Episode 9: The Client Conversation Most Fractional CMOs Are Missing

Jen Singer  0:00
When you add that value system into a decision making framework, then that feeds that naturally is going to feed into your brand standards, it's naturally going to feed into your communication style or brand archetype, whatever that is, but also starting to give your employees, your team members, your colleagues real tact like this is where you get really tactical with values.

Randi Beth Burton  0:29
Thanks for tuning in to the Atlas Rose Podcast. I will kick us off today, and I will say that most guests who are on this podcast throughout all of our episodes call themselves marketers. Jen Singer, our guest today, never really has. Here's her highlight reel, her resume, if you will. Over 20 years, she has scaled a company 7x to a $35 million acquisition in under two years. She has driven $14 million in new revenue through post acquisition strategy, and my favorite, she co-founded Avid Caddy Golf Lounge, which is a golf lounge that from scratch and built it to profitability with 160 member community, and growing, and her work spans Intercom, Cronky Sports, Sovereign, and some of the most growth-hungry companies in media and SaaS, and her take - I'll steal it from her - is that marketing doesn't scale companies, strategy, value, operating rhythm and customer growth built to work together, that's what actually does it. Marketing is a lever, not the machine. So that whole business lens is exactly what she brings to her company, Blueprint to Bold. It's her fractional practice, built for small businesses and founder-led teams ready for their next stage. And now she's doing that for herself, what she has done for everyone else, and she's a fighting Texas Aggy, just like me, and hails from Colorado. Jen, welcome to the show.

Jen Singer  2:14
Thank you. So happy to be here. I love you, beautiful people.

Monica Spieles  2:19
I love the bold statement that we're coming out with.

Randi Beth Burton  2:22
Yeah, so with that, you're on a marketing podcast, you were talking to other marketers, you have a resume most CMOs would kill for, but you don't call yourself a CMO. So, what do you call yourself?

Jen Singer  2:35
It doesn't matter when you're working for small business. I think a title doesn't really matter, it's about the value you bring and the strategy, and like, how are we going to get this thing moving into a bigger place than we ever thought before, and I started out at Texas A&M in the business school, and as a marketing major, and I got two years into it, and I was like, what, what are we doing here? Like, it felt like very tactic driven, and I switched my major to psychology, and it's really about for me underlying motivations for why people do things, buying natures, thinking about personas, and how to speak to them, that is the underpinning, I think, to any marketing or any kind of strategy in which you have to be customer focused, which is, I think, most businesses. Branden reached out to me via LinkedIn, and which I think he reaches out to everybody on LinkedIn,

Branden O’Neil  3:41
No, only the top tier.

Jen Singer  3:45
And he was like, well, this, you know, CMO work, and I'd been really thinking more about, like, the operations side, so when we started talking about what a fractional CMO meant for Atlas Rose, it was the first time I actually really felt aligned in that mission and that calling, and even that title that I didn't feel like I could really wear, because I'm not an ad words admin expert, but really thinking about, you know, where my brain goes to is first and foremost, what are the values that this company is building themselves off of how does that play into the brand that they're built building and how they want to step into the marketplace. So I really think my brain is about go to market and that means operations on the inside, internal communications, making sure the right people are on the in the right seat, doing the right thing, ensuring that the leadership team is looking at the right metrics for growth. I feel like that that's been a stereotype I've thought about in for marketers in the past, like, oh, look at all these numbers, like we had x amount of impressions. Well, how many sales did we have? What is our growth? Did we cut costs?

Jen Singer  5:02
So I think about that whole experience, and marketing definitely is the driver, and I think it's a good name for what we do, especially as it's built on the foundation of this is about strategy, it's about growth, it's about making sure that we are aligned on goals and then executing each and every day toward those. So, thank you to Atlas Rose for introducing me into a framing of what CMO could mean and what fractional work really can mean for companies, and also how aligned you are to small business and really creating the support needed for what I think is the backbone of America.

Branden O’Neil  5:44
I think it's just interesting. You're touching on a problem that we talk about a lot, but it's the delusion, maybe, of the marketing name, right, of the marketing industry, the the understanding of of what marketing is, and we've done it to ourselves, you and I we got into this conversation. So, funny, funny story is Jen and I, in our first conversation, I was actually sitting in the hospital, and she was like, yeah, I mean, just like, as all of you can tell, Jen is just an absolute joy to talk to, no matter what, anytime. So I immediately started enjoying our conversation, and you're like, I really don't see myself as a marketer. I really don't like marketing. I think I said, or you said, and I was like, I don't like marketing either. And, and what I mean by that is, I don't like how I don't like what marketing has done to itself, and how we have moved ourselves out of the boardroom and into a cheap parlor trick, right? Just a bunch of tactics and viral buttons that you need to press, and just all this magic crap, and that is not, I mean, what you said is marketing doesn't scale companies. I think that's exactly right. I mean, I would say marketing tactics don't scale companies, right? So all this stuff is flashes in the pan, if it works at all, and all this stuff.

Branden O’Neil  7:15
And what you, what I heard loud and clear from you is, I don't care about all the all that bullshit, right? I don't care about all the fluff and the noise. I want to leave that behind, and I just want to scale companies. That's all I want to do. I want to say, okay, scale companies. I love that about you, Jen, and you're right. We are in total alignment on that, and that's all that's all we want to do as well, and and it's interesting, though, how, how a COO is sort of like not really understood exactly what a COO does. They do operations stuff, like they run things, you know. And then the people that report to the COO, what do they do? Stuff they help run the company, maybe right, different aspects of it.

Branden O’Neil  8:05
The CFO, would you expect that the CFO is going to be the one to, you know, pull the P&L, or right? No, no, they're they're there for the long-term strategic growth of a company, and there are people underneath them that handle the tactics. Somehow marketing all the way up to the CMO level got all rolled into one thing, and it's all tactical, and that is that's what we all need to band together and undo, and just show it's about scaling companies, and there's more than the tactics to do it, here's the strategy behind it. of which you just said strategy is what scales, not not the tactics, right? So I love that.

Jen Singer  8:48
And I think you know the frame for me is really connection and storytelling, and it doesn't necessarily matter what vehicle you drive to that destination, whether it's a scooter or an SUV or a big truck, it's the destination, so you can use a lot of vehicles to help tell that story.

Monica Spieles  9:11
I find it interesting that I never really thought of it this way, just when you said that we're aligned for the first time in just what the definition of a CMO is, and you would think that that's, I mean, just as you're saying, Branden, that's really clear what what a CMO is, but it's because there are so many versions of what a CMO should or could be in the way that we've shown up within within different levels of business, and so not you take a step back from there, and you're thinking not only is there just this misunderstanding of what a CMO, the definition of a CMO is, but then there's like, there's.. it doesn't even help that no one really has a clear understanding of what the definition of marketing is, and so, as a, as a small business, they're like, well. Sure, I could have the greatest CMO in front of me, and, but not really even know how to utilize them, because I don't even know, I don't even understand true marketing, and that is also something we've perpetuated ourselves.

Monica Spieles  10:11
And I was sitting around the table with a bunch of executives recently, and they're all running really successful small businesses, and and all of them still have this had this like confusion around really what marketing should be doing for their business, because it's just this giant black box of tactics and things and people, and so to then kind of look at it the way that you introed it was Jen was it's a growth lever, it's a growth lever, and it doesn't have to be any more confusing than that. It's just simply one of the many vehicles that we get to use and be strategically influenced by to grow the business, and just erase everything else, erase the titles, erase marketing, like, erase the title of it in and of itself, because anything else just gets us confused and kind of set in a box that doesn't need to exist. So it's just funny how, like, you just go, you start looking at the whole line that's kind of strung together, and you think, well, no wonder there are all these CMOs out there that are operating in a totally different mindset, because, because the businesses that have hired them, or the ones that are utilizing them, are not even able to hold them accountable to what they should be leading. What a confusion, what a mess we've made. That's kind of what it comes down to.

Branden O’Neil  11:37
It does. How do we fix it?

Jen Singer  11:41
To me, it's it's what Atlas Rose and your methodology is what's solving it, right? It is that shift from well, we have these campaigns that seem to be driving these inbound leads that feels very siloed. I think it's a real holistic view of what the company needs from a capability standpoint, and how are we going to communicate that at every touch point. I think it's it's customer experience too, like really thinking about how these brands are showing up in really fun and surprising places, and I like, and fun. I think it needs to be fun when we start to think of these functions, because growth is fun, success is fun. When we start to talk to clients, or customers, or end users in whatever way that speaks to them, then that sparks ideas that can be fun that we can execute against, and I guess through throughout my career I started in radio long, long ago, and this is before streaming even existed. So I remember selling streaming for the first time on our actual radio stations that were streaming, we syndicated Dave Ramsey, so a little touch point long, long ago, where I got my start.

Jen Singer  13:14
But back in those days it was like a daily vitamin, which I like that idea of if you're doing something every day, your long-term health is going to be better than acutely treating a symptom of, man, our leads are down, let's go and do something real quick, you know, there's something more functional about it, and where I think that we lost the plot was when we got a bunch of digital tools and we had to start talking about attribution and reporting about where did our, where did that marketing budget go? I think about that CFO to CMO battle of not having, not being able to prove that ROI, but the company's growing, but that channel didn't work, or our views are down, so then I feel like kind of marketing had to go on the defensive, and now we're working our way back into getting to be strategic, and I feel sentiment has changed, where that like one to one attribution model hasn't really proven all that effective, unless, unless you're just benchmarking a vendor that's doing one thing for you, are they doing better or worse?

Jen Singer  14:27
But in the overall holistic view of an organization, what's real, what's really working is what's providing growth over over time, and sometimes marketing tactics, those are real foundational storylines that have to be told over and over and over again, and you see this exponential growth later, so that one to one attribution has never really existed. So I think that to me that's where we pull ourselves back in and. It's doing what what Atlas Rose does each and every day. What are where are we going? What are the steps that we need to take to get there? Let's show up every week and work toward that goal.

Branden O’Neil  15:11
Helping them scale strategically.

Randi Beth Burton  15:14
I, uh, story. I sat on a prospect call with Branden, and we were meeting with this client, they, they needed a CMO. We knew that. What his understanding of what a CMO was was, you know, he had marketing in mind. He's thinking, okay, can come in and take some of these things that I'm managing off my plate now, you can manage them, and and what Branden started doing was just started asking, like you just said, Jen, like, "Okay, what are your goals? Where are we trying to go? What's your growth strategy?" And you can tell this guy's like, "Oh, he's kind of digging into some things I didn't know he would get into on this call.

Randi Beth Burton  15:56
And then Branden just says, "Well, okay, if these things that you named, if that's what you want, I've got a marketing manager who can handle those things for you. It doesn't sound like that's what you're asking for, though. And he just kind of repeated back some of the things, and he's like, "Which one of those you want? And the guy was like, "I want, I want that one, which was the CMO, real CMO work. And what I loved about that call was through the process of asking questions and establishing goals. We were able to differentiate between attack a tactician and a CMO, and had them asking for it. We weren't selling them on it, we weren't saying this is what you need, they were actually asking for that from us, which going back to how do we fix it. It's, you know, being able to sit in those conversations and not just say yes to the tactic thing that the, you know, the company needs, but help open their eyes bigger to what a real CMO can do for their business, and helping is in helping think about those growth levers is then puts you in a position to be able to do that going forward within this company, and you're not trying to back yourself out of, oh, I just became this tactical octopi.

Branden O’Neil  17:16
We've been talking about term

Monica Spieles  17:19
It's familiar.

Randi Beth Burton  17:21
I can't quit saying it. I just became this tactician that I didn't want to be.

Jen Singer  17:27
I'm curious about, you know, how you think about the small business entrepreneurs. In my experience, these are individuals who, I mean, they know everything about the different parts of their business, oftentimes not classically trained. I mean, these are.. I see a need, I have the wherewithal, and just gumption to get things done, and building their place to a successful business, they get to a certain point, and then they start to plateau and not figure out why. Well, I know I've read these books. I, we need to get into this channel or we need to produce this content, and so I think there's there hasn't been a framework that a lot of small businesses have seen to have a real strategic partner before, and I'm curious, from your experience, how, how true is that?

Branden O’Neil  18:25
I'll say frameworks are being adopted in the small business more now than they, than, than I think, maybe they ever have been, in. Like, look at EOS, for instance, right, from an operations standpoint, EOS is a wonderful framework. It's because it takes the guesswork out of running a business. I don't have to figure out how to run a meeting, I don't have to figure out the structures of my organization, I don't have to figure all that stuff has been thought through and tried and true and proven, and when you adopt that, what you're able to do from that point on is go serve clients better, right. And so when you're not working 110% on your business, and you get to go and serve clients well, then your profitability is just going to go up, your lifestyle is going to go up, and all that stuff

Branden O’Neil  19:19
Well, the same is true from a marketing standpoint, so when you're able to adopt a playbook, adopt a methodology into your, into the business for your growth engine, then the same, the same thing happens, right? So now all of a sudden you're able to, you're able to grow, you've got somebody to help lead that, it's being done in a strategic way to find repeatable, you know, the Atlas Rose CMO leaves, and that framework is still there, and you can still operate on that framework, and it works, and it wins. So it takes the guesswork out of it.

Branden O’Neil  19:54
The biggest aha moment I had 14 years ago when I was starting Atlas Rose was that people just didn't know what to do next, like it was just that people were just looking at the small business specifically, just needed confidence in knowing what to do next with their marketing. What do I do next? What do I do first? What do I do second? What do you do third? And nobody was there, and I would argue that that even today we really struggle with providing that kind of clarity to folks, so you've got CMOs that shouldn't be calling themselves CMOs, you got real legit CMOs that are out there, whatever, right, that are creating on-the-fly agendas, but when you're able to adopt something that's tried and true and and has a purpose to it again, like an EOS, gosh, it takes all the guesswork out of it. You can just move forward confidently, and then you get to solve bigger problems, you know. So, I think that's...I think that answers your question. I think that's the benefit of it.

Jen Singer  20:58
Yeah, I think I feel like it's. it's helping organizations that have probably felt a little bit reactive as they build move into a proactive space, so that they do have the head space, the mindset that they're not getting derailed just by the tactic of the day, or the problem, or the issue, or we need to change this to make the customer happy. It really gives a confidence for them to sit back and say, you know what, we have a plan, and I'm not worried, I can sleep at night, and I know it's gonna get...we're moving forward.

Monica Spieles  21:30
I think so much of the framework is.. it goes back to, we had this conversation on Monday around one of our core values being guide. And the way that the framework is set up to guide and coach clients through where we're at and where we're going and why actually helps them operationalize this like this function of marketing in a way that they need, because if you think about it, I'm not a CFO, I don't know, you know, if everyone kind of fits this model, but I think CFO, CEO, COO, they kind of have this mindset of of operations, very process-oriented, and so marketing is, is like, actually the, it can feel very opposite of all that, it can feel too, too ethereal, a word we've heard a couple times, a little bit too free forming, the wild west, fluff and frou frou, and all these things, like there's a lot of terms associated with marketing not even being strategic, so the the teaching is that if you're a good CMO, if you, if you understand the framework that that we operate in, it creates freedoms for you to be creative, to test things, to drive towards results within this mechanism that is still strategic and that brings comfort to a client when they're when they're walking alongside you in that way and you're coaching them through that and you're helping them learn that and it's not just let me go do a bunch of things and I'll come back and I promise we'll grow or we'll see this we'll see this happen in a couple quarters and I promise that that line item that I'm asking for budget on will make sense, all of these things don't satisfy the operation side of of a of the rest of the team's brain,

Monica Spieles  23:11
And so I think that this component of framework is crucial for a CMO to operate in, because then they're satisfying the the need and the justification and the accountability that the rest of their leadership really needs out of them, and if you don't have that, then you're just, you seem irresponsible, but you know exactly what you're doing, you know what it can drive to, you, you've been living in this for a long time, there's a ton of experience in that, so I think that it's so important to recognize that that need to satisfy the rest of leadership team creates that bond of trust and understanding of what you're driving towards, and then will make you more successful, because you actually have buy-in in the strategic direction you want to go.

Randi Beth Burton  23:56
I was sitting next to a COO, and the conversation was around innovation, and his role, he was saying he has a really hard time with that, because his role is essentially to protect, he's protecting the operations, he's making sure that things are operating efficiently, that they're not going crazy, that they're operating within these boundaries, just like you said, and then he's like, but to him marketing it came down to risk. It feels risky. It feels like it's driving hard in this direction that he's not wanting to go, because he wants to protect, and so those two positions are almost at odds with one another, and then it created a space for a great conversation around the frameworks that we operate within, and that that creates the mitigation to that risk that needs to be there, because it's not just innovation for the sake of innovation, it's not just exploration or trying a million things that kind of flash in the pan type of mentality.

Branden O’Neil  25:00
It's also not spending money. You don't have to spend money to be a great marketer.

Randi Beth Burton  25:04
Yeah, yeah. So it was, it was a nice meeting of the minds on that, because though, as we were sitting there, we felt diametrically opposed to one another, and that it made me think, I wonder if, if, if many of our clients feel this way when we're bringing these, these ideas and initiatives to the table, and they're like, hold on, what's that going to do to how we operate.

Monica Spieles  25:29
And circles back to what you were really saying in the beginning, Jen, which was just around the frameworks that we're operating in, are not just for marketing, they really tie together all functions and all aspirations of of the business for growth, and so it's not operating in this silo, it has to be in line with all the other things that need to make that need to work for that to happen. It's just beautiful the way it comes full circle. We do not need to be operating in this marketing is the answer to all things, marketing is a lever amidst all their things that we are also have our eyes on as a leader, especially in small business.

Jen Singer  26:10
Yeah, and marketing really is, I mean, if we can shift this, it to me is ubiquitous across the organization. I mean, if you have a logo on something that means that it's representing your company. How does that look, feel both for your employees, both for your customers, your vendors, all of that relationship building, even something as small as an email signature that is consistent across your organization that let levels up your professionalism, how you can step and be seen in in the marketplace, and to me those, those are small things that technically that's marketing, right? So any, you have to put a logo on it and talk to a customer about it, that's going to be, that's going to have an edge to marketing to it, and that it can be supported by/

Branden O’Neil  27:06
Yeah. Well, I would like to, I'd like to jump back up to the strategy level, and and hone in on something that you said earlier, and that's again, that's just that marketing doesn't scale companies, that strategy scales right, and and we've talked about that before. You and I have strategy scales, and then you have a, you have a viewpoint of strategy scales and values are the framework of strategy. So, I'd like, I'd love for you to just dig into that. What do you mean? What do you mean by that? Teach us, teach us more about that.

Jen Singer  27:44
I mean, you guys are leading from example. You look at your values and it tells you exactly what the company's about, but what I found across my experience is it's the companies who really ingrain those values, and every day it's not just a poster on a wall. Things that drive me crazy are like integrity. Well, what does that mean? Are you expecting people are not telling the truth, that they're not showing up for their clients? How do you make a decision on integrity if that, that's to me a crazy value? Because I would, there's an assumption that we're in business and we should be integrity living in integrity anyway, but what does it mean? Does that mean that we never tell a lie, that we always are transparent with our prices, and so I found when you.

Jen Singer  28:37
So for Avid Caddy, one of our brand values is motivation with sophistication, so we're an indoor golf simulator business, and that value is that we know that we can have people improve their golf game because of the technology sophistication that's there, so that is so, how do we get people really stoked up through the use of technology, so that helps frame our strategic decision making, what we're going to spend money on, how we evaluate new technology that we want to bring in, is it going to bring that level of both sophistication, wow that's cool, and motivation?

Jen Singer  29:22
Another organization of mine, Medium Giant, was a, it's a big media marketing firm, and we were creating our values after a, I think, for business acquisition and merger, so we got to redefine really everything, and one of them is purpose-driven curiosity. We wanted to be really clear, like it's not just being curious and asking why for a reason, like what is the underpinning why for your why, and and so we started to hire for that. It was in our job descriptions. When we did performance reviews, it was in our performance reviews when we were thinking about campaigns or how to talk to ourselves about ourselves. It was that curiosity, but rooted in a real direction.

Jen Singer  30:14
So I feel like when you add that value system into a decision making framework, then that feeds that naturally is going to feed into your brand standards, it's naturally going to feed into your communication style or brand archetype, whatever that is, but also starting to give your employees, your team members, your colleagues real tact, like this is where you get really tactical with values when we are in QBRs with clients and we say that purpose driven curiosity, this is how it's going to show up, or another one of the values was always challenge the status quo, but not to be a contrarian, to really push the edge, so we then went into job descriptions and outlined exactly what that means in their individual roles, how that value would manifest in real time, so that being the basis and foundation of our brand is built in from the very fabric of who we're hiring, how we're looking at vendors, the types of pivots we need to go in as a business, and and there's some some CEOs that that's not their thing, they're building a business to try to make money there, but the long lasting you're wanting to build a legacy kind of business that's really going to be able to scale. Sometimes it feels like, well, are we going to bog down? This feels like an HR thing, like it, it can't be. It's really that foundation of your strategy. How do we. There was a cacao company. I drink, I drink cacao every day.

Monica Spieles  32:05
Like, hot cocoa?

Jen Singer  32:05
Nope. It is a ceremonial grade, like non-processed chocolate.

Monica Spieles  32:09
I always have to say myself to say it the correct way. So I'm always like, I'm just gonna say cocoa in my mind.

Jen Singer  32:16
But this business owner is looking to build out a community around this, and doing some ceremonies, and so when we did a value exercise, we realized that raw was one of her values, and what does that mean? Well, in sourcing, we have to have like a certain level of rawness to the organic products she's going to use, it's how she wants people to feel like they can show up, they're raw, complete, like whoever you are yourself, so and then as marketers start to think about, like, now how do you take that kind of value and and surprise and delight and add it to campaigns? I mean, it's really an idea sparker and true and authentic, and that that sometimes I think is the hardest thing to do in marketing, especially with companies that don't have that authentic connection to a value. How do you make it sound real? And in the world of AI, I feel like consumers are out there, like we can pick out now what's what's authentic, what was computer or robot generated, and so stories connection ideas, that's all supported through a real value system that's at the core of your business.

Monica Spieles  33:35
Yeah, and it's not only what, what, what's being composed that is fabricated, but it's that if stories are fabricated, or if they're real, and so when you have a real mission that's connected to a truth, like your story is truly connected to your mission, that you can't fabricate, and it's felt, and it's seen in and through all the different things that you use to articulate that, and I think that is really important for businesses to hone in on, like, yes, you may sell something, a good, a service, whatever it may be, but getting back to that why, and we talk about this all the time, that brands, we elevate brands' culture and mission, and your culture is representation of your brand in many, many ways, and then that is fueled by a lot of times that culture is also fueled by its, by its mission, and it's connected connectivity to that mission, and then that helps fuel the brand, like it's just this cycle that happens, and when it's when it's in unison, it works really, really well, when it's made up and it's fabricated, it's it's sniffed out and it's just there, and it's a poster, and it doesn't work for you, so it's so important.

Randi Beth Burton  34:45
What do you do, Jen, when you enter, start working with a company who doesn't have values in place? What's your approach to that?

Jen Singer  34:56
Much like what Atlas Rose does with your launch sequence, it. Just to me, is this is not I've been with with companies that have spent hundreds of thousands on consulting groups to come and do all kinds of interviews, and then, like, here, let's roll out the values, and then we're going to paint them on the wall. I don't think it needs to take that much time. I mean, especially with founder-led businesses, small businesses, that senior owner, entrepreneur, they know what their why is for it's to me, it's 90 minutes where we sit, we talk through several questions about really what's fueling them, what what they want their product or thing to change in the world. How is this going to affect the communities? What are non-negotiables? And so I find values are always going to be reflected from the CEO, president, that business owner, and so it starts with them and helping them. Often they have a vision, and they might have a mission, but how, how are we going to show up to do those things? Is the value work, and they already have it in their mind, and it just takes somebody to ask the right kinds of questions and synthesize the right way with a layer of practicality.

Jen Singer  36:21
Great, it's a, that's a great value. And how will it play out in somebody's everyday life? So, getting to have a partner that pressure tests that. So, this is what I typically do. It's, I have, I, there's a little bit of a questionnaire, so somebody can be reflective. They then we'll get together for an hour or so, ask deeper questions, and then I come back with a readout that's like, hey, this is what I've heard, is this something that we can commit to, because if so, we're going to lock it, if not, we'll continue to revise and refine, but most times it's like, wow, nobody has put it back to me in this kind of way before, and it's for Maggie's, you know, one of my values for Blueprint to Bold is make room, and for me it's really important for everyone to feel like they have a seat at a table that they can have a voice, so that's that's how I build my engagements too, so it's not one side or power struggle, but it, but again, that for me to really sit down, look through what I want to bring into the world, the values were actually a lot easier to identify than I think some people might feel daunted, like that feels really big, and it's going to be a big project. It's already in your heart. We got it. I like that,

Branden O’Neil  37:45
Jen, I would say what you're describing here is is the reason why you went down a path of, well, I don't really view myself as a marketer, right? It's more of a marketing ops or an operations person, because I think a lot of marketers would look at core values or the lack thereof and say you should fix that, maybe, maybe they would say that, maybe not, right? Or you come in and you're asking about the profitability of products, or you're coming in and asking about the organizational development of of the org and helping them create an accountability chart, or you're helping them, you know, understand key hires and fires that we might need, or whatever, right? All those things are are housed under operations, typically, and I think that's sad, I think that's wrong, and I say, How can you call yourself a CMO if you're not willing to dive into those kinds of conversations?

Branden O’Neil  38:52
Maybe if you're a marketing director, right? Maybe if you're a director of marketing and you're in your charge is truly just marketing, but if you're going to call yourself a C suite. How dare you? How dare you be okay with, with the company not having core values and things like that, and not even just from a value standpoint, but also if you're a CMO, you know that your marketing strategy is not going to come to fruition, that the scale is not going to come if the company doesn't have some, some of these core things in place, right. So, going back to Monica, I loved it because you, you said brand culture and mission, and I had that written down. I was going to bring it up too, because our mission is to elevate brands, culture, mission through executive level marketing help. All right, so brand culture mission, brand is easy, of course. You're going to think I'm going to come in and elevate your brand, but culture and mission - that's our, that's our - that's where we get to get messy into the operations side, into the business side of things, which is, which is what we have to do in order for us to be able to call ourselves CMOs. Otherwise, we're not. We're a consultant, we're an agency. Were something else, or something else, so I love that you said that, and I love, I loved our conversation right from the get go of the way that you think about this, because it's you're all what you're describing is just a CMO. This is a way a CMO should show up.

Jen Singer  40:17
Am I a CMO?

Branden O’Neil  40:18
You're a CMO.

Jen Singer  40:29
But you know, Branden, there's there's a real ROI value too, because that's what I don't want is to be misconstrued that this feels fluffy, and it's just a good feeling for people when, because you're right, it informs culture when culture has a lot of autonomy, and people can operate with confidence in the direction that they're going. That improves operational effectiveness. It improves customer relationships. You get to start to. there's a real business reason, along with the keeping employees, people want to continue to work toward goals with teams. I mean, that's kind of the human nature. So, when we can can think about internally, how are we communicating and giving the right kinds of places for employees to see themselves within these values, it, it will, it makes money, and it accelerates growth. There's no doubt about it.

Jen Singer  40:45
Is that the whole point of our podcast is convincing me?

Randi Beth Burton  41:12
This was really an intervention.

Jen Singer  41:17
Okay, guys, I got it.

Monica Spieles  41:32
You mitigate bad hires and turnover, and all those things that are very operational, very much tied to a line on the books, and was something that we, I got to hear a stat on recently at a conference for Total Rewards, and they were talking about one that I think it was the stat was like 70% or 69% of employees were satisfied at their compensation, and then they said 70% of the employees were satisfied with their benefits, and 75% of those employees were still looking for other jobs, because they were not seen, they didn't feel like they were connected to mission, they weren't known those, and it was really tied to these underlying values of culture that matter so much that are part of what we have to protect, and so, like, you just, you again, you make those connected dots to to all of it, being as you said, Jen, there's there's an ROI to it, it's not fluffy, it's not. This would be nice to have. This is this is one element of so many elements that are protected in the vein of brand culture and mission, and the way that they have to work together. There are stats to prove it, which is really interesting for where the workforce is right now.

Branden O’Neil  42:57
Jen, how does this.. how does it.. how does this intersect with. I mean, you've chosen, you've chosen small business, right? You've chosen to start your own small businesses to work within and support small businesses. So, I'm just curious, like, it's funny because you'll come into a lot of small small business and the playbook may not be their core values, like that's a waste of time, right? So it's like you get into these big corporations, and they, like you said, they've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to develop these things, but Who you and I, all of us, we've all decided to really serve and dedicate our careers to are these small businesses. So why, why are you doing that? Why are you serving these guys, these small guys?

Jen Singer  43:45
I grew up, my dad and mom were entrepreneurs. He ran an insurance agency for 20 years, and then moved into local publishing, and I, I got to have a front row seat at the impact that he got to make in the community, so we and his perspective was so much about connection and being able to deliver something that's going to change somebody's life, but also the impact that you can see it right there in front of you, so and for me, I like small business because I, my little ego side of me, I can, I can have big impact really quick, especially when you start to put in a framework and structure and strategy, man, there's a client I've been working with for two and a half weeks already, and what we, we worked really hard that first week, we set strategy, and now we're executing, and the impact I've already been able to make, so it feels good for me, and I get to see how that value is pulled through to organizations.

Jen Singer  45:07
And I also, I think, enterprises, it's hard to change that 18 wheeler going down the highway, right? Like, when they need to change lanes, it's going to take 12 looks at three different mirrors, and making sure it's not on an uphill slope. I think small business is is like a Fiat, we can just bob and weave and be nimble, and that I think it allows to operate at a speed that you can't get in large organizations that you have to be at 10 different meetings just to talk about what you talked about last week in the last week's meeting. This is where real things can get done in organizations, you know, under, under 100 you, you could move really, really fast,

Jen Singer  46:00
And I mean, in organizations, my our Avid Caddy Golf Lounge, there's three of us, and we can still move really fast because we are operating at the same going in the same direction, we know what our strategy is, and no one is afraid to just raise their hand when it doesn't fall into directly into their job title, I find that to be really true in small business, in small business teams, I mean, the amount of people that I've worked with that has such curiosity to, like, I know that I'm in billing right now, but I'm really interested in content development, can, so being able to allow people opportunities to show their strengths in different ways, instead of just restricting them into certain roles. I, I just have such a passion for it. I think it's amazing, and it's, it's what makes our amazing country amazing. It's really that small business to me that I'm so aligned with that keeps our communities going. It's what supports our local festivals. It supports local schools. I'm really, really passionate about the big business small business can do. What about you guys? I mean, what's what is what fuels your passion for small business? I mean, we're all in here because we have a love for entrepreneurship, and so what is it? What is it for each of you?

Branden O’Neil  47:26
Early on, I mean, so I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. Also, my dad was a financial advisor, my uncles were financial advisors, my grandfather, same thing. Just, and then growing up, we started all these businesses and things to just.. we.. I was part of a big family. I was the oldest of eight children, and sometimes you just got to do what you got to do to survive, and we did all kinds of things. So, very entrepreneurial mindset. Most of my siblings, if not all of them, are right now are entrepreneurs. So, it's the way we grew up for sure. I fell in love with the small business, I think, through that, but especially in my time with on with EntreLeadership. So, when I was working for Dave Ramsey, in my time with EntreLeadership, of just witnessing all of these small businesses and the challenges that they have, and then particularly with, with how marketing is not serving them well, and then the stat of 90% of American business has 20 employees or less. It just lit me on fire. I was like, oh my gosh, this is.. this is.. you guys hear me say it all the time. Small business is the backbone of America, right? And, and our industry is not serving them well, and. and then, so I started to get into that, started to get into serving them, and I fell deeper and deeper in love with it, and I love every aspect of it. I love that they're gritty, I love that they've got to figure it out every day, I love all the millions of ways that people have figured out how to make money, how to create economy. I love those things. I was walking down a beach, we were in Hawaii, and we stopped off at this stand in Maui, and this lady in this little hut was selling banana bread. She was just selling banana bread, and I got into a conversation with her. Well, lo and behold, what she does in selling banana bread, she makes like $200,000 a year in just making and selling, this little old lady in a hut on the road to Hana, making, making and selling banana bread. I was like, that's amazing, that's a small business, right? The ingenuity of people, and how to provide enough value that people will give certificates of appreciation, little green things called dollars, that that in exchange for that value is just, it's amazing, and so to do whatever we can. To serve them, you know, in the ways that the ways that we do, I've just, I just love it. If you can't tell, I really, really love small business.

Jen Singer  50:09
Yeah, the ingenuity, the grit, the innovation that can happen just from some any anyone that can see an opening and has a path to get there, and I've.. it's.. I'm in awe all the time, of like, wow, you built what from banana bread. People need banana bread. It also sounds like a book on the road to Hana, a banana bread story, a banana bread woman.

Branden O’Neil  50:39
There's another one, there's another one that I witnessed. There is a.. we were on another vacation, funny enough. And this one was on a cruise. We were in the Grand Caymans, and we were.. we were walking along a beach, and this guy was there, and what he did was he.. he like carved out different things on the inside of coins, so took, took a coin, took a quarter, or whatever, and like carved out maybe the face of the quarter, or you know, a T for Tennessee, or whatever, like he just carved things out on the inside of these coins and sold these coins for like 20 bucks, and and I got to talking to him, he was like, he's like, I may, he didn't tell me the dollar figure. He said I make way more than I need. He's like, I balance half my year I live here, half my life I live here, and I make way more money than I need to off of this alone. I'm like, he carves quarters, are you kidding me? That's amazing. It's amazing, incredible figuring it out.

Jen Singer  51:40
Yeah, but you know what? Look at that amazing marketing that he just did. How he told a story, how he showed his own value. He painted a picture. I, and, and has built a business off of that. So, I mean, walking up and down a beach is marketing.

Randi Beth Burton  52:00
That you're still talking about to this day on a podcast.

Branden O’Neil  52:03
Still getting that story wrong after all these years.

Jen Singer  52:07
It sounds like Branden just likes long walks on beaches.

Monica Spieles  52:09
Yeah, I know. Wait a second.

Jen Singer  52:12
You get approached a lot.

Randi Beth Burton  52:17
Monica, why do you love the small business?

Monica Spieles  52:19
I was, I was, you know, as funny, because as you asked that question, Jen, I'm thinking I don't know that I've ever really reflected on this until this very moment. So this is my raw answer. It's that I certainly, I have very, I had very entrepreneurial grandparents, and you know, my grandpa was a photographer, owned his own studio. My grandma would paint the pictures for him to bring color to life in the, in the photos, and that was, I mean, that was their whole business. My other Grandpa did everything under the sun that you can imagine, but it really was not this direct influence. I think it, it grew in appreciation over time, especially in working with all the businesses that we've worked with. I think what it comes down to is I just love people, and when you get to work with small businesses, you see you see the people, and you get to understand their heart and why they got into it, and who they want to serve, and how they light up when they get to treat their employees the way that they want, when they get to serve their customer in a way that they dreamed, and so when you just, I think, when you get to serve small business, you get to see the heart of people, and that will never get old. I will just love doing that every day, despite what size, what process is being used, all of it. It's you just get to encounter the heart of people.

Randi Beth Burton  53:38
I actually pulled out my C12 curriculum because this quote is in it this month that was pretty instrumental to me early on when I was choosing my career and it's: The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. That's by Frederick Buettner. And when I was I went I was in the business school as well, that I finished my college experience with marketing, and it was like that's kind of all I have left to do, and it's time to graduate, so marketing is what I'm doing. And I was doing some real soul searching post college, trying to figure out, just like, okay, where, where do I do with this? Where do I use it? And someone introduced that quote to me, and, and so I started exploring, okay, what's my deep gladness then? And where do I see hunger around me? And I feel like small business fits into that so beautifully, because I love learning about all of the different small businesses, it that brings me gladness. Working with people brings me gladness. I had someone tell me, like, you can't be good at everything, you need to, like, hone a skill set and go deeper if you want to, like, have a job around something that becomes a career, and it was like, alright, then I'm doubling down on marketing. I'm going to get good at it. I'm going to make this my thing, and, and so, anyway, I think I love this idea of like ripple effects, and if I can input myself, insert myself in this just experience that I've gathered, that does bring me a lot of joy, and that can help other people to progress their passions and missions forward, and that feels like worthy work to do in a way that God uses me.

Randi Beth Burton  54:32
Well. I will wrap us up as well. Jen, thank you so much for taking your time out of your day today to chat with us, and for us to just to get to hear more of your story, as well. It's, it's been fun getting to know you, and look forward to continuing to do that. And we won't always be recording those conversations, but thanks for joining us.

Jen Singer  54:29
Well, I, this is, this is my honor, my joy to be a part of this, to be a part of this team, and it just could not speak more highly of what Atlas Rose is doing, the frameworks that we have, and what we're bringing into the world. It's something to be extremely proud about, and just that everyone has such a servant heart, like it. I'm, I feel extremely lucky to be sitting here today with everyone.

Monica Spieles  56:24
Thank you.

Branden O’Neil  56:24
Thank you, Jen.