The Glow Up - Fabulous conversations with innovative minds.

Building Startup Brands that Provide Value, Faster - Melissa Hollis

• Nathan C Bowser • Season 1 • Episode 26

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Melissa Hollis is the CEO and co-founder of Taylor Street Collective, a marketing and go-to-market strategy firm focused on helping startups and startup-adjacent service providers clarify their messaging and accelerate their growth. 

With a background as the “vicarious entrepreneur,” Melissa has built her career by becoming the first marketing hire at numerous startups, driving foundational brand strategy, and working directly with founders to bring their visions to life.

Key Takeaways:

  • Clarity Above All: Melissa believes the most critical part of startup marketing is getting to the “why behind the why.” She helps founders distill their company’s core value down to a powerful, clear statement, ensuring the most important message always leads on the home page and in investor decks.
  • Empathy-Driven Research: Taylor Street’s process always begins with in-depth customer research. By developing high-empathy marketing teams (even seeking out folks from acting/theatre backgrounds), Melissa ensures her team can truly step into the shoes of founders and their customers.
  • Founders Shouldn’t Go It Alone: Melissa is passionate about building collaborative networks for founders and for fractional CMOs, stressing that partnership and shared expertise are key to survival and success.
  • Evolving with AI: Though once hesitant, Taylor Street now transparently and actively integrates AI tools into foundational marketing work for startups, co-building AI-powered “marketing interns” tailored to each brand’s research, FAQ, and legacy content.
  • Giving Back: Melissa highlights the impact of Girls Inc of the Pacific Northwest, an organization she supports for empowering girls to become strong, smart, and bold, and emphasizes the importance of mentorship and community for marketers as well as founders.

Melissa’s own “glow up” for the next year is to scale Taylor Street’s new AI-powered marketing foundation kits, enabling startups to hit product-market fit 80% faster by seamlessly blending human empathy and research with AI-driven efficiency.

About Melissa Hollis Co-Founder + Conversion-Obsessed Creative Leader

Melissa is a marketing communications professional and vicarious entrepreneur with 10+ years building brands and go-to-market strategies across industries such as accounting and tax, healthcare, real estate, finance, and tech.

Everyone who has worked with Melissa will tell you she is someone who truly listens when you tell her about your passions and, more than that, she hears and articulates what your heart is trying to convey when you might not have the right words. She takes the most pride in her proven ability to take subjects that are often overlooked and bring their most compelling aspects to the forefront with fresh perspective that are hard to resist. 

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Melissa Hollis:

Every single time it is about what is that first line on that homepage hero or on that landing page, and how do we make sure that you are not bearing the lead of what your company does and why it does it? And it's tricky. It's a really tricky thing. But if you can nail that, if you can nail the why behind the why behind the why, then everything in marketing makes sense.

Nathan C:

Hello and welcome to the Glow Up, fabulous conversations with innovative Minds Today I am here with Melissa Hollis, CEO, and co-founder of Taylor Street.

Melissa Hollis:

Good to see you too, Nathan.

Nathan C:

Melissa, I have, had the pleasure of seeing your work for a number of years. for those who are just meeting you today on the glow up, can you, introduce yourself and, a little bit of how your innovation journey got started?

Melissa Hollis:

Hi, I'm Melissa Hollis. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Taylor Street Collective. I also operate as a fractional CMO for our clients. Because what Taylor Street does is we are focused primarily on marketing and go to market strategies for startups and startup adjacent service providers. So our entire focus is that startup ecosystem. and that's where I've lived my whole career. I've called myself the vicarious entrepreneur. my first job out of college was at a 15 person startup where I became their admin, and it was the same day their marketing director left. So. I just took that over. I came in at 22 and they handed me the keys to a whole rebrand, whole new website, and I had a lot of opinions and that's taken me to where I am today.

Nathan C:

I love it. young, opinionated, and the keys to like a startup basically. what an amazing, start. Years later, you're now still working with startups. What about startups, founders, and these adjacent providers, keeps you interested and excited about working in that highly, dynamic space?

Melissa Hollis:

Well, I think there's certain layers to it and we could go pretty deep on personality traits and birth order, things like that, that play a role in why I was so drawn to startups. I'd say the best way to put it is that I love to have an impact and don't really, I've worked in these bigger organizations. and found that I could have impacts and meaningful relationships and meaningful, work results there, but there is just something so dang addictive about startups. I mean, and getting my start in a startup kind of made that a constant pull. But if I am gonna go. psychologically about it. I think it's because I'm an only child. I think as an only child, you wanna have that impact. You wanna have a say, you have strong opinions, and those get rewarded early on. And so you become an innovator and an entrepreneur by default, really.

Nathan C:

You don't have a built-in team, so. You have to go rally one. Right?

Melissa Hollis:

Your built in team is your parents and they're giving you constant praise and you know, exciting things to try out and attention and so, I mean, I'll just be honest, that drives a lot of that for me.

Nathan C:

I got goosebumps. And I'm also feeling a little bit called out. I am, I describe myself as the worst of both worlds. I'm an only child who then like remarried into having older siblings, and so I'm both the only child and the baby, which means I expect to be the center of attention for everyone all the time.

Melissa Hollis:

My daughter now in that situation and she's a Leo, so you know It's gonna be a star of the show for her.

Nathan C:

her.

Melissa Hollis:

but I'll also say my, Oh, lots of sequins, lots of rainbows, lots of every brightness. I'd also say the innovation journey and why I called myself a vicarious entrepreneur for so long is being drawn to entrepreneurs, being drawn to startups. I loved working with founders, and working directly with founders CEOs as a marketing arm and as like. Constantly the initial marketing hire, so like the founding marketing hire and building out those foundations for brands and high growth startups. and then even when I was working with startup service providers, I constantly made, It about working with clients and meeting the startup founders and doing case studies and testimonials and like having that be a constant part of our marketing and content strategy, which as we know today is one of the most effective ways and has been. So that's always been a big part of it too.

Nathan C:

So, I love that it. It seems that you love a challenge, right? And helping startups, especially technical startups, like explain to the world how they're, how they're changing and, you know, moving beyond the status quo and why you might want to also change is like an incredibly, it's a tough challenge.

Melissa Hollis:

I'm it, I'm liking it.

Nathan C:

AI will let us know if it stays in. So let's focus for just a quick moment on the work that you do at Taylor Street. And so we've got a little bit of the foundation of where, your taste for pain has started. now. I'd love to dive into a little bit of the core problem that you're working on at Taylor Street. And how are you specifically supporting, these startups and adjacent companies? make their own glow ups or succeed in the way that, you're supporting them.

Melissa Hollis:

Well, I think what you just alluded to is sort of a common thread that startups come from ideas. They come from a really clear moment of clarity, eureka moment, but as they develop into viable products and services. That gets buried in things that the founders are taking in, things that are changing about the product, things that they're learning, which is wonderful that things go in different directions, but constantly and almost, I would say a hundred percent of the time, without even regretting or saying that I'm, you know, going back on that, Almost every time I've worked with a startup, it is about getting to the why behind the why and Unbearing the lead. I joined multiple startups where they've said, we need a new website. It's almost every time when I worked as an internal marketer, they were like, we need a new website. And well, often that was very true, and I've gotten very good at creating new websites and understanding exactly what they mean when a founder means when they say they need a new website. Every single time it is about what is that first line on that homepage hero or on that landing page, and how do we make sure that you are not bearing the lead of what your company does and why it does it? And it's tricky. It's a really tricky thing. But if you can nail that, if you can nail the why behind the why behind the why, then everything in marketing makes sense. Your go to market, your messaging hierarchy, every ad you create, every campaign you run, every event you attend, and I mean. What The why behind the why is what will hook an investor in your pitch deck, which you really only have eight slides to do so, so you better do it early.

Nathan C:

Oh my gosh. I thought I was the mean marketing editor when I was looking at pitch decks and saying you had to be under a dozen, but under eight. I love it.

Melissa Hollis:

I think, I. mean, that goes back to those strong opinions I have had to learn to be more mature, be a little less nice. my favorite. Boss ever told me once, you know, I was ripping apart like a pricing page on the company's website. And I was like, this doesn't make sense, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's just like, you know what, Melissa, you're right. But no one is gonna listen to you or wanna work with you if you say it that way. So the mean marketer had to, you know, soften things. And I think that happens naturally over time. But those are those strong opinions.

Nathan C:

Almost like, the strength of the opinions was burying, the. The gold hidden within them a little bit.

Melissa Hollis:

absolutely. that's Yeah.

Nathan C:

If you found a niche where you can help startup founders understand where they're burying their core message, where you can help them focus on something that feels huge and like life and world changing down to a single sentence, how do you, Coach cajole guide founders to understanding their business in like a coherent, concise way that really fits at the top of a webpage and doesn't just like yell some jargon out at the world. how do you help move a, a founder from a broken message and something that's buried into how do you help them make that transformation? Into something where they can really speak truly and clearly about the why behind their why?

Melissa Hollis:

Oh, I think everything about the why behind the why starts and ends with personas and customers. So customers and clients. So if, we do work with startups who don't have customers and clients yet, like I alluded to, but the primary, clientele we work with has. Gained, a book of business primarily through like word of mouth So we start there, we start with interviewing their customers and clients, and really it's about building out our knowledge and expertise in those customers and clients quickly and efficiently. and with the main skill and main thing we're focusing on is building empathy. So I hire the people that I've hired in marketing. If I look back and I think about it now, consciously, now, subconsciously then are people with really high empathy, like almost too high empathy. I'd also say people who can get a little theatrical. So I love people with a theater and acting background too.'cause they can really put their mind in someone else's shoes, in a character, in a persona, and quickly adapt and understand like voice and tone and what's gonna resonate.

Nathan C:

I love how, starting from research, and this is something I want to get back to, starting with research is like the first thing that you say and That you're actively looking for. A little bit of tension, a little bit of drama, a little bit of story right. Like those are the things that get attention. And when you have somebody that both understands who they're talking to, plus knows how to like read the room and play to the room, that starts to become very interesting. you mentioned. helping your customers learn from their customers. I'm curious in your time working with startups and, you know, doubling down now with Taylor Street. Is there something that your customers have taught you about your approach, about your marketing, about your vision, and how Taylor Streete should show up in the world?

Melissa Hollis:

Definitely. So I mentioned that we work with startup service providers, and some of them are ones that we've. Now my co-founder, Selena, and I have known for like close to a decade now and worked with previously and they have taught some incredible lessons on us about building businesses, you know, they've done it before. one of the best pieces of advice was making sure we aren't building businesses that are too reliant on ourselves. So right now. That's what Taylor Street is. You know, we are, the faces of Taylor Street and we're the ones who are actually, working with clients as much as we can bring on. And you know, that's not scalable and that's something that we do wanna build and I. So that is our long-term plan is to make, and that's beyond six months.'cause I don't think that will happen. Maybe we can start that happening, bring on other CMOs and especially bring on CMOs that have greater expertise with some of the newer clients that we're bringing on, that we're getting to work with brands that are, you know, more CPG focus, retail focus. It's construction focused by working with smaller startups. That's been really rewarding. I like to joke that, you know, you live in Portland. When I lived in Portland, I lived in Beaverton right across from the Nike World headquarters, and I was like, when do I get to do a sexy shoe commercial? When do I get silly? You know, and I never did. I was always in B2B or in healthcare or real real estate was the other one, which don't get me wrong, I love the, you know, B2B and the more stodgy industries'cause I like that challenge yet again of making them fun and sexy. But it's been really rewarding to start Taylor Street and be able to help, you know, the more consumer focused brands as well. But I'll still always have been love for B2B.

Nathan C:

It is hard to get that like New York Times billboard for your work when you're selling a business software,

Melissa Hollis:

Oh yeah, I have gotten some of my B2B clients or my B2B jobs. I've gotten them on Inc. New York Times. I like, appreciate a good PR partner. It ain't me, but I appreciate a good PR partner.

Nathan C:

bless the PR partners, especially the powerful ones. So, oh my goodness, this idea of. Building, as a founder, building a business that's value lies in the business, not just your expertise is a very juicy problem, right? Because you want, a business, an agency to. Reflect your skills, your passion, your background, but like at the same time, not be limited by it. Right. And, as a founder, that's gotta be like a very exciting. moment of growth to realize, right? It's not just about what I can do, but like, what does this organization, the vision for this group of people do? And'cause now you're working not just on survival goals and achievement goals, but you're actually like. In providing and leading, which has gotta be a really like, cool and potentially scary place to be. so Bravo.

Melissa Hollis:

Well, I think the biggest thing I've learned is that businesses are like babies. You know, like if you're a founder, your business is your baby. And after becoming a mom for the first time, a couple of years ago, it really is so true. It's a little less like a child has their own vision. you are just there to help them grow and follow their dreams and their hopes and support them. move mountains for them. But with a business, you actually have to create that vision. So that's where it's really different. you get to project onto your business. While also having to be very selfless with making sure that you're doing the right things for the business and every decision you make is best for the business and not for yourself. the selflessness of being a parent and being a founder the same, but the ability to drive things and create the future, I'd say is much. You have much more, you need to have much more control when it's your business. Versus your child. You should just let them drive and you create the path based on what they want. That's my beliefs.

Nathan C:

the, I think the metaphor is, is really strong and, many of us who choose to become founders are both right. And, and, and I think being able to, to separate, you know, where you have to clear the road and be supportive and, and where you need to like. Make the road and then be supportive is, is, is an important distinction. And it, it starts to get into this idea of impact and measurement and right, like goals, you have different goals for these different babies and the business baby., so how do you think about. the impact that you make when you're supporting startups and, and other founders, and how will you know, how do you know or, or judge your success when you're working with a, a, a new client in these endeavors?

Melissa Hollis:

I wanna really quickly answer one of your other questions, which is, how will I know when I made it? And I'm had a hard time figuring that out. Like, I'll know when I made it, when I'm on a talk show or something like that. Who knows? But like, really now that I've said what I said about the, you know, similarities and differences between being a founder and being a parent. I'd say, I'll know I've made it when I stop really having to push a vision on Taylor Street, and it becomes more like Taylor Street's taking its own path and I'm clearing mountains instead. So right now I'm having to drive it with my business partner. We're really driving what Taylor Street is going to be, but. There's going to be a point of inflection if we are successful and we make it where it's beyond what we've envisioned for it. And really it becomes about putting things in place for it to grow. And I've seen that. I've seen that with, gosh, some of the first startups I worked with. When I reconnect with those founders today, I can see it in them that that's where things shifted and they took, You know, they took, they sidestep things a little, their roles shifted. Their roles shifted from having to push to being more of like a guide, being more of a move things out of the way. And that's where I could tell, I can tell that's when we've made it. so excited for that day to come

Nathan C:

A lot of early startup conversation. Is around like all hands on deck. Everybody's doing everything and that's part of the joy, that's part of the fun. That's part of like how you build a lot of experience very quickly. But if we're focused on like making founders succeed, all hands on deck, doing absolutely everything, being in kind of a fight or flight, you know, constant state of startup crisis. Is the thing you want least for your founder, right? It is the thing that is maybe least powerful, least efficient, least best use of that person's time and vision. And like this, having such a clear understanding of that maturation and, and those two different phases is like a very cool marker to have. You got me so excited. Well, I think if we're talking about success, if we're talking about growth, I think we need to talk about a glow up. A glow up is a notable transformation, a major achievement in the next little bit. Melissa, what's your big glow up, that you're looking to make in the next six months?

Melissa Hollis:

Oh, I'm always glowing up. I never stop glowing up. I've been glowing up my whole life. I've had some major glow ups in the last few years. I'd say the glow up that I'm looking ahead at in the next six to 12 months, and a little bit of something that we did learn from our customers early on. When we started Taylor Street, it was sort of at this weird time where AI was. Getting adopted by some people, but then also some people were saying, hell no. Don't use AI for content. Don't use AI for marketing. It's gonna cheapen your marketing. It's gonna cheapen your brand. No matter what you do, you're never gonna be able to use it. And so we really were very hesitant and tiptoeing around AI and didn't wanna use it for any true like marketing. We used it maybe in like some of the business planning we did for Taylor Street, which I highly recommend, but not a lot of the actual like client deliverables, anything like that. And what happened was some of our first initial clients came on and they were solo marketers of startups. And so working with that solo marketer, especially a couple of the ones out of San Francisco where AI was hot and just like very quickly adopted. We saw that they were using AI and quickly had to pivot and realize like, if we're not doing that, we are gonna look like idiots, and why are we shying away from this or hiding it, which I think so many agencies probably were and maybe still are. No. Like we are going to look. What would be antiquated if we're not using AI the way our clients are, at least if not better or more so than, so we quickly pivoted from that, became very transparent and actually very collaborative about our AI usage with clients. And that's kind of led us to something that I'm testing out here with the early stage startups that I alluded to earlier, which is. Building out foundational marketing pieces for startups like early, early stage, like. Especially as we're working on things like investor relations, pitch materials for them, and then like early stage branding and taglines and messaging, and then kind of creating either a DIY kit or a do it with you set up of whatever AI tool preference you have. Of creating your like marketing intern so that all of those foundational pieces have a place to live and are set up for success as your basically like the legacy knowledge of what your brand can be. You always have that as something you can go and reference and it's something that we maintain an update for you. This is just something that I'm experimenting with. So I've piloted with a couple of clients that we worked with, it's just, it's something where I can see a lot of value because there's a big gap in both for marketers and non marketers in how to use AI for marketing appropriately. And I mean, we've nailed it. We're seeing clients get results out of this and out of the collaboration we've been doing. So certainly I'm hoping that we can make that something that is scalable and help startups. My goal would be is that help startups. Who are looking to hit product market fit or traction in their markets, 80% faster.

Nathan C:

That's the glow up.

Melissa Hollis:

That's

Nathan C:

the glow up

Melissa Hollis:

That's I'd love to see.

Nathan C:

Well, you, you, I'm sure know, right, that any goal that's worth tracking has a measurement and you've just set that measurement. And when we come and talk, with you in another year, we can check back on, how that's going, I wanna dive in and ask all of the questions, you know, what are your founder's advice for ai? How do you, I think the one question, I'm not gonna ask you what your secret sauce is and how you get people set up with like marketing interns, but

Melissa Hollis:

Well, the secret sauce is using the right marketing agency, using an agency that does the research, that builds the foundation. So, you know, any agency would probably or could probably do this for you. They might not be willing to'cause they wanna get money out of it, but you know, we are here, we wanna be that. And like I said, we start with research, we start with empathy, and those are the two keys for building out anything in ai. Right foundations and being that human empathetic side of it.

Nathan C:

there is this perception in the consumer world, you know, in the greater consumer world, and especially in those marketing detractors who are like, why would you use ai? It's gonna dilute. Those often come from the perspectives of people just using free accounts, limited free accounts within like chat GPT maybe not going all the way to set up a system message to build an environment where like there's resources and guides and research, that the AI can learn from and call back to. The like off the shelf, why do I get something that sounds hyper promotional and like the worst YouTube ad I ever saw, versus like, is this, you know. Fixing my broken webpage and helping to drive results. Right. I think there's a lot of skepticism within marketers about how you do that. the question I was going to ask was, you know, how do you help people feel confident? How do you help people, feel like their data is safe, or what they're sharing with their customers is safe?

Melissa Hollis:

I think there's also being on top of trends with ai, like we see it all the time, things that are like dead wringer, like obvious, make it obvious that something was generated by AI or something that was created. That, I mean, being knowledgeable of that, which is another thing. We try to empower people when we're working on these type of offerings to do. find, and this is interesting, but I find that there is a generational like specialty here. I, I'm a millennial and most of our team millennial and then a couple Gen Z, and I think these people that are in their twenties, thirties, forties. Are like going to have that responsibility and kind of just take that burden of being able to identify AI and be sharper, especially if you're working in the industries then that we work in. I have kids and my main thing is, you know, sometimes they can't identify what's AI generated and then I'm like, oh no, that Taylor Swift song is not a Taylor Swift song. Someone put that together with an AI tool. She didn't have any new releases or anything like that. Even though it sounds like her, it's AI generated, that's like a pretty innocent example, but it's going to be a skill that has to. Get developed and people are going to have to teach. And so that's just a broad way of saying like that's something to empower founders who are hesitant or are maybe worried about using AI is just knowing how to identify it so that as you are using it in marketing, you are really able to filter that and edit, because you do have to have a human filter on that, and we offer that as well. So offer that as like, we'll review that for you and make sure we're checking for obvious AI factors.

Nathan C:

Mm-hmm. I've been working with a couple corporate clients and I've been really impressed with like one of my comms leaders who's just like rock solid, always on brand, always has like the perfect corporate message and like in having this conversation with you, right? There's a lot of fear about using AI in marketing means that I have to ask an AI to post on social media for me or to write a webpage or to, and there's so many other layers and levels where you can be learning, you can be adding value, you can be more efficient and like my brain has this corporate comms officer. As an AI agent, right? Who's helping your marketing team of one, right? And the comms officer just knows what the, the current messaging is. They know the FAQ for that the press team helped you build and like craft around the sensitive conversations. And then when you have a new question online and you're trying to figure out, how do I put together this nuanced thing? You just send it to the comm bot who knows all, like, knows how to make it rigid, who knows how to make it safe, who knows, like all the right barriers and just offboard all of that work, all of that, right? Like,'cause there's a, a purpose and a role and like a very specific lane that, that that bot can play and you could have that conversation with your comms team and never need to put anything public. You could be totally confident and aware. It could totally accelerate, some crisis communications that you're trying very carefully, to be mindful of. And, you're off to the next thing. Instead of spending three days on a grumpy, Reddit poster,

Melissa Hollis:

Well, and let's talk about that. I mean, what you just described, is something I do for myself. I have a bot that's trained in my voice with some of my favorite content I ever wrote, or, interviews I've done and I've trained it on my voice To me that is storing legacy knowledge. That is what I was talking about earlier. What you just described is you're storing that comms director, their legacy knowledge. You're storing your brand legacy knowledge, some of your customer and client knowledge, and from that point of view, you're just. You have a brainstorming buddy. It's not that I just go into the AI that I trained on my voice and I say, write me a LinkedIn post about this, or, answer these questions from Nathan about the podcast. Of course I'm doing that, but I'm also going like, that's crap. I'm, but I'm using it as a brainstorming exercise. There's no bad ideas in brainstorming. It's just getting to the right idea. And I tell you like it has saved me so much time as a. Celine and my co-founder would call me a perfectionist. I don't come off that way, but I think if you really know me, I think I always admit it, I am somewhat of a perfectionist and this really does help me get over a lot of those humps of even getting an email out sometimes. I think that also, you know, I'll get real about it. I'm also an extrovert. I don't know about you, but I'm highly extroverted Really something about working from home and everything that has gone, with work from home and the covid and the pandemic, it's very lonely and that can be really hard for coming up with creative ideas. So, you know, there's always, the opportunity to go out there and network or go co-work or things like that. Or just have a lot of meetings where you're brainstorming, but at the same time. It's just been really helpful to use AI to help with that, to help with having a brainstorming buddy to help with that is almost like you know yourself or you create one for a client and then you're brainstorming with the client without having to like, to your point, say some of the bad ideas out loud to a client or the half baked

Nathan C:

I think we've got a mini podcast, which is the Taylor Street. three great ways you can get started with AI in your marketing today. that just sort of organically bloomed out of the. Conversation. thank you for going on that, rabbit hole. And I think for me, the highlight that I wanna pull out is this idea of use AI to get to good enough, faster. There's so many things that you can do in your day. Nothing is permanent, nothing is final. The world is so chaotic. It does not need to be the perfect anything. But if you can get to good enough for what this purpose is quicker than like go, go, go, spend your time on that stuff. That's really valuable. Speaking of time, Melissa, we've been doing so fantastic. Every founder needs a hand. Every founder is looking to grow in some way. Is there something that you are looking for, for Taylor Street, for yourself, for your community?

Melissa Hollis:

Every founder needs a hand. I think that reminds me of a quote, and I didn't come up with this slogan. It was one, actually one of my clients, but"never startup alone." So that client does accounting and fractional CFO for startups and SMBs. But I think that applies to all startup and business, to business businesses, is that, you're never alone. You never should be alone. Partnerships are everything. That is what I realized right away and love most about my role is now that so much of my role is networking. And getting to meet people. I'd say if I'm looking for one thing, it's, you know, who can I help? Who can we work together and collaborate? I. CMOs and fractional CMOs who are looking to work with exciting startups or looking for support because they feel alone with their clients. You know, I think the future of it all is going to be very collaborative and very much like an ecosystem. I'm seeing that with some of my clients and other specialties like I just mentioned, where they're broadening beyond just, you know, their. Core teams and really like having to pull in experts and it's just more of like whoever brings in the business or whoever's in contact is now able to extend that to their network. And so I think that's what's beautiful and like kind of the next phase here. It's just having a network of expertise and being able to find and sift through that.

Nathan C:

We do make time on every glow up episode for a community spotlight. Is there a group that's doing great work that you'd like to shine a light on and share a little bit of your time with?

Melissa Hollis:

Well, you know, you are in Portland. That is where we met when I was living in Portland, Oregon. And so I have to shout out the cause that I worked with when I was living there and I'm still somewhat involved with today, even from a whole other time zone, which is Girls Inc of the Pacific Northwest. I just will always have a big soft spot for them and what they do to help. Girls become strong, smart, and bold, and really their programming and what they've created and are now starting to, when I was last at their events, starting to see girls who had graduated from the programs, graduated from college, and then were coming back and showing the impact of what the organization is able to do. And I just think it's so important You see girls. Women just doing amazing things and I think organizations that start early, early with it are need all of our support. And I was lucky enough to be on their marketing committee when I lived in Portland and I was a solo marketer at a few startups. I was very much alone and on an island and surrounded by a bunch of technical people or a bunch of accountants every day who I loved, but I needed. I didn't realize what I needed until I joined that committee, which was having other marketers and being able to share ideas and work towards a common goal, which we were also excited about getting to help that organization through events and, you know, have a greater community impact. So I owe a lot to them and a lot of things I learned from that group of really awesome women.

Nathan C:

Heck yeah. Shout out to Girls Inc. Melissa, it has been so inspiring and so exciting to talk with you today. I really love how this idea of founders shouldn't go it alone. That you need a community of people who understand what you're trying to do and, you know, partners who can help push the mission forward. In our ever-changing, highly complex world We often have to wear many hats and do many things, but we should not be doing it alone or without, the input from the many experts that are all around us. I'm so excited, to get back to my own marketing and dive into my own why, behind the why. If people are interested in following up or want to learn more about your work and what you do at Taylor Street, how can, people find you? How can they follow up?

Melissa Hollis:

LinkedIn is where I'd say I'm the most active LinkedIn you can find me on LinkedIn at Melissa Hollis and follow Taylor Street Collective. so if you see that lovely yellow logo, you'll know you're at the right place.

Nathan C:

How'd we do today? Did we, did we get to all the points that you were hoping to talk about?

Melissa Hollis:

Well, I should give that question to you. I was just happy to be here and have a fun conversation and hopefully share some things that'll help people have eureka moments.

Nathan C:

The, I had like three, so I think we'll probably, be pretty good there.