Katie Smith - Wild Path Consulting

Katie Smith is the Founder and CEO of Wild Path Consulting and a Fractional CMO.

Katie is a dynamic force who masterfully blends adventure with marketing expertise, transforming stagnation and chaos into clear strategic success. She joined us to share her incredible career journey and unique insights that will inspire and challenge how you think about marketing and leadership.

Wild Path Consulting helps businesses that care about the future of our planet and its people to craft compelling strategies, build strong marketing teams, and remain flexible in how they position their products and services. With a focus on social impact marketing, Wild Path empowers companies to scale sustainably while making a positive difference.

In this episode:

Adventurous Beginnings: Learn how Katie’s diverse and adventurous career journey has influenced her ability to think creatively and tackle complex challenges, helping her become an expert at solving problems in innovative ways.

Strategic Alignment for Success: Katie emphasizes the importance of aligning teams, goals, and strategies to achieve clarity, focus, and meaningful outcomes. She shares practical advice on breaking through organizational silos to create more cohesive and effective marketing strategies.

Overcoming Stagnation and Embracing Change: Discover Katie’s approach to turning stagnation into momentum, using adaptability and bold decision-making to navigate through uncertainty and drive business growth.

The Role of a Fractional CMO: Katie explains how fractional CMOs can bring high-level expertise to businesses on a flexible basis, offering the strategic direction needed to scale effectively without the commitment of a full-time hire.

Finding Opportunity Amidst Chaos: Katie shares her philosophy on embracing chaos and uncertainty as opportunities for transformation, providing tips on how to reframe challenges into strategic advantages that lead to long-term success.

Transcript

Steven Proud   0:42
Hello everyone and a warm welcome back to the latest episode of the Radical Global Marketing Podcast.
 My name is Steven, one of your regular Co host and today's very special guest is Katie Smith.
 Katie is founder and CEO of Wildpath Consulting and a fractional CMO.
 Katie is a dynamic force blending adventure with marketing prowess based on a unique career journey and a dedication to transforming chaos and stagnation into strategic success.
 I'm really looking forward to getting into this with Katie and she will do it wage better than I can in just a moment. But first, as ever, we have a quick word from our sponsor, the radical Global Marketing Podcast is produced in association with Brandigo China Brandigo's.
 Team of local and international marketing talent has been helping multinational brands achieve their marketing success in China for almost 2 decades.
 This is founded on the unique, radically relevant China marketing methodology built on insight, creativity and flawless execution across multiple China marketing channels.
 To find out more about Brandiga China and how they can help your brand meet your China business objectives, visit brandigochina.com or contact the team via social media or e-mail and we will put all links in the show notes Katie. Hi, how are you today?

Katie Smith   1:54
 Hi I'm doing great.
 Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Steven Proud   1:58
 Oh, it's a pleasure. We're looking forward to having a chat with you. Whereabouts in the world you sat at the moment.

Katie Smith   2:03
 So I am in Southwest Montana in the Usai.

Steven Proud   2:07
 Beautiful.

Katie Smith   2:09
 Yeah, I am about you know.
 You can get to Yellowstone in about the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee. From where I live.

Steven Proud   2:18
 Oh wow. I was a beautiful part.
 I'm I'm very jealous.
 Like, don't get me wrong, I love Shanghai, but being out in those mountains and things like that, I'm I'm very envious.
 Well, I'm really interested to sort of hear about your journey as the founder of Wild Path Consulting, and I'd like to talk about some of the work that you do for your clients.
 And I'm also interested in kind of this positioning as a fractional CMO as well. But to get things moving, I'd love to hear a little bit about your your career journey to date.
 Like how?
 How? Well, let's say you know.
 Started off and then how did that pivot into marketing?
 Would you mind just sharing a bit on that?

Katie Smith   2:53
 Sure, it's a bit circuitous. If you had told, you know, 20 year old me that I would have my own business, I'd be working in business.
 I would have thought you were crazy.
 I was interested in psychology and I was interested in the environment.
 So after college, I started guiding.
 I was an outdoor guide and I took people into the wilderness hiking.
 In college, I did a little bit of rock climbing guiding.
 Cross country skiing?
 I worked at a cross country ski ranch and I would take people outside into these environments that I loved, but they didn't know much about and I made sure that they were safe, that they learned how to move about and hopefully to I wanted them to fall in.
 Love with those environments and the activities that I did too.
 So I did that for a long time.
 And something that I loved about it was building community.
 So building connection with the people that I was guiding.
 Connecting with the community that I was living in, all of those pieces were really important to me, but something that I learned while I was guiding that I take with me, I take a lot with me into my work is when you're out there, when you're the leader.
 In the lead, you got to have, I was.
 So here's a great example. I did a lot of horseback riding guiding. I was a Wrangler at.
 A guest ranch.
 And so when I'm sitting in my saddle in the lead, I never look.
 I never sitting forward in my saddle.
 Always turn to the side.
 I had one eye looking ahead.
 I knew where we were, where our goal was, and I knew that there were going to be multiple things that would come up that I needed to keep my eye on.
 Was there a moose or a bear?
 Was there a rock in our way or a Creek that we had to cross?
 I so I was always looking one eye ahead, but then I always had one eye in the back watching my clients making sure that they were having a good time, that they were safe, that the horses were taking care of.
 And so I think that ability to swivel and I think you know taking that from you have to look at the big picture and then come down to the small picture and then look back up to the big picture.
 So that ability is something that I honed in guiding and I take with me in my work as a fractional chief marketing officer and and in a marketing strategist sort of leading A-Team and helping lead a business through the marketing piece of their work.

Steven Proud   5:30
 Yeah, that's really cool.
 You can.
 You can the way that you describe it. You can genuinely see those parallels with how that experience is guiding transfers into what makes what I think makes a good marketing professional. I love the phrase that you hear as well as like working with people who don't know the.
 Environment and again I think that's a phrase that you sort of used right at the top of the conversation where you can see how that transfers into marketing as well because you're working with these businesses that know their own business very well.
 But our responsibility is helping them.
 Kind of get.
 Understanding of their broader target audience and stakeholders and how you influence that behaviour and stuff like that as well.
 So I'd like I said.
 I knew this was going to be a great conversation and I can see right at the top how that beginnings as a guide can transfer to what you do now.
 So when did you make that pivot? Then towards a a desk based, I guess or a marketing focused career?

Katie Smith   6:22
 Sure. So sometime in my mid mid 20s, I thought maybe I should try my hand at getting a real job.
 It didn't stick for a very long.

Steven Proud   6:32
 And yet you I was going to say.
 And yet you picked marketing.

Katie Smith   6:36
 No, but but I kind of had a knack of just understanding, like, how I always knew that we needed to get. It was all about the people, right?
 That's all about the clients.
 How do we get them and what is their mindset when they're first, you know, first come to us first deciding if this is something that they wanna do and how do we show them that this is a fun, safe thing to do.
 So I was still working the outdoor industry and then.
 2008 hit I lost my job.
 I was living in New Hampshire at the time, so all the way across the country, that's where I grew up.
 And my friend had APR company. She needed help for the summer, so I worked.
 And it was an immediate immediately I loved it.
 I I loved.
 I loved the connection there is, you know, companies that had a product they needed to sell.
 There were journalists who needed to write something, and I loved being that connector.
 So I worked with her just for the summer, and then afterwards I was like, well, I can't find another job.
 And might as well move to Montana and and teach Nordic skiing and and be a Wrangler again.
 So I had another.
 Another five years of that, but throughout that whole time I was still trying to get into marketing.
 It was just during the recession years.
 No one wanted an intern.

Steven Proud   7:56
 Sure, sure.

Katie Smith   7:57
 So I was Scrappy and I volunteered and I, you know, all the places that I worked at, I worked with their marketing department to learn.
 Actually, at that time I thought I still wanted to do PR so.
 I ended up getting a Masters degree in public relations just to tie all my experiences together, and from that I got people started wanting me to do PR for them.
 So that was my first business was doing PR and it turns out I don't like PR, it turns out.
 It's a lot of just like throwing things out into the Internet and only a fraction comes back so.
 After that I started working for manufacturing company.
 Metal manufacturer and I had an incredible boss who said what do you wanna learn?
 What do you wanna do?
 I'm here to support you. Who really let me run with it to explore the company was really supportive of education, so I got to go to conferences and take courses and really learned about inbound marketing and how that works.
 And again, it's that connection.
 It's the need of people with need of company.
 And I get to be the connector which I really love about marketing.
 I see marketing as a.
 Is a service. You know I need to be of service and I pull that externally to our customers, but also internally with the different departments in a business, marketing is of service.
 Marketing works to help buoy sales.
 Marketing works with the CFO to, you know, to learn like they work with customer service. They work with everybody.
 So that's what I love about marketing is being that connector being in community with everybody.
 And yeah, so I really learned about that.
 I worked for and I worked for an international nonprofit for a long time, so I got to understand how to work in different markets that aren't just us based, which is really important. I think in general it's really important, but especially, you know, if you do work with.
 International clients, you have to understand the culture.

Steven Proud   10:09
 Sure.

Katie Smith   10:11
 Things like that.
 So that was really great.
 And then, but then I really was feeling the pull to get back to my own thing again.
 So I did a small stint at a fintech company and then I was ready to be on my own and I started just with strategy.
 But what I found was I would be working with marketing departments and it was really challenging to get the buy in of the C-Suite.
 And for the kind of work that I wanted, do where everything's so integrated.
 Not only I needed to understand what the business goals were, and often what I found was like the marketing director that I was working with didn't really know what those were. We were focused on marketing goals, but for me, you know what?
 We can pat ourselves on the back with marketing goals, but are we actually moving the company forward and being aligned?
 And then I also found that if I wasn't in the C-Suite, I it was harder to get buy in from.

Steven Proud   11:10
 Yep.

Katie Smith   11:11
 From all those people, and often.
 I am talking about business strategy tied into marketing.
 Sometimes they're intertwined.
 So that's when I I learned about had a friend who is a fractional CFO and I think that's more common is people coming in and I love that idea and we spoke about it quite a bit.
 Where, you know, I didn't necessarily want to work with a big large company.
 Those are kind of like cruise ships.
 You know, it's really hard to.
 Make the move and and turn. I really enjoy working with companies that are, you know, not start up startup.

Steven Proud   11:46
 Absolutely, yeah.

Katie Smith   11:52
 They need to move quick and that's just not really my Forte.
 And also, they're not so focused on marketing 'cause, they're trying to build a business.
 So where I come in is really when we're in a growth phase.
 So the business, we know how the business works.
 We know how all those parts and pieces come together and we have these.
 Business goals that we want to achieve and now we're saying how do we achieve?
 How do we achieve those sales numbers?
 How do we achieve achieve this kind of growth? Enter this kind of market?
 That's really where my brain works the best.
 So discovering that discovering that you know that fractional piece, I like to work with lots of different companies.
 I like to have a lot of variety so it fits me, fits my personality, but I believe that.
 Every company deserves to have that kind of strategy at the sea level.
 It it can help really streamline things, help everything, click less waste. We move forward.
 My new model is go slow to go fast, so slowing down building that foundation. That's what I love to do, building that marketing foundation.

Steven Proud   13:04
 Nice.
 That's brilliant.
 I love that.
 Go slow to go fast. You know I do some martial arts and one of the things we say when you're learning and you're training always starts slow because slow gets smooth.
 Smooth gets strong and strong, gets fast.
 Sorry, I love that kind of mentality.
 I also I think it's really interesting that I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think my career journey I'm about 10 years ahead of you and I was APR.
 Specialist as well.
 So my bachelor's degree was PR.
 Down the London agency route, before I broadened into marketing.
 So there's a lot of parallels between what you and I have experienced and I shifted away from PR about the similar sort of time as you did. And I think yes, there was a sort of global recession around that time as well, but also there was a huge.
 Shift in what PR was and is around that. So the kind of previous decade that I've been working with, it was all about those connections that you.
 Were discussing where you know I had spent a lot of time and a lot of hard work fostering good media.
 Contacts and then developing good stories for them that enhanced the credibility of the work, the client and stuff like that. And you know, when I was doing my first job, there was pretty much no social media for the first couple of years. But around that sort of period.
 I think when you and I both switched, we had that onset of the social media and the democratization of the media, and there's a lot of positives that come with that too, but.
 It really shifted what PR is and was and what it does.
 I've got a lot of previous colleagues who adapted to that very, very well and have really gone on to make a success of it.
 But I was very similar.
 I same as you. I kind of wanted to broaden away from that a little bit because of that industry shift.
 So it's interesting.
 I think me being where I was and where you were and where you are, but having that it's almost like even though I'm a few years ahead, it's the same period in time when we've made that decision to pivot a little bit, which I think is interesting.
 I'm I'd love to go back.

Katie Smith   15:12
 Yeah.

Steven Proud   15:14
 Just a little bit.
 You mentioned about the steel company that you're working for and the global.
 Non profit just before we get into how you set up your own business as well.
 What were some of the kind of the challenges and opportunities that came with those roles?
 I'm thinking more specifically about the type of business that they were, but also the regions that you're working on with them. I'm sure very different challenges between the two, but if there was anything, any common themes or anything like that, you'd be happy to share.

Katie Smith   15:42
 Yeah. So I think so.
 The the metal manufacturing, that's all B2B business to business and.
 I I love. That's kind of where my heart is at.
 I do love business to business.

Steven Proud   15:56
 So you're in good company where B2B geeks as well.
 So you're in good company.

Katie Smith   15:59
 Yeah, I just, I love it.
 I mean, it's more nuanced.
 It's a little bit trickier, but it really does rely on that that relationship piece which I is. So such a core value for me, you know, relationship with your sales team, relationship with who.
 Your customers are.
 I like that your customer knows a little bit about your product, so you're not just starting from scratch.
 Now that metal manufacturer was had some B to C components of it too 'cause they were working with home owners as well.
 Architects, things like that. But having to sort out who we were working with and what does that look like?
 That was fantastic.
 I really.
 I really enjoyed it and that's really where I was kind of cutting my teeth and learning about this kind of marketing.
 So like I said, my boss said, what do you want to learn?
 And so I did. I I learned I I was all in on HubSpot.
 I took all of their courses.
 I learned so much from them and then marketing Prof.
 So I still, I still, you know, retain a membership to this day, do their trainings go to their conference.
 And learn so much from all all of their their people.
 So so I think that idea that everything's changing and so you should always keep learning.
 I I really learned in that spot.
 Working for that metal manufacturer and also not to.

Steven Proud   17:26
 Yeah.

Katie Smith   17:29
 You have to look at your market.
 So their market was.
 Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota.
 So it's kind of like the Mountain West states. And then they started to expand down into the southern states farther West, and they made some mistakes.

Steven Proud   17:40
 Mm.

Katie Smith   17:49
 They didn't vet some of their markets, so I got to learn from their mistakes and then, you know, so then I I had my solid idea of how marketing worked and I moved into nonprofit work.
 And that.
 I don't think that you should approach nonprofit work differently. I think that you should approach nonprofit marketing the same way, the same structure that you use for anything else.
 And and what that is is you need to understand who your constituents are, right? And so and for that can be donors in non profit world.
 You're looking at your donors, but you're also looking at who's receiving services.
 You have to understand that.
 And then when you're building your messaging, you build strategy and where you're going to use your tactics.
 You build it around those groups of people, so same way and I'm really glad that I kind of learned the marketing piece.

Steven Proud   18:42
 True.

Katie Smith   18:50
 With.
 For profit so that when I went to non profit you know you didn't kind of get stuck in in that 'cause I think non profit you're not selling a product but what you're selling is really self actualization is selling a passion.

Steven Proud   19:04
 Mm hmm.

Katie Smith   19:05
 So people can't get that from anything else.

Steven Proud   19:06
 Hmm.

Katie Smith   19:10
 I mean, that's pretty solid.
 So that's how we we really approach that. And then the international side was interesting.
 So this was a non profit that educated girls and women in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan.
 So we had a lot and then the organization itself worked within those countries.
 So we had communication, you know, with and then it wasn't Americans who were running those schools, it was local people.

Steven Proud   19:32
 Hmm.

Katie Smith   19:40
 So we had communication, you know with.
 With people in Afghanistan, with people in Pakistan, with the people in Tajikistan and so really knowing the culture is so important and it's a, it's important to show respect, it's important to make them comfortable. And then you you work Better Together, you learn better, you know, so I.
 Tried to learn Dari.
 Made sure that we are always.
 Like appreciating their holidays as majority Muslim countries so.
 So wishing them.

Steven Proud   20:11
 Mm hmm mm.
 Eid Mubarak.

Katie Smith   20:16
 Yes, yes, in Mubarak, wishing that you know all.
 Just making sure that we were supporting their culture. That's really important.
 And then you become a team and you're working together. And then most of our fundraising was us based.
 But we had lots of pockets over in the UK that we would work with. And so just tweaking the messaging a little bit just culturally based on what what people?
 What's expected in the culture? What? Because.
 You know the American way of fundraising, of marketing, of talking is very brash.
 It's very direct. It's very straightforward because that's most of our culture. You know, in compared to other places.

Steven Proud   20:53
 Yep.

Katie Smith   21:00
 But if you were going to fundraise, you know the UK, you just tone it down a little bit.
 It's not that much different, but you just kind of tone it down a little bit and.

Steven Proud   21:06
 Yeah.

Katie Smith   21:12
 And tweak. Tweak your language to where you are so you know I'd say the bones of those.
 Of how I approach marketing is is the same no matter what I'm working, who I'm working with or what I'm doing. We're always identifying company goals.
 What are those goals?
 What are what? You know, that's sort of like our compass point.
 You know, that's like what we're putting what we're training our bearing on and then who are we talking to and not just like how old are they? And do they like Starbucks but.
 You know what?
 What are they worried about?
 What are some of their fears?
 Their those pain points that we talk about.
 Where do they hang out?
 Where do they get information that they trust?
 And you know how? And then what does that journey look?
 What is that? Knowledge journey look like for them? Because you can't.
 You have to match it right?
 So when I'm working with so now.
 One of my clients is another metal metal manufacturer.
 Couple of guys spun off from that original 1 and so I'm working with them and their client is not homeowners. Their client is contractors.
 And I came in and defined that when I started working with them and it just made sense, you know, that was our good niche.
 That was the best way that we could get higher contracts with less work and the guys who own the company have, you know, 50 plus years combined of working not only selling metal, but also working in the building industry.
 So everything that we put out, we're not going to put out like.
 Pinterest Beginner level information.
 You know, we need to figure out how we work with an agency with a writer who has no knowledge.
 How do we transfer that information so that they get that high level information that our customers need?
 It's matching the customer, you start there and then you build the tactics out from there.

Steven Proud   23:09
 And that's where that appreciation of the B2 BI think that you mentioned coming too.

Katie Smith   23:10
 Based on that.

Steven Proud   23:13
 Is having that real understanding of the buyer journey for your target personas and then really knowing?

Katie Smith   23:16
 Mm hmm.

Steven Proud   23:20
 The channels that they use at which stage as they move down the biofunnel so you mentioned Pinterest are not focusing on that basic because it's just pointless and it's yeah.
 And again, this is one of the reasons I love B2B as well.
 It's kind of really getting on that really into specific target audiences, really plotting out that buyer journey.
 Identifying which is the best channel for each stage of that buyer journey. It's a really fascinating process.

Katie Smith   23:44
 Yeah.

Steven Proud   23:45
 It sounds like I often ask when we do these conversations.
 I often ask people to kind of name and influence on their career and but it sounds like those two roles and that boss that was so willing to kind of ask you about what you would be wanting to learn and what you wanted to do, sound like they.
 Were a pretty influential aspect of what you've worked with in your past so far.
 Is that fair for summary?

Katie Smith   24:09
 Oh, yeah, yeah, yes.

Steven Proud   24:13
 So now I'm I'm interested sort of. Now talk about the current business.
 So what was the?
 We've kind of touched on a little bit, but what was the the inspiration for founding wildfire marketing and also you mentioned the friends talking about the CFO role, but I just I'd love to go back to the beginning of this stage of the journey if you'd be kind.

Katie Smith   24:32
 Yeah, Wild path consulting so.

Steven Proud   24:32
 Enough to take us through it.

Katie Smith   24:37
 Originally, when I kinda went out and started this consulting business, I was called the marketing. Thank you.

Steven Proud   24:42
 It's a cool name, by the way.
 It's a very cool name.

Katie Smith   24:44
 Yeah, wild path. Well, yes.
 I it was originally called the marketing hat and I thought I could maybe like coach business. What I saw was all my friends with businesses.

Steven Proud   24:52
 OK.

Katie Smith   24:57
 They'd say.
 Hey, can I buy you? You know, a cup of coffee and just pick your brain about stuff. And I found that they didn't really know what they were doing.
 When they were working with agencies, they didn't know how to communicate, so either they were a being taken advantage of or B they couldn't communicate their needs.
 The agency couldn't communicate with them.
 What they needed. And so they just weren't getting enough out of that. And I thought maybe I could train people to do it, but.
 That really wasn't actually a good fit for me.
 I got boring.
 So then I kind of started moving into strategy and all of a sudden I was outgrowing what the marketing hat was.
 So I went on a retreat with a business coach and a few other people in a cohort and really kind of got down to the nitty gritty of what was that. I like to do in my personality.
 You know, I am an outdoor person. I've had a very circuit, you know, like my path has been very wild to get to where I am.
 And so this name, you know, I was like, what am I going to call myself?
 And I woke up.
 You know, I woke up and I had the name.
 I asked for the name before I went to bed.
 I woke up and I had the name and it just.
 It just fit is about strategy.
 It's fit with my guiding past and how I use that guiding past to guide my clients.
 That's really what it is I am.
 I am there for you.
 I'm looking out for you like I am as a as a fractional CMO. I'm in your business, so it's not like an agency whose external I come in and I like, get to know the industry.
 I get to know all the people and I'm fighting for you, for your business.

Steven Proud   26:38
 Mm hmm.

Katie Smith   26:41
 So that just like, you know, I'm your guide, I'm within that.
 So that just felt right.
 And then I was moving on, just doing marketing strategy, but still like I said, I need it felt like I when I could work with the C-Suite and Company, that's when we got everything done.
 That's when we moved forward and it wasn't just.
 Pretty marketing plan that someone got to check off a list and put on a shelf. You know, like that's when we were moving forward and I felt like I wanted more.
 I wanted to level up more to get things done.
 And that's when I had. I hadn't heard of a fractional CMO.
 My friend suggested it and I googled it and then I found a company called cmox. They're wonderful.
 And they are kind of like a mastermind for people who are starting out their CMO businesses.
 They provided great templates that just kind of create a good jumping off point until you're ready to, you know you you go through it a couple times and then you tweak it the way that you are.
 You wanna work?
 So that really gave me the foundation that I needed to to shift into that role. And now you know, that is really where where the sweet spot for me. I like being up in that level because I do.
 I wanna change a whole company, you know, and marketing's the way that I do it.
 But I want us all moving together.
 I wanna change the way people think. I wanna create a more cohesive environment.
 I want that collaboration.
 And also I want that like people, if you're gonna work for me, I'm gonna shake things up. And so you need to be adventurous.
 You need to be ready to be adventurous with your business, because we I'm gonna challenge you.
 We are gonna do things that are gonna scare you, but I know what I'm doing. You know, like, there's a reason. But there's data behind it.
 There's a reason behind it.
 There's, you know, changing markets.
 I'm always looking at the markets.
 What's happening?
 You know, and I like to be ahead of that.
 I like us to have a plan.
 But it can be scary when you're not quite there. So so that adventurous piece of my name is there to kind of call in the people who are who are ready for that.

Steven Proud   28:53
 Is your.
 So what sort of businesses are you working with at the moment?
 You don't have to name names or if you do name names, we'll get. We'll drop a shout out to them in the notes, but I'm just interested in the type of businesses that you're working with.

Katie Smith   29:13
 Yeah. So I've been starting to make a slow shift into manufacturing.
 I still have one non profit client who's fantastic. They work to to get more foster parents in the state of Ohio and that is really, you know, very fulfilling, very challenging because we're working with the state with a government grant to do the marketing arm of that.

Steven Proud   29:30
 Oh, very cool.

Katie Smith   29:40
 But it's really fulfilling and challenging.
 But really, I've been doing manufacturing, so I've worked with metal manufacturing company that I talked about.
 We've been working together for about 5 years and we've really it's been a lot of managing growth. Actually I think you know right now we're in such a building boom.
 Especially in our area and kind of the states around us that we are managing growth because that's part of it too. If you could spend so much money on marketing.

Steven Proud   30:05
 Right.

Katie Smith   30:14
 And get all the clients. But if your back end and how you're going to deliver it doesn't work out, then you're all of a sudden that's catastrophic growth.
 You're gonna tank so.
 And then let's see.
 Most recently I worked with a company that makes desktop CNC machines. They're fantastic.
 Really inventive creative people, and so imagine just acnc machine that fits on your desktop.
 So if you are a researcher, you can just.

Steven Proud   30:41
 That's so cool.

Katie Smith   30:44
 Create the pieces that you need if you know if you're developing something, or if you just need to make a small piece and you don't wanna take the big machine offline, who's making the big pieces?

Steven Proud   30:47
 Hmm.

Katie Smith   30:54
 So they're really wonderful people.
 Creative. Really.
 There's a lot of potential there. I think I just manufacturing is so fun because it's like watching stuff get made.

Steven Proud   31:05
 Yeah.
 Do you know I am exactly the same? And I think part of the reason I love our manufacturing.
 I love all our clients, but one of the reasons I love our manufacturing clients is my career.
 I've made some cool strategies and campaigns. I'm very proud of, but I've never made a physical, tangible thing and I'm always in awe of these people that make physical, tangible things day in, day out.
 I'm that's it's quite a diverse obviously keeps you challenged and obviously keeps you engaged and the passion that you.

Katie Smith   31:32
 Yeah.

Steven Proud   31:38
 You speak with when you talk about the clients.
 Is it evident in in the tone of your voice?
 It's a difficult question.
 Maybe a little bit, but I usually like to talk about any sort of the common challenges that the businesses that you work with Facebook with that diversity. I don't know if that'll be the case with you or is it a regional thing?
 Are there any common challenges from the business within your part of the world at the moment?

Katie Smith   32:00
 There are common challenges to stages of business and to achieving that growth.
 And no matter where you are. So I like to come in when a company doesn't quite have a marketing department. I like to make the foundation of their marketing department.
 So generally, they've been working at some piece of growth they've gotten. They've gotten their success and now they're looking at their next big goal, which is a very frightening place to be.
 So they've got, you know.
 It doesn't matter what they're doing.
 They have to invest money and that is terrifying for everybody.
 They have to invest more money than they have ever invested before in marketing, and they need to think of it as an investment, right? So often if you're looking at a bottom line and you're trying to see how small you can shrink it, you there's always a dim.

Steven Proud   32:48
 M.

Katie Smith   32:55
 Returns in marketing.
 Sure, we can shrink it, but it means that you know.
 You shrink it a little bit and your return on that investment goes down more than you've shrunken. There is like a little sweet spot tipping tipping point for every piece of advertising or every every piece of marketing that that you put out there and that it can be.

Steven Proud   33:01
 Yep.

Katie Smith   33:17
 Hard to explain to people and they might not want to believe you, but but that's true.
 There's, you know, there's a certain just same thing, like there's a diminishing returns for how much you put in as well.
 And.

Steven Proud   33:30
 Yep.

Katie Smith   33:31
 I'm not saying that we should just always have a huge budget on marketing and spend whatever we want, but if you think about it as a bottom line item.
 It's you're never going to reach the potential growth that you're looking for. If you think about it as a smart investment, think about like a piece of machinery, you're going to invest a large amount of money into that piece of machinery.
 And eventually it will have a return, but you have to wait a little bit to get that return.
 Or if you're starting a new business, maybe you know and you need to buy material at cost.
 You know you're going to until you build up enough business to get be able to buy enough material to get that cost down. You know, you know, you're going to be kind of eating your profit for a little while until you can get that growth. And so it.
 Really hard for people to get into that mindset with marketing that it's an investment, that there's time, that it'll come back to you. And I think that's common throughout industries.
 Just being in that.

Steven Proud   34:38
 Yeah, for sure.
 It's a great answer.

Katie Smith   34:41
 It's scary.

Steven Proud   34:42
 Yeah, it's scary, but it's. Yeah. And it's a challenge that wherever you're sat in the world as a marketer, I think you face and you've very eloquently broke it down just to finish things off a little bit on on the current business. Then what's next for for the.
 Business, what's your strategy? Short term long term goals?
 What have you got coming on the horizon?

Katie Smith   35:02
 It's always harder to talk about yourself, right?
 But you know I am.
 I've really taken the past few years to hone in how I work and how I want to work with clients.
 So for a long time people would ask me, well, what's your system?
 What's the and? I'm like I don't.
 I don't have one.
 And then I was talking to a good friend who he has an agency that when we partner with and he said, well, you have a cookbook and he's like, you know, you have all these different recipes.
 That you can pull down for different things.
 You can be custom and kind of taking that.
 I'm like, yeah, I I I'm not gonna do the same thing with every client, but I have all these different experiences that I can build on, and I can pull from my recipe book. So now that I have.
 But you still kind of have to have a basic way that you work with, you know, a basic structure.
 So I've got that straightened out. I know how.
 How I wanna come in?
 What questions I wanna ask?
 And I'm really ready to to I'm, you know, like I said, I'm moving into that manufacturing space, which is really cool. And I really am loving podcasts and talking about this.
 I love educating people, so in the next few years I'd love to build up to do more speaking engagements and do some more education.
 I mean educational pieces.
 But really, you know, finding those right clients who are who are ready to go.
 They just kinda need a guide to help them get to the next level. I've got, you know, a few more openings. So I'm looking looking to grow a little bit.

Steven Proud   36:47
 And like I said, I ask everybody that we sit down with here, but just from a marketing in general point of view, do you?
 What do you what's your thoughts on future of of marketing?
 Is there any sort of technology that interests you?
 Any challenges that you see coming?
 Where are you at with that?

Katie Smith   37:03
 Yeah, I think, I mean, AI is sort of the biggest thing that we all need to figure out.
 And there's two pieces of it that we need to figure out.
 How are we gonna use it in our jobs to do well, to keep up so that we don't become obsolete?
 But but what are our guard rails?
 Because no, I mean I think maybe like the UK is is will always be faster at at setting what's right and wrong. But in the US it's it's the Wild West.
 Out here, there's it's no man's land. And so I think it's up to every business to.

Steven Proud   37:29
 Yeah.

Katie Smith   37:33
 To understand how it works and to set your guard rails and how to do it ethically.
 And so that's really what I'm what I'm working on and learning about that I'm, you know, as I'm playing with the technology, I'm trying to be very thoughtful about what that looks like, I think.
 I don't know.
 I I have a couple of ideas with AI but.
 Everything that you see now, it's sort of becomes very similar and people adapt so fast.
 I think that's why.
 You'll always have a job in marketing, and that's also why you can't always do the same thing, because people adapt and they always want something different.

Steven Proud   38:07
 Yeah.

Katie Smith   38:13
 They're always seeking something different, so I think that human creativity is just going to evolve.

Steven Proud   38:14
 Yeah.

Katie Smith   38:19
 It's I see it as like the invention of the printing press or, you know, some like the industrial revolution.
 It just changed the way that people did their jobs. And so we're, I think we're in that place. And so I'm just trying to figure out how does.

Steven Proud   38:29
 Yeah.

Katie Smith   38:35
 Change the way that I do my job and not take my job.

Steven Proud   38:38
 Yeah. Well, we've we've got some. We've got some excellent copywriters in our team and with the onset of some of the genitive AI, there was always there was a few nervous little looks.

Katie Smith   38:39
 How do I?

Steven Proud   38:49
 But they've really quickly, interestingly enough, the the ones that perhaps felt the most threatened is the team that's got to grips of it really quickly to help them work smarter.
 So again, as you said, it's marketing. So it needs that human touch because that's how we relate to.
 The people that were trying to influence and the behaviours we're trying to change, but.
 If you can use it as a tool to enhance the productivity and do that at a faster, smarter way, it's only a positive thing.
 So I've just been really interested to see in, in my experience, the team who were the most worried about it have been the ones who have adapted to it quickest in our business.
 I think you mentioned the kind of the regulations and the guardrails as well and that's usually important.

Katie Smith   39:26
 When will?

Steven Proud   39:31
 You make a really good point there.
 And again, interestingly, where I'm sat now in China.
 The the actual products aren't as good or aren't as effective.
 Moment. There's still a lot of work being done to develop a product or develop a tool that's as good as what we've seen from other parts of the world.
 But the regulations we've done and published and very clear. First, it's almost like we know this is coming.
 So this is how we're going to govern it once it's been developed, which is it's just a funny way of looking at it.

Katie Smith   40:00
 Imagine that.

Steven Proud   40:01
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 Very cool.
 And Katie, that's been fantastic.
 I've really appreciated taking the time today and chatting with.
 Great insight that you shared as you've gone through your story. If our listeners want to get in touch or find out more about wildpath or or get in touch with yourself, where can they?
 Where can they find you?

Katie Smith   40:21
 Sure. So the the best way to find me is LinkedIn.
 I love to show up there.
 I love to have conversation talk there, but my name is Katie Smith. And so you have to search Katie Smith Wild Path because there's a like millions of us out there.
 And then my website, which has been sadly neglected but it's.
 Follow the wild path.com or you can e-mail me katie@followthewildpath.com and I just love to talk marketing with folks and share ideas.
 So I'm always going to to meet up with new people.

Steven Proud   40:57
 That's great.
 Well, we'll put all the links to to Katie's social media and her website in the show notes.
 So if you do want to follow up with Katie, you'll find out how to get in touch with her right there.
 Katie, it's been an absolute pleasure.
 Will you do this again with me in a year or so is time when things have moved on and we can do a little bit of a follow up because I think that would be really good.

Katie Smith   41:11
 I would love to.
 Yeah, that would be so fun.

Steven Proud   41:17
 Awesome. Thanks again.

Katie Smith   41:18
 Yeah. Thank you.