Hey, I'm JR Lay. Welcome back to another episode of the level of business podcast in this episode. We are going to explore the world of B2B marketing has changed But more importantly, we're going to provide you a path forward beyond the confusion beyond the chaos of change so that you can Confident to level up your business, but first speaking about change I'd like to invite you to get a copy of my best-selling book banking on change It is the entrepreneur's guide to unlocking and achieving exponential growth in the age of AI Text me 832 240 1922 and I will text you a copy so that you can level up your mind level up your marketing level up your cells So that you can level up your business and your life now joining me for today's conversation is Megan Bowen Megan is the CEO of refined labs a B2B demand Gen Agency. Welcome to the show Megan.
It is good to share time with you today Thank you for having me looking forward to the conversation. Well, I know you have been extremely busy You've been out of it You have hosted events and dinners and you've also been sharing a great amount of perspective on LinkedIn Around how the world of B2B marketing and branding is continuing to transform before we get into that What are you most excited about right now? What's giving you a lot of positive energy to get started? I think what's giving me a lot of positive energy is we are on the brink of another Big change in everything in the world.
It feels like from an economic political business Then you get into the weeds of B2B how marketing is executed and measured I think one of my best skills is adaptability so when I see change on the horizon and and you know the status quo being disrupted I love to be a part of shaping what the future looks like and helping people navigate the change And so I know sometimes it can feel overwhelming or scary You know AI is the hot topic and there's a lot of doomsday sares You know claiming AI is going to be the end of the B2B marketer or the designer what what have you? I don't believe any of that to be true and so I'm excited for how things are changing and you know I always try to be thinking two steps ahead and so I'm trying to think how is this going to play out? How can we prepare ourselves and our business? How can we help our customers succeed in their businesses?
And how can I apply you know my experience and change management to be a positive force in? Capitalizing on the change and not being afraid of it. Let's let's just pause on that point because you talked about one of your skills is adaptability and it is a skill one of the things that I wrote about it making on change was the Formulae approach to where EQ plus aq is going to be greater than IQ What's your take on adaptability as a skill because emotional intelligence and adaptability intelligence or aq it can be benchmarked It can be trained. I know those actually one of the topics at last week's event that you're around Yeah, I mean there's some famous quote that I'll butcher, but it's the it's not the strongest that survive It's the one that's most adaptable to change right and so My my life experience is such that I have been fortunate enough to put myself in or find myself in Life circumstances that are always throwing me curveballs and it has allowed me to through experience build a muscle of being resilient through change Not being afraid of it leaning into it and ultimately usually having positive outcomes Even if there's some challenges or little slip ups along the way The final outcome always ends up positive all's well that ends well and so I think the ability to anticipate change the ability to Understand and identify what it really means how you need to change what you're doing today to set yourself up for success and being willing to learn as you go and get feedback and pivot accordingly is crucial in terms of B2B marketing most Most B2B companies today the most important thing is actually building a change management discipline The thing that people are stuck in is doing things the way that they've always done them and if they don't adapt their companies will die And so it's actually less about the specific marketing tactic or the specific measurement you need to apply It's how do you actually get an entire organization to to buy into a change and then actually execute that accordingly?
And so that's what's happening right now. I think on all levels of our existence right politically economically personally professionally So yeah, it's exciting. It's interesting. You use the word feel you said it feels like we're on the precipice of a big Change and coming back to your point about building a change management Practice and B2B marketing within brands I think one of the models that I wrote about in banking on change was there are four steps and I'd love to get your take on this And maybe we can dialogue on this.
Yeah step one is to help other see things differently pattern matching learning is back to your point I'll always be curious because when you begin to see things different the second step is you're gonna think different New thought patterns and so when working with leaders, I'll ask them. Okay, great You're gonna see something different like for example, you're out of it You're gonna see something different and it's so much fun doing this from the stage because I'm like you're all here You're seeing something different. Yeah, I am so you're thinking about things differently Yeah, yeah, I am. So what's gonna happen next and it almost it's this like knee jerk reaction.
Everyone says I'm gonna act I'm gonna be I'm gonna do something different like are you and they look a little puzzled and Like because the bridge to gap between the thought and the action you can have the logical thought that you need to do something different But you're not gonna take action until you feel different So it's interesting that you use the word feeling on this I feel like there's a role in the precipice of this change Because the feeling the desire the emotion to do to act to be different has to be greater than the feeling of the motion to maintain the status quo Let's lean into the feeling piece of this just for a moment. What are you feeling when it comes to this change? I Love that you went in this direction So I always actually have very similar instinctual feelings right before big change in my life in any any aspect of it usually it's a series of Emotions that are always sort of clustered together. So I think there is a feeling of restlessness anxiety excitement and This strong urge to prepare for what's next that's like the best was the best words I can use to describe the feeling and I think that Ultimately you make up a really great point when you think about like change management and any large organization You have to have really motivated change agents that are willing to put everything on the line to push a company forward because it's easier and safer to just do the same thing and fall in line then advocate for what is really necessary I Have always been what I consider to change agent in every chapter of my career And I've been able to accomplish a lot of great things But it's also resulted in various failures and departures from companies right as a result If you're gonna take the mantle on you have to be willing to accept the consequences And so in terms of you know how I'm feeling yeah, those are the things that I'm feeling and it inspires me to take a step back and reflect on what I'm then seeing and Experiencing and put a game plan together of how I want to move forward.
That's interesting you Is intuition perhaps and I think also this practice of taking a step back and reflecting because I think if we get so busy doing the thing That if we don't take the time to pause and to review and to reflect We miss the greatest opportunities because it's in the reflection that we we pattern match and we gain new perspective and we gain new insight We gain clarity and that provides that path forward that to see to think to feel different to then do different through the next iteration So let's just reflect for a moment when it comes to be to be marketing what has changed over the last three to five years What's been the biggest shifts that you're Yeah, let's let's use the big shiny object right and be marketing right now, which is AI And this is a great example of the point that I'm trying to communicate so AI tools have been being released for the last couple of years and we're kind of in the I think the beginning frenzy of this shiny New object and if you are on LinkedIn and you you know You kind of believe what you're reading about how people are talking about it. You would think oh my god Everybody has this all figured out. They've fully integrated AI into their GTM What does that even mean right and if I'm I'm not using AI so I'm falling behind or we're not gonna be able to achieve our goals Because we haven't figured this out and all that's actually happening is people are leveraging AI to do the same exact shit That they've been doing for years and years and years. They're just using the tool and posturing and trying to Present as if they have it all figured out, you know And what I'm doing is saying I'm actually more interested in how is AI actually gonna change how people consume Information and find out about new products and services How is AI actually gonna change how businesses allocate capital resources to achieve financial goals, right?
What industries or products or services are going to be totally disrupted and irrelevant in five to ten years because of AI and Which ones are actually gonna require significant evolution to survive? Which new ones will be created as a result, right? Those are the more important and interesting questions not how can I use AI for sales outreach or how can I use AI for content production? And so what I'm trying to do is sit back and and it's not to say that we're not leveraging various AI tools to be more efficient here And they're of course, that's the easy stuff.
It's not groundbreaking or that exciting But I'm actually trying to take the time and observe and develop a perspective on answering those bigger questions that I just laid out So it's a more dare I say is a more philosophical anthropological Thinking about your thinking metacognition here I think it's just more strategic instead of getting all wrapped up into what tool am I going to use to deploy this strategy? I'm trying to get ahead of how are some of the fundamental aspects of how B2B markets operate going to be impacted and Once I have clarity on how I see that playing out what do I believe are the strategic moves? I read a marketing agency a very common trope out there right now is AI is gonna eliminate the need for a marketing agency It's like probably not but what services an agency provides and the value they provide and their business model Is probably going to change and be disrupted. So let's have that conversation instead of the surface level conversation with the you know Conclusions that people are jumping to that I don't think are really they're not really thinking through how much is mindset playing into this?
Because you recently posted something about abundance and the way that I think you framed the challenge here when thinking about this And if you're reading and scrolling and it becomes doom scrolling is like the sky is falling It's like hold on wait a minute If you're looking at the world through that lens of scarcity, of course, that's gonna be your perception But if you if you take a different approach and I think to your point It's like I'm trying to gain a perspective and perspective is the sum of context and framing So you're looking at this from a completely different lens and and if you already have a natural growth mindset abundant mindset You're gonna completely be playing a different game already What's the difference here and maybe the deeper question is okay? If you're stuck in scarcity, how do you shift from scarcity into abundance from just a matter of thinking perspective as a whole? Yeah, I mean there's a lot of scary stuff going on in the world right now and there's a lot of reasons that people are fearful and You know worried and so there is validity to those feelings that people have however My perspective is we're entering a new era of our sort of civilization and society where a lot of the constructs that got us here are going to be destroyed And broken down but in service of building back something that's better Will it be painful as we go through the cycle of destruction and rebirth totally? But I do believe that the the final outcome of the cycle will be a positive one I don't know how long it's gonna take and I'm prepared if I get you know caught up in the collateral damage You know who knows none of us are safe But I can't worry about those things because they're not outside of my control And so despite how the world wants to operate or how the media wants to make us feel I have a choice and how I decide to show up in terms of my own mindset And so I've always believed that you can create win-win-win outcomes I've always believed that if you focus on doing the right thing that that you will be rewarded eventually even if not immediately I have a long game mindset I think it takes people to go on their own personal transformational kind of spiritual journey to come to those conclusions on their own I don't think you can tell someone to change their mindset and they change it It's a very personal journey that each person has to take on their own But you can talk about those things as the catalyst to open people's perspective and decide that they want to they want to move in that direction There's definitely a spiritual undertone here, and it's so interesting It's like and that was although as the impetus for me launching level of business was I got Literally drained out of soul level trying to inspire change with leaders who were not interested in change at all And it was it was showing up in my health It was showing up in my family my marriage my kids like literally my young guy He's so intuitive so in the path that he's dad you come home with a dark cloud over your head Like you could see it since you feel that but it back to I think what you're talking about you're showing up in service And then you said something interesting.
I don't even think you might not have seen my shirt. Oh, I didn't do the right thing so let's let's pause because you mentioned something about constructs and perhaps another word we could use is belief systems because beliefs are what inform behavior and in between all of that's the messiness of thoughts and emotions and actions which become habits that we repeat and Just there's that whole narrative but when you talk about these constructs these beliefs getting transformed death and rebirth resurrection What what are you seeing when it comes to be to be marketing or maybe at a macro level? How is what's happening at a macro level gonna impact be to be marketing for that matter? Yeah, and so you know five years ago when Chris and I started refine labs we noticed that there was a huge shift happening in terms of how people were consuming information and social media was effectively how everyone engaged with sort of the digital world and taking the time to evolve and modernize strategies from 2010 to 2015 to sort of the 2020 2023 timeline was critical for these organizations What's been really interesting though is we continue to operate the agency is companies that are you know 10 15 20 years old Have not been able to get out of the 2010 to 2015 paradigm They're still stuck there and these are 50 million to one billion dollar revenue companies many of them public spending millions of dollars advertising and also still relatively successful and so our client base has really morphed into this sort of middle market enterprise B2B SaaS company and Finding those companies with leaders that recognize changes required and working with them to actually implement our change management process to methodically evolve and modernize their strategies over time What's really interesting is they're like a full decade back But what's happening right now is the B2B marketing playbook is literally being rewritten again However, I think we're at the beginning stages and so you're seeing two different ways that people are attacking it You're seeing people grabbing on to different like I was describing this earlier different AI tools and low-hanging fruit to try to basically Slap on an AI enabled version of what we've been doing for the last five years And I think what's missing and what has yet to be written is what will actually matter in terms of B2B buying behavior changes How business model changes those are the actual like underlying principles that should dictate how your marketing strategy evolves I think you're also seeing a resurgence to sort of basic business fundamentals and like core marketing principles because what has happened from a technology perspective is software building and differentiation is actually not very hard anymore and that used to be really hard ten years ago So things like the right type of problem you're solving the right type of product or service to solve it in the right business model Are actually the most important moats instead of the actual software you're developing So you're seeing that shift it's almost like what's old is new again So you're seeing the resurgence of those practical basic marketing and business strategies actually becoming more important because of the technology cycle that we're in I'll pause there.
I mean I could keep going on. No, no, I mean you're what's old is new again I've literally have used those exact words myself And I think because when you start studying this and you pick up on the patterns It's just pattern matching what is going on and it becomes very clear and then when you have that clarity But others don't share that same perspective. That's when you start to like am I seeing this is anyone else seeing this and you start comparing That you're like huh and then I guess the question is with all of this in mind because what is old is new again? Where do we go from here?
Like what is what is that next step? What does the path forward look like as I think in threes myself and I you know I'm gonna try and perfect them and you know one of the big things going around is is brand demand expand I know you recently posted something on that here What is the path forward for a B2B brand? So yeah, great question And I'll use that framework since we've been talking a lot about that at refine labs And so when we talk about brand that really goes to how you are perceived in the market by your perspective customers Your target audience and so having strategies to know where are they spending time? How do you communicate your point of view?
After covid and how the whole world just moved online for years and years What's been really interesting is how impactful in person interactions are they always were right? But what's old is new again? And it's even more important now after the recent history that we've had so really having a brand strategy that's anchored in How are you connecting with your perspective market in ways that resonate with them? And how are you building trust in terms of demand?
That's I would say what has sort of historically been the refined lab specialty And that's really around execution of programs to capture and convert buyers that are in market to buy and making sure that you're being strategic and Effective at deploying those dollars in those programs when we talk about expand and this actually kind of my interesting My background is actually more in customer success and account management and sales not really marketing and Christmas or the marketer of the duo of us retention and expansion and renewal of your current customers is a critical growth lever and with everything that's changing and Especially over the last five years that has been an afterthought for most B2B businesses And so that needs to be at the forefront and there needs to be a real strategy for customer retention expansion advocacy and growth And that's actually it fuels then your brand perception in market, right? It's this sort of self-fulfilling cycle that you can propel and so that's sort of the the framework that I'm going into and there's a lot more That needs to be flesh out and communicated in terms of very specific strategies and tactics and how you measure if you're successful in Executing those but that's the mindset that I think B2B companies need to have to be successful for the next decade Your your hot take on founder led risk versus reward. Yes What's your hot take on that? The founder CEO brand can be really powerful, but don't put all your eggs in the basket diversification Portfolio right yeah again if you're on LinkedIn land you hear you hear people will proclaim that that's all that's needed to drive a business And it's just not true And I think one of the things that I try to bring to the table and like the Lincoln Lincoln echo chamber is trying to bring some like practicality reality and Not even a hard truth just like things that people need to realize in terms of business building It's really easy to get you know excited with all of the crazes that are happening and I try to just keep it real come back Come back to the fun that you can't you cannot build a brand on sand because otherwise it's gonna get washed away when the tide changes You got to build it on a strong foundation You got to build it on on rock and principles and truth that is what time and it's coming you know arguably refined Labs had one of the best founder brands with Chris Walker and we did and it was awesome But we also had to build other motions right and and that's critical and now he is focusing on other endeavors And it's even more important that we have those foundations in place to continue to grow and scale And so I think you know I still obviously think the founder CEO brand is a great tactic, but it just can't be your only one No, it's definitely diversification Megan.
This has been such a great conversation I appreciate the perspective that you have shared here today your unique wisdom if someone is listening they want to connect with you continue the conversation What's the best way for them to reach out say hello? Linkedin is the only social media platform. I've ever been on so find you there. Wow Connect with Megan learn with Megan she is on Linkedin and only on Linkedin I'm right there with you.
That's my prime. I have a Facebook page Yeah, I'm not a I'm not a big social media person on a personal level just professionally. Yeah, it's interesting making on change Chapter six is a chapter and you mentioned something before about control which you can control it's a very stoic idea Oh, I love stoicism. Okay, we're gonna pause right there.
You and I have to come back after the conversation on that whole topic Yes, the context of B2B marketing and brand because chapter six I gotta get you a copy of the book chapter six is about digital stoicism. There you go Megan this has been great I really appreciate it and speaking of the book if you want to copy send me a text 832 to 40 or 1922 else in your copy of banking on change It is the entrepreneur's guide to achieving exponential growth in the age of AI. You don't have to do this alone