Building a Marketing Team That Doesn’t Break Your Business (or Your Budget)

What startups and scaleups get wrong about hiring their marketing team — and how to do it better.

In this episode of Chocolate Pill, we break down the biggest hiring mistakes founders and marketing leaders make when building their teams, from first hires to scaling the org.

You’ll hear:

• Why hiring content first is a mistake
• The order of hires we recommend (PMM → Demand Gen → Content → MOPS)
• How to avoid hiring the wrong profile for your stage
• What scaleups need to do differently when building teams
• Why early career marketers should think twice about startup roles
• How CMOs can balance strategy vs. execution — and when to outsource
  
  

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

You. Okay, we're ready to go. Oh, okay, 321, boop, okay. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to our podcast where we are diving into everything related to marketing, whether you're startup just getting off the ground, or you're a scale up trying to figure out how to ride a rocket ship. We are here to talk about any and all of it. And today we are talking about topic that is near and dear to all of our hearts, and that is about hiring, and specifically, what does startups get wrong about hiring in marketing? And so we've got a ton to cover, and without further ado, I say we just dive right in. So Chris, Aaron, you ready? Let's do this always so ready. Always ready. Cool. Okay, so let's just talk about, let's talk about startups first, especially the ones that are at, like, million range to maybe, you know, three, 5 million range. So they've got some revenue, they've got a little bit of traction, they've got lots of excitement. Probably have a founder running around, doing founder led sales, and more often than not, there's maybe one or half of a marketer who's hanging on for dear life. So from your perspective, Chris, let's start with you. What are some of the top challenges that we've seen founders face when they're just trying to figure out what to do about marketing and hiring marketing talent? Well, 90% of the time, it's wrong. They've hired the wrong person. That's just straight up, usually, is what the case is. And the reason is, is because, when you're a founder and you're trying to find product market fit, and you're running around going from meeting to meeting, you iterate so quickly. And you You know, sometimes you'll have product pivots in there too, right? So you're doing so much, and the support you need at that point in time is so chaotic, and it ends up being very executional, right? So you'll a lot of founders will typically hire someone that can write content, maybe someone a little Junior in their career, that can, you know, they can kind of mold to do different things, and they're led around. They actually have to lead that person around continually. There's constant check ins. They really can't lead on their own. And that's, that's super, super typical, right? It's just because it's just a function of where they're at as a company. So wrong person. That's, that's the biggest first thing, I think, and also product market, by the way, yes, agreed. Um, also waiting too long, and that's almost a symptom of that, right? Because if they wait too long to hire, then they might scramble and hire the wrong person, you know, and just be like, be more of a tactical hire than a strategic hire, right? Like they'll be overwhelmed, like, I need a person for this, and then they scramble. And I think that's part of the problem too, right? Yeah, and I think it can be, it can be tricky, because hiring the person that's hiring the wrong person flat out hiring a person when it's too late. The thing that I've seen founders do, too, is just hire the wrong profile of person. So they may hire someone who's got enterprise experience, like their neighbor's husband, or, you know, someone who they've worked with before in a previous lives, partner, or someone that they know through some other connection, who's maybe a CMO someplace coming into a situation where it is chaotic to Chris's point, and that's that's also a challenge. It's like. So if you want to be strategic and hire bring someone in who could put some put some order in and some foundations in, but you can't run the risk of hiring someone either to junior or just flat out wrong. What's that like? What's a founder to do? Well, I think there's an order to things, to be honest with you. I think there absolutely is. So the unfortunate part is that if you get in that first scenario, what you're left with is a very reactionary view of what marketing should be, and that is the worst place to be if you're a founder who wants to hand off sales right to a sales team if you want to hand off that function, if you want to accelerate your growth, that's exactly the wrong way to do it. So in my opinion, I think it really starts with good product marketing. That's where you come in. And you're able to identify how you're fitting in the market, why you're fitting in the market, all of the persona work that goes behind it, all of the targeting work, all of the messaging that has to take place before you have a solid foundation and you have sales and marketing alignment, and before there's any hope of being proactive and actually creating any kind of growth engine after that, right? So your content, building your content. And engineer engine, your ability to go out into leverage different marketing channels and platforms and different functions within marketing and demand gen, all of that really hinges on that, that getting that first piece right, and many, many just don't do it, even into their series B, yeah, we've, we've stumbled upon many of those. So Aaron, would love your take on this, because I was, I know contents near and dear to your heart, product marketing is near and dear to mine, and we're kind of the two who sort of lock arms when it comes to just figuring out story and the message, brand and all of that. What's been, what's been your experience with founders who either don't have product marketing when, when you get there, or when you first stumble upon them, to work with them, or they do when it's not quite kind of what you need. Have you seen, have you seen the problem? Sort of show up from, from your point of view? Yeah, it's so tricky, so it's so funny, because either it kind of runs the gamut, like, I'll see founders who, who are like content, what's that, you know? And then they, they do start with potted, which is great, but, or I see the other, you know, end of the spectrum where they're just like, we need content right away. And so I'm like, as much as I love content, like, you're not ready for us if you don't have solid product marketing in place, like that sets the stage right. So that is the foundation of everything else, of what your content will be built off of. So if you don't have a strong product marketer in place, it's not time for content, because, like you said, Sandy, that content person will be a partner, hopefully, to that product marketer and and the content strategy and everything kind of like down the hill from there will come from what is identified within the product marketing strategy, you know, like personas, messaging, all of that then informs the content infrastructure that you're about to build. So it's just making it more challenging to do it the other way, to bring content in first, because then you're gonna have to go back and set that foundation along anyway, and it's important. Like, I've also seen hires like, where they make a hire that's more of a generalist, and they have somebody that can handle everything, but then handling everything, they really handle nothing. Have you guys seen that too? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. It's a blessing and a curse, right? But Chris, talk more about that, because you've almost always been the first one in, I know, in your startup career. So talk more about, oh, it's rough. It's really, really rough. Because not only are you trying to do everything, you're trying to trying to educate your your founder on really how different parts of marketing work. And if you're a junior yourself, sometimes that doesn't work right. It just, it just doesn't. So in my opinion, the first leader that you have really needs to be able to not only do the work right? They have to be able to be tactically sound and a lot of different areas. They have to be able to level up to a strategic level and to a growth level, and understand what it takes to grow, understand the planning and the the work back that it takes to get there and to and to really create something that's solid, and then, and then it's, it's the ability to be a player coach in that process, too. So it's really hard to find someone like that, to be honest with you, and someone that's willing to take a risk on a startup. Yeah, that's a great point. And I think, I think in my experience with, you know, with going in, being either one of the first or the first only been the only once, and it was not very fun. But one of the things that I've I've also realized in in, you know, in retrospect, is the direction of the product at the startup level, especially, it changes sometimes. So the things that you think, the things that you think you can do to get your first round of customers and sort of your first bit of traction, may not be the trajectory that ultimately is the best for the organization. And lots of decisions are made about that right. Investments in your product are made on those decisions. Your first customers influence a lot of those decisions, your investors and what they've expected from you, the promises that you've made to the market. All of those things sort of factor in. But we've seen many times, right customers, excuse me, founders make pivots in terms of just where to go with, with the market. They've just I've seen founders go up market, try to go down market, try to go to go into different industries and all those things do impact not only your go to market team, but specifically the profile and sort of makeup of the marketing team that you need to support. The goals Absolutely. You know, it's really funny. I think you get to something that's really interesting. Which is the profile of someone that's actually willing to take that jump and that leap and what it takes. So a lot of times, vendors will go, oh, you know what, if we just had this person from this company, from this big company, they could show us how it's done. And it never, it never works out. It never works out because typically the person at the large company doesn't know all the little steps it takes to get to the big company, right? They know they are used to working in a silo in a big organization. They don't know how to do all the little things. It's it's embarrassing, frankly, a lot of times to be able to see that. So, yeah, they confuse the big the big company experience with, with the actual ability to be able to go out and do it, and really there's a different, entirely different mindset of that person that's really needed at a startup level. So I think you have to have a growth mindset. Number one, you have to be willing to admit that you're wrong. You have to be willing to iterate and to test and to be a little frenetic in that and be adaptable, yeah, resourceful is key, and it is. It's a different startup. Startup marketers are different breed. Shout out to them. We see you out there. We support you. But Aaron, I know in one of our in one of our previous conversation, you had mentioned something that sort of hit me. Obviously, I know your background, but it hadn't hit me that everywhere you've worked, you've been the first and so from your perspective, what's it? What's, what's the difference between sort of being, you know, being the first one in and, you know, the the subsequent hires, and what can the founders sort of learn from the profile of the first but someone being first in the profile of someone who comes in to sort of augment or accelerate what's already been in place. Yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah. When we were talking earlier, I was like, reflecting, you know, at times you reflect upon your career, right? Like, okay, where, how far have I come? Where have I come from? And I was like, Oh my gosh, I've always been the first person in so I've always been I've never replaced anybody. And so I've either been the first content person in for a brand new startup that are launching the or even a brand that's been around for a little while but hasn't really explored content their content arm. I've always kind of been the first one and either hire the help, hire the the founding team, or what have you. So it's always been blank. Came blank canvas, blue skies. So I don't know what I would do if I came into an organization and they were like, you're replacing this person. Everything's already figured out. I'd be like, Okay, bye, because I like to be in, like, an early hire, and figure it all out, you know, from from from scratch, but I will say what I have, what I have seen from from marketers come in from a bigger organization, is that they are used to having resources, right and support, and so when they're tasked with something, and they're like, Oh, sure, that'll take no time, because I have that nope, not you, not that person. Oh, I don't have anybody. I have me, you know? And then they have to figure it out, or they're like, oh, we have all these tools, we have this tech stack, and it's just like, well, we have this one thing. And so they've been having, I think sometimes I've seen frustration levels come from that as well, that they know what they're supposed to do, but they don't feel equipped. And they can be equipped, but they don't have that mindset, that startup, you know, kind of scrappy mindset, to build something from scratch. So it's very it's very interesting to completely different environments and that's when we also see, as a startup scales to each kind of next level, you kind of see a shuffle in, in your talent as well, right? There are people who want to be there at the early stages to help grow, and then as the company gets bigger, some of those people will be like, they'll Peace out, you know, because that's not where their their sweet spot is in that company, so you have to deal with that too. I'm wondering though, like, should we talk at a high level? Like, what we feel like if a founder is starting to hire for marketing, we said Product Marketing first, right? And then is it demand next? And then content? Like, what do you guys think? And then ops after that? Like, what are your guys thoughts on that? Yeah, this is the question I get so much when I'm teaching hyper growth for marketing for Rocky's venture club, the incubator and accelerator that that I'm that I'm a part of. It's the number one question that founders come in with and they say, like, Okay, who do I hire? They may have a marketing leader that they know, who's a pal, and I have to break it to them and say, they may not be the right fit in this moment, but generally speaking, and I think Chris and I, we've gone back and forth on this quite a bit, because personally, while I love that you both believe that product marketing should be the first hire. I like to be second. I like to go in when the foundation is set and there's some. There's some, some beams up. If you bring me into a blank slab and say, build it, I run out the building screaming. So I like following someone like Chris, who's done the demand, who can do some of the strategy. I think I'm I would very much love to go second and let him start. You know, I say that because I think it's a fair point that you make right? I have done some product marketing in my past, and so I don't, I don't necessarily like to do all that work coming in. I just like to hit the ground running with demand, Gen and strategy. So maybe that was a selfish way to put that right, and you're right, right? Like a lot of founders will say, Hey, I just need, I just need the leads. I just need, I need traction right now, and that's fair, but you have to understand that someone in the demand gen space, if they don't have at least a little bit chops in terms of what they can do with product marketing, you'll be dead in the water. You either have to have someone that has a little bit of experience there, or you outsource it, bring in an expert, or put them first. Yeah, one of the things we've talked about, and the advice that I give, the give the founders that come through the come through the accelerator program, is when you're when you are hiring, think of people who can do double double duty. So if you can find a demand, person who's a dimension, person who's done strategy, who also understands the tech stack and what you need and don't need, ask those questions while you're looking for them, and have them really talk about, as an example, some of the pros and cons to some of the tech stack. That'll give you a really clear indication that they have been in the trenches and they have made these decisions and learned from them. From a product marketing perspective, I say, bring in a product marketer who can also write, because if you're bringing on just a couple of people and you're not quite ready for content, to Aaron's point, you're going to need a lot of there's just a lot of writing that just has to happen. And what the product market will do is they will align some of the messaging positioning, get some of the infrastructure down. They can also do sales enablement, some of the content, to support your sales, so you're not dead in the water from a content perspective. And hopefully, if the product marketers worth their weight in gold, they will have built the messaging architecture right? So they'll have that single source of truth, that beautiful document that Erin always asked for when she's when she's when she's engaging with clients on content, it's like, Hey, where's your messaging framework? So I don't have to guess how to talk about it. And then I think, for content, Aaron, what are your thoughts on, like, the kind of, the double duty kind of version of the of the founding content person? What do you think founders should look for? Okay, we're gonna have to record that part over again, because you sounded like a robot and I did not hear anything. So Joey's gonna that was, that was rude. That was really rude. No, it was all like, sounded computery, and it was like, I don't understand what you just said. So if you could repeat that question, sorry, it was fine on my end. Yeah, it's just my connection. So did you not hear the question? Or did you not hear my whole thing I didn't hear we'll say, I heard you say, just say the question, and I'll see if I have enough context to answer. Okay, so we talked about, so we talked about, on the demand gen side, bringing in a demand gen leader who understands your understands tech stack and has done some of the strategy, because that person will be able to help figure out what the table stakes are and sort of, what the sort of, what the what the minimum, kind of, your minimum viable tech stack looks like. And we'll also have a sense of a good sense of direction, and we'll put some foundational structure in place. The fast follow is a product marketer, and if you're if you have your pick of product marketers, find a product marketer who can also write, because if you just have demand, Gen and Product Marketing going for a minute, they can help with ads. They can help with sales enablement, content landing pages, just some of the initial things that you need in order to get test and experiment in some channels. And then I was saying, from a content marketer's perspective, from a content pillar, what are some of the kind of kinds of hires that you think are, like the double duty for the for for, like, your first content person? Yeah, now that's a great question. Um, gosh, if you can get that trifecta of someone who is content, who knows, you know like engaging articles, long form, short form, but also knows social media that would be huge, and then maybe if they have some PR chops and you're like, golden so it's very hard to find all that in one person. So I would say for sure, if you could find someone that could kind of get your social up and running while they're building out your strategic content arm, then that would be huge. And then after that, what do you guys, I would add an SEO to that list, by the way, SEO, thank you to that list. To me, SEO is part and parcel. But you were right. We need to call that out. Like, SEO and content to me are like, married, and I was talking to someone today, and I was just like, that's just kind of how i i. Naturally attack content nowadays, but there's so many organizations, so still see them as so separate. So yeah, thank you, Chris. That is very, very true. SEO along with the content. And then once that is in place, Mops, what do you guys think is the next hire? Mops? For sure? Yeah, yeah. Because you're gonna want you're gonna want tracking, reporting, you're going to want someone who can mind the tech stack, because marketing tech stacks expensive, right? It's an expensive investment. But also, I think Chris lives embrace this all the time. It's the measurement layer and the the the, I can't say, analytics, the analytics piece, so you can understand how things are performing, what is working, and any insight that you need to to provide the rest of the business. So what are your thoughts on mops? Chris, well, if I think the reporting is great, as you know, for the planning and reporting up and all of that, but really the key actually the hiring, or the reason why you would want to hire a mops person earlier than later, is the technical enablement. That technical enablement in terms of the software you're using, the processes that you're creating with. What's the lead flow? How do you get lead from one system to the next? How do you how do you create a good process for follow up? What technology is going to be best for converting leads on your site, like all of that, has a direct impact on your ability to produce leads and produce, you know, you know, viable leads for your sales team. So it's, it's critical. It's just a huge accelerator, yeah, but totally agree. And I think on the mops front, again, someone who's who's done the zero to one can really lend a great hand here. One of the things that we've seen time and again with with founders, not so much at the at the at the very early stage, but when things get choppy, when things get a little bit rough, and they're and the and the broader go to market team is going back and examining what is working, what is not. Give a mops person who really understands that the business at that level, they're a huge they can just be a huge value add in that, in that way, in preventing you from making like silly mistakes about either investing in tech that you don't need, changing processes that maybe aren't, aren't broken, that you that, that you may suspect need an update, they don't, and also just sort of helping you, helping you look at, look at things through like a performance lens, usually a good moms person can, can, can facilitate all of that. So before we start talking about scale ups, right, and the challenges that those marketing VPs and CMOS may be feeling later, later down the line with a recession, dare I say it looming, and lots of change looming, let's, let's, let's leave. Let's leave at least two good takeaways, or three good takeaways for the startup founders with kind of advice that we can give them on what they can do better for their next hire. So who wants to go first? You get to go first. What's your bit of advice for founders hiring? Really? My thing is, don't bring content in too early, value content, but make sure that you have a pretty solid, at least a start of a product marketing function. And I would, I agree demand before, before you bring in your content person, you can bring them in. It can be very fast follow, not saying you have to wait a year, you know, or even six months down the line, even if it's like, you know, a month or two after you kind of have those functions in place, then you would bring in your your content person and and lean on them. Lean on them to do what they do best, to help you or to help to figure out your strategic framework for for content. And that's really what you want to look for in your content person as well. You want someone with those strategy tops at the beginning, because they're going to create your whole content ecosystem. And so don't just, don't hire someone who is a writer. First and foremost, hire someone that has that, that vision, that innovation and content, that can take you from point A to B to C, and can help you build out your your content, function. Awesome, Chris, this is a hard one. There's so many. Yeah, there are a lot. There are a lot. For sure, most startups fail. That's just the honest truth, most startups fail. You don't have time to mess around. You really don't. As a founder, you get it wrong, you have to reset. It'll set you back half a year to a year, and you might run out of funding. It's that's just the way it is. So whether it's a product marketer or demand gen or whoever. Are hiring first. They should know how to build the foundations, right? They should know how to do all of that, and they should have done that before. If you're if you're expecting someone to do it that doesn't have any experience, that's not a good great advice. You took my bit of advice. So I will leave, I think my my bit of advice is, invest in your product marketer. They really can be the key to your your first like, your first few million and sort of getting you from the startup to the scale up phase. The reason being is that they wear so many hats, and they really can be instrumental in you getting the right story to the right audience, helping you unlock value for customers, bringing that insight back into your organization. A really good product marketer can almost be your quarterback as a founder. So think of yourself as the owner of the team who is in the in the back in the suite in the box, you know, schmoozing with people. And think of your quarter, your your product marketer, as your quarterback who can be on the field and really running running plays. The best ones really do this beautifully, and that's why they're in high demand. And that's why I think you should, should, if you look for nothing else, look for that look for that person first. Okay, so that's it for founders. Do we want to talk about marketing, VPS, CMOs and the scale up? Oh, that's just as much pressure. Just different. Absolutely, it's champagne problems versus ramen problems, right? They become much bigger, for sure. Yeah, yeah. So this is a story we've heard that's oldest time the economy goes through its waves, right? We have our bear and bull. We have our our our peaks and valleys, whatever you want to call them. But inevitably, as your company grows, at some point, a couple of things happen, right? It could be, you know, external forces, like like a recession or just some sort of market change. It could also be that you're growing by acquisition, and now you've acquired another team, and you've got to make hard decisions as a CMO as to what the new team will look like. Or it can just be, you know, just changes in the market or changes in your direction, whether they're positive or negative is almost immaterial. What we do know is the CMOS and the VPs of marketing out there are on the ropes, no matter what the scenario is, especially when it comes to justifying hiring, justifying their budgets, because we know the budgets are high, and really thinking about, Do I have the team that will get me the results that this that the business is looking for. So from that perspective, I have, I have stressed just thinking about you poor CMOs and VPs out there. But what challenges, from your perspective, have you seen that that these VPs and CMOs are facing regarding, just regarding marketing and hiring? I guess one of the ones that I've noticed is retaining talent versus hiring new talent, right? And so like, because I've and especially now, teams are burning out. They're burning the candle at both ends. Sometimes, a lot of times you especially recently, people are filling gaps on things that they are areas that they are not well equipped to do. So, right? They're being asked to handle parts of marketing that are not in their wheelhouse at all. I have seen mops being asked to manage social I have seen so many different things, and it's just like, what? And it doesn't help anybody. And so it's like, and that doesn't help retain your talent either. News flash. So you know, because it's like, you're, you're, you might be saving budget, saving the bottom line, that sort of a thing, and trying to leverage talent that you already have, but it really is looking at like, okay, in order to really forge the best path forward, is it time to invest in new talent rather than trying to get the most out of the talent that you already have and kind of making those strategic new hires? Chris, what about you? What challenges have you seen? I don't you know what. It's really interesting. I think startup marketers are way different than scale up CMOS or leaders, for that matter, way, way different your startup marketers are maybe a little crazy. They're willing to take a chance. They willing to roll the dice and just get in there and they like they're creators. They're builders, right? What I have seen is that leaders that. Come in was to scale up. Are typically a little bit more picky, right? They're trying to pick and choose the situations and create the environment, or make sure that environment is going to be aligned with their skill set and what they believe they can do. So very much more aware of that went going in right? The problem is if, if the economy takes a downturn, and you become a little desperate, because those situations don't exist, you don't have the time to be able to do that, it gets a little scary. It gets a little scary in either of those situations. What I've what I've seen scale ups have to deal with coming in as a marketing leader is to understand debt. What is your debt? And that debt is typically on the technology side, yeah, absolutely on the technology side. Process wise, yeah, you probably have a whole bunch of broken processes, but it's people too, and a lot of it has to do with problems that were created within the startup world. Every startup, I like to call a dysfunctional family. All startups are like that. They're dysfunctional to some level or another, and marketing teams are no exception to that, right? So you have personalities. You have, you know, things that worked. You know, at one point time may not work anymore. People have left, right? So you have gaps, you have holes everywhere, and you're trying to figure out what works. Yeah, yeah. I think the biggest challenge I've seen CMOS face as of late, especially this year, is was a little bit of a surprise to me. So in startup land fundraising time, right? Just going back there for one quick sec, there's lots of talk about CAC and LTV, right, the customer acquisition cost to long term value, and there's a lot of talk at the founder level about how they're going to then balance that, how they're going to manage that, what they think their ratio will be, and that's part of what's what goes into the calculation of what they ultimately get from from investors. Had they gone that route. I'm hearing more and more on the scale up front and on more mature organizations, more and more CMOs are getting pressure, not on just the customer acquisition cost, but the long term value. So there's a lot of customer retention talk happening, and a lot of pressure there. And the thing that I've seen, and there's this, there's this thing that happens between startup and what we'll call the scale up, where the customer marketing bit of it customer retention, that just sort of goes by the wayside because you are growing. So if you can add more customers than you're losing, you're winning until you're suddenly not. So then we reach, you know, the mature organization. There may be an underlying churn issue that could, that could point back to either value, message, quality, people, process, technology, it could be any number of things. But nonetheless, that CAC, LTV question is getting, is getting asked more and more by the boards and also by the CEOs to their to the CML and VPS. And what I think is happening is one of the first places you go to you look, if you're trying to lower your lower cost, is people, right, people in tech. And that sometimes leads, unfortunately, to the layoff or, or, you know, some, some just reduction in tech debt. But then that, to Aaron's point from before, leads to, oh my gosh, how do we actually execute if we don't have the right people process in place and tech in place? So it can almost be a bit of a vicious cycle. To me, it's almost like there's a problem that's been ignored, that I think more and more companies are going to have to face this this year, just with our economy being the way that it is, that's going to show up in unexpected ways, specifically, and you got to bring your cost you got to bring your customer acquisition costs down. And by the way, what are your customer acquisition costs? I don't know many CMOS that know that number off the top of their heads, and I think they need to now. I yeah for sure. And I, I feel like that brings us to the next question that we hear people talking about a lot, which is, do you hire in house, or do you outsource, right? And so like, and obviously, you know, in the line of work that we do, you know we're in that conversation all the time. You know, whether you know it's like, Okay, do we hire internally for these roles, or do we look externally, at least in the interim of figuring out, like, our next best step, right? And a lot of organizations are in transition right now, especially, you know, with the question mark around the economy. So I mean, what have you guys heard about that recently? You know, like, you know, pros and cons of hiring internally or looking outside to outsource your resources, especially now. Yeah, I think that the common thing I'm I'm hearing is which, I think we hear every, every economic twist and turn, which is your consultants and agencies show up at a different part of your balance sheet. So it's a little bit easier to justify that expense if it's really just about it, if it's about expense, if it's about expertise, especially in some of the specific channels. And actually, Chris, I'll let you talk more about this. Sometimes it does make it does make sense. But one of the things that I that, that I've heard, that I'd love Chris for you to expand on, is in areas like SEO. Specifically, if you've had someone on your team who is in house, who'd been doing SEO for 567, years at the same place, they're not up to speed on what's they may not be up to speed on all the things that are happening in, like, with AI and SEO and with other things. So like, I know you're usually closest to this on the digital front, but what are you hearing with respect to, like, the expertise, the brain drain, some of those other terms that we sometimes encounter? Yeah, I think it depends on the type of person you have, right? So sometimes you'll have a person who, I use the term rat holey. I don't know if you guys know that term, but you basically are just you stay in that little hole, and that's my job. That's my space. If you have people like that in the role, I mean, good luck, right? I mean, if you have people that have been leading a function effectively, and you and you have professional development as a you know, as a thing within your organization that you prioritize Right, absolutely, give them a chance, right? If they're hungry before it. But a lot of times they're not right. And you have those holes that happen from startup to scale up, you'll start to see some holes in terms of their processes and their their capabilities. You really need to bring back, Well, number one, you need to plug the holes. And so that's where agencies, a lot of times, will come in and help you, help you plug those holes. And then the second part of that is to you have to re look at your structure, right, in terms of, do I have, what I need to be successful? And sometimes success is defined differently for CMOs and scale ups, right? So depending on the industry, and you know, the type of organization that it is, sometimes that is, marketing is a service arm, right? It's a center of excellence type model where you're creating services for sales. For example, you're creating a, you know, Field Marketing team that helps sales be able to sell. In other cases, you may have a really strong need to create a marketing team that can scale and grow your business digitally, and so that requires a whole different skill set. To be able to work, work and do integrated marketing. Is hard, to be able to hit all your channels and to be able to create momentum within an industry, it's really hard to do so, you know, a lot of times what happens with scale ups is, when they get to that point, they have so many holes that they're just trying to plug the holes. They're not quite sure how to do that. And they never get to the point where they have that strategy layer and that orchestration layer that's really that's really necessary to to scale at the level that they want to scale. Yeah. And then there's also the other thing that happens at scale ups, especially in this sort of, in this when, when we're in this kind of moment, is we know we've seen it right. Marketing leaders are their backs are against the walls. They are there with their C suite, and their fingers are pointing right. Furniture is moving, as I say with, like, lively conversations about, like, Hey, do we need to spend this? How are we going to save here? Why are my hires on, on on hold? But, you know, marketing has this big team, and why is the tech stack so big, and what do they even do? Like, all of those questions. There isn't a CMO out here that hasn't heard them, but they hate hearing them, and so from from their perspective, just protect your own brand, right as a as a leader, as a leader in the organization, and sort of defend, defend your turf. The thing that you really need to do, in addition to that, which I think speaks to all of what we're talking about, is proving the ROI to your peers, to the C suite, like proving the ROI on your programs, on your people, on the vision on just overall performance is really key. So when thinking about hiring along those lines, you know, what's the what's the reach, what's the return on plugging those, on those unplugging those holes, and sort of advancing, say, specific channels or programs or initiatives that, you know will will prove out as strong ROI versus trying to find talent in house that maybe are, are, you know, good hires for the for the kind of the longer term, it really is a balancing act. And I say all this to say I don't think there's a right answer here. I do think there's just a lot to a lot to chew on and a lot to think. About, especially sort of toward the, you know, when you're either toward the beginning or toward the end of the year, when you're either trying to justify what you're doing or prove out, you know, justify what you've done and those results. But what have you what have you guys? What have you guys seen when just talking to the marketing leaders about that dynamic that they go through? Oh, but hey, I do have actually one issue with one little term that you use, protecting your turf. So, oh, so you know what's really interesting, I found that the leaders that are most successful is that they do the thing that's right for the company, not right for them all the time, right? So if they do the right thing for the company, you approach your scale up problems differently, right? You do whatever it takes to be able to analyze whatever channel or whatever process or whatever is broken, and you bring all the things to bear that you possibly can to a unblock your people be you go out and get help where you need it, and then see you're hiring the right people that can, that can elevate what you're doing there, so that, anyways, that's just, I think, an approach that I've seen really work in opposition to that, yes, and hey, I fully agree. We can. We can debate that. I think when I think about defending turf, I'm thinking more about just what's in their like, their frame of mind, not, yeah, not the action. We don't want anyone swinging. So I don't want anyone to go out swinging in their in their board meeting. So it would be fun to watch. Sometimes we think you're right when, when you can collaborate more. And CMOS, we've seen in that recent study, I think by Price Waterhouse Coopers about CMOS that are, they're collaborating a lot more, and they expect to collaborate a lot more in 2025 so it is proving out. So Chris's collaboration, but what you're talking about with collaboration and ultimately partnering to do what's right with the business for the business is certainly proving out. Let's switch gears for a sec and talk about balancing the strategy and execution when you're a scale up, because when we were talking about startups earlier, right? It's building the strategy and then executing and being able to learn quickly from mistakes and pivot and pivot and pivot and then ultimately, hopefully find product market fit and grow. But when you're when you're already on the on the rocket ship, right? And you've got, you know, you've got a balanced strategy and execution. How do you think about that in terms of just overall operating of the team? And then how does that factor into, like, how you think about hiring, how you think about organizing, staffing, etc. Yeah, I think you know it is true. Like, as you grow, you do start, it's easy to fall into those habits, right? Of like, where you're thinking less strategically, and you're like, well, these things that we're doing are proven, so we're just going to keep doing this. It's a well oiled machine, you know, let's just put one foot in front of the other. But then if you continue to do that, all of a sudden, you're like, where did my competition go? Oh, they're way up there. Like they've, like, totally shot past you. So and so it's like, it is this dance of like, you still have to have this, like, forward looking strategic hat on at the same time you're stirring this pot. And also I want to say, like, maybe every episode we should take bets on the sandy or I say something that Chris is like, I do, I do that. I'm sorry. You guys don't really love it. Okay, all right. Like, I wanted to stir in the pot. I wonder if Chris is gonna be like, such an asshole. All right. Should take that. We should take bets on the analogies, because as I've gotten older, I've messed them up more and more. So I'll be like stirring the rocket ship or whatever it does. I know I have to cool it with the analogies, but you're cooking the kitchen, and let's say you're cooking over here, something that you know is tried and true, but you have to keep your eye on the next big recipe. Okay, I've hit that as much as I can, but you guys, somebody else take it. No, I think, I think you're right, though, right there is, I hate building the plane while flying it, because we all die. We're not doing that, but there is that long term view, and then there's the short term gains. And I think that really is the project of the scale of CMO, right? And I think going back to Chris's point, that's why they're so different. Startups are like we're trying to survive. We are literally scratching and crawling and pulling trying to keep our eyes open for every possible opportunity to figure out not only what works, but what we can repeat, and what we can ultimately scale but scale ups are more you know, it's more directional, but they still have to think about the short term, like the short term gains and the long term. Kind of the long view, the long strategy, and that's I. Think that is one of the things that makes the hire in that organization, the hiring kind of philosophy and strategy, so different. So Chris, I know you have thoughts on this, and we would just love to hear them, because you're doing that thing where you look up and then you look back, and so that's your tell. So what are your thoughts on what my therapist just told me to do? I would say that it's really interesting, right? In scale ups, you have a couple types of CMOS that typically come in, stereotypically, that come into an organization. The worst stereotype is, hey, I got my playbook. I'm the website CMO, right? We're going to come in, we're going to redo the website for a year, and I'm out, that's it. I'm out, right? George Costanza, if you know Seinfeld, I'm out. That's it. And that is the funniest one to me in my book, and the most detrimental one to most organizations. So if you do that, if you've ever done that, maybe back up a little bit, right? I think the interesting part for most CMOS, when they come into an organization, is they see the potential of the areas that are working right. They see those they're they're interesting to them. They think they can work with those, the good ones, right? And they see how they can scale them and leverage them. Which is, which is great. And typically their their strategy is not the the downfall, that's not the problem, right? Like they can, they can get to a strategy, they can get to the the OKRs, the key results that you know, they can get to, all of that, and they have those processes that they can bring what the landmines are, the things that really are scary and unexpected a lot of times, right? So you'll have, again, you'll have the technology, the processes and the people that are broken, so all three of them, right? And being able to find those quickly and assess that quickly, and be able to overcome that in a prioritized way is, really, is really the key? I think, yeah, I think I agree with all of that. I think one of the differences from a hiring profile perspective, not not of this the CMO or the VP of marketing, but of their teams, is I love, I love to encourage early career marketers to look for scale ups, because they're chaotic in a fun way. There's almost always an opportunity for you to find your mentor in that group. You can experiment and sort of learn and grow into your role, and really learn from a specialist what area of marketing works best for you, and there's room for you there for early career, people who marketers, who go into startups. I usually go, oh, girl, boy, maybe not the best move, because you might not ultimately learn the things that you learn in order things you need to learn in order to really understand and master the craft of marketing. You may get dynamic founders, great off sites, wonderful benefits, excellent pay. But and you are putting you are working hard. You are pedaling backwards in terms of your knowledge. And I think most early stage, early career, early stage marketers that go to their next job, their next role, their next kind of company, understand those lessons in retrospect. So my little bit of advice is for you, scale up marketer. Marketing Leaders still hire the early career folks, especially if you've got a good round of talent, so that you can give, give us early career marketers a fighting chance. We want to see the profession grow and and blossom when we want, we want, like plenty, plenty of people in there, for startup marketers, I would say for startup founders who are looking at higher marketing, I would look for a little bit more experience first, and just kind of balance that out for all of the reasons that we've just talked about. And so that's my bit of advice for the scale up, VP and and cmo out there. I kind of jumped to our last last bit, but I will let Chris or Aaron take it. What's your bit of advice for when it comes to marketing, hiring for the scale up CMO or VP, I do like one of the points that you just made regarding having an experienced higher at first, because I have seen it go the other way, where they'll get someone who's just at a school, or, like, very new, and that's probably not the time, you know, especially it depends upon, you know, the stage of your company, and if it's a true scale up, or, you know, like, where, where you are in the stage of the game, what you've accomplished and what you've learned at that point, but, but I have seen them crash and burn at that point too, if they only have a couple of years under under their belt. So I would look at that as well. Um. As far as like your your your higher is to look at the, I agree, Sandy, is to look at the experience level too. Because then a lot of times you're you're expecting a lot out of them. You're expecting this much, and they have this much experience, and that's what you're ultimately going to to get. There's only so much you can learn by doing too. So I think it's just smart to be aware of that. Yeah, I think in scale ups, ideally you have on your team architects or mentors. And architects are great because they can work well cross functionally. They know how to stitch things together. Mentors are people who have very deep knowledge within a specific channel, and can mention those young people like you mentioned Sandy, right? So ideally, you have, you have a, you know, a combination of that. I would say, people that are good with other people, people that just can execute. I mean, you need all of those things, right? What you don't need are Kingdom builders. That is the most detrimental. I know we haven't talked about that yet, but that's probably the most detrimental thing to a scale up, especially if you've been through layoffs, or you've been through a rough patch where the marketing team is turned over, people get scared and they they do maybe not the best things for the company or for your team and that situation. And so I would say at that point you really have to be careful when you come in about who you're hiring, but also who you're keeping. So great advice, great advice, and I think it's supported by some of the research that that that we've seen through with Gartner and HubSpot and a couple of other couple of other organizations that put out research about just the state of state of state of marketing and priorities for 2025 we'll include those in our show notes, but all that is it for today. Everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're out there and your founder or CMO or VP of marketing, and you're wrestling with your marketing hiring channel challenges, we would really love to hear your thoughts. Would love to hear from you question that we have that we're just leave for our audience is just what's the hardest part of building us, building or scaling a marketing team right now, just drop us a note. Find us on LinkedIn. We just love to hear it. And if you found this episode helpful, please share it with your network, and until then, we will talk to you soon. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. You