Ep 70 Startup Renegade Shauna Armitage

Meet Shauna Armitage, a mom of four, military wife, host of the Startup Renegades podcast, and successful entrepreneur.  As a fractional CMO for early startups, she has helped her clients achieve results like a 400% increase in website conversions and a 220% growth in sales.

Important takeaways:

• How she overcame losing her dream job … “I woke up one day and couldn't access my email. I had three little kids at home at the time … I lost this job that I loved. And it just changed everything …it was heartbreaking. This was three weeks before my husband left for a six-month deployment.”
• 3 things you need to have a successful marketing campaign and 1 of the biggest marketing mistakes business owners make 
• How she manages being a successful entrepreneur while being a mom of four kiddos
• Relationship marketing funnels
• Startup vs small business
• Brand partnerships

"We like to put entrepreneurship on a pedestal and we make it look so sexy. And having these moments where founders are saying things like, that was tough, or I failed, or that was the fifth time I failed.  Hearing from successful people that they've had those moments and that they've moved on to do something successfully, I think is probably the most inspiring thing." ~Shauna Armitage

CONNECT WITH SHAUNA

• Instagram: @shauna.armitage
• Website: shaunaarmitage.com
• Podcast: startuprenegades.com
• Email Address: shauna@makingmoxie.com

CONNECT WITH MANDY

• mandysawyer.com
• insta @mandycreativevision 
• facebook @mandyscreativevision
• Mandy's Vision Gig fb group

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Transcript

Mandy:

Hey everybody, thank you so much for joining us today. I have a guest with me by the name of Shauna Armitage. Today, she is an awesome entrepreneur. After obtaining two bachelor's degrees in four years, she struggled to find work and the ailing economy of 2011 and turned to freelance writing. It didn't take long for her to discover that her abilities as a writer were highly valued by marketers. And only a year later, Shauna had taken a position as director of digital content for an agency that wanted to create a more effective marketing solution for startups. Then the agency model, Shauna began stepping into the fractional marketing director role. Through her intensive approach, Shauna has helped her clients achieve results such as a 400% increase in Website Conversions, and a 220% growth in sales. She is also the host of the startup Renegades podcast, which is a raw conversation with founders about their business journeys, and the growth strategies they've used to successfully scale their brands. So Shauna, thank you so much for being here today. 

Shauna:

Thank you so much for having me. You're welcome. 

Mandy:

It's my pleasure. So let's do you want to add anything to that bio really quickly? Or?

Shauna:

I mean, that? That's a lot, right? Um, no, I think let's get started. Okay.

Mandy:

 So you, you got your Bachelor's in, two bachelor's degrees in four years? Let's talk about that a little bit. How in the world did you achieve that, 

Shauna:

um, I was a slacker. That's how I achieved that I went for my first bachelor's degree in elementary education. And taking the teacher tests scared me and I failed one. And I was like, I can't do this. So I ended up taking my double major. So I took the major in History and the minor in education, and graduated a year early out of the program. And then when I decided that, you know, a degree in history was not going to get me a job that, you know, would pay my student loans. I went back for a professional writing degree. And because my core work was already done, I only had to do one year to actually complete the degree. So I did all of my senior courses, and then you know, combined four years, and I had two bachelor's degrees. Awesome. That's amazing. 

Mandy:

So, then after graduating, what made you decide to write as a freelancer instead of it? How did you market yourself? 

Shauna:

I mean, I couldn't get a damn job. That's why I decided to go into freelancing. You know, I was really struggling. I was sending out resume after resume, and I wasn't getting interviews, or I was getting interviews for things that just 100% Were not a good fit, right? And a family member was like, Well, why don't you try being a virtual assistant? And I was like, Huh, what is that? What's that? Yes. And at the time, there was a platform called Elance, you might remember it today, it is now called Upwork Upwork. And within two weeks, I had my first job as an assistant. And then I started picking up writing jobs, because that was, you know, where my skill set really lined up. And I found that I was doing a lot of writing for different marketers, and different marketing projects. And I didn't, you know, I wanted to be a teacher, I didn't even realize that marketing was a thing, which, you know, maybe naive as an early 20 something, but I didn't realize that it was a thing. So when I really got into it.

It just kind of snowballed from there. Yeah.

Mandy:

Awesome. Awesome. So what is your favorite topic to write about? 

Shauna:

Oh, my gosh, in my job today, I don't do so much writing anymore. I did a lot of blogging back in the day. And I love writing about all of the business concepts, for sure. But I think that my favorite things to write about at this point are my favorite things to talk about. Right? So the relationship marketing funnel, or why your website's not converting or, you know, any of those topics that we would just have conversations about in real life. Right. 

Mandy:

So, are you currently working on a book?

Shauna:

I am currently working on a book, I don't have a launch date for that. There's a couple of thing in the works. You know, I launched the podcast this year. And I also accepted a co-founder position at a fintech and then worked on the books. So there's, there's a lot of balls in the air, a lot of things, 

Mandy:

Is there a certain process that you have for your writing? I mean, do you especially with kids, I'm sure you have to like, you know, how do you find the time to do that?

Shauna:

I think for me, it's really about setting boundaries. I know that a lot of people can work at home moms, and I think they've amazing human beings. That is not me, I have four kids, and there's always somebody who likes, needs their applesauce open, or you know, they're hungry 30 seconds after you finish lunch, or one of them looked at the other one the wrong way, right? So for me to create that boundary, my kids go to daycare, most of them go to school, but you know, their school or daycare at this point, right? So setting that boundary where I work during the day, and then at the end of the day, it's family time, it's dinnertime, it's bedtime, and there's no crossover, you know, checking emails or whatever. Having that boundary is really how I'm able to accomplish things that way. I'm not trying to do both things at once and not doing either of the things. Well, right.

Mandy:

Exactly. Yeah. And that's really hard, especially during the whole pandemic when people were forced to work at home, and they weren't used to that. And then having to try to separate work and family when everybody's here when I'm working, you know. So that was really difficult. I'm sure for a lot of people, I don't have children. So, I mean, I taught so those were my kids. But So yeah, I know that that was kind of a struggle for a lot of people.

So talk a little bit more about your business, then what exactly is it exactly that you do and who do you serve? 

Shauna:

That's a great question. I feel like it's a new concept, almost like my mom, my mom doesn't even know what I do. I'm a fractional CMO for early-stage startups. So what I found while working with a marketing agency, is there's a lot of power behind that. But there are a lot of businesses that kind of get left behind. They don't just fit into the blueprint, or maybe they just don't have the funding to really go all in. And a lot of marketing agencies have very specific strategies or strengths that they engage with. But it's not always a holistic view of the marketing in the growth. And startups absolutely have to have that. Yeah. So there's this point in the startup journey, right? Especially when you're bootstrapping where you need to hire someone to do the marketing. An agency could be too expensive, you don't really have the budget to have a marketing director. Come on, you know, because you're either not funded, or you're, you're in the early stages of funding. And having an employee is expensive. So I kind of bridge that gap coming in at those early stages, setting the marketing foundations and start executing on a lot of the pieces to take it off the CEO's plate. 

Mandy:

Awesome. That's awesome. So talk about the values that you uphold in your business. I think that's super important for people whenever they want to connect with you or want to, when they're trying to decide, well, who should I hire for this? Or that? Who should I hire to help me with my startup? You know, they want to know what you stand for. They want to know what you're about, you know? And also, can you deliver the, you know, the goods, but like, Yeah, we were you about, what are you about?

Shauna:

 I think that's so important. And it's definitely something that I've had to think about over the years. I think a lot of times, it can kind of go by the wayside. But when I wasn't happy working at the marketing agency, I had to ask myself why. And I realized that a lot of those values just weren't lining up. So for me, the partnership is a big part of it. You know, when you're paying an agency or a contractor, there's not that same level of ownership as if you have someone on your own team. So it's really important to have someone who believes in the vision of your business, working for your business, as much as you do. The impact is really important. You know, we have to set strong goals so we can achieve them. But we have to make sure that what we're doing is actually creating an impact on the business. Another value of mine is creativity. You know, I don't feel like most businesses get to where they need to go by just falling in line and, you know, executing on a blueprint that everybody else has had before them. So getting creative. Being open and adaptable. You know, this past year, almost two years at this point. We're really, I think, as one of the buzzwords was a pivot, right, everybody.

But the truth is, you know, the companies that did really well, were the ones that were adaptable and said, this thing that we're we're giving our customers, it doesn't serve them anymore, or it doesn't work in their current context. So being able to pivot to have that flexibility to say, we're learning that our customers need something different, and we're going to give it to them even if that means changing things up. I think that's really important.

And you know, at the end of the day, always being fierce. I think that it's important to believe in your own ideas and your own vision and to really work relentlessly to see things through. 

Mandy:

Yeah, absolutely. What is the marketing funnel anyway? Because some of my listeners might not even know what that means to a marketing funnel, tell us about that.

Shauna:

Yeah, it's kind of this picture that we draw where it's really wide on the top, and then it's really small on the bottom. And in a very basic sense, it's how you get your customers from not knowing about you all the way down to paying to be your customers, and ultimately, to be your brand advocates. So we use the picture of the funnel, as a way to kind of visually walk people through these steps, and understand how you're moving people from one stage to the next. 

Mandy:

Nice. I like that explanation is very simple. took me forever to understand that. 

Shauna:

Well, funnels can be complicated and really scary for people when they're complicated. But you can just have a basic funnel to start for sure. Yeah. So what's the relationship? Marketing? 

Mandy

What's the relationship marketing funnel? And how is it different from the traditional funnel?

Shauna:

So, I'm gonna say the traditional funnel could be a lot of things. I think HubSpot really kind of propelled the funnel into, mainstream marketing by setting it up the way that they did. And, you know, creating courses around it, and the way that they implemented it in their business, but a lot of funnels traditionally have the way that they function is a little antiquated today, to be honest with you, right? So, you know, what are we doing at the brand awareness level, like SEO and blogging and trying to answer the questions that our customers have, so we draw them in? The problem with that, for startups, is that those things take time and possibly money. And those are two things that founders usually don't have in great sci-fi, right? We can't just put all of this stuff out into the world and wait for it to start resonating. So the relationship marketing funnel is different because it takes into account how consumer behaviors have changed. A lot of times, you don't discover a new brand, because you type something into Google and their blog comes up. And that was the solution. No, you found the brand, because you were scrolling on Instagram, and you're like, hey, that's cute, I need to check it out. So that's one way that our consumer behaviors have changed. Also, you know, I always say that consumers now shop in two different ways, right? connection, and convenience. Amazon has the market on convenience, right? You can order something, you'll have a million different choices at all sorts of different price points. And you know, they can have it to your door before you can put on your pants and go out to target. Right, right. So there's that convenience aspect of it. But the truth is that the same product that someone can get on Amazon, they will pay two or three times as much for if they are shopping with a brand where they feel that connection, whether it's women-led, sustainably sourced, made in New York City, right? Like whatever their values are, they're much more likely to shop with and continue to shop with those brands, where they feel that they share values. 

Mandy:

Yes, that makes sense. Yeah. Cuz I do that. I like to support Fairtrade. And I like things like that. So organic, stuff like that. So, yeah, so that makes sense. How do you create a successful marketing campaign, 

Shauna:

The successful marketing campaign, so any marketing campaign should do three different things. It should drive awareness, should drive leads, and it should drive sales. And, you know, I kind of told you the high-level thoughts around a marketing funnel, but the relationship marketing funnel, it starts with brand awareness, and then it goes to conversion. Now, this isn't the sale, this is conversion, right? So if you are driving traffic to your website, you should be able to get their phone number for SMS marketing or you should be able to get their email and what's that conversion event that we are creating so that they want to be

In contact with our brand, then we're going to the nurture sequence. And then we're hopefully making a sale. And the next on the funnel is retention and brand advocacy. So a great marketing campaign is going to take those things into account. You know, it's not just writing on social media, because it's National Donut Day, it's not, you know, sending email campaigns once a week because that's something that you feel you have to do. It's taking into account all of those different places where your customers might be on the funnel, and creating content specifically for where they're at. Now, I do think it's important, again, to maintain this connection point with campaigns, right? Because most of us are just putting content on social media to put content on social media. But we're not using it to focus on connection. So great marketing campaigns are going to take into account what the season is, what holidays are coming up, where can you highlight those shared values that you have with the customer? 

Mandy:

Okay, so how are changing consumer habits affecting the way we market successfully? 

Shauna:

Yeah, I mean, it all goes back to that whole convenience over connection thing, if you have a connection, and you can add convenience, right, like, if free shipping can be in your offer, then you've really got a home run. But in marketing, being able to highlight that connection point with your customer, is where marketers need to be spending their energy in the upcoming year. Right.

Mandy:

In your experience, what are the biggest marketing mistakes that business owners are making right now? 

Shauna:

Yeah, I think one of the biggest mistakes is not understanding their phone, right? I see it over and over again, where, say they're running social media ads. And they're like, well, it's just not converting, and this agency couldn't do it, and that agency couldn't do it. And then a third agency can do it. It's like, Well, you haven't set up your funnel properly, right? You're sending all these people to the website with no way to grab their email addresses. So if they weren't in the frame of mind to make a purchase at that time, then you've lost them, right? Yeah, they bounced off. And it's kind of out of sight out of mind. So really, making sure that all of those touchpoints in your funnel are set up properly is super important. And also back to the example of the ad, you have to be willing to put in the time and energy to create relationships with your potential customer. So when you're running those ads, and someone goes to your website for the first time, they probably need to see that ad two or three more times, click on it two or three more times, before they're ready to make that purchase. You have to build the know, like trust factor with your potential customer before they become a customer. And it's hard when we are up in these spaces against big dogs in the industry, who have all the brand awareness, and they've been building trust with consumers since before we were born. I think a lot of startup founders and small business owners will give up on things too quickly. Because they're just kind of expecting that these things should be working like every day. Yeah, my ads, they look beautiful, like Why won't people buy from me? And you have to really be willing to take the time to build that relationship and not just expect people to purchase right away. 

Mandy:

Right. So, do you think at what point do you think a person should say, Okay, this, I went the wrong direction on this. And so now I need to shift and try a different type of ad or whatever. Or, you know, like, how long should they try it, try something out before they change something, change it to do something else? Does that make sense?

Shauna:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that it really depends on the strategy for something like ads, it's a lot more straightforward because you can see, you know, in your analytics, well, we've spent X amount of money and we've only reached 1000 people. So in the grand scheme of things, especially if these are completely cold, you know, a cold audience, it's not very much money. Exactly. So you know, maybe when that ad has reached 20,000 people or 50,000 people now you can say okay, we're only getting a click rate of ads. The amount and the conversion rate are even lower. And at that point, you should have a couple of different ads that you can say, well, the video is doing better than the image. So we're going to switch to the video, this audience is responding better than this audience. So in that sense, you should have a bunch of different data points that you can kind of test and you can see where things are working and where things aren't. And then you don't necessarily stop, you just pivot towards the things that are working right, you double down on the things that are working. It's a little less straightforward. With things like brand partnerships, where you're reaching out you want to do cross-promotion, is a company that has synergy with you, they could have 10,000 followers on social media, but their main way to communicate with people is through email and their open rates are garbage, right? That doesn't mean that you don't do another brand partnership, it means that maybe it wasn't the right fit for your niche, or they needed a little bit more help with promoting it than what you initially gave. So things like ads might be more straightforward. In other strategies, you might need to do a lot more testing, and change up who you're talking to. And why before you kind of decide that. That's not a good strategy for us anymore. 

Mandy:

Okay, that's good information. Thank you for that. So, let's talk about your startup Renegades podcast. Tell us what it's about. And what do you love the most about it?

Shauna:

Oh, my gosh, that's a hard question. Um, startup Renegade is a raw conversation with founders who have turned their idea into a thriving profitable brand, there's a lot to say in there. Um, you know, I started the podcast a, I wanted to talk to a lot of these founders, like as a fractional CMO, like, I'm just living the dream here and about everybody else's success stories, right. I am a big fan of how I built that with Guy Raz. And I wanted to take that kind of format. I'm listening to the journey and really hearing about their story because I find that to be really interesting. But then having a conversation about growth strategy, because I feel like a lot of times you get into podcasts, and you hear all these high-level ideas. And you're super inspired, and it's amazing. And then you go sit down at your computer, and you're like I have, where do I start? What do I do with that? Right? So the idea was, you know, we're going to hear all these inspirational stories, but then we're really going to dig in and figure out what worked for them, what didn't work for them, and why. And that way, listeners actually have very actionable ideas that they can go ahead and try in their own business if they see that there's some synergy with that strategy. So I think my favorite idea is just having some of these conversations, you know, I've been able to talk to some really amazing men and women and hearing. There are so many behind-the-scenes things that the public doesn't say no. Yeah. And getting to hear that is awesome. And I think there have been several times on this podcast where people are like, I don't know if I should have said that like that. Is that too much, like, not inspirational. And I'll say, I'm so glad that you shared that because you got to be real. We like to put entrepreneurship on a pedestal and we make it look so sexy. And having these moments where founders are saying things like, that was tough, or I failed, or that was the fifth time I failed, hearing from successful people that they've had those moments and that they've moved on to do something successfully, I think is probably the most inspiring thing. 

Mandy:

That's yeah, that's golden right there because that was so much more relatable to people and where they go, okay. Yeah, I'm more than inspired. I realized that that person that was really, really is like me, and so if they can do it, so can I. So tell us what, what is the difference between us a startup versus a small business?

Shauna:

I think a lot of it is a mindset, and some of it is also your model. My favorite way to explain this is this company that I had talked to a few years back, so this woman had a dance studio in New York and she had a very kind of different model, you know, style for the dance for the classes. And she wanted to scale it up so they started recording them. They made a library online, and that is a business model that traditionally doesn't scale, you're going to be limited by how many people you can fit into the classroom, right? What your physical spaces, you're going to be limited by how many classes you can fit into a day, maybe kids school schedules, you're going to be limited by your location, there's only going to be so many people within a 5, 10-mile radius of you that this is going to be a business that attracts them. So there's gonna be a point for that business where they can't scale up, right? What she did was, she turned it into something that had a lot more potential for growth, right? Because now we're not just selling to people in this 10-mile radius, we're selling to people all over the world, our market share has exploded, because now instead of maybe the 10,000 people that this might be a fit for, there's like 1 million people that this might be for. So to me, the difference between a small business and a startup is that you're taking your business model, and you're able to scale it into something big, right? 

Mandy:

And the innovation that has come about I believe, in the whole lockdown 2020 thing, you know, we were talking about pivoting earlier. You know, when people are up against adversity like that, like oh, my gosh, this is our business. And I was listening to somebody else the other day that had opened, just opened a coworking business, a co-working space, like, I don't know, a month before everything was locked down. And they had to shut it down, you know, immediately. And so, so yeah, had to pivot really fast on that, but, but I think it has just really caused a lot of awesome creativity to come about and to. It's just neat that the things that people have, have overcome, and have figured out how to do in addition, just like you said, the lady with the dance studio, I wouldn't have thought about that. I wouldn't have thought about putting it all online. And what does she do with membership or something like that with the videos?

Shauna:

Yeah, you can subscribe and do like, like three classes a month or something or it could be like, or do like a three-class package or do a subscription and they get access to all the videos month over month. And I think you know exactly what you just said, I think for a lot of businesses, the pandemic kind of accelerated changes that were already happening, where some business owners or even business models, were kind of slow to make changes into the digital space or to offer things remotely, the pandemic made it so that they had to or they didn't survive, right. And there were a lot of businesses that didn't survive. Yeah.

So you know, it was the businesses that really figured out what their customers needed from them and pivoted, and those changes, and we're able to deliver in a new way that fit the new context of our lives. Those are the businesses that did well. 

Mandy:

Yeah. Yeah, that's really awesome. Okay, I'm going to shift gears just a tad, who is what motivates and inspires you?

Shauna:

Oh, my gosh, I feel like this is gonna be so cliche. But my kids really motivate and inspire me, um, I have four kids. So I'm a pretty busy woman, and building a good life for them and being someone that they can look to, and see, like, you know, if I work hard, I can have this kind of life, or I can do something that really makes me happy. Like, that really, really pushes me. And you know, I'm inspired by all of the little things every day, one of our favorite things to do is travel. And I know a lot of people are like, like, how do you travel? Like, why would you do that with kids? It’s so much more fun seeing things for the first time through their eyes. Yeah, they have a completely different view of the world than we do. So it makes everything more interesting. 

Mandy:

They're so innocent, they're more innocent. We were jaded. Yeah. That's awesome. Where do you guys like to travel? 

Shauna:

Oh, my gosh, it depends where we live. Um, my husband's in the Air Force. So we just spent eight years in Colorado. And we did a lot of Southwest stuff. You know, we went to see canyons in Arizona, and we climbed mountains in Colorado, and now we're in Germany. So we're seeing a lot of castles. I've heard it's beautiful. There. It is. We took a trip to the French Alps a couple of weeks ago. Oh, there's somebody which we hit a trip to the French Alps a couple of weeks ago. And like in terms of my kids inspire me, right? I am terrified of heights like me. And somebody had mentioned that there was a paragliding experience while all of my kids wanted to do it. So, after watching my babies jump off a mountain. You know, I felt like I couldn't do it after a five-year-old did it. So I strapped a parachute to myself and jumped off mountains. So cool. Yeah, that's that, you know, there's remaining to see. 

Mandy:

Just curious, were you screaming inside? 

Shauna:

I was Yeah.

Mandy:

Awesome. Yeah, I love to travel. I just haven't been able to. I haven't gone to Europe yet. I really want to do that. That's on the bucket list. I've been to South America. I've been to Ecuador three times. But lots of good stuff over here. You'll have Yeah, no, yes, I should. And by the way, thank you all for serving our country and for sacrificing because I know that that's really hard as an especially as a mom, with four kiddos, I'm sure you get left at home, you know, at home to do all the things by yourself or your husband is serving our country. So thank you for that, by the way. Absolutely. Thank you. So tell us what big obstacles Have you overcome in your life and how did you do that?

Shauna:

So, I think that one of the hardest points for me was launching the business because I had taken a job at a friend's marketing agency. And I thought this was going to be my forever job. This was my dream job. I was the number two I was going to help grow it. And for the first couple of months, it went really well. I loved the work. And after a while, just realize that the customers were not getting taken care of right. We were getting an invoice after an invoice was paid. But they weren't getting results and we were falling behind on our deliverables. So when I brought that up to my boss, he didn't like the pushback, right? Like this was his business. And six months after I had started with this company. I woke up one day and couldn't access my email. Everything was gone. Well, he called me later that day and he said, I'm sorry, you're just not a culture fit anymore. And it was heartbreaking. This was three weeks before my husband left for a six-month deployment. I had three little kids at home three kids at the time, not four. And I lost this job that I loved. And it just changed everything. 

Mandy:

Yeah

Shauna:

So, you know, this has just changed everything for me. So that was the biggest challenge in my opinion that I've experienced so far. But I think that it was also the best thing to happen because it pushed me out of my comfort zone and really made me do something completely different. 

Mandy:

Yeah, it seems to be kind of a common story to where people who have kind of a devastating job situation like oh my gosh, what am I going to do? Well, then that actually forces you to figure something out and be stretched yourself and figure out that Oh, I do have more to offer than what I thought I did. You know, I do have more skill sets. You know, I can use this out you know, what I've learned elsewhere? So yeah, that's that it's probably you know, is like a blessing in disguise or whatever.

Shauna:

No, I totally agree. And I never would have thought about it at that time. But it truly was Yeah.

Mandy:

Right. Let's see, tell us about a mistake you made or about a time when you had no idea what you were doing or whatever? How did it pan out? And what did you learn from it?

Shauna:

Well, I mean, I had no idea what I was doing to the business, right? I was, I was not one of those. Like, I started in a lemonade stand when I was six. And like, I've always been an entrepreneur my entire life. Like I was an entrepreneur by accident. This was not the path I had really originally chosen for myself. And I think I did everything wrong in the beginning. You know, the first year, I definitely took on clients that weren't a good fit for me because I needed to pay the bills. And ultimately, I learned a lot about what clients weren't a good fit for me and what I wanted my business to really be by making those mistakes. Yeah, early days. I mean, you have to have trial and error. I mean, because how are you going to know who? Which clients are not the best for me? 

Mandy:

Exactly. You have to. Sometimes you just have, there's no easy path. There's no easy button when you're first starting out, or maybe later on too. But like, you just have to, it's part of the experience. It's part of the journey of figuring stuff out and learning what doesn't work. Oh, well, I better not do that again. Or, you know. So I mean, it's life. It's life lessons to the same thing in your business. Yeah. So. So what is your vision for your life for the next five years? 

Shauna:

Well, we are going to see so much of Europe. That's like my life vision. Right now I'm going to explore with our kids. You know, I just signed on as co-founder for odo, which is a new FinTech that's just democratizing investment for Americans and growing wealth. And, you know, being a fractional CMO, I've done marketing for a lot of different startups. And I've had opportunities to be in the C suite. But this is the one where this is something that I had to do. This is a vision that impacts me. And it's something that I want to bring to life. So working with that company moving forward, and really seeing and growing over the next couple of years is a big part of my vision moving forward. 

Mandy:

Awesome. So what is one thing that you would like to leave with listeners, any particular valuable lesson or a quote or a joke, whatever?

Shauna:

I wish I could tell a joke. I'm just not. I'm not.

Mandy:

Like, I'm funny all the time. I tell my boyfriend all the time. 

Shauna:

Like I'm funny, basically. Yeah. Okay. The only time that I'm slightly amusing is when I like repeating things that I've heard from friends. Yeah, but it's, it's not anything that I've heard that I've, you know, come up with myself. Um, you know, for listeners, I would just say, to keep moving. I think that this past year or so has been super hard on all of us. And what I've taken from the past year, is just meeting customers where they are, I feel like a lot of times we build these things that we love. And we are really passionate about it. And then get frustrated when people don't see the same value in it that we do. But at the end of the day, your business is always in the service of someone else. So really valuing those relationships, those connections, and making adjustments to meet customers where they are. And that's kind of the new recipe for thriving in the new year. 

Mandy:

Yeah, I like that. That's very good. Very good. So tell everybody how they can get a hold of you. How can they connect with you? 

Shauna:

Yeah, you can find me at startuprenegades.com. Listen to the podcast there. Or if you're interested in learning about my marketing work. You can find me @ shaunaarmitage.com. 

Mandy:

Awesome. Well, Shauna, thank you so very much for being with me today. I really appreciate your time because I know you are busy, busy mama, and you've got all kinds of things going on. And I just appreciate that you decided to spend a little bit of time with me today. I appreciate that. 

Shauna:

Thank you for having me and for great conversation and for hanging out with my kids. You bet. 

Mandy:

They're awesome.