Justin's Podcast
Dive into the captivating world of extraordinary individuals with "Interesting People," the podcast where host Justin Wallin sits down with some of the most intriguing personalities from all walks of life. Each episode unravels the unique stories, challenges, and triumphs of guests who have made remarkable impacts in their fields or led fascinating lives. From trailblazing innovators and inspiring artists to unsung heroes and enigmatic personalities, Justin brings you candid conversations that reveal the human spirit's endless capacity for wonder and achievement. Tune in for thought-provoking interviews, surprising revelations, and a celebration of the diverse tapestry of human experience.
Justin's Podcast
Navigating Communications Careers and Building Powerful Teams with Sarah Reinke-Dejak
Share the journey of Sarah Reinke-Dejak, vice president of marketing at Progyny, who once successfully navigated the world of golf management with scarce knowledge of the sport. Sarah’s career path is a testament to the power of adaptability and self-motivation. In our conversation, she shares how her passion for strategic communications and marketing has driven her diverse experiences across industries, ultimately leading her to specialize in healthcare communications.
Learn from Sarah’s insights on building high-performing teams, drawn from her rich background in communications and...college soccer! She reveals how an inherent interest in writing and persuasion shaped her career, while her athletic experiences taught her invaluable lessons in teamwork, competition, and leadership. Sarah passionately emphasizes the importance of fostering a team culture rooted in accountability and trust, and how the right behaviors can significantly impact performance both on the field and in the boardroom.
In today’s rapidly evolving communication landscape, Sarah highlights the significance of soft skills like resourcefulness and collaboration, which are crucial for effective team-building and proving marketing ROI. She offers practical advice on maintaining message consistency amidst overwhelming digital information and shares strategies for pitching creative ideas that resonate with organizational goals. Through real-world examples, Sarah underscores the importance of transparency, patience, and learning from both triumphs and setbacks, offering listeners valuable lessons in demonstrating tangible marketing success.
Join us for this compelling episode with Sarah!
Welcome to Interesting People, the podcast where we delve into the lives and stories of fascinating individuals from all walks of life. I'm your host, justin Wallen, and in each episode, we bring you inspiring, thought-provoking and sometimes surprising interviews with people who are making an impact in their fields and communities. There's only one common thread that the world is more interesting because of them. Get ready to be inspired, entertained and enlightened as we spotlight the extraordinary. Let's dive in All right. Today, I am joined by my good friend, sarah Rankin-Dijak. Sarah and I have worked together for a number of years. She's now a senior director of marketing at Progeny. She's going to tell us a little bit about that and how she got there, but we got to know each other while she worked with one of DC's premier communications firms, at Farrell.
Speaker 2:So she's had an interesting career.
Speaker 1:She's an interesting person and, sarah, thank you. Thanks for joining.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me, justin. This is very exciting.
Speaker 1:So I was hoping that you could tell me a little bit about how you got to where you are now and just illustrate the path a little bit, for yeah, absolutely Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So I did major in strategic communications and marketing in college and after college I had a brief stint actually working in-house for, actually a golf management company. I do not know a ton about golf, despite being raised in Pinehurst, north Carolina, which, for those people who golf, know exactly where that is, and if you don't, then you don't know where that is.
Speaker 1:I don't golf and I know that, oh well there you go.
Speaker 2:So maybe Justin might be the exception there. But anyway, I actually joke. I think they hired me. You know, coming right out of college I feel like they hired me maybe because I actually had on my resume that I lived in Pinehurst at the time.
Speaker 2:So I think that was one of the reasons I got the job, but anyway it was a great first job. I worked with wonderful, wonderful people there, many of which that I still consider wonderful mentors and peers I still very much stay in contact with. But I had interned at a communications agency in college and I sort of, you know, not having a ton of work experience at that point, I was at this more of this in-house role and I was sort of kind of missing the back and forth on different clients and you know, never a dull moment and you know your day always looks very different than the day before, and I sort of equated that to kind of the experience I got at an agency. And so, you know, I sort of looked for my next role after that, that golf management company, and I kind of focused in on finding a role at a comms agency. And so then I landed at Added Pharaoh where Justin, I know you'd mentioned we kind of started to work together and were introduced to each other and I was at Added Pharaoh for almost seven years, so quite some time, and it was a really great place to get exposure to a lot of different industries, a lot of different types of clients, a lot of different types of work, everything from more traditional PR and comms you know pitching reporters, media list pulling, you know clippings, morning clippings, all that sort of thing you think about all the way through to more of kind of the digital marketing element of things. You know things like you know going out and putting together a grassroots campaign and trying to get patient advocates online and you know being able to do some content marketing to certain audiences and email marketing and paid media, all that sort of thing. So it was a really good way to kind of get engulfed and ingrained in everything. So I was there for again quite some time and I credit Ed Farrow for sure for a lot of kind of their ability to, I would say, encourage people to be self-starters and go after opportunities and when people do that, rewarding people who are doing that with you know, obviously, promotions and more and more responsibility and all that great stuff.
Speaker 2:So by the time I left Ed Farrow I was vice president, focusing mostly on their kind of healthcare work. And you know, once I was out of Ed Farrow for a while and you know, once I was out at Pharoah for a while, I sort of started to maybe look at some other companies that were even just a little bit more focused on actually the healthcare space. I found that that was kind of a client base I was really, really interested in. There's so many facets of healthcare, so many things to explore. So I started looking at you know what another opportunity might look like, and I landed a job with a communications and marketing agency called Health and Commerce. That was more of a small field, similar to Adfero, which I liked Everybody knows everybody but they were very, very focused on going very deep into healthcare. So in addition to doing some you know Corp comms, work, things like that that I was doing more, so at Ed Farrow I also got exposure to actually more of like the marketing side of things with like startups and everything from like startups of like you know 10 people to startups of like you know huge startups that are publicly traded, that are probably not really considered startups anymore but were at one time. So it was a great kind of next step in that space. Um, and then from there I actually um, I had this opportunity um with progeny come up, Um, and I um, progeny is a uh.
Speaker 2:Where I work now is a fertility, family building and women's health company.
Speaker 2:Um, that benefits company that focuses on working um with large employers to provide their um employees and members with um access to fertility, family building benefits, as well as pregnancy, postpartum benefits and menopause benefits.
Speaker 2:And um they started off in the fertility and family building space Um they, when I came on board, they were starting to launch their menopause and pregnancy maternity product and fertility and family building was always a an issue area kind of near and dear to my heart. My wife and I have a three-year-old thanks to fertility support a three-year-old thanks to fertility support, and it's an area of healthcare. I'll give your listeners a little bit of the high level of it. But it's an area of healthcare. It's not covered in the same way as many other conditions are covered, and what we mean by that is a lot of times, if there's any coverage at all, it might be like, let's say, a dollar cap right, where your employer might say, okay, you have $20,000 to go towards your fertility treatment, which, don't get me wrong. That's a generous benefit, but it also means that people are limited in terms of, for example, how many rounds of IVF they can get if that's something that they need.
Speaker 1:Can we put a context on that? Because $20,000, you're right sounds like a nice chunk of change. It wouldn't say no if someone walked up to us on the street and gave us a paper bag full of it. But when you're talking about these treatments, what does that cover? If you have 20 grand cash, how far down the road do you get?
Speaker 2:So I would say, with 20,000, you'd be lucky and it also depends, right, where you're located in the country, but I'd say, with $20,000, you're maybe lucky to get one round of IVF out of it, which doesn't always work for everybody, right, and so that, and that's again, that's if that's a benefit available. A lot of times, again, that's a very generous dollar cap available and in fact, there's also again. This is this is maybe going into too much information, but I think it's really, really important for people to understand. The context of this is I've worked at companies where I've my wife and I have tried to go through, go down a path for fertility treatment and we've actually been told we can't access it because we're a same-sex couple, right, so we don't technically fit a medical need for quote-unquote infertility, right.
Speaker 1:Neither of us are infertile In today's world.
Speaker 2:In today's world, right? So there's a lot of, again, that's kind of showing you both ends of the spectrum, right? That's showing you like a generous dollar cap that could be available all the way through, so like you actually don't get coverage because you don't fit the dictionary definition of quote unquote infertility, right? So there's a big range in there. So, again, a cause very near and dear to my heart. And so what Progeny does very differently than other companies is they provide really like great access to fertility coverage, and they've now since started to do that with their maternity programs and their menopause programs as well.
Speaker 2:But they make it so that the benefit that they're administering is very inclusive.
Speaker 2:There's no issue accessing it if you are a same-sex couple.
Speaker 2:They make sure all of the really critical elements of fertility care are included in the benefit, such as, like genetic testing for embryos if you're going through IVF, like all those things that even if there is a dollar cap or there is some coverage, a lot of the times that isn't covered and ultimately what that can create are negative outcomes for the member, and then ultimately, like, who's going to foot the bill for that? The health care system, right? So again, something really interesting to me something I was really passionate about ultimately, like, who's going to foot the bill for that? The healthcare system, right? So, um, again something really interesting to me, something I was really passionate about um, they were growing their marketing team a ton. They're based in New York, so I was a little bit like, oh, I'm in DC, like does this work come to find out they do hire, hire remote. So I, um, I I landed the job with with progeny and now, um, now, this is kind of where I am now, justin, I'm a senior director of marketing there, focused on a lot of their digital work as well as their strategic partnerships work.
Speaker 1:You clearly love what you do and not often do you get the opportunity, I think, in life to work in the space, doing in general what you love doing comms but actually work within not only the industry but work with a company that aligns with your particular goals and hopes and dreams and values. That's a beautiful thing. Let me rewind just a moment, because you started in communications. How did you know, or did you kind of fall into it, that you wanted to do communications?
Speaker 2:Great question. Um, you know, I think I, I think I always knew um on on some level that I, that I wanted to to do comms. Um, I've always been really, really interested in in writing. Um, in, you know, persuading my. My parents actually always joked that I should have been a lawyer, but I guess they mean that you should have been a litigator, like in court.
Speaker 1:If you're going to persuade him? You should be in court.
Speaker 2:Right, that's what they always. They always told me I would be a lawyer when I was growing up and I guess you know again, in a lot of ways I've still taken kind of the persuasive route, but it's just looking at persuading audiences versus, versus, maybe a jury or a judge. But yeah, I think I really have always sort of wanted to do this and it was you know what I what I started out in college sort of focusing on as well, and I never, I never, yeah, I never sort of um stepped off the path towards wanting, wanting to do something like this. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I want to talk a little bit about cause. You have a really interesting background and you've applied it, um, to your professional world, uh, in terms of of teams and, um, uh, something outside of your professional world that, uh, you've applied and made successful and really built terrific teams and work with terrific teams with it. Uh, can you talk to me a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, I mean, I think so. I, as you, as you alluded to, justin, I played. I played soccer in college and I've always been competitive by nature and I've always been very team oriented by by nature too. I love to be on a team, I love to make it about the team, I love the idea of like, winning and losing as a team.
Speaker 2:Like, and and losing is included in that, because that's a matter of life and I think that's, um, what it's taught, what it's taught me a lot, um, being part of those sort of sort of communities, growing up and playing at some of the highest levels in sports, being, being and playing at that level is the way that a team works through adversity, the way a team wins and again loses those are all elements of whether or not that team is going to be successful. And the way I sort of think about it is like, if we're taking college soccer, for example, right, everybody's playing by the same rules. They can start training at the same time every single year for NCAA protocol. They can start, you know, in soccer, right, like you can't touch a soccer ball with more than like I can't remember the exact rule like, eight players on the field at once until, like, a specific month of the year.
Speaker 1:Is that true? I had no idea, really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they don't want to give teams an unfair advantage, right. And if you're playing together as a unit, you get more comfortable together. So they make it start at the same time for every single team, right? So there's all those same rules and protocols in place. Again. Everybody has access to the same resources, everybody can get access to the same equipment, everybody has the same weight room setups, everybody has access to nutritionists and strength training coaches, right.
Speaker 2:All else being equal in a competitive environment, the thing that really, I think, makes a group successful is their behaviors towards one another and ultimately, again, how they face adversity, how they work together to succeed or fail, right. And so I think that's something, again, that I've always really taken away from my experience playing, playing, you know, college sports and and playing sports throughout my my whole life, and I think the same thing really applies in in the professional workspace, too, right, I think. I think there's, there's tons and tons, right Of, of, you know, harvard business review, case studies and all these things on like team culture and like how you create a company identity that you know trickles down to the rest of the company and what that means for the success of the company, and how, you know, a leader came in and changed that, right, like those all exist because of this philosophy that, like, the team can outperform, the team as a unit is what, what brings performance, um, you know, to to the level that it needs to be. And, um, I, I just think all of those sorts of things, sorts of stories, um, you know, case studies about the professional world are, are, are what kind of gives credence to a lot of that, um, and a lot of that starts at the leadership level, right, and making sure that you know the person, that the person or people that are in charge are kind of exhibiting the behaviors and incentivizing the behaviors within each other as well as within the other team, the rest of the team, that they want, that they want to be, to be shown throughout the organization.
Speaker 2:And if you don't have a strong sense of that, it can cause a lot of confusion, it can cause insecurity, it can cause a lack of accountability and focus. And so, yeah, I think that's something that I've really carried through and I hope to be able to instill in teams that I lead is is this idea of like, here are the behaviors that we're going to exhibit as a team and here are the ones that we're going to call out in each other um myself included, in my own self right and um, hold each other accountable to behaving one way versus another, and um, and that's how you find stability, it's how you find trust, it's how you find focus Right and, I think, without, without those things right, I think a lot of times what comes out of that is more of a combative culture where people don't see each other as teammates. They see each other as competitors, and I think that ultimately works against things like productivity and efficiency and high-performing teams.
Speaker 1:But yeah, yeah, it's funny you say that. I couldn't agree more in terms of you know that culture of viewing your colleagues as competitors and there's some organizations that really do encourage that and they lean into that, yeah, and successful organizations. It's not like you can say this doesn't work, cause it does. But, um, I've never gravitated that way. Uh and the. It's almost when you start, if you have the, the, the good fortune to select those you work with, uh, or seek out particular folks that you work with, um, uh, I've often found it almost Aristotelian in terms of friendship. Right, you, you, you, your best and most productive friends. Does it mean that you know they're not all your best friends, because friends have different, different uh, looks and feels and so forth? Are those that are better than you in some way, right, and you seek them out because they're better than you? And if you're competing, then you're not going to seek out those that are better than you, right, you're going to seek every possible advantage you have against them, right? That's, that's human nature.
Speaker 1:So if you're surrounding with folks who are better than you, notably visibly. You've identified that, and that's one of the things that you're going to improve yourself with, as well as the team. I mean. That just seems to be a foundational to really having something that's truly excellent in a workplace, yeah, and you know what?
Speaker 2:You're exactly right, justin. There are, like I, have friends that work for Amazon, for example. Amazon is a company where they want people to be competing against each other all the time, but I think the difference in a group like that versus a group that doesn't know who they are in that sense is that the competition is transparently incentivized. So I mean, going back to the sports example right, like you is outperforming another player for a specific position at a specific time. The response is very clear and direct of what's going to happen. Right, that person's going to be in a position and they're going to start. Right, they're going to play most of the time until that other person is able to outwork, outperform whatever that other person that's taken their position. Right and the again, the coach, as the leader, makes that decision, and I think that's the difference is is an element of competition, is important and great in any sort of environment. I think the difference is how does leadership be really direct about, like, how they're incentivizing this competition?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:I think that's absolutely the golden thing, the difference between you know those that truly perform and value, and and and get the most out of the competition versus it just kind of descending into internecine warfare yeah, exactly, that's exactly right, because, yeah, and ultimately the castle will begin to crumble if there's no true North star in terms of, like, what does competing at this level versus this level get you? And I think that's really important.
Speaker 1:If you were before we move on to the next topic, cause that wouldn't it's so important If you're hiring if you were going to kind of suggest some things that could be helpful to someone who's getting started out. Thinking about building teams, what are you listening for when you're first talking to people? That are good indicators that they may be valuable in the kind of team that you describe. What are kind of the tells that you're hoping to see?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question, I think, for me, I think, for for me I am I'm never really looking at hard skills when I look at somebody to hire, um, things like, have you written a press release? Have you, you know, created a paid media strategy? Those things are awesome if the person has them, but they're all things that can be taught, um, and so what I find more important than any of those are more of the softer skills, um and I think that tells, and I think that tells from that standpoint are trying to suss out is this person, is this person going to be a self-starter? Is this person going to be resourceful? Are they going to sit back and ask for the answers to be given to them? Are they going to work back and ask for the answers to be given to them? Or are they going to work, compete right and try to get you know what they need to get to get their job done? Being a self-starter, I think, is a really big thing for what I look for in the teams that I sort of want to build and foster. But I think, in general and in the working world, very important, a very important skill to have.
Speaker 2:The other thing, I'll say that I try to look for is. I try to ask a lot of questions around, like how they problem solve with their co-workers, and what I mean by that is like, how are you going to collaborate on a project, right, um, and at the same time, when you run into a roadblock with a coworker, right, how are you going to solve that problem? How are you going to work through it? Are you going to like, just shut down, maybe, and not say anything? And I think that a lot of that has to do with how the person you're working with is going to respond to don't get me wrong, but I think is it.
Speaker 2:Are you going to, you know, shut down, kind of like just retreat a little bit and then maybe talk badly about that person later and not be really direct with it? Or, right, are you going to be clear about what your expectation is, but also be willing to bend in terms of what the other person's expectations maybe are as well? Because ultimately, I think that's what gets you to a viable solution that works for a larger group of individuals and a bigger good. I think so. I think it's the ability to be resourceful, the ability to collaborate in a really productive way, I think. And the last thing that I think is super important and something that I think is a little bit of a lost art, but it's the ability to just like say when you're wrong.
Speaker 2:When something hasn't gone well. Um, this idea of like accountability is like it's. It's so interesting, right, like um, but I I think I've found that there's um a lot fewer people at a lot of different levels. I think that um are willing to just feel like, hey, I was wrong about this, right, it didn't work the way I thought it was going to be. Or hey, I totally forgot to send that email. I told you I was going to send and send, and now our project's two weeks behind. Like, the ability to say like I made a mistake is an underrated skill that I think is really important to at least again, teams that I want to kind of foster and people that, like I hope to be able to work with, because it happens to everybody. So, anyway, I think those three things are really key.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think one of the core things that underlines that is, if you're building or if you're hoping to be part of a team that's being built, always remember to try and talk about other people. You know how you interact with them what you learn from it. You know what was valuable about it and that really that gets you right. It's the first step to getting to kind of all those key things that you're describing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're exactly right.
Speaker 1:So you've been in this industry for a while. What uh? Has anything meaningfully changed over the course that uh of time that you've been working in it? That that really stands out to you.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh man, I mean this. Anybody in this space would say this, but just the amount of information people are getting is unbelievable. I think there are some things that have changed. I think there are some things that are probably more constants, that I think maybe display differently now, but they're, you know, they're still the tried and true kind of pillars that we try to live by.
Speaker 2:I think the biggest thing that's changed, though, again, going back to the, just the amount of information we have out there is people don't want in my experience at least, it doesn't seem like people want want to be navigated away from any platform that they're currently visiting, right? So web information, newsletters, social media it's all. They're all vehicles that communicators use to get a message out. But more and more, I'm seeing that the benefit of things like that are message consistency, message frequency all very important things, but if you're looking for them to double click deeper, they they will at some point, depending on how good your message frequency and and the issue that you're talking about is, but it's harder and harder these days to get people to leave their current space. Right? If you're on Instagram, do you really want to leave Instagram to go read this blog? Maybe, maybe you will, but it's probably going to be after we've talked to you like 20 other times about something you care about and we know you care about. So I think there's an element of as much as possible communicate within the environment that the people are already in. Right, I think a new wave of communication is podcast advertising, because a lot of times people are doing something else while they're listening to a podcast. Maybe they'll skip forward on it, but they might be working out, might be cleaning their house, might be driving. It's a way to subtly be able to talk about the issues and things that you want to talk about without fear of like needing to navigate them away from the platform that they're in, and also without fear that they'll like scroll past it really fast. So I think that that's a very specific example of a platform that I believe is going to be become more important in terms of the at least especially the paid media space um for communicating. But I think it's I, I think it's uh, the L, it has the elements to be um, something that has some staying power. I think Um, I think the.
Speaker 2:The thing that is the constant that I think about when I think about this space is this idea of authenticity Not just saying something because you you know you want to place an op-ed, but being able to like actually have an opinion and say something meaningful to the audience you're trying to reach I think is really really key, and I think it's always been important. But I think the more platforms that communicators have available to them, the more comfortable and the more information people are getting, the more comfortable I think communicators have gotten with like just saying anything, and I think that can be a really dangerous kind of path to go down. So I think that's that's a really important area to look at. The there's there's also this trend towards which I think goes toward goes to this authenticity message. But there's this trend towards, like influencer engagement, which is kind of interesting. I mean, you, you see, like comms, marketing shops create whole divisions, you know, related, focused specifically on right. Like this influencer engagement element of things which is really really interesting.
Speaker 2:And again, I think it's our industry's way of responding to the fact that it's harder and harder now to get your message to stand out right, and so they're leaning on these people with a lot of clout and influence to do that.
Speaker 2:But I think it's really important to remember that that platform is just gonna become, like all the other platforms that we're currently feeling like aren't working right, If we over leverage it and use it to maybe not have the right partnerships.
Speaker 2:Right, like, does your influencer actually make sense for the message you want to share, over leverage it and use it to maybe not have the right partnerships? Right, like, does your influencer actually make sense for the message you want to share? And also make sure, like it's a two-way street in that sense, right, it is a true partnership. Like the influencer has to be careful that they're carrying the message that's going to be most resonant to their audience and vice versa. So I think, again, that all goes towards that authenticity message, which has always been important and continues, I think, to be even more important as we get more vehicles available to us, as more information continues to come flooding in and as this trend of influencer marketing takes off, which I think is a great way to get your message out. But, again, there's pros and cons to everything like that and I think the more careful you can be with that, the better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not just point and shoot, right? You really need to think about, obviously, the message. Those messages need to be tested. You need to think about the environment. Is it conducive to the message that you're sending? Uh, all those, those components, and again and correct me if I'm wrong I mean, as as powerful as some of these things may be, um, people consume information a lot of different ways, right, and you know hitting them in a variety of different ways. Obviously, we work in practical realities of budgets. Um, you know that that enhances your, your likelihood to get sickiness along the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Meeting people where they are, for sure.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, I have, um. I have another topic that I wanted to touch on um, because we were working world of organizations right on, because we work in a world of organizations, right, and in public affairs communication specifically and I know you work in marketing communications, you work in public affairs communications and those bridges because they're very, very, they're very much related. But in public affairs budgets are challenges, right, because, unlike with marketing, which is directly tied to sales and you have a direct ROI tied to it and you know, obviously there's some fuzziness going around here and there, but it's it's much easier to demonstrate ROI with with marketing budgets than it is with public affairs budgets. Um, how are you able to navigate, uh and champion these kinds of budgets that you're hoping to, to, to capture inside an organization? Right, with competing interests and these are very real things, right, it all has to end up in a bottom line.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. It's a great question. I wish I could say I had an exact science, justin, I do not have the secret sauce, so if anybody does, let me know. But but I think there are certainly like trends that I've learned and I try to hold true to. I mean, project has been a really so to back up a little bit, like I used to do this For clients right, like I used to have a crazy idea, pitch it to the client that we have usually like a closer relationship with right, and the client would either tell us no way, that's happening, yes, let's do it, or, which this was probably the most often, yes, but how do I sell it?
Speaker 2:Right, and so I almost used to be providing the client with and equipping the client with things they needed to sell this idea up. Now I find myself in the position where I'm the soup to nuts like create the idea, get the idea, you know, and sell the idea up the ladder, right, right. And so I've seen it from sort of all a couple of different angles, but I think the things that the things that are consistent, are first of all spot on with the ROI, like, as much as possible, figure out how to provide some sort of tangible metric that you believe you'll be able to achieve with the budget you're requesting, right, and I think there's an element of that. That. I think people get really black and white on on, like in the marketing end of things, right, it's like for what I'm doing, sometimes at Progeny it's like okay, but how many? Like how many sales am I going to get from this? Right, which is absolutely important. But I think, like I think there's also an element of before you get there, you have to get here, and where here is is what's the marketing impact on this ROI? And so I think, if you can take a step back and look at it, for example, with marketing as leads, right, like, how many people can you get to sign up for a demo or a webinar or whatever sign up for a demo or a webinar or whatever, right from this budget you're asking for? And then, as you get better and better at sort of making that case, you'll learn more and more about what that ROI means for, like sales ROI, right, and you can kind of extrapolate that out.
Speaker 2:What's tricky about all of that is and this is where I think the other two things come into play that I'll speak to in a second. What's tricky about that is, if you don't have any baseline, how are you going to make those estimates right? And that's totally a valid, valid thing to share, and I have dealt with that even at Progeny trying to sell things up the ladder right. I've dealt with that even at Progeny. Because we to sell things up the ladder right I've dealt with that even at Progeny because we grew really fast and there wasn't always this like huge dynamic marketing team and so like. In lieu of having these like, oh, if I spend this much money, I'll get about these many leads and this is what that equals, right? So, in lieu of having that, the first thing I did was I tried as much as possible to use my past experience right. What have I seen happen from these sorts of budgets? When I've worked with clients in the past and I had a ton of different case studies and things like that where I could pull and kind of like extrapolate some of that out, and I made sure to be very transparent with the people I was selling this to, of like, hey, we're dealing in reality here. We've never done this before. I'm telling you, based on my experience, this is potentially what we can get from this, and the more you let us move forward with things like this, the more information we'll have to get, better and better and better. And just being really real about that, because that's the fact we're living in, and if you try to sell it any different way, you'll probably get called out on it and it's going to end up just decreasing any trust that you had in your initial presentation.
Speaker 2:Now, the other two things that I think can help while you're trying to make that ROI case, even if you don't have any baselines to work on. The first is it's okay to let other things, other ideas that maybe they push back on you, for it's okay to let some of those things play out and sometimes fail. What I mean by that is, if you're going up to leadership and they're very set on doing something X way right and you're offering a Y way right, if they're very set on continuing in X way, I think what you can do there is carry it out, go forward with the plan, but make sure you're keeping an eye towards what all of that is getting you, because ultimately, if things aren't going well or there's room for improvement like that, maybe failure is too strong of a word. But that failed enterprise right can be something that you take and say, look, we did the best we could with this idea, right, like and here's what we got. Are we interested in trying a different path?
Speaker 2:Right, so, even if you're not going forward with your idea right away, being able to understand that any small step you take towards it is for the greater good of carrying something like that out and making sure you remember to create those baselines and benchmarks right, because that's all in service to being able to report out on that ROI and get better and do bigger things. And then I think the last thing that I've seen as key is being really patient and being really consistent. So the patience and consistency I think comes with like you know, if you get a yes to like a fifth of your idea, move forward with a fifth of that right. Don't let it stop you right From From from making progress, even if it's not the entire thing that you envisioned. Take what you can at first, and that's kind of, I think, the the being patient and consistent part of like doing that Right and continue to bring it up.
Speaker 2:Don't hide the results you're getting good or bad Right.
Speaker 2:They're all things that you can kind of learn from and, um, I think, anecdotes that your leadership will find really interesting and helpful again, even even if it doesn't work out a hundred percent the way that you thought it would. Um, and I think, uh, when you get to the end of end of your journey, if you're able to carry everything out and it goes, it goes wonderfully. And you know, of course there's going to be things that could have been done better. What, what? What have you right? I think one thing to not get discouraged about so that you have fuel in your tank for the next idea is palms. People are often, I think, used to not getting a lot of the glory and the strategies they carry out, and I think we should continue to get used to that internally too, because even if something works really, really well, you might not always get the glory for it internally once you've carried it out. But just know you've done the good work and don't let that discourage you from continuing on to the next big project or big idea you have.
Speaker 1:It's terrific, Sarah. It's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you today. Thank you for taking the time. It's been a joy. Of course I appreciate it. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, justin, this was really fun.
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