From Marketer to CEO: How Leslie Vickrey Built a Thriving Agency, a Strong Brand, and an Unstoppable Culture

#6: How do you go from being an in-house marketer to the CEO of a thriving agency? And how do you build a personal brand that fuels business growth while fostering a culture that attracts top talent? In this episode of Growth Activated, I sit down with Leslie Vickrey—entrepreneur, author, and founder of ClearEdge—to unpack her journey from marketing leader to agency CEO.

Leslie shares how she made the leap into entrepreneurship without a business plan, the power of networking in building a personal brand, and why company culture is the key to long-term success. We also dive into the build vs. buy dilemma—when businesses should invest in in-house marketing vs. leveraging an agency.

Whether you’re a marketing leader thinking about your next career move, an entrepreneur looking to scale, or an executive focused on building a strong, high-performing team, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.

Tune in to learn:
✅ How Leslie transitioned from marketing executive to agency founder
✅ The role of personal branding in driving business growth
✅ The key leadership lessons that shaped her journey
✅ How to build a company culture that fuels retention and success
✅ When to outsource marketing vs. when to build in-house

🎧 Listen now and get inspired to take your marketing leadership to the next level!

Free Sales & Marketing Maturity Assessment Giveaway: Enter Here

Let’s Keep the Conversation Going!
Loved this episode? Connect with me for more insights on B2B marketing leadership and strategies to grow your business.

🌐 Visit my website: growthactivated.com
🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn: Mandy Walker
🔗 Get Your Free Marketing Planning Guide Today!

Don’t forget to subscribe to Growth Activated and share this episode with fellow marketing leaders. Let’s activate growth—together!

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Growth Activated
• 0:51 Meet Leslie Vickrey: Entrepreneur & Champion for Women
• 3:32 From In-House to Agency: Leslie’s Journey to Founding ClearEdge
• 7:43 Taking the Leap: Lessons from Entrepreneurship
• 11:30 Stepping Into the CEO Role: Mindset Shifts & Growth
• 16:30 The Power of Personal Branding & Thought Leadership
• 27:04 Marketing ROI: Educating the C-Suite on the Value of Marketing
• 31:17 Agency vs. In-House: When to Build, When to Buy
• 40:41 Building a High-Performance Culture
• 48:10 Marketing’s Role in Navigating DEI & Corporate Values
• 52:00 Closing Remarks

Transcript

00:00 – Welcome to Growth Activated

Hey everyone. Welcome to Growth Activated. I'm your host, Mandy Walker, and I'm so excited to have you join me for this episode. Today I'm honored to welcome Leslie Vickery, an entrepreneur, author, podcast host, and a true champion for women in leadership.

00:51 – Meet Leslie Vickrey: Entrepreneur & Champion for Women

Leslie is the founder of Clear Edge, a company transforming the business of talent through marketing, recruiting, and leadership development. She's also the co-founder of ARA, an organization dedicated to advancing women in technology and has built a reputation as one of the most influential voices in her industry. Full disclosure, I've had the pleasure of working as a marketing consultant for Clear Edge for the last year, and I've long admired how Leslie leads as a CEO, builds a high performing agency that truly partners with its clients and drives meaningful change in the industry. So today we're gonna be diving into her journey around how she built ClearEdge, the power of personal branding and the lessons she's learned about leadership, culture and marketing along the way. Let's dive in.

Well, hi, Leslie. Welcome to the Growth Activated podcast. I'm so excited to have you today. Hi, Mandy. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. You know, we didn't plan this, but funny story, today is actually my one-year anniversary with Clear Edge as a marketing consultant. Happy anniversary. I know. It was not planned. I did see the announcement on Slack. So happy after… a long time talking with each other and meeting and trying to find opportunities to work together. You've been here for a full year now. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, this has actually been my first year on the agency side. I came up on the in-house side and it's been a wild year learning the agency perspective and it's been so much fun. But part of why I'm so excited to have you here today is because I hugely admire what you've built and who you are as a leader. And for our audience who isn't aware, Clearidge has an incredible reputation within the industry that it serves. Everyone knows you and loves you within the industry. I just remember every conference I went to, every interesting white paper that came out, it felt like you had a hand in it, you were either sponsoring it, you were speaking at it, and pair that with the company culture that you've built one of the best cultures I've ever worked with. So you've built something really special. And I am excited to really dive in today to learn more about how you built it, why you built it, and some of the learnings you're seeing from both the agency and the in-house experience that you have. Oh, well, thank you. Thank you so much for all of that. That feels really nice. Thank you. Absolutely. So let's start with your background. I'd love to hear, I know you came from the in-house side as well, and then obviously built your own agency. What caused you to do that? What was sort of...

03:32 – From In-House to Agency: Leslie’s Journey to Founding ClearEdge

How was your journey into the agency space? Sometimes I feel like the non-agency agency because coming from the in-house side, we, a lot of us miss that and love that and like the idea of helping companies as if we're part of their team, which you've probably picked up on working with us. That's really important to us. So I did not have any agency experience either kind of coming into starting Clear Edge and my background, I started not to go way, way back, but my passion was really journalism and writing. So I wanted to be a journalist or a broadcaster through various circumstances that did not happen. And I ended up landing at McDonald's Corporation and internal communications. So for me, I love writing. That's a passion of mine as it relates to marketing and why I wanted to do journalism and PR, but the opportunity presented itself. So I moved actually from, I went to school in Michigan, grew up in Michigan, moved to Colorado to do broadcasting that did not work out, moved to Chicago for McDonald's Corporation and really had to kind of fall in love with writing in a different way, in a marketing sense and really very niche internal communications. From there, I went into the nonprofit world and really kind of got my… experience, I'd say more in marketing. So event planning, fundraising, PR, and still doing, you know, a lot of the writing and kind of the jewel of all trades, so to speak, where I was doing the design and the writing and the pitching and all of the event prep and so forth. And after that, that's really when I got into the industry that you and I have been a part of for so long with the kind of staffing, talent, tech industry and really then started getting my experience outside of the internal communications or little pieces of marketing and really diving into full on integrated marketing. I realized quickly that I, through mergers and acquisitions actually, so similar story as you, the company I was with at the time, they wanted me to move from Chicago to Atlanta, and that was to continue to rise up in my career there. However, I didn't want to move. So I stayed in Chicago, went to another company, and I went from a publicly traded company, big responsibilities, global experience and so forth to a much smaller company, not tiny by any stretch. They were about 25 million in revenue, several locations. And again, I was kind of tapping into my abilities to do all these different things, but I was at a stage in my career where that really wasn't what I wanted to do. I wasn't a designer. I loved writing, but I wasn't necessarily, I wanted to manage a team at the time. So I decided to start Clear Edge and offer this option or opportunity for companies to outsource their marketing. So they could have part-time fractional CMO, they could have basically what they needed when they needed it and be really agile and flexible and making those investments instead of carrying the kind of full-time staff, so to speak. So that was really the genesis, seeing a need for those kind of small to mid-sized companies to have the same powerhouse marketing team that the larger companies had, but add a fraction of the cost for that. So they could have access to that great talent, but maybe not have to pay for it fully. Meaning they're paying for it. Don't get me wrong, but it's on a more like a retainer basis and carry the overhead cost of that. So that was the original intent based on my own experience and what I saw happening. Interesting. And so talk to me a little bit about how you actually made the jump. Did you immediately jump to be an agency where you were outsourcing work to other contractors? Or did you start yourself as a consultant and fractional and then build your legacy from there? Well, one thing to be really clear on, I had no idea what I was doing, other than I knew there was a need in the market. And I didn't have a business plan. 

07:43 – Taking the Leap: Lessons from Entrepreneurship

I did not have a budget, I didn't have a team or a staff, I didn't have contracts, I didn't know, I had never been in sales. There was a lot I needed to learn when I did it, Mandy. But one thing that has really helped me throughout my career and something I talk about a lot is and it's a little cliche, but your network is your net worth. So one thing that I did have was a client lined up. So one of my past employers, they had They knew that I was, you know, going off on my own and so forth. And they had suggested us to be the agency of record when he took on that new role. So one thing I don't talk a lot about is I actually had an agency before ClearEdge with a business partner, and it didn't work out. So then I hit reset and did ClearEdge. And there were a lot of lessons there as well, kind of going into that. But again, I didn't have business plans. I didn't have. You know, a lot of things, I just knew that I wanted to go into this and give it a shot. And I had mentors and friends who were so supportive and just kept encouraging me to do it. So I was also single at the time. I had a dog and a loft, but I didn't have a lot of responsibilities. So financially, I knew I could give it a shot. I didn't need to get funding or anything like that. And I did have a team pretty quickly. I recruited some people in who you know through Clear Edge. So Jess Castaneda and Sarah Schaunce were two of the originals who, I remember Jess having to convince her to leave a full-time job and go contract because I couldn't afford to pay her a full-time salary, but I could do contract and build the model that way. And she did it. And I'm so grateful that she did 18 plus years later. Same thing with Sarah. Sarah was living overseas in Paris in France, and she, you know, I happened to call her on a Saturday and had a need for a writer, and she said yes, and it, you know, it worked out. Again, 18 years, 18 years later. So I was kind of fortunate in that regard where I had a client out of the gate, someone who knew me and trusted me as a marketer. I wasn't afraid to ask for help, so I knew I needed help with legal, so contracts proposals, all of those things. Now, fortunately in-house, one thing that I did a really good job of was aligning myself closely with sales. So I knew what went into selling, but I never had to sell directly. So that was kind of a learning curve. But what I have found works really well is when you're really passionate about what you do and you're the experts in what you're actually selling. I'm a marketer selling marketing. It didn't feel like selling. It felt like I was just… advising them and consulting them and clients really appreciated that. Absolutely. And I'm so curious because you, in my mind, you had to learn two drastically different things. You had to one, learn agency life and two, you had to step into the CEO role. And so, huge kudos. That's like two mountains to climb in tandem. What were some of the learnings you had that you would advise or share with anyone who is interested in starting their own marketing agency, either on the agency side or the CEO side? Well, it's a good point on the CEO front. You know, a lot of marketers, when I was doing this before, today it's different. Marketers get experience and exposure to different parts of the business and can continue to move up into different roles within the C-suite. The chief revenue officer, CEO, there's a lot more opportunity today in that C-suite realm, so to speak, for marketers, which is incredibly exciting. For me, going into that,

11:30 – Stepping Into the CEO Role: Mindset Shifts & Growth

I never really saw myself as a CEO. Interesting. I had a hard time even saying it. I'm a CEO. The funny thing is today when friends launch their own companies and they're wondering, well, what should my title be? How do you introduce yourself? I'm like, you're the CEO. It's your company. You're running it. I don't know if it's imposter syndrome or what it is, but it's something where you just don't necessarily see yourself in that light, in that regard. You know, my journey, Mandy, everyone's journey is different. So one is to make it your own. And I do coach and consult with a lot of entrepreneurs and share kind of my thoughts on it. And people just have different opinions. You know, you could be in a full-time job and have this idea and you can ruminate on this idea for a really, really long time and never really do it. Or you could go for it and, you know, really bet on you, bet on yourself know that you can ask for help. You don't have to know everything. And asking for help is really critical. I still ask for, I'm 18 years in and I have advisors and coaches and all of the things, mentors who I lean on in different elements and aspects of the business all the time. I'm really not afraid to ask for help. And I think that's a key thing. And don't feel like you have to necessarily wait. Now, I'll say that everyone's financial situation is different and the position they're in and their personal lives and responsibilities. Again, when I did it, it was different. I could heavily leverage contractors. I worked out of my loft. I didn't have overhead. I didn't have a lot of responsibilities. And I had a client lined up right away, so cash was coming in. And I did deliver, to your point. I was... delivering while I was a CEO. So I was project managing, I was writing, I was doing the work alongside our contractors and our eventually our team to help build the business. But you know, that's a key thing too, is to know when to start like that pivotal moment when you go from, okay, I'm delivering client work and they're expecting me to, I need to start, stop delivering client work and focus on sales and growing the business. and have other people deliver it. So you go from being wildly profitable because you're delivering and selling and doing all the things to, okay, I need to cut into that profit to really invest in the business to grow. And that's a key turning point, I think, for a lot of entrepreneurs to decide, do they want that or do they not want that? And it's okay to not want that for sure. Totally, yeah, I'm at a similar point now where certainly along my consulting journey, been a fractional consultant now, as you know well, for the last year. And as I think about what's next for my career, it's been interesting to figure out the right balance between I've got to pay my bills, I've got to stay committed to work and me actually being the one doing the output. But I also am really excited about this business over here that I really want to invest in. And you know, we were talking about earlier about like… just jump in and do it. I have wanted to start a podcast for years. I have wanted to mentor and coach other people for years. And it felt like I always needed to learn more, or I guess imposter syndrome is probably one of those things. And something that I learned recently that really has stuck with me is this idea of just-in-time information. And so you don't need to understand everything at once, to your point of just learn what you need right now. right now in this moment, and then you'll learn everything else as you go. And that's been really humbling for me as sort of like the type A. You and I both spent years making CEOs look great. That's part of a marketer's job. You're behind the scenes helping everyone else, helping the company's brand, building the culture, you know, working closely with HR and the C-suite. You're getting the CEO, president, all the executives speaking opportunities, PR opportunities. So our voice is not that we muted it, but it's everyone else that we're putting out there. And then all of a sudden you realize like, wait a minute, I'm that voice. I have an opinion. I'm a thought leader. I can go out there and do these things too. And it's a really interesting experience, I think, for marketers in particular, because we're so used to promoting everyone else. We don't always promote ourselves. And then it comes time to say, I can actually set up the podcast and do this. I did it for years for other people. I certainly can do it too. So it's just a matter of thinking of it differently for yourself. It's such a great point. And I've never really thought about it like that. And I know you talked about earlier, like your network is your net worth. I know you invest a lot in your personal brand and I see it, I feel it, I see the impacts of it in the industry.

16:30 – The Power of Personal Branding & Thought Leadership

Did that come naturally to you? What tips and advice would you have? I guess, what's been the downstream impact as well to your business and to growth? It's a great question. I would say the networking piece when I had to really look back on that and think about the importance of that and where that stemmed, that did start really early for me and my career. I didn't realize it at the time. how important it was and where it would kind of take my career and help me by asking people for help and then realizing I got here because of them and then they helped me get there and then this helped me get here. And while you're doing that, you're building your personal brand because those people know you. I mean, for one thing to have a good personal brand, you've got to be really good at what you do. People need to trust you. They need to believe in you, see you as a thought leader. So anytime little pivots like that happen for me. it always came with a little bit more of building my brand, which was really helpful. So building my network helped me really create that brand because then people refer you to other people and say, I've heard so much about you from so and so I want to meet you and get to know you. Well, that's your brand as well. It's everything you do, not only externally to the world, but internally to how you are working, how you interact with people because that extension of your network, they're building your brand on your behalf too, whether you realize it or not, it's happening. So you wanna do really good work and be seen as that thought leader, to be able to get there. For me, I'll say a couple of pivotal things I think really helped. One, when I started the company, we immediately partnered with TechServe Alliance, which is an association for IT and engineering staffing companies. And… We did that, ironically, I was a member of the association when I was in-house, so I already knew them and just had this affinity and affiliation with them anyway. Then we started doing marketing for the association and they've been a client all 18 years. Wow. Really good friends and partners and have definitely by targeting an association where your prospects are, that has helped a lot too. But we sponsored their women's luncheon and hosted it for many, many years, I'd say over 16 years now. And in that luncheon, it was a women's luncheon, it was I think the first that the industry really had and the first time that we put emphasis on supporting each other as women in this format. In doing that, I was… I didn't realize it at the time, but also building my brand in equity as well, because I was always up on stage speaking. So I'm speaking, we're creating content after that. We're posting that content. I'm talking to the other speakers, creating the program, building the program, all of those things that you do, it builds your brand. And then people continue to see you as a thought leader. I was at the luncheon this year, which I was fortunate to see you. at the event itself when we were there in Arizona. But someone had said, you know, I've been at your luncheon every year. And I get that a lot. So people see you and then they start to look up to you because they see you as the one kind of leading it. And in that case, people had seen me through marriage, divorce, pregnancy, baby. I brought Grace into one of the lunches. Like you don't realize that when you put yourself out there and you're really vulnerable and you're, you know, putting it all out. I cried at the luncheons. I mean, I was a mess at some of those because of things I was going through, but they loved it. They appreciated it. They embraced me. They helped me. I helped them. And it built, it really was this kind of starting point, I think, of helping me do that as a thought leader because not only with the luncheon, but I would contribute to webinars. I would talk about marketing. I'd sit on marketing panels. So then we started to become known as the industry expert in… in marketing in general as the go-to firm for that, which ultimately was our vision was to become that. And then from that there, we partnered with other associations, got more speaking opportunities and really just kept asking for opportunities. If you need a speaker, lean on me, being really active and proactive again and building that network, helping others build theirs, but be visible, be vulnerable. and put yourself out there a little bit to build that brand. So it took time. It's 18 years in the making. Certainly coming out of a large company like I did, a lot of those executives scattered to other companies. So being able to have that network and have them spread the good word about you is also really critical to building your personal brand. That's great. And by the way, I have heard about the luncheon that you brought Grace into from other clients and they've just, it brought them to tears to even talk about it and how moving it was. And so clearly your vulnerability has really resonated with people. And so Leslie, for, well, it seems like everyone's building their personal brand today. I mean, honestly, LinkedIn is a bit overwhelming for me right now. I don't know if it is for you, but it feels so saturated with everyone sharing. There are thoughts and you can just tell, we're all building a voice, which is amazing on one hand, but it can feel very intimidating on the others for those who are just sort of getting into this. And so what advice would you have for people that wanna build their personal brand? They understand the importance of it. Where would you have them start? Yeah, it's a great question. And I have to say, for us, for just using Clear Edge as an example and… You know, you're on the inside of ClearEdge. You know the inner workings and what it's like. And you know, we have, you were just featured on a Spark the Space video where we're showcasing experts. And one of my goals is this isn't the Leslie show at ClearEdge. You know, I help sell. I am not involved in delivery really at all. I'll get involved in strategic conversations. I'll brainstorm behind the scenes. I'll participate in building those executive level relationships. But you all are the real talent. Yes, I used to do it, but that was back in the day. And I still love doing it and advising and writing and all of those things, but I'm not delivering. So to have our team out there really showcasing themselves from a personal branding standpoint is important to me because it showcases a depth of talent that we have and how that helps differentiate us as well. And to get started, it is things like what is the company doing that we can participate in? to kind of dip our toes and put things out there. And I think the other thing is to realize it's not for everyone. So like anything, know your why. Why is it important to you? Why do you wanna do it? Is it because you love writing and you love reading these things and you want to put your thought leadership and knowledge to work and build your network and so forth? Is it you're trying to help the company brand get out there and build your brand at the same time? Do you want more speaking opportunities? Do you have visions of something as you continue to grow your career and you want to leverage it to do that? Understanding your why and the audience and the mediums is really important. And to give yourself grace, you know, don't worry so much about, gosh, that post didn't perform very well. A lot of mine don't perform well. The ones that perform well for me are the ones that I'm the most transparent and, you know, putting something personal out there. Those always get so much interaction. But what I'll tell you is the others that we put out that could be about marketing or business or something like that. People are reading them. They may not engage in them, but they're reading them. People mention them to me all the time. We see you everywhere. I noticed you're speaking here. Someone, I was on a call the other day and they quoted the stats that we posted announcing our second year anniversary for recruiting and Leslie Kardek's incredible stats in that division and they didn't engage in the post, but they're reading it. So you're putting yourself out there and, you know, needing to be patient with it. But I'd ask yourself why you want to do it. And then just baby step it. Think about the best medium for what you're trying to do and leverage. If you're at a company and they support it like we do, we put out a ton of content. Leverage our content. volunteer when we ask for Spark the Space videos to showcase our experts or we're wanting to do webinars or have you on a podcast, say yes. Say yes to speaking opportunities. Say yes to podcasts and then use that content to your benefit when building that. Yeah, absolutely. I love the reminder. It's such a simple reminder, but such an important reminder to think about why you're doing it because… I've always had the desire to build my personal brand and have a strong voice in the marketing space, but it really wasn't until this year, probably in the last six months or so, where I realized it sort of clicked for me. Like, I don't… want to have a marketing voice with CEOs or with COOs, I want to have a marketing voice with other marketing leaders who need a CMO to look up to. Because that was something I didn't have coming up. I never had a CMO that I worked with. I had to learn and sort of scrap everything together, which was a great experience. But I really identified this year, I want to be the CMO mentor to others that I never had. And so I love the know your why because it really shapes. the things I get involved with, the topics that I talk about and the drive behind why I'm doing it. Yeah, the guests are having the conversations, the questions you're asking. It's all to help fuel that piece. Yeah. And just while it's top of mind, because it's such a hot, you know, marketing ROI is such a hot topic. And to your point, a lot of the things that are happening and the people that are seeing it or the people that are, it's sticking with them, they're not actually engaging with the points. And so it's hard to note that that visibility is happening, that the engagement and credibility is happening. I'm so curious from the CEO perspective, as you're talking to your peers who really want to drill down on measurable success from marketing.

27:04 – Marketing ROI: Educating the C-Suite on the Value of Marketing

How do you educate them and talk about the importance of doing these types of activities? Yeah. Mani, it's such a great question. And I know we talk about it quite often, the ROI of marketing. And so many people think of marketing in different ways than I think you and I do. We see it as business growth drivers, period. It is going to drive your business forward if you invest in marketing. Keyword I just used, invest. And that means investing in sales and marketing alignment. You know, does the company, I asked this question today on a call with, with someone I said, does the company believe in marketing? What do you have to overcome to get marketing to work? If you think marketing is one email campaign and it never works, we've tried that one email campaign or we're active on social media and we're not seeing any results from it. When you stick to one channel and one thing, or maybe you're trying a couple of things, but you're targeting the wrong audience.

If you don't take the time to ask the why, do we believe in it? Why do we need it? What do we want it to do? And really take the time to lead with the business goals and tie that into the strategy. I've seen way too many marketing organizations be so reactive because they're reacting to every single request they get in. Oh, we have this proposal, we need help with this RFP. I need this sell sheet. My sales team is telling me they can't sell without more messaging and more content. There's always an excuse for marketing to jump in and be reactive. And a lot of us are type A. So we're checking those boxes and saying, I delivered that presentation to the sales team. Okay, I did that sell sheet. This is great. I helped that CEO with their speech. Okay, I'm good. Well, yeah, you're probably good at what you do, but does it show results? So making sure you can tie it into actual results, which is hard if you don't have sales and marketing alignment, the right tools and technologies, or a vision as a company and goals as a company. If you don't have business goals as a company, which a lot don't actually. I know. Well, how do you align marketing to it and how can you do it? So unfortunately, I think bad marketing programs get blamed a lot for marketing not working when marketing really can work when done the right way. But you have to be willing to think differently and invest in making it work. And listen, you know, I'm a CEO, you said it, own my own company. We invest in marketing too, and I ask the team a lot of questions. You know, that's great that our click rates are above average. Let's talk it through. What else are we doing with that content? What other channels, what other mediums? How are we tracking it back to ROI? And if we can't, why? What's broken in our systems that we can't get the data or analytics? Because I want to know. And quite frankly, the reason I want to know is, if it is working, I want to invest more in it. Yep. And I always ask clients that, like, if you could track that marketing was driving revenue, wouldn't you invest more? And the answer is always yes. So why not get it in that right shape and position to be able to do that? I completely agree with you, Leslie. Actually, just on last week's episode, I was talking to five-time CMO Scott Todaro and He had done a lot of research with CFOs and had said, hey, if marketing could prove a 3X return on marketing, would you invest more? All of them said, if you could prove a 3X return, your budget would be unlimited. I mean, the C-suite is open to investing. Well, they have the faith though too to make the investments to get it there. Absolutely. If they don't have the tools and technology the right sales alignment and accountability, it's just not going to work. So are they willing to put that investment in to make it work? That's really important. Absolutely. And sort of on the long lines, but I'm gonna pivot the conversation here because just with all of your agency experience, I come from the in-house side, but

31:17 – Agency vs. In-House: When to Build, When to Buy

 I'd love to hear your perspective on where you think an agency plugs in really well. There's sort of the build versus buy dilemma as people are looking to increase their investments in marketing. How do you typically educate CMOs or CEOs on where they'll get the most value from an agency versus what roles or functions are really important to build in-house to ensure that they're getting the most from marketing? It's a great question. And one thing I will say is I do think it's different for each company, depending on the stage of where they are and quite frankly, their culture. There are some companies who just don't do well outsourcing functions of their business. So if they're not outsourcing anything and then they go to outsource marketing, there may be a reason why they haven't been and that could be culturally driven. So in that case, they may need most of the team in house, but there are probably certain functions that aren't full time that they can outsource. And usually that could be, again, depending on the company and the industry, it could be PR, it could be analyst relations. It could be specific demand gen campaigns. It could be branding and messaging. There's different functions that you may not need full time, depending on the company. If you're an e-commerce company and marketing is driving everything, you're going to need a mix of internal, a nice internal team and some experts externally that again, maybe you don't need full-time paid ads or SEO in-house. My gosh, if you're e-commerce, it's so critical to your growth. It just may not be full-time, but you need a great agency who specializes in that to help you get there. So we, you know, we're a strategy first company. We tend to look at what are your business goals? How is marketing going to help drive it? And then what should that team look like? So taking the time to actually evaluate or reevaluate that. Maybe you have a marketing team in place right now but you're evaluating where things stand based on where the company is today and where you're looking to go in three to five years. So doing an audit and assessment just to make sure everything is on track, working hand in hand with the marketing team can be really helpful. Oftentimes those marketing teams know in their hearts that maybe it's not a full-time job or maybe they need someone with expertise in this, that or the other, and they'd actually see better results. But then if they say that, are they losing their job? So they may not want to come forward and say that necessarily. So sometimes doing that audit and assessment can help. It can also create and present opportunities to bring in people like you, to mentor the team, to rise them up if they're not ready, or to offer more professional development. Maybe someone has a skill in one part of digital and what the company really needs is another part, but that person… is the right person, wrong role, could they get the development and training to get there? And then leaning on an agency to help with that can make a difference too. So I think it really just depends. Fractional CMO, you've been in a fractional CMO role. I've always felt pretty strongly that depending on the company, once you get that strategy set and going, can you have that be a fractional position where… They can still be a member of the executive team. They can still report up to the board level. They can still manage your team. You can actually get incredible talent that maybe you couldn't afford full time, but you can have access to and your team can have access to. And it doesn't mean that it has to be long-term. It could be a year, three years, get that team where you want them to be because you believe in them and you want them to grow. It really is dependent, I think, on the situation. And for us, that's why we have the model we have. We're a full service marketing agency. In some cases, people outsource completely. In some cases, they're leaning on us to recruit their team. In some cases, we're special projects and special forces. We're their PR agency. We're their digital agency. Coming in and doing branding and website build really depends on where they are and meeting them at their need. Yeah, absolutely. And I think in my past, From an in-house perspective, the two areas that I really saw a lot of success with agencies was the strategy, if there was a strategic gap on our team where we had a great senior manager at something, but they were missing the director or executive director level strategy for that program or that area. It was always incredibly helpful to get an agency's perspective. And then highly specialized functions like SEO. You may not have the budget to have a full-time, highly specialized, well-paid SEO person on your team or an SEO team, but you want that level of expertise. And I think what's unique about ClearEdge is that even though you are wide in terms of what you offer, you are narrow in the industries you serve. And so that absolutely still gives you that level of specialization. And I know is a big reason why clients choose ClearEdge. Yes, for sure. That's a big part. One of the things I was thinking about is for people who are considering using an agency or marketing leaders who want to bring an agency in, in my experience, I was laughing at myself this morning as I was thinking, like I was almost equating it to it, how you prompt chat GPT. Like you get out what you put into it from the in-house side. And I see that all the time, like the more that a company welcomes you into their team, to their company goals, the more context they provide, the better output they'll get from an agency. But I'd love to hear your perspective. What are some of, if marketing leaders or C-suite executives have decided we know we need an agency or maybe we're not getting what we need out of the agencies we use, and we just generally don't believe in them, what are some of those critical pieces of success that you've seen that really determine whether someone's going to get the most value or not? Yeah, it's interesting, Mandy, because sometimes because of the level of talent. So imagine, you know, I'm a CMO and I you're brought in by my CEO. Am I intimidated by you? You're coming in to do the strategy and in my head I'm thinking, but shouldn't I be doing that strategy? Why am I not doing it? They must see something that I'm missing. So out of the gate, sometimes there can be the sense of friction of they want, they're gonna come take my job. They're gonna come in, they're going to identify things that are missing and lacking and that's it. Now I'm done. I've been seen people, you know. I'm a fraud. It's that imposter syndrome, lack of confidence that can sometimes get in the way. And the best thing I can do is say, you know, partner is the key term. See it as a partner, not a threat. And treat it as a partner as if it's an extension of your team. And that is so important, be transparent and communication. So let's say we were hired and someone wasn't happy with a first round of writing.

You know, what I would say is it's the first round and we just started working together. We've got to get to know your voice and make sure that we're hearing you clearly and understand it. And we need that, we need that feedback. And it may take two or three rounds instead of not saying anything. And then months go by and then all of a sudden we're fired. And it's like, for what? There was no transparency and no communication. And that goes both ways. If we're working with a client, they're impossible to get a hold of. They're not fully invested. They just don't see the value. We're not going to be successful. So the key thing is we have a list of partner values. Like, what will make this successful? Treat us like humans. We are partners. If you say something like, well, you should be telling me that. Okay, well, it's your business. We want to get to know your business inside and out. So tell us about your sales process. Tell us about your cost of sales. Tell us all, we want to learn your business. You know, let us in, be transparent, be open, be honest with communication. It's like any relationship, you know, treat you fairly. And that transparency and communication, those three things, partner, transparency, communication are so, so critical. Yeah. Absolutely. One of the things I've gotten accustomed to telling clients is when I ask them what their view of marketing is or should be or things like that and their immediate reactions, well, you should be telling me. And I always say, well, I want to hear your perspective. I will absolutely tell you what my perspective is, but your perspective is incredibly important. This is your business right now. And so yeah, I could absolutely see that. Well, Leslie, you know, I'd… I definitely would be remiss not to talk to you about culture and leadership, given just the amazing culture you have, but also everything you do to lift women leaders up in the communities that you serve. And so I'd love to hear your perspective of when you built the culture, I'm sure you did it very intentionally at Clear Edge. What... Yeah, it's, you know, I at the time didn't realize how intentional our culture building was when we did it. But from the beginning...

40:41 – Building a High-Performance Culture at ClearEdge

Everyone had a why as to why they wanted to work at ClearEdge. At the time, one of the reasons was flexibility. So we had a remote model when no one had remote models, you know, going back over 18 years ago. And what I realized was I was giving people opportunities that I didn't realize how valuable that was to them. So it could be something like someone had a parent on our team who had late stages Alzheimer's and they lived in Florida. and needed help, but her corporate job was in Boston. So she had come to me and said, I love your company. We had worked with her as a client over the years. She said, I really want to be with my dad and help my mom out in Florida, but my company won't let me. And I was like, I just kept saying yes to these like, well, of course, yes, we would love to have you. And so she worked part-time in Florida and part-time on the Cape and It was one of the most loyal employees we've ever had. And it was story after story after story of, it's special needs child and the company wouldn't give them flexibility to go to appointments or do different things. And in my mind, I kept thinking, who are these companies not giving you, of course, like that, it was a given within who we were and what we did. And that led to really building this company and culture of inspiring loyalty with your team and being there. You know, you've seen it. We've had, sadly, in the past year, a couple of people with breast cancer doing very well, thankfully. But, you know, the team steps up and steps in for each other in ways that are what I hear from other people. It's been a long time since I was at a company, but unique and different and are always willing to take care of each other because we know there's a time when we're going to need to have help with something and just to be there. So we had come up with the culture of Rise Up and it's always to rise up others on the team if it's launching a podcast, launching a company, rising up in their career within the company, whatever that may be, it's having the opportunity to present them with an opportunity to continue to rise up. And that is through and through our culture. We talk about it on our all hands meetings. We have values that we stick to with everything we do when we decide which companies to work with, who to hire. It's all really important. So over the years, I don't interview anymore, but when I was, I would ask the questions about their why, and I would dig to make sure there was a why that there was something unique that they had going on personally and professionally that we could help them with to help rise them up and that that why was met. And that led to a really strong foundation and culture within the company. Then you've got to look at your teams and think about how you interact with and how that threads throughout the company and the teams who you're building and growing to. For me, I always lead with trust and transparency. I trust you and I hope you trust me. And I'm going to build that trust by being extraordinarily transparent. And, you know, some people have coached me that it may be a little bit to a fault. And I'll say, well, maybe for you and the way that you lead, this is the way I lead and I don't know any other way. And I believe in it and I know the team believes in it and they appreciate that. And that's what's led to having such a strong culture. But what our culture is isn't going to be right for someone else. And I'm okay with that. I want it to be right for us and the people who are on our team. And people have left because it's not the right culture for them. And I'm okay with that. That means we need to do a better job when we're hiring and interviewing and make sure we're bringing on the right people. But you don't always get it right. And what you wanna make sure doesn't happen, and this can happen really quickly on small teams is one person can throw that culture off and really be toxic and create an environment that you don't want to have. I've grown a lot as a leader over the years. I have an issue with conflict. This is a child thing that I'm working on. And I was more of a ruinous, empathetic leader where I'm a fixer, a pleaser, want everyone to be happy. And now more radical candor can be direct but everyone always knows it's coming from my heart. Because again, that's the only way I know how to lead. And that's the only way I know how to be as a person. And then that goes back to reflecting on your personal brand and why people wanna be around you or why they wanna work with you or why they want you to speak. I don't know that leaders always realize that as they're leading their company and choosing the tone and the culture that they set, it does extend externally. Clients know it, they understand. what that's like because they're working with your team. And then that filters out into building your own brand too. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I can say that I've never worked for a company before where I knew what the core values were. I mean, something as simple as that, gosh, some of the companies I've worked for didn't even have core values, right? I mean, naturally they come to life just in how people show up with each other and with their customers and stuff. But… You can definitely tell it's very intentional and it's woven into the investments that you make, the team members you bring on, how you serve your clients. It's really impressive. I will say when you're a marketer and you specialize in internal communications, that you have a team filled with internal communication. Jess Elliott, who's our COO, I don't know if you knew this, but she was my internal communications partner at the company early on. I didn't. No she would help write the internal communications that our division had to send out. So you have a company who worked really closely with HR on values and the C-suite on values and the importance of communication. We always say, and I'm sure you see it when I show people our Slack channel or, oh yeah, you can give kudos through Awesome Alerts. You've got Five for Friday. You have these awards. They're all tied to our values. Like what? I do think part of that is because we're marketers and communicators by nature that we then lead with that. And I do think it helps strengthen the culture and the way that we communicate with the team and our clients and so forth. Absolutely. That was one of the things I, a few of the companies I've worked at didn't have core values at the company level, but we created our own at the marketing level in terms of how we wanted to show up and serve the organization and serve our customers. And I guess that leads me into. An interesting final question. Obviously there's a lot happening in the world right now with the new administration and, and changes with DEI and stuff. And we don't have to get into that one way or the other, but I'm, I am curious from the marketing perspective, how would you be encouraging marketing leaders to be partnering with their sweet suite as the companies are figuring out which way to go on some of these new changes that are coming out?

48:10 – Marketing’s Role in Navigating DEI & Corporate Values

Well, one, I hope the C-suite leans on marketing for things like that because sometimes they don't think about marketing being in a function to help that with internal communications. And internal communications is often really overlooked. So I have a couple of thoughts on that. One, I mentioned ask for help. I am not an expert in all things internal communications as it relates to DEIB. I'm not, but I talk on the topic a lot because I'm passionate about rising up women in the workforce and I'm passionate about equality for all. So for me, I ask for help. I lean on resources to help me. Rocky Howard runs a company in diversiology. I subscribe to her newsletter. She has a text phone call meeting away to get advice, help, and counsel on how to handle it. She's put out a lot of resources on this topic as well. Deliber Wesley, who I lean on all the time. In fact, she had been engaged by our company to help us as well. We talk, we have regularly scheduled meetings, but she's also helped us and our team. When certain things have happened where we need advice for our own company on how to handle it. If I'm coming onto a town hall to talk about something significant happening, I'm not going to let fear get in the way of me doing it. I am going to do it but I am going to be prepared. And part of that prep is I meet with Leslie, I'll meet with Jess, Sarah, other people on our team, I'll meet with industry resources and experts. I take the time to make sure I'm really thoughtful in my approach. And at the end of the day, what's most important, I think to me and the team and our clients is that we stick to our values. You know, we lead by our values. I don't go out making big political statements. I've published articles on this. I don't think work is really a great place for politics. I do think it's a place for everyone to feel like they can belong and that they're in a safe space. And I feel very strongly that by saying nothing, you're saying something. And by saying nothing and people on your team are impacted and affected by it, what is that saying to them? Do they have the support of the CEO or not? So next week is our all hands. And I'm… going to address the topic and talk about it within the company meeting. And the core thing is, I will not divert from our core values, which is equality for all for us. We really believe in supporting and helping everyone and creating a safe space for that. That's great. I love the authenticity. That's what's been, it's been heartbreaking to watch some of the companies that you felt like we're authentic around their initiatives and now are peeling back a lot of the stuff that they've worked so hard to put out there. And so I just love the authenticity. Either way a company goes, just be authentic to who you are. And what you say externally, you know, sometimes companies say things externally, but the story internally is different. And, you know, for us like that trust and transparency, I'm not, again, I don't go out and make, and we're not a consumer based company, we're B2B, but I know a lot of people have different beliefs and they're different than mine, even within the company. So I am careful about that and want to respect everyone's belief and values. But there's a saying called diversity theater where companies externally will say one thing and then internally it's totally different from what they're saying. So to be careful about that as companies. That's why I think the key thing is, and you mentioned some companies don't even have their values, but if you can be rooted in a foundation of what your values are, that's a really great place to start and know what that belief is. And then it gives employees the option to choose. Is that the company, does the company's values, does it match mine? Yeah. And if not, then you have a choice to make. Is this the company I want to be at or not? Absolutely. Absolutely. 

52:00 Closing Remarks

Well, Leslie, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. For those that are interested in connecting with you, learning more, following your podcast, how can they learn to find you? The best way is LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so just Leslie Vickery, V-I-C-K-R-E-Y on LinkedIn. And yes, I'm always happy to connect and share more. I'll do a quick plug. We've, we had our first book, Together We Rise, come out with the Lady Leaders. We're working on our second book. So that should be out by the, I'd say mid year, end of year. So keep an eye out for that, which will be another great way to learn more about our stories. And it's really along the lines of an angle of the courage too. So each chapter is talking about the courage to do something. So I'm really excited to continue to share my story in that way. Oh, I'm excited to read it. Well, thank you so much, Leslie, for taking the time to be here today. This was wonderful. Thank you, Mandy, for having me and congratulations on watching your podcast. Thank you. All right, friends. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with Leslie. I know I personally took away so many valuable insights around leadership, personal branding, and building a thriving agency. And I hope you did too. As always, thank you for tuning into Growth Activated. If you enjoyed today's episode, Would you please consider subscribing and leaving a review? And in the meantime, keep activating growth for yourself and your company. See you next time.