metrics and try to push forward.
But yeah, number go up, number go up, which is like, and it was great. It was so much fun there. And I wrote this post about how like measurement killed the marketing star. I don't know if you saw that a while, Evan, like a long time ago, but it did because we were so excited when it all happened.
But now we're so in it and every single thing needs to be quantified that it just kind of killed a lot of the creativity to because we're so obsessed with the numbers. So there was obviously a bad side to that that happened. But I mean, I'm a numbers person. I'm very like type a process driven.
I love that stuff. Even solo as a business. I'm still that like demand gen growth marketer. I still keep pipeline and forecast documents like of my own business.
And I have other solos were like, oh, we like just look at our bank accounts or, you know, we just have like a little spreadsheet. No, mine is like this robust air table, like bringing all my stuff in there, you know, like pipeline contracted actuals like I have everything in there. So it's just funny because that's like how we would then trained, you know, and moved from like, ah, we this looks cute. And now it's like, okay, how much revenue to the cute drive?
Yeah, you're leveling just Chris margin. Yeah. How do we get some profitability here? But no, and it's it's so true.
And I feel like we're almost like in this pivotal moment where like people are trying to push back to the content, the messaging and the narrative. And this might be like a good kind of transition as we think about like your journey and kind of how you moved up into different like aspects of your career, but in having worked and led teams at B2B, what was that like moment where you kind of really like this shit isn't working. I don't really want to do this anymore. Or I see a light on the at the end of the tunnel that's pushing me to drive towards that and want to focus on that.
Mm. So I did I don't know if I even have that that inkling like inside. I just gave this workshop yesterday to some 18 to 25 year olds were kind of just starting out and I put I put so much stuff on there. I put the screenshots.
I want to I think I did you didn't you put like three pointers? I think I had you on a slide. I can't remember. I get yeah posting to like this better gets caught in the algorithm.
I bet that went well. Yeah, it went really well. I swore a lot as I usually do. So they thought that I was cool as hell just for doing that.
They were like, Oh, we thought it was going to be like this old lady coming in here like open your LinkedIn profile. Now let's create a new LinkedIn picture. Like I was like, hell no shut your laptops. We're going to have a conversation right now.
And I think the big thing for me, you know, and Evan, you talk about this a lot, which is burnout in just corporate in general in marketing. We have this like always on mindset like that comes with the startup like go, go, go. And I kind of had some of those same moments, you know, in house like I was leading the teams, but then the company wants to run more efficiently. So then they get rid of, they got rid of my team.
You know, here I am doing three people's jobs. I have a 25% budget cut, 20% growth target, right? And then I grin and bear it because they say, Oh, you know, we really want to promote you next year. So the next year rolled around, I was stellar annual review.
I mean, I still have the receipts, right? I still have the annual reviews. It's like, Oh my God, pivotal person and not team, all of the stuff I asked about the promotion and then they look like I told them they mother died and like the shock, you know, and it's like, Oh, we didn't realize that you wanted to promote. You never mentioned it all year.
Oh, sorry. I had 45 projects, three people's jobs. I was eight months pregnant. Like at what point do you think I had time to ask you about that?
And so right at that point, I realized I'm working 50, 60 hours a week. I've done this my entire career because I'm the kind of person that just I like to work. And so when I'm in, into something, I'm going to be into it. And so I'm working all this time, realizing that my entire just like mental health was dependent on this like one situation.
I'm missing out so much on my kids lives and things like that. And so instead of spending the nights working, catching up on slacks and emails after my kids go to sleep, I was like, can I do something more creative for myself? And that's where we suckle back to the love for writing. And I keep thinking about Gareth and telling me you're not going to like writing for someone else.
I'm like, okay, can I write for myself? Wasn't a means of like, try to make money, try to do whatever. I was very bought into the I'm going to climb the ladder. I'll be CMO one day.
Like that was just always my path and I always went for it. So it was never a thing in my mind. I just wanted a creative outlet. And so the first step was, okay, what do I want to write about that?
I'm really passionate about it. My daughter is a really sensitive child. Nothing medically wrong with her, just sensitive. And there weren't a lot of resources when I had her.
So I just didn't know how to handle it. So I was like, okay, maybe I can be that resource for parents. And I want to start this like parenting podcast called like candid parenting or something like that for, you know, kids. And I left the marketing part towards the end because I'm like, I'm a career marketer.
How hard could this be like, whatever. So I wrote out like 70 episode ideas, all the stuff that I needed to do to like get the podcast off the ground, the cover art and all of this stuff, right? I did everything, get to the marketing part, look it up. And I'm like, oh shit, I have no idea how to market a podcast.
And this is so hard. And this one article said, having a podcast is like having a house party. No one knows you, but you're inviting everyone to your house and they're like, bro, I ain't going to your sketchy ass house. But then you need to go mingle, find the groups, you know, that are your people, maybe the parenting groups or downtown or whatever, meet people and then invite them over and they're happy to come over because they like you and they trust you.
And I'm like, okay, that makes sense. So I went to Twitter at the time. I'm like, oh, one and a half followers. I'm not going to do this.
This is dumb. And then I went to LinkedIn and I had 1200 connections. And I was like, okay, I can like try to see what this like social organic growth thing is. And so I started writing there, but I knew like I couldn't start with parenting stuff because that would be so weird.
Like people would be messaging me like, mam, are you okay? Like is everything good? So I started with like cringy personal development stuff. And I did all the like Justin Welch courses.
I found him. He's always on the feed, you know, the first person. And then I did all of that, followed a few people, all of his stuff. And then Anthony Pierre eventually connected with him because I saw one of his graphics.
I was like, oh, this is really cool. And then he sent me a message and he was like, what are you even doing? All caps. And I was like, what?
And he's like, you're a marketer. Like, why don't you talk about marketing? It's the most interesting subject on earth. I'm like, first of all, I wouldn't go that far.
And second of all, like I'm burnt out. I want to do it. He's like, I'm going to start posting marketing stuff. I'm like, okay.
So I started sprinkling it in here and there. And then I started seeing a lot more marketers connecting with me. But the light bulb that went off was the total accidental discovery because I started getting reached out to for marketing jobs and consulting stuff, no intentions of searching. I was fully employed in house, just sharing dumb stuff.
And the light bulb went off. And at that point, my boss and I already had like a complication in our relationship because of everything that went down, the company wasn't doing very well. And so they decided to do a second round of layoffs, like a few months after that. And the minute I heard about it, because like, I always make friends with like IT and all this stuff.
So I knew it was coming, but I knew about the first round of layoffs. And I did it about the second and I was like, oh, I bet I'm on that list. And they're like, no, you know, all your friends are like, no, you're overreacting. I'm like, no, no, no.
I've actually laid people off. I've been on the other side and trust me. I know that I'm on that list because XYZ facts, right? So it happened.
And I was relieved. And then at that point, I had seven weeks of runway and I was like, bucket in a week. I was going to take a week off, hang out. And in a week, I'm just going to like put myself out there because I couldn't openly promote that I was available for work before that.
And yeah, did the LLC did it week later, put myself out there and then like never looked back. That's awesome. I mean, kind of a blessing to get laid off. Oh, it'll blessing.
Not only like more time back to family life and just your own well-being, but also like that forcing function to find that light or that little spark, right? And the whole full circle moment there is kind of your journey starting with your interest in writing. But it kind of reminds us that there's this, you can't force something you're not passionate about. It doesn't feel authentic.
And we can read these influencers, thought leaders that are just posting a bunch of garbage. And it's just like, that doesn't even, it's not relatable because it just feels so forced. Like there's no personality behind it. There's no one else to think about it.
So like for you to have like that milestone and kind of be like, hands up, I don't care. Like I'm just going to go for it. And then finding that niche, I think would be like, so you got into it, you chatted a little bit about marketing. You started to see momentum as people were interested or at least like communicating with you.
And then you're no longer just talking at the abyss and hoping that somebody's been in it. You got four impressions, I think was my first post ever. And like, I'm like, you know, with 500 connections, I'm like, thanks LinkedIn. But like, how do you, how did you like niche into, you know, this so-called adventure to where like landing pages really became your focus?
What was like, what are the two to three things that like you look for that were like, this shit is bad, this needs to change and I'm going to be the point person for that. And then I think that'll kind of set us up to like dig into some of the tools and stuff that you use. Honestly, it wasn't like throughout my career, I was just so passionate about landing pages. It was just another thing on the list to do when you're in-house, you're doing a billion things, right?
And it's better to be a generalist or deep generalist in-house. You wear many hats, you can do a lot of things. If I came in and I was like, you can hire me to just be the landing page person. They were like, no, thanks.
I needed to also be like 600 other people, right? And so I was very adamant about being broad because that's how you could get up to then being head of marketing or whatever. So when I came out, it wasn't adjustment to be like, oh, I got a niche down. So when I first announced that I was going out on my own, I thought I was pretty narrow when I said, oh, I'll be a fractional head of digital and website for companies.
And I had some people in my network, but he had already worked with me before. So it was fine. But then here comes Anthony again. And he's, I always love to tell the story, but he's in a panera, just mouthful of food, you know, crumbs flying everywhere.
And he's like, what are you even doing now? What are you doing? I'm like, this is the first call with this guy, like a networking call. Okay.
And I'm like a fractional. He's like, he's like, I'm going to go to my website. It goes to my website. What is this?
Why are you doing like 600 things? So after some arguing back and forth, he's like, no, no, no, you need to narrow down. Like if you actually want like inbound and people coming to you, like you need to own a problem and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, okay, whatever.
He's like, go read this book, built to sell. I'm like fine. I put on my list. And then he was like, look, we've talked to 150 startups and they ask us about like campaign landing pages and stuff all the time.
And Robin and I like, we are not, we don't know nothing about that side. Like we can't handle it. But he's like, but looking at your background, you have this like digital side, which is the distribution piece, you know, and tying to revenue and stuff, but you also have this website background and then combining the two, like the middle thing there are those like campaign landing pages. And I was like, oh, fuck, he's right.
But I was so annoyed because I was like, oh God, you know, here's another Garrett. This ready to ruin my life. Tell me what to do, which I do not like. And after we got off the call, I was so annoyed, so angry.
I'm just sitting here twiddling my thumbs and I was like, fuck it. So I changed everything that night. I changed my website. I changed my LinkedIn profile, all of that stuff.
Next day I get two messages from two different agencies who were pitching to Snagit and Bambora for landing pages and they were like, do you, like they were doing campaigns and they're like, we need a landing page person. It's the tagline about, I'm just trying something. Oh, okay. Do you want to join the RFP with us?
And then we won the Snagit one. And the reason that Snagit loved us over the other bids was because they said we love that you guys brought in external experts who are very specialized in these areas versus just like saying that you could do it and just cobbling some junior person in-house to do it. And we were like, oh shit, okay. And so it just like that immediate validation, I told myself this, that spotlight effect where you think that people are watching you a lot closer than they are.
So they're always like, how are you so brave to like niche? I'm like, because if no one, if it didn't work, like three months later, I could just change it to something else. No one's going to remember it. Like no one's going to give a shit.
And it was true. So I just told myself, I'm like task, just like writing on LinkedIn. I'm like, just write for 60 days, whatever it is. It doesn't matter what you need to do.
Just write for 60 days. Write for 90 days. You did so good for 60. Just keep going 90.
And so the same thing with the landing page. I'm like, just give it a couple of months. Give it a couple of months. If it doesn't work, find something else digital and website is so huge, you could literally do 100 things in there.
Just see if the landing page thing picks up. And so when it first started, it wasn't like I had some crazy POV on landing pages to start out with. And so all the content and Evan's normally sits pre landing pages, but all my content at the beginning was around converting on landing page, just how we think about it and be to be. And then I had this epiphany where I was like, wait a second.
I was a buyer in house where I had budgets to buy software and partner with agencies and all of the stuff along with my paid media spend. So 30% of my budget was allocated to partnerships and purchasing software. What is the thing that I hated when I would shop the software? Oh, literally every landing page that looked like form up here, two things of text, some bullshit features in the bottom.
And like, so everything that I hated as a buyer, I fucking did as a marketer. And that's when like, I was arguing with Anthony about something and I told him the whole, like I had the slack conversation with him. And I was like, yeah, so you know, my whole thing is like the conversion, it's so stupid to measure based on that because there's a whole layer of signals that we're missing, which is how people are consuming the information. And he said, have you told anyone this?
Like, where does this come from? I'm like, no, this is just like, I'm pissed off about it. And I'm annoyed because I can't find any like good examples of it. And then he's like, task, you, this is like the thing, right?
And so that graph that I shared yesterday, which was B2B consumption or CRO is not for B2B, it's for B2C. And then I put like a comparison chart, I actually posted that a year ago and I reposted it yesterday with like a little bit of a reframe. And that was like where the POV was kind of born, you know, just doing that. And then I was like, oh, we need to be doing it so differently for like, especially high ACB products.
I love this story because it feels very, you've had a lot of like Gordon Ramsay style mentors where like Gordon Ramsay will go to a restaurant. He's like, why are you trying to do? Why is your menu like a cheesecake factory? Yes.
Do one thing. If you're good at one thing, do that one thing. And so, you know, we've heard a little bit about how you landed on landing pages, but what were some, once you like made that decision and realized that this was something that you actually were passionate about and had a good POV on, what were some tools that you used to market yourself in that niche and also like keep building and iterating on what makes a good landing page? I think the first thing started with the offer.
So before it was even like marketing it necessarily, I, you know, yes, I was posting landing page content to see what the interest was and there was a lot of interest. And so in the beginning, I was kind of trying to do audits. Like, how can I get them a deliverable quickly? So I would do audits.
But then what ended up happening was like after a few audits, I realized I was just rewriting the whole damn page for them anyway, which is so stupid. Okay. So then I stopped doing the audits and I'm like, I'm just going to give you this landing page. That's like a great first touch point product type landing page that you need.
But then I realized that I couldn't do that if I didn't know enough about the company. And the thing is like, it's easy to do it for a company that we all know, like Zoom or Calendly or whatever, like everybody knows what those products do. They all have brand equity. They all have pretty simple product, like understanding.
You know what's really frickin hard to do? Security, question, automation, application security, okay? Data analytics platforms. That shit is hard.
And so I couldn't just make snap judgments and promise them or try to say like, yeah, just make these few like CRO tweaks and like your conversion rate is going to skyrocket. I can't do that. You're talking about a $75,000 ACB product. Like, no, that's not how it's going to work.
So when I put the offers together, I asked myself based on this deck that I had to do the stupid circus in house anytime I wanted to software, I had this deck. That was my business case deck, the justification for this vendor that I wanted to partner with. And this deck, I needed to share it on LinkedIn because I had it in Toronto. And it was just like six slides and I was like, what's the problem that we're facing?
Why the existing way does not work? What are our options to fix it? And I would do three. One, we could try to continue doing what we're doing.
This is the cost and risk associated with that. We can try to half asset with some halfway automation and tools and halfway manually and we could save some money, but like, and it's not best. Or we could pay a lot for this tool, but guess what adoption, all of these problems are going to be solved like very quickly. And then I put this timeline of like, okay, we're going to do this.
The next step is we're probably going to have a sales call with the vendor. They can probably help us with this, like the pricing, all of this stuff, approvals, info sec, procurement, da da da. And I was like, you know what, I had to hunt for that fucking information as a buyer, like an asshole. I'm like on Reddit, like, hey, does anybody know how much is women for charges?
And then you get like six different price points. And I'm like, okay, I don't know. So we just do a range and then or disqualify ourselves. Like that's going to be way too high.
So I'm like, what if a landing page just had this information, you know how I would have been like copy, paste, copy, paste. So I was like, how can we make the buyers lives easier and then how can I make my buyers life easier? So if there's a head, I usually work with a lot of like heads of demand, general heads of marketing. And I'm like, what's the state of marketing right now?
But just a cut resources, a cut teams are gone, growth targets are high. They're fucking drowning. They do not need another person to come in and tell them what to do. They need someone to help them do the work.
So what are the things I hated when I was in house, constant meetings, constant pings, right? Vendors who needed a lot of hand holding who just delegate fucking shit to me. I don't need that. How do I create something and offer that is going to take care of all the shit I hated in house, all the problems the in house marketer is going through and give them something that checks something off their list and makes them look good.
So when I came up with the process, I was like, okay, I'm going to give you this buyers business case we're going to put together. And then you can use this as the hub for all your other content. I'm not going to do that content for you, but you can take it social, email, nurture, whatever you need to do. We'll do all the research components for you, right?
So you'll get that. Also, we're going to do a set of landing pages. I'll do the design. I just don't build them for you.
So your in-house web team or even the marketer can go into the CMS copy. You're just literally put it in there, the end, right? You don't need to go through info second by a bunch of tools. So while it's nice to have an A, B testing tool, if you have it, we'll use it.
But the only two things that you need to start website analytics and a heat map tool, that's it. So the heat map tools, most of them will give you 2,000 sessions for free per month. That's perfect. That's all you need.
Right? 2,000 is a good sample size to start, like, feeding some, like, optimization examples. Those are the two. Oh, you're having too many meetings?
No worries. Our engagements are three months. You will have three meetings during that entire three month period with me. Everything else is async, right?
getting done for you. Oh, you, everyone's trying to tie you into a your long retainer. No worries. We only for three months, you never have to see my freaking face again.
After that, we'll come in, do the work and we're going to get out out of your way. You got everything set up. It's not going to be throw away asset or foundational landing pages that will exist forever evolve a little bit, but will exist forever. So that's how I went about and did it.
No slack. They asked me what's like, I'm like, you don't need slack. Why do we need slack? We can do emails, you can, you can talk to me inside the Figma board.
That's it. The end, everyone's happy and stuff. So that's how I kind of created everything around it. And I'm like, how do I solve for this?
Like, they don't have to go through all these approvals. Like, I know another landing page company and like, I'm very close to all of my competitors, we're like, oh, you know, whatever. But one of the things like they use an external kind of a tool, not unbound, but a different tool to build these landing pages. They're stuck in approval right now, approval process, because these big enterprise companies are like, no, you can't have our data sitting in a different tool, da da da da.
I'm like, don't you? I know you want the control, but like, you've got to meet them halfway, right? Yeah. So those are things that I try to solve for and I have the advantage of like having been the in-house digital person or on the demand-gen team who has to like get shit down.
And I'm like, oh, don't make me go through another round of fucking approvals. Like, please have a love of God. I can't do it. I cannot ask Susan in fucking finance and Rick and InfoSack one more fucking time.
If I can add a script or like, please for the love of God, just start working on my stuff, you know, we've all been there. We've all had a student or Rick and it's so frustrating. It's like, why are you even here, Susan? Like, what don't like, go balance books or something?
Why are you why you got input on my frickin? Why do you have input on my landing pages? Like, I don't get it. rocks to stack.
No, it's so true, though. Like, we have this idea that it's overly complex. And I think what I'm taking away from just your journey in general is like, sometimes overthinking things is like to your detriment, right? There's there's no growth associated with like this overthinking mindset.
Similar to like your journey of like, Oh, I'm gonna go into journalism or I'm gonna go communications. I'm gonna go to marketing. It's like, we feel like we have to point off like the compass in one direction and chase that. But that's not the case, right?
You know, we continue to evolve, we continue to pivot. But I think that that also like ties back to as you talk about like conversion pages, landing page optimization, the buyer marketing evolution, simplifying everything. So you're not only like from a vendor point of view or contractor's point of view, right? You're bringing the tools to somebody that's simplifying their journey.
They're also allowing them in house to be their hero, right? So they are putting this right stakeholders and they're like, look how easy this is. I did this for you, right? And that's like the partnerships that work the best is when it's like, let me do everything behind the scenes and you go and you get that promotion, you do you, you kick some ass.
But I think all that just like the the over engineering, overthinking complexity that we try to create through some of these partnerships is just like a forced security and longevity. And that's not often in case, right? Nobody wants to feel stuck. Nobody wants to feel like they can't advance.
And I think that that's just a lot of different angles in which I'm kind of just absorbed in this conversation. But I feel like there's also like, it's positive you made these leaps and bounds. But tell me like, let's hear like, what's been a holy shit? Like this isn't working?
Or maybe I made the wrong decision? Like, what's a low point of this journey where you kept, you still kept pushing forward? But some of the failures that maybe like, I know you're not gonna be afraid to say, but some people are right. Yeah, okay, let's talk about it.
You know, trauma dumping, I love doing that. That's cool. Working on it at therapy, but it's fine. therapy 2.0 therapy 2.0.0.
So there were two points, one that was outside of my control. And that was a few months ago, well, was last year, around like third quarter, third or four quarters. So I was like on a stride by leads will flow in content was doing really great, like my infographics were going crazy, like hundreds and hundreds of likes, I was like, Oh, shit, nothing can stop me now, you know, I was like, yeah, whatever. Anyway, algorithm change happened.
I was getting a fraction. And by fraction, I mean, 10, 20% of the impressions that I was getting before. Like, so then I went on this way and page I asked everybody, I'm like, are you seeing it? Are you seeing it?
And you actually posted like, what's up with the LinkedIn algorithm playing games or whatever? And I was like, okay, okay, I haven't seen it. But it has a job. Okay, test.
So then I'm going through all of this stuff. And then finally, I went to Anthony, who I love going to because I need like, at this point, I realized that I respond best to yelling. Okay, like, I like, that's the parenting style I grew up with. So when people ask me nicely, I'm like, whatever, but if someone yells at me, I'm like, I'm listening, you know, so so I went to Anthony, I was like, are you seeing this?
And he goes, have you tried making better content? Like, okay, whatever, gonna go ask somebody else. And so then I saw like a decline in like the lead. So I was like, is this the seasonal?
Is this the algorithm? Like, what is going on? And at that point, I'm like, Oh, shit, what happens then? I say a lot of off color things on LinkedIn.
What if they kick me out? Like, the end, the business is over, how do I even reach all the people that I know? Like, and so I knew I wanted to maybe start prepping for that this year, where it's like, how do we take some of that? Give me another means to talk to people?
I obviously have my resource hub and, you know, people have signed up for that and really because I like the dopamine hit of the numbers, I don't do anything with that. But like, when I launched it, you know, I have like 2,000 people who are just sitting there in this list, and I don't do anything with it because I'm very focused on one channel one offer kind of thing. But I'm like, Oh, maybe it is time to expand because like, I just, so that's something that I'm thinking about. But I just like, I'm like, I write a newsletter, like it's so much work.
And I'm so scared from it internally. Like, let's put let's everybody stop what you're doing and do this newsletter that no one's reading. You know, and so I'm like, can I how can I make it more tasks? And so maybe in third quarter this year, I want to try to like do a micro newsletter where it's like maybe one landing page tip once a week or something like that that's like more like me short form someone can finish in like 30 seconds and move on.
So just another touchpoint that could be something. So that's something that I'm thinking about because that was a very scary thing that happened. And now it's getting better. But you know, still, okay, so that's one.
The next part is I only work three days a week. I don't know if I've ever mentioned that to you guys. So Tuesday's, Wednesday's and Thursdays of the days I work because when I was burnt out and I left, I was like, I want to build a business around my life and not my life around my business. And because I had sacrificed so much time with my kids, I was like, I'm not doing that again.
So I on purpose, we have my son home with me on Mondays and Fridays, my my daughter's in kindergarten. So she goes five days a week. And then obviously the weekend. So I want to optimize for the life part.
So four days with my kids or family and three days at work. My husband so works full time. So he's like, I'm glad I'm not part of your optimization. Just you and the kids.
I'm like, yeah, you're fine. Thanks. Thanks for the insurance. You'll be fine.
It's really about me and the kids. So then, so then what ended up happening though, is that I would I could only cap my, you know, my landing page engagements. I could only take two or three a month. I was turning down a lot of companies because I just couldn't.
I also had a couple of fractional gigs that was happening. So landing pages weren't my only thing it was like an intro offer. And so then I had a McDonald's secret menu where I'm like, okay, they want total pains and the asses. Yes, I do offer advising and other stuff.
And then I sit down to work on landing page stuff and I get a slack right like, Hey, can you pull this report? Can you put together this email? So at the end of the year, I killed all the retainer type agreements and just decided to go straight landing pages. So that was one of the things I don't need the distraction.
I think I would have enough landing page work where I don't need to do the like ongoing thing. And then second, I'm drowning in delivery, even with the three clients a month like engagements, it would be like, okay, Mondays and Fridays, I'm like waiting for my son and app so I can go do work. Then I put them down at night and then I'm like finishing my landing page stuff. And I was like, dude, do you not see how this is like defeating the purpose?
And I was like, okay, well, what do we do? He's like, I mean, we can send, you know, oh, we to school five days a week. I'm like, yeah, maybe and I'm like, wait, wait, that was like, what? I'm not sending my son away.
This is like how we're trained. We're trained to do that. I'm like, no, I need to explore some other avenues. So I talked to a former client of mine.
And I said, I'm struggling with this, like whatever. And he's like, why aren't you hiring people to do the work? I'm like, I don't want to be responsible for anybody. And he's like, well, you don't have to be responsible for them.
You can just get like contract people. But they wouldn't do it as well as me. Though I did it one time. And like, I got the worst feedback that he's like, what's the background of that person?
I'm like, well, not sass. And I'm like, okay, so it sounds like a hiring problem. And not really anything else. I'm like, okay, here we go.
Someone telling me that I'm the problem again, right? And he's like, no, go find people who are very experienced in sass. If they trained in your methodology, me as your client, I would have cared that I got the stuff faster than you being the one doing it. I'm like, run, okay.
So then I went through the exit five community. And I partnered with three like stellar writers, one's even a growth marketer. She's like, I'll even do the testing component for you in that third stage. Like, I love doing that stuff.
Lots of three writers put them on projects right away. Every client had great feedback. And I was like, Oh, shit. And I at that happened in October and November was like, you know, I went to San Diego and I had all this stuff and like, looking at my emails, things are moving without me.
I'm like, okay, this is good. And so from then I'm like, I've been living my best life since then. I actually enjoy the three days of working where I get to fuck around do things like this, you know, hang out on LinkedIn, write content, I had to get back to doing that because it was so inconsistent. I didn't have time for that.
But guess what? It's the one part of my business that like, if I don't write content, I don't get leads, it would kill it. So like, I now back to writing content and being annoying on LinkedIn. And now I have people who help me who aren't full time employees who are partners and help me do that and gotten really good feedback from clients on that.
And it's so great to get on calls and they're like, So what's your capacity? I'm like, ready when you are, bro, let's go 15, how many landing pages you want? Hey, 200, let's do it. So yeah, so that that kind of like, now it's good.
Like I enjoy Mondays and Fridays with my son, like we go to the library, if he doesn't know, I'm like, I don't care, like, we'll hang out and, you know, it's been great. Empire was born. The Empire. I just I told him, I'm like, I don't be a full fledged agency.
He's like, I wouldn't say you're an agency. You're like, you're still a very specialized service. And he's like, it just sounds like a lot of the roadblocks are just you not wanting to delegate or let go of stuff. I'm like, okay, don't tell me I'm the problem again.
Okay, only compliments, only compliments allowed. Thank you. Okay, so I want to I do want to take that moment. We've talked about like the ups and downs of your journey a lot that you've learned along the way.
I want you to say something so nice about yourself. I want you to compliment you. Like, what is something that you have learned that you are absolutely incredible at no one else calling you out just you giving yourself a little bit of applause. I think my blessing and my curse is that I've never met a stranger.
I talk to everybody that like I've known them 100 years and and I feel like I do. So like, I genuinely love people. And it was so funny because again, Anthony, he was making fun of me last week because he's like, you know, there is like marketing led type growth where like a company does really well there. This founder led, right?
And I was like, yeah, I'm there. He's like, no, wait for it. He's like, you know, there's found a lead, but they're putting out good content and people like them and reach out to them for their POV. And then there's someone who's like very networking led.
And that is you like, you know everybody. It's like, he's like, I don't even know how it happened. But like, you don't have the biggest numbers and stuff. But then you see people like showing up or you showing up for them and like, I will have three networking calls a week, even though I have nothing to gain from this person or whatever, because I genuinely just like, like people.
And and it's fine. So like, I and he's like, but it's great. Like that that kind of stuff gets favorability in some way. But I will I want to point out one important thing.
And actually, I plan to write a post about like, all this, all the kind of insults, not insults, but like shit that I've been called in the past, right? Because there's this there's this air of like, we are the best marketers because we're the loudest and repost all the time. But it's like, here's actually some of the shitty feedback that I've gotten in my career. And guess what, you can get over it.
And that doesn't define you. And I want to write about that. And so one of the things I want to talk about is, I was so burnt out in house. And my confidence in myself was so poor.
Because when you have one person that determines your entire future and that person may like or dislike you, it's hard because you want that approval and validation so much. And the funny thing is on LinkedIn, you get that like in mass, right? Like you get a lot of feedback, good or bad, but mostly good, people are very nice and professional and understanding and agree with your points of view. And it was this this like, weird, unintentional benefit of LinkedIn is that it healed me so much.
I had incredible stage fright from like a bad audition when I was in high school. And it carried on into my adulthood, I was never as confident as I was always on the outside. I was never very sure of myself on the inside. And I would get I remember the first two podcasts I did while I was in house, you know, I was so nervous that I memorized every I wrote out answers to all the questions and memorize them.
So I could answer it. And like, I had to do that, like, let's take it again, because like I messed it up and like, oh, yeah, I was insane. And it was so funny, before you got on the call, I haven't said any questions about the online, I'm like, honestly, I barely read it. And it was that part where it's like, I just do so much better with the imperfections now.
And I have so much more confidence in myself that like, not in the way that I'm never gonna fuck up, but it's like, I want people to see me fuck up so they know they can fuck up. It's okay, like, this is why I am we are human beings, this is being real. And that's like, that's how it's gonna be I'm not compromising my values, my self worth is not on the table ever. Right?
Like, it does a bad client good client, whatever, my self worth is not what's being measured here. My self worth comes from me and like that conference that LinkedIn and just now being surrounded by incredibly smart, supportive peers, like, it's an insane benefit. So if you can't write for other people or your company, whatever, just write for yourself. Because you just you just never know, like, people are listening, and then I just feel like I'm always surrounded by this big hug and safety net, like all the time, like it's okay, you know, and I wish someone told me that when I was in house, like, you're doing great, you're okay, you know, leave it at that.
That's, surround yourself like me, maybe that gives a shit about you and good things come. Yeah, like tomorrow, if the business fails, like, people aren't like, oh, we care so much about landing pages, they're like, we like tasks. And you know, I could like tomorrow, if I get wiped out or whatever by AI could be like, Hey, guys, I'm kind of thinking about going back in house full time. And like, I would imagine that so many people would speak my name and a room of opportunity and you know, and help me out in some way there.
So it's just nice to have like that emotional mental, like even career support that I would have never had before, or dependent on one person that would have never showed up for me and didn't honestly, you know, the P and L starts to justify your performance, whether it was good or bad. Yes. And I think that's so challenging. I really do appreciate you kind of opening up and yeah, in transparent sharing your journey with us.
And I love to kind of take a quick pivot because this is how I kind of learn every point of view. But I'm really curious, like, as you think about the evolution of marketing. And please don't say AI. Yeah.
But I would really love to know like, what shift do you see coming? And like as listeners or as myself, like, what do you like, how do people prepare? You think about that room of individuals that you're working with junior folks coming into marketing that are going to step in and take our jobs someday? Like, what do you think that they should prepare for or see coming that you know, maybe unique to your perspective?
Yeah, I'm not going to say I, although it's kind of part of the answer in one way, which is like, I know, but it's like, it's so past there, right? It's like, Oh, you better prep for it. Like, we get it, you know, like, Oh, the marketers who are afraid of AI aren't the ones who are going to six, what is that? You know, what's that saying?
It's marketers who know how to use AI that's going to take my job? Okay, whatever. That's my next link in personal. Yeah, that's the next thing to impose.
It's like, it's not those. Yeah, so stupid. AI is not going to take my job. It's marketers who know how to use AI.
Yeah, that's that's the quote. Yesterday, during that workshop, I gave the kids and I said, it's hard, right? Because it sucks to be a worker right now. You are just bombarded with things like there was 760,000 a halfs in 2024, which was the highest that had ever been in 10 years outside of the pandemic year, where it was 2.3 million jobs, right?
We're gone. And then AI in the next 10 years, according to Goldman Sachs, is supposed to replace 300 million full time jobs. There's not been 300 million people in the US just to give you like an idea of that, right? So then what happens, right?
Every job application you look at says over 100 over 100 over 100 LinkedIn, stop putting accounts in the applications because it was scaring people. So they now they just say it's over 100. But there's actually thousands of applications coming in. And so we can't succeed based on merit anymore, right?
You could be Harvard educated, top of your class, whatever, okay, you and like 600 other people that's still 600 people they have to wait through. And so I think right now, our choice and like B2B can really learn from this, which is we are in this like sea of sameness, right? And so you can say like, Oh, our product is what makes us different. Oh, or like, you know, maybe a market, whatever that is.
But ultimately, it comes down to this. The best, like it is no longer you are no longer going to get ahead as a company or an individual by being the best or being good at something. I'm not the best landing page person out there. But what you're going to do is like the only ones are going to get ahead are now going to be the ones that are different or un-ignorable.
That's kind of like what we're going for. And so you need to be so outrageously different and un-ignorable with a personality in order to make it, right? How many CRM's come out of the frickin woodwork every year? Why would I pick pipe drive over sales force and in comment, right?
What what makes you different? So you can't rely on just your product, you can't rely on doing the same old bullshit B2B marketing plays like, let's have another webinar where we talk about the future state of AI or whatever, like no one gives a flying fuck. But the things that are causing a ruckus that are causing a scene is just having that distinct POV that's a little bit against the grain while you're challenging stuff. And I wrote the poster about challengers like, you got to you got to have someone who's willing to like do something so wildly different.
And the good news and bad news is most companies aren't willing to do that. So it is kind of easy to stick out. And like, you're so worried about AI taking your job and like doing all your replicating stuff, it's just trained on what's always been around. So you have to be something that I can't train on.
So like, what is that, right? And so for me, people know me because of my personality and like, I treat LinkedIn very much like, I'm like a lovable troll on there, right? Like, not all my comments are going to be fucking insightful. Like, I agree.
How would you think about like, who's today Daniel posted about people? I'm like, is this AI generated? Like, who edits on paper anymore? Like what the?
So it's just stuff like that. Like Liam posts this video. I'm like, why you have, why is your video inside? You're always outside.
I can't listen to this if you're not outside. So like, that's the kind of shit where it's like, people know that's not written by AI, I would never say that, you know, so that's the kind of stuff where you need to do stuff that's different. And not many companies are willing to do that or people. So they'll suffer the consequences.
I love that. This has been incredible. Thank you so much task for sharing your journey with us for spending this hour, giving your insights and giving us a lot of motivation to, I think, take that step forward. I hope that everyone listening starts flexing those networking muscles and starts finding a way to make yourself unignorable.
I know that's what I'm leaving this call with a lot of inspiration for. So if you all like hearing these journeys, make sure to subscribe and share this episode out to your network. And if you want to nominate a marketing hero to come on and chat with us, feel free to get in touch. Thank you so much for listening.
We'll see you all the time.