099: She Leads Digital: Inspiring Stories of Women in Marketing (Best of Episode) – Part 2

She Leads Digital – Episode Transcript: 

 

Danny Gavin Host

00:05

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Mentor. I’m your host, danny Gavin, and, together with industry leaders and marketing experts, we’ll explore the meeting point of mentorship and marketing. We’ll discover how these connections have affected careers, marketing strategies and lives. Now get ready to get human. Now get ready to get human. From previous interviews In this segment, we’re celebrating women who are making waves across the digital marketing landscape. 

00:46

You will hear stories that touch on key themes shaping the industry today, including the power of mentorship and networking, the importance of ongoing education and professional development, and navigating career shifts into digital marketing. Plus, you’ll gain insights on personal branding and specialized roles in content creation, seo and paid media. These conversations showcase how women are leading with authenticity, building supportive communities and embracing change to stay ahead. Whether it’s discovering the power of mentorship, balancing the demands of a dynamic career or redefining success through strategic thinking and creativity, these stories serve as both inspiration and guidance for anyone looking to thrive in digital marketing. So sit back and get ready to be moved by these remarkable women and their journeys, because their experiences remind us that diversity, resilience and innovation are truly shaping the future of digital marketing. 

 

01:38 speaker: Katy Katz

At the University of Minnesota there were definitely several professors that were very impactful for me. One who stood out was Professor Alan Fine, who I stayed in contact with many years after college. He also was involved in politics and so in the business school he really led from sort of that lens again, also kind of that orator type of person. I looked to him for many ways in professional career going once I started working but also could just continued up that conversation. He ended up writing a book in different ways that we communicated going forward and I haven’t spoken to him in a while but absolutely he was a huge impactful person on the early part of my career. 

02:27 speaker: Katy Katz

There are many non-traditional mentorship relationships that are very impactful for me and I don’t like to pigeonhole it into that kind of traditional definition. 

02:42

Many of the kind of leading relationships at this point in my life sometimes are people who are early in their career but just have different experiences and we can kind of learn, teach and grow together and I find that to be very rewarding for both sides. 

02:59 speaker: Katy Katz

I benefited from bosses that I worked with early in my career. One of them was Josh Broughton, who he really I attribute a lot of my interest in speaking to him, he encouraged all of us to get out and blog and speak, even when we felt like we didn’t have anything to say. That’s how we met people within marketing in our professional career who helped us advance and move further along to our goals. And so, again, I wanted to give back and share those skills in any way that I could and joined different boards and organizations within the communities I’ve been in as a result of that. So it’s sort of it’s been this sort of like stepping each time. You know that the different people in my life showed me how those relationships can be of benefit and brought value to me, and then I wanted to share that and pay it forward. 

Danny Gavin Host

04:00

How do you tailor your mentorship approach to different individuals? 

 

04:03, speaker: Katy Katz

I really kind of jump back to that, what I was saying earlier about non-traditional relationships. 

04:11

I personally find that, and maybe it’s partly because of this, I like to be in a more learn-teach relationship with people that I’m learning from, because I am a very curious and have lots of thoughts and ideas and I like to have it be more of like a Socratic dialogue, and so I approach the mentorship relationships with younger people the same way that I’m looking to have it be a dialogue. And what’s important to you right now, what are you looking for to grow and how can we have a conversation about that? But also have it go both ways, because I feel that it establishes trust when I’m also taking advice and listening and hearing what somebody that I’m working with has to offer. I also try and open our relationship beyond the discipline that we are. Maybe the mentorship is focused on. We are people, right. We’re whole people. We’re not just toy marketers. So I think it’s important to see the whole person and everything that’s impacting their life and how that is affecting how they are coming to the table today. 

Danny Gavin Host

05:29

When you look at the people that you learn from and the people you look up to, what are some traits that you feel like make people a good mentor? 

 

05:36 speaker: Chayale Kaufman

I would say holding a certain calmness, keeping whoever’s under you or whatever’s going on around you. There’s a certain demeanor of calmness, allowing everybody around you to do what they need to do. Again, we’re talking in business, not necessarily in midos or in character traits or in anything like that. This is something I would say that really is the most productive way to lead a team is with that calmness, with that confidence, and I look up to that. When I see people that have high positions, that can keep a certain calmness and a grace, I see very, very high qualities in them. It shows there’s control, there’s self-control, there’s discipline. It’s work usually comes from somebody that’s a worked on person that they’re able to take the situation, keep it under control and work through it and make sure that everybody around them feels supported. So I think that’s a huge trait. I like them to know that I’m always here, meaning a lot of people on my team are self-motivated, because that’s a trait that we look for when we’re hiring. They’re motivated, they have a sales skill, they have a lot of good qualities to begin with, but they know that I am completely here for them to bounce anything around. There’s an issue? Talk it through, call me speak it, things like that. I also open up calls. Anyone in my company that wants to join a call to just hear and gain from even a client that they have no connection to. Let them hear, let them learn. I’m always open to that. 

07:04 speaker: Chayale Kaufman

The challenge that we do have, though, is that I have a lot of remote employees. They don’t get to see me day in and day out and work with me day in and day out. There are some that do work in person with me, but I feel like it would be there’s so much more to learn if we were together. One of my employees came one day and she took a desk here and we had an event at night that we were together. One of my employees came one day and she took a desk here and we had an event at night that we were working with the clients on. So she’s like you know what I’ll come for the day, I’ll work there and then we’ll go together. We had such a great day. You know. She, like was able to learn so much. So I feel like anyone that’s able you know, to like in-person experience, a mentor or someone of like being able to work side by side to them, learn from them. 

Guest

07:44 speaker: Ameet Khabra

But I remember at one point I used to talk to so many of like my followers because I had done more stories and there was this one person who was also doing Google ads and we’d talk about ads like all the time and I’d tell her what I was up to and all this great stuff, and then all of a sudden, I didn’t hear from her for maybe about I want to say like four to to six months or something long enough that I had noticed that she was kind of gone. And then I went back to try to find her and her account wasn’t anywhere and I was like, hmm, I wonder what happened. So I, randomly, I um, opened up my phone and there’s a message from like a new account on Instagram or whatever, and I opened it up in the set person and the message basically read I switched careers and meet. And I was like and she was. And then literally it was just I saw how much passion and how much love you had for PPC and I realized that I didn’t match it anywhere close to that and that must mean something. 

08:32 speaker: Ameet Khabra

So she’s like I do content now and I’m significantly happier and like that story stays with me years and years and years and I was like, ah, that was my good thing that I did. That was the one good thing that I did with my career was the fact that I helped somebody see that maybe it wasn’t for them as much as I want people to. I mean, my whole platform is trying to encourage people to kind of start doing their ads themselves or for clients or whatever. But it was just yeah, it was just a really. It was a really cool moment for me where I was just like, oh, like I did that, like that was really cool. 

 

09:02 speaker: Taylor McMaste

Sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves of like I need a coaching plan and I need to be learning how to be a better coach and things like that. But really it’s more getting on the same level as them. And sometimes they say, with kids, you have to kneel down and talk to them and be on their level. And I feel like that is the way that I approach it. It’s like, okay, I’ve been in your shoes, I’ve done these sales calls, I’ve done the account management, I’ve experienced all of the things, so I can relate to you. Let’s really talk about this and let’s brainstorm together. 

09:36 Taylor McMaste

I’m not. I find it really hard not to just tell someone what to do. So that is something that’s taken time for me to really work on is really working on my listening skills and then saying do you want me to give you a suggestion or do you just want me to listen? And really identifying where they’re at and maybe it’s just a bad day or maybe they need strategies to get them through this in the long term, but really getting on their level and really working through how they can solve issues on their own and coaching and mentoring on an ongoing basis and not letting people just run off on their own. So we do weekly touch points Like hey, you know I’m here every week. You can Slack me anytime, but we have a dedicated time on our calendar to really like work through issues or problems or celebrate the wins. But giving people that dedicated time and really just like listening to what their problems are,

Danny: I feel like I want you to be my boss. 

10:36  Taylor

Sure, come on over. 

 

10:39: Katy Katz

When it comes to education. You know that has always been very important to me. My parents are both very highly educated. They have social work backgrounds, so my mom was a high school principal. That definitely directed the way that I view education and prioritize it. 

10:59

I think, working in marketing, it is important to be constantly learning and growing and adapting, especially in digital marketing, so I place a heavy importance there. My mom absolutely impressed the value of mentorship for both my sister and I from a young age as she worked in school districts and then later became a high school principal. And she was very involved in the community in Wisconsin and led a program called Bridges which was for at-risk students and I have very early memories of her up on the stage leading these big groups and initiatives and really helping the community out and seeing how impactful that was on the lives of the people who benefited from it and feeling that pride for her but also feeling like that there was a torch. You know almost that it was an important part of just how I was raised and who she was raising me to be. 

 

12:03: Brie Anderson

I went to school for communications. At that time I had already been working with bands. That’s kind of how I got into marketing. So I had already started working with bands and things of that nature. I started working with a startup, a music startup. They were working on like a social media platform aimed for musicians, bands, promoters, venues, labels, things of that nature. 

12:27- Brie Anderson

And at one point the owner kind of asked me he was like you should just drop out of college and move to Nashville and do this full time. And I was like, yeah, my parents would not go for that, but thanks, and things weren’t really working out like playing soccer anymore. I just wasn’t happy and so I decided, hey, this is something that could actually be my future and at the time I was really focused on community building and awareness for these bands and music products I was working with. So I actually found one of the only schools in Kentucky which is where I was at the time, offering a digital marketing degree specifically focused on social media marketing, and I transferred to Western Kentucky University. 

13:12- Brie Anderson

I worked at an agency, I interned at an agency and then I interned for the corporate Airmark, which does all the food services at the college, interned at another agency in town and even did some consulting and stuff like that throughout college. So I went to college but I would definitely say that the majority of my schooling was in just saying. Learning just came from saying yes to opportunities and really getting involved in the industry in any way that I could. 

 

13:47 – Allie Danzinger

And so this summer of 2022, we transitioned to just focus on our training, so we are no longer now matching the interns, and it allows us to scale and really touch now millions of professionals, entry level professionals, opportunity, youth interns, apprentices anyone, college students Now we’re testing things out with high school students. Anyone and everyone we’ve realized needs this training in order to start and launch their careers, and so, by focusing on the training and putting that beautiful algorithm and dating app experience over on the shelf so that we can really focus in a place where there’s no competitors, there’s no one doing anything like this, which is both good and bad, but from a good perspective, it allows us to really be the market leader in what young professionals need to start and launch their careers, coupled with what businesses need young professionals and entry-level employees to need in order to make sure that they’re productive and thinking things the right way and understanding the way that the workplace works from day one. 

 

14:56 – Shaina Keren 

And so, to me, a mentor isn’t somebody who you want to emulate everything about them. I think that’s what a lot of people work at a mentor as, and then they get upset when their mentor say, gets divorced or, you know, does something like that they’re, you know they’re just. Like I can’t believe it. I, you know my whole life. And to me, like I think I have the same approach when I come to work, I am trained to look at each person and see their best qualities. 

15:21: Shaina Keren 

You know anyone who I’m sitting with as a client. That’s my focus, and it’s funny because I think I’m sort of a I don’t consider myself not a judgmental person, but I think that you can take that judgmental lens and use it for the positive or for the negative. And so when I’m meeting someone, I’m going to focus, my focus is automatically on what’s amazing about this person and how could they use that. And so I think I look at mentors the same way. It’s what does this person know in a certain area that I can learn from, I can emulate, benefit from, and to me, it’s, you know, an opportunity to learn from someone who’s done something that you know, you think is incredible Seminary was expensive then and they gave me like a very, very small budget to spend like a month or whatever it was. 

 

16:02: Chayale Kaufman

And also, as a very responsible kind of daughter, I was the type that I wasn’t going to ask for more and I had to figure out a way how, at that point, to cover If I want to go out with friends, or how was I going to do this? So I called up my mother and I said Ma, we’ve been here for 4 or 5 weeks and girls need haircuts. Can you send me a scissor? I had no clue how to cut hair and that’s when I started being the seminary. Salon was my room and everybody came for haircuts. I just learned on the job. We did great styles and we had a really good time and that’s how I had my spending money at that year. 

16:36

So I think that instilled in me that entrepreneurship of owning up. You have a problem, you need a solution, figure out what’s needed. Owning up, like you have a problem, like you need a solution, figure out what’s needed, come up with a plan. And that $50 pair of scissors was, like you know, the best gift my mother could have given me, because I think I wonder she’ll even remember at this stage of life, so many years ago. But I still even tell my kids, like you know, cut hair, you do anything. You do what it takes to really just get yourself in the door to get what you need. 

 

17:06: Danny Gavin Host

Is there one quick exercise people can use to start their journey, to figure out their strengths and affinities? 

 

17:12 – Shaina Keren 

Absolutely. Yeah, it’s so easy and everybody should do it and you can do it for free. So please do Just the basics. You know the personality type, the Myers-Briggs I’m a big fan of it. A lot of the complaints against it or hesitations to it are, I think, when people don’t understand that it’s not supposed to be the whole life solution. It’s just a little bit of useful information that could be really helpful. And seeing people discover that they’re a true introvert or a true extrovert I think is so helpful to people that you’re looking for four basic pieces of information about yourself, right? The introversion, the extroversion are we more down to earth or more futuristic, more emotional, more logical, more planned, more organized? 

17:52

And it’s amazing to hear the comments that people have in sessions when we figure this out Like oh, that’s why my wife is like this and that’s why my mom was like that, and no wonder. Okay, well, if we just you know, once you understand that you understand human nature, it’s a secret to being successful anywhere. And so there’s a free test. I have a free quiz on my website, shanakarencom, where you can watch a video and answer four questions about yourself and then you’ll get the description. You can go on personalitycom if you prefer a longer multiple choice 60personalitiescom. Look for longer multiple choice questionnaire. And then on uslaborgov, I believe it is. There are two tests there’s the Holland Code and there’s another one. It looks like you’re familiar with it. There are plenty of free career tests. That might not be the full answer, and I find that because they’re online multiple-choice tests, so it’s sort of whatever you put in, you’ll get out. So, depending on your mood or your stage of life, you might get different responses, but that’s a really good start. 

18:53

Start with finding out Are you more investigative, Are you more psychology? Are you more business-focused? The point where I think it’s like you want to max out on what that can offer you is when they start making career suggestions, Because those algorithms are limited by what you put in and the career choices I don’t think are necessarily updated on a fast basis as new jobs are created. But I like to use it to the same way I use mentors to give you some information, so then you can take it yourself and figure out. Ok, so the engineer would be a good thing for me. I wonder why? Well, that’s because I’m interested in mechanics, interested in nature. Well, how could I apply that? Do I want to apply that? 

19:32

I think it gets a little bit more complicated at a certain point where you want to make your own decisions just because there’s a recommendation for my lifestyle. And that’s why I work with people doing aptitude testing, which gets more specific. We don’t just rely on data, we also get to know the whole person. But definitely starting with figuring out your personality type, your Holland Code, all those free resources the StrengthsFinder, I think, is an incredible resource also. So all those things are gifts that people should give themselves. Maybe it’s going to cost you $20. I think better than therapy, at least for a start. 

 

20:07: Danny Gavin Host

So are there any common missteps to personal branding that you see? 

 

20:12: Shaina Keren

Well, let’s start with the resume. You know the resume, and that could be followed by LinkedIn profiles, which shouldn’t be another version of your resume. But I think that it’s so strange to me how many people think that their resume is supposed to be a full on history of every burger you’ve ever served in your life. Right, like it’s it’s, we don’t care and it’s not relevant, it’s not useful, and I think the one thing that you know, I’m curious what you’ll hear, what you’ll you would say from a marketing perspective, but I always tell people your, your resume is an advertisement, right, and advertising doesn’t include everything the company does. It includes only the thing that we think that the person might buy, wants to hear, and you are the thing available for purchase now. And so what do you want to tell them about yourself? And if it doesn’t fit into that, then it has too much information. 

 

21:03: Alison Reeves

And then, as far as engagement, there are ways to kind of hack engagement. So if you’re going all in on LinkedIn, it’s like your main thing, the only thing you’re doing, then it’s worth putting your energy into. There are ways to kind of curate more engagement. Generally speaking, I don’t know if it’s worth it, but I do have hacks for most platforms. If you want your engagement to be higher, there’s tips you can use. 

 

21:26: Danny Gavin Host

Do you want to share maybe one or two for LinkedIn? 

 

21:29: Alison Reeves

Yeah, I guess they’re similar for a lot of them. So Facebook, linkedin, instagram, the ways to help your engagement are creating conversations. So if you can have DM conversations that are authentic, don’t do what you’re getting on LinkedIn Like do you want 100 booked appointments every day? 

 

21:46: Danny Gavin Host

Yeah, get a million of those, you know nobody wants those. 

 

21:49: Alison Reeves

Nobody wants 100 appointments a day. Yeah, I get a million of those. Nobody wants those. Nobody wants 100 appointments a day. But starting genuine conversations, it helps, especially on Facebook. I found it helps my organic reach a lot, which I don’t use that strategy anymore. Proactively making new connections, commenting on other people’s posts and then hosting collaborations All those things will help with engagement. And if you have one platform that you’re really invested in, pushing people to that platform from your email list. So, for example, if I want to grow YouTube, then pushing people to the newest videos, that I do. But you can do the same thing on LinkedIn. Even just have a client who will email his email list a post, a link to just an individual post, to try to get more reactions on it. 

 

22:29: Danny Gavin Host

So is there anything you find many of your new clients are missing out on in the world of content marketing? Is there maybe a common theme or thread? 

 

22:36: Alison Reeves

Audience borrowing. So, like with a lot of my clients who are doing everything else right but they want to grow their email list faster, I think audience borrowing is a big missed opportunity. If they are doing audience borrowing and they wonder why it’s not working, it’s usually because they don’t have a focus of like. How am I using this? 

 

22:52: Danny Gavin Host

So, allison, let’s define audience borrowing for those people who don’t know what it is. 

 

22:56: Alison Reeves

So audience borrowing for me is collaborating with someone who is complimentary but not competitive, where you can help each other grow on your preferred platform. 

 

23:04: Danny Gavin Host

How can you use audience borrowing to your advantage? 

 

23:07: Alison ReevesGuest

My favorite way to use it is to try to grow your email list. It depends on what your primary platform is, but I would say there’s lots of different ways you can leverage audience borrowing. So podcasting, hello, good example, but then making sure that when I’m on the podcast, I’m giving Danny a link to my lead magnet or whatever I want the audience to know about. Guest blogging, which I feel like everybody has heard about, but I feel like it’s a little bit harder to do these days. Bundles and summits shout outs, and another really underutilized example of audience borrowing is just email swapping. So find someone who’s a similar size to you and then trade lead magnets. I feel like that’s so underutilized that I have to explain it to people. But in order to get more sales with the same offers you have now, you’ve got to get in front of more people, and you can either wait for the algorithm, run paid ads or find people to audience borrow with. 

Danny Gavin Host

24:02

You take your list, you advertise their offer, and then they take their list and they advertise your offer, and it’s like a win-win situation. Yeah, and do you think in general, are people open to that? 

 

24:13: Alison Reeves

They are. I find that it takes a lot of explaining, which is why I created a $9 course on it so that more people can learn about it. Aliceravesco slash everything, which has everything that I have and that’s near the top. But yeah, once I explain it, you just have to, and there’s scripts in that course on how to ask people to do the things you don’t have to. Otherwise, it can get really complicated and convoluted, because you can also do audience borrowing, where I’ll send my email list your lead magnet. But maybe your email list is really tiny but you have a huge Instagram following, so I’ll send my email list your lead magnet and you’ll do a shout out on Instagram for mine, for example. 

Danny Gavin Host

24:47

How do you feel ethics plays into audience borrowing? Obviously, it’s kind of like taking what people opted into. You didn’t necessarily opt into someone else. 

 

24:58: Alison Reeves

Well, you want people to self-select. 

 

Alison ReevesGuest

25:01

So I’m not going to. If you and I were going to do a trade, I would not give you my email address, my email list. I would email my list a link to your opt-in and they can decide if they want it or not. And then everything else from there is just normal disclosure, like you’re going to be put on my newsletter list. This is how many emails I send out. 

Danny Gavin Host

25:20

Do you ever find that your audience gets annoyed when you’re pushing other people’s offers? 

Alison ReevesGuest

25:24

They haven’t yet, but I’ll keep you updated. I just did this huge bundle where I was promoting 20 other people’s offers and I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that people were really grateful that it was organized and had access to new resources and they’re good. I think part of the ethics of that too, is vetting the people, at least to some degree. 

Danny Gavin Host

25:42

I can’t control the quality of everybody’s business, but True, but I’m sure, knowing you, allison, you’re going to choose people to promote that you feel comfortable. You’re not going to sell yourself out. 

 

26:05: Chaya GlattGuest

I try to. I’m a people person so I naturally gravitated toward teaching and you know, special education is more lucrative than teaching. I know I wanted to be able to support my family, so that was kind of the default path that I took and I always thought of marketers as these, like weird, creative, cool people and like also kind of slimy and manipulative people, and unfortunately, there’s probably good reason why markers have that reputation. But I have learned that most of what I do is not slimy. Nothing that I do is slimy, thank goodness, and it really is about helping people. Just like education is about helping people, branding is about helping people and the people that I help. 

26:52

Thank God, I’m so grateful to work with really fantastic clients who are also sincere, value-driven individuals who have something to bring to the world, need somebody to help them get the word out, need somebody to help, you know, make this seem like an appealing offer so that they can, you know, put this product out and also support their families. And it’s a great endeavor and I love it and it’s so satisfying and I still get to be a people person. One of the biggest benefits is having that community where they ask each other questions and they get that support, or they can ask me questions and they get support. You know, if they’re doing this for a year and I’m doing this for 10, it’s like totally different perspective that I can point out to them. And I think community and support is one of the biggest, like most undervalued, commodities out there. 

27:50

It’s very hard to explain to someone you know pay this amount of money because you’re going to get people who care about you, who answer your questions. You know, like it’s really hard to see that value, but once you have it, it’s enormous. And we actually have in our Slack group for Brands Authority. We have a channel called Silly Question Asking, anyway, and I just think just the fact that that channel is there is so validating because, like here, there’s no such thing as a silly question. You might think it’s silly, just ask it. That’s what we’re here for. 

 

28:24: Danny Gavin Host

I would imagine your background in PR would also have placed a strong emphasis on personal branding. How would you counsel someone who worries their personal brand will be too professional, kind of like cold, bland, lacking uniqueness? 

 

28:36: Stacey Piefer

Well, I think, the cornerstone. I think you would agree with me, danny. You’ve been in this world long enough also to know that there is nothing better than authenticity. You have to be who you are in order for everything to fall into place and be authentic. You know, personal branding does not mean you have to jump off the walls and be, you know, this hyper. You know hyper person that just cannot sit still and you’re in to all of these different things. That that’s not what personal branding is. Personal branding and branding in general is really your authentic self. It’s who you are. 

29:13

And I think when people stop worrying about is my brand exciting enough, is it sexy enough, is it going to get enough attention, I think as soon as you stop worrying about that, you start to figure out what makes it unique and why it’s unique and what makes your brand stand out from others. Because brand is multidimensional. It’s not just one aspect of who you are, it is a combination of a lot of different aspects that create your brand. And I had a conversation with a friend the other day who’s a luxury real estate agent and he’s thinking about going independent. He said I think I’m just gonna name my property or name my company, just my first name, and incorporated or limited or whatever it might be. He says what do you think my brand should be? I said, well, you are the brand. You are the brand. That’s the thing. You have to figure out what that brand means In lieu of everything else. You are the brand, there is nothing but that. So finding out what it is that makes that up is where I think a lot of people get kind of waylaid. 

30:28

On this personal brand thing. You know, personal branding isn’t for me, because I’m not super extroverted, I don’t have an interesting background, I don’t. You know, I can’t stand on my head and juggle at the same time. I think that it is a lot of this, you know. As soon as you take the worry out of it, then you start to really figure out who you are and what your brand is. And no one takes anything else away from this podcast episode. Take that away, please, that you don’t have to be this super gregarious, just outgoing crazy person in order to make impact with your personal brand. Your personal brand is who you are. Embrace it and build from that, and I guarantee everybody has a unique personal brand. They just have to take the worry out of feeling like it’s too. You know it’s not cool enough. 

 

31:20: Danny Gavin Host

So kind of moving one degree away from that. Definitely not to contradict with what you’re saying, but one of the intentions of good personal branding is to encourage the perception of oneself as an authority in their field. Given that you typically work with college students, how do you challenge their likely imposter syndrome or feeling like they don’t have enough experience to be considered an authority figure? 

 

31:39: Stacey Piefer

Okay, so first of all, you just absolutely touched on a topic that I am so incredibly motivated. My goal is to eradicate the word imposter syndrome from the campus of the University of Houston. I hear students say that they have imposter syndrome and it absolutely sends me into orbit. Not because they feel that way, but because someone somewhere along the way has made them feel like they need to feel that way. And when I hear the term imposter syndrome from our students, the first thing I do is I define the word imposter. 

32:19

Now, keeping in mind that imposter syndrome has been around for what you know the past. It’s not new. It’s been a concept coined for what 60, you know past 50,. It’s been a concept coin for what 60, past 50, 60 years. But I define the word imposter which is a person who pretends to be something they’re not for nefarious gain. And I asked my students I said are you intentionally deceiving people for nefarious gain? And they’re like no, they say no, of course not. I said exactly You’re not an imposter, because imposter implies you are trying to be something you’re not in order to deceive others and gain something that’s not rightfully yours. You’re a student, your job is to learn, and I said quite. I always say, quite honestly, we’re all imposters. Then, if that is, if your definition is different from mine, we’re all imposters because we’re all learning and you know, to me, anyone who makes someone feel like they’re not on the same level, or they don’t have the knowledge or they don’t have the experience, anyone who makes someone feel that way, they’re the ones who have the issue, quite honestly, because they’re not being real with themselves. 

33:31

It’s impossible to be an expert in every single aspect of the work that you do, because this world changes so rapidly and our world changes very rapidly. In the marketing world especially, look at technology and the advent of AI and things that are every minute of every hour of every day. It’s growing and evolving and becoming something different. My gosh, danny, when, when I mean how, how often the marketing world are we like? Oh, we have to learn a new platform. What does it do? How does it work? What’s the algorithm? Who is this for customer bridges? Is this for consumer marketing, business to business? Don’t know, but I dig into it and that’s just our world of marketing. 

34:17

And so for students who are in this rapidly changing environment and feel like that they’re supposed to, as an intern, know it all. My goal is to help remove that burden from them. You’re not supposed to know-it-all. No one wants you to know-it-all, otherwise you don’t need to be an internship, you don’t need to be an intern, you don’t need to be in an internship. So it’s almost like you read my brain, you read my mind, because that word imposter syndrome I think it is dangerous, I think it’s psychologically dangerous and I think it is something that we need to eradicate from our marketplace, because it’s just not true. In my opinion, it’s just not a true way that you should expect to show up in this world and in your job, because what is one of the number one skills that companies are looking for, what is one of the number one skills that companies are looking for? Constant learners. And if you’re not constant learning, constantly learning, then you’re not fitting that skill set bill, which means the imposter thing needs to go out the window. 

Danny Gavin Host

35:21

So what would you say are the top three keys to success when it comes to a client account manager from Dot Co going into an agency? 

 

35:28: Taylor McMaster

So the biggest thing is fit for our agency partners. So I know anyone listening who might have a business or work in a business. When you don’t have the right partners, it doesn’t go well. So we partner with people who are like Danny and who have similar values. They’re nice people. They want something better for the world. They’re not just here to boss people around. We work with really great people. 

35:56

So finding the right fit in terms of agencies but also account managers. We’re hiring people who are at a higher level. They are really experienced, they’re warm and friendly and we have very specific values that we hire on. So really making sure we have a fit on both sides and then matching an agency with the right account manager and making sure that that is seamless, and that is the most important thing. Number two is ongoing coaching and mentorship. So what we were just talking about is ensuring that our account managers are always up to speed on the new things and the new tactics and learning from each other, and that is honestly so, so important, and we see this inside account managers in other agencies. They don’t have this mentorship and the support, and so we take them into our world and we coach them and we mentor them because we realize that in a client-facing role, everyone needs a mentor and needs a coach. 

36:52

So that is number two. And number three is processes and optimizing, continuously finding ways to do things better. So maybe you send an email to a client and it’s super detailed and you’re like that is the best email I’ve ever sent. Well, you should be documenting that so that you can use that again, or the team can use that. Or processes for onboarding how can you always be doing a better job and how do you always optimize that process? So systems and processes are key to our role as an account manager. They’re not the most important thing, because being the right person for the right job is the most important thing, but making sure that the systems and processes are on the back end. We’re not robots, we’re human beings who make mistakes and who are going through this fluid day in our agency. So we want to make sure that, yes, we use systems and processes, but at the end of the day, we’re the right people for the right job. 

 

37:49: Danny Gavin 

Don and Co was originally a digital marketing agency, but you made the switch to account management. Was there a specific moment when you realized you wanted to make that transition? 

 

37:58: Taylor McMaster

Yes, specifically, I was on a mastermind in Fiji actually Sounds so exotic, but I was really struggling with what to do next within my agency and I was trying to figure out what do I really want to do, because this isn’t fun for me, and I just went with my gut feeling and with the flow that I was feeling. So I was. You know, okay, what do I really like doing? I like talking to people, I like being super organized, I like helping people, I like all these, I love a busy day, I love meetings. So I was like that sounds like an account manager. 

38:36

So many agencies in my world need a really good account manager. I can actually step in and talk to clients because I’m a marketer. Wouldn’t this be cool if this is all I did? And then started talking to people at this retreat and they were all like can I hire you? Can I hire you? And so that’s when I realized this is a need in the industry. I can either keep going the route that I’m going with running my agency, or I can actually pivot. And that was the moment that I said I run an account management agency. Call me, and it grew from there. 

 

39:12: Danny Gavin 

Just imagine you like lying on the beach with a martini and bam, there we go, there we are. 

39:19: Taylor McMaster

This is my new business. 

 

39:21: Aimee Woodall

Angela Blanchard. I met this incredible firecracker of a woman in my first year of running our agency. Right after I got started, I met someone at Social Media Breakfast who said I think you need to be working with our organization. We really need to try new things. This was 2009. It was in the middle of the recession. It was sort of I don’t know if you remember the days when flash mobs were emerging and like there was a lot of. It was sort of like the rise of experiential marketing and disruption and, because of the recession, everyone really needed to try something different to connect with their audience. And I spoke at social media breakfast about this and this woman came up to me afterwards and said you know, we need to be thinking differently. I want you to meet our CEO. 

40:17

And so a few weeks later, I met Angela Blanchard, who, at the time, was the CEO of an organization called Neighborhood Centers, now called Baker Ripley, and anyone who’s listening who has met this woman, I’m sure she’s left an impression on you. She is such an incredible leader. She is unapologetically, original and determined and changing the lives of the people around her. She know she, she and I ended up working together. We ended up meeting and and hitting it off very quickly and ended up working together and in the relationship actually turned into almost a decade long uh relationship, uh client relationship, but also a friendship. And I learned so much from this woman, starting with just really thinking about the people around me and especially the people that we are trying to reach through our work, which she’s not necessarily the founder of but she leads. 

41:25

She led the Baker Ripley organization with appreciative inquiry, which is really asking of the community what the community needs, and not coming into the community with the answers you know, letting the community itself tell you what they need. 

41:47

And so there’s like a deep listening at the heart of that and I think I was always a pretty good listener. 

41:50

But being next to her and watching her lead and watching her practice that every day and the way that we would talk about the work we were doing together, uh, it has stuck with me. 

42:04

I mean it shifted the trajectory of our agency working with her, because I realized the intersection of that impact and communication, maybe for a second time. I kind of talked about that a little bit with my college professor, but this was the second moment where I really met someone who showed me like kind of illuminated my path and showed me how meaningful the work could be if I went in that direction. That practice of her deep listening and thinking from an appreciative perspective, a community-driven perspective, has been with me every single day since then, so for the last 15 years, that practice she kind of passed that down to me and it has made such an impact on the way I lead and on the way we intersect with our clients and the relationships that we have there and then beyond our clients, the audiences that we have there, and then beyond our clients, the audiences that our clients are serving. 

 

43:11 Danny Gavin Host

Yeah, I think it’s fascinating to have such a special client that actually helps you push your agency right In a in a in a better direction. A very unique relationship, and whenever I like see Baker Ripley and think about it, I think about black sheep. So I feel like for a long time those two brands were synonymous. 

 

43:29 – Aimee Woodall

Oh my gosh, it was the shape-checking of our relationship with that organization and Angela’s priorities over the nine plus years years. It was just. You know it was the greatest mentorship that one can ask for, especially because of the way it changed over time. You know, we’ve been through a lot over the past few years and I mean that happens over a decade with a pandemic or without a pandemic, and so being in a relationship like that, you know it’s similar to a marriage, like the things that you, the ways you adapt together and learn from each other over time, changes so much and means so much. 

Danny Gavin Host

44:13

How many brands or toys are you working with at any one time? 

 

44:17 – Katy Katz

your team- we have several brands that are in development, plus we have about 20 established brands, so not all of them require hands-on marketing strategies right now. Some of them are a little more like impulse buy type brands, and so those we don’t have to invest as much effort in. And then you have others like Care Bears Behind Me, or we launched a new brand, littlest Pet Shop this year that are very intensive, and so that’s kind of where we’ve been looking at defining for ourselves, defining what that scope looks like, and we’ve been setting it based off of the revenue potential, which kind of makes sense for a way to define those boundaries and how to define up our time so that we can be more systematic and strategic about where we’re investing and have a system around it. 

Danny Gavin Host

45:16

How important is gaining experience across different media platforms, advertising platforms like Google, Microsoft, Meta, TikTok. How important is that? 

 

45:25 – Sophie Fell 

I’m going to go with the typical answer of it depends, it’s okay. Because it really does. 

Danny Gavin Host

45:30

I think that’s important, because it means that both are true, but tell us why. 

 

45:34 – Sophie Fell 

Yeah, absolutely, it depends, right? I mean, if you’re like a T-shaped marketer, you don’t need to know absolutely everything, right? You need to know how it all works, what kind of audiences are available and things like that. But you’re also concentrating on SEO, websites, brand, all these other things over here, pr. So I think both are right. Again, it depends what you want to do. If you want to become, say, for example, I’m the director of paid media, so I need to know what all of them do. But if I was director of PPC, I would just need to know Google and Microsoft and maybe Yahoo and Naver and all those all those ones too. So it really does depend what, what you want to do and where you kind of see your, your future career. I would say don’t you know? You don’t have to become a specialist yet you know, becoming a T-shaped marketer is brilliant. You can do all the things you know. Yeah, it really depends on your ambitions and goals. 

46:25

And also what your clients or you know, if you’re at an agency or the brand you work for, what they want to right. If they only want you to do LinkedIn ads and that’s the only thing that ever worked for them then there’s no point you knowing the ins and outs of Google if you’re not going to use it you know. So, yeah, it really just does depend on where you are in your career, where you want to be in the future and, I guess, again, the requirements of the business that you’re working for. 

Danny Gavin Host

46:53

How do you balance the need for creativity in toy marketing with the data-driven nature of e-commerce? 

 

46:58- Katy Katz

Oh boy, that is. That’s one of my like whole life questions. 

Danny Gavin Host

47:04

Is that the million dollar question? 

 

47:05 – Katy Katz

Yes, it’s like that art history degree and the business degree. They’re both in there and you have to balance them both. I tend to lean more towards the data and logic side, which is kind of funny because I love art and creativity. From a personal perspective, my roles in work have more heavily been data-driven. I’ve did a lot of SEO and pay-per-click ads and have been more heavily on the data side. So I think that’s impacted my personal leaning. 

47:44

But the creation process is iterative. It can’t be 100% data-driven and you have to find that balance a little bit. But that’s been helpful for me having that background, especially when I’m communicating with the creative part of our team, because creatives don’t always necessarily want to use the data for their starting point and having both experiences has definitely helped me with those conversations of how you can use data points as a starting like kind of like a writing prompt, without it destroying the creative process. I started with inbound marketing and content creation and how that pulled people into the website and the data that would come from that and that we could follow them then from lead to customer and that entire life cycle. Then when e-commerce came and we could do that on another level where we could run a social media ad and then follow them all the way to the cart and follow up with emails and convert them and upsell and cross-sell. 

48:56

I really love data, so those opportunities of incremental increases that you can do that will have a big result. You just can’t replicate that with brick and mortar or some of the other areas, so that I really like having a clear cut answer and be a problem that you can solve and that the data offers that. And I think e-commerce is such a great modality for that, because you can see every step in the funnel, the data tells you what’s happening and there are a lot of easy adjustments you can make because everything’s so visible. 

Chaya GlattGuest

49:33

So this is like, really the foundation of everything that I train my students in brand authority. Branding is a solution, not a service. If you think about the traditional, I need a logo. Right, that’s what most people think when they hear. A branding is a logo and a color palette and a font, right, like the visual aspects kind of pulled together in the branding package. But I like to give the muscle of the fisherman from, let’s say, a thousand years ago. Right, he went and he caught fish in the lake early in the morning. He brought them back to his village, he sold them to the village people. He didn’t need a logo, Okay, he just went and he bought the fish and he sold them. 

50:20

Now, if you fast forward to today, right, if you’re going to buy fish, you’re going to go to the supermarket and be inundated with all your different options and all these brands are competing for the same customers, right, and all of a sudden they need a way to stand out on the store shelf and make you want to buy their fish. That’s why branding is a solution. Buy their fish. That’s why branding is a solution. It’s a solution to a specific problem that businesses have, whether that’s, you know, getting customers to buy. Some brands have a problem of, like how do we help people understand what we do? Like, people do not understand what we do, especially if we do many different things. Like how do we explain all the different things, right? How do we get people to pay more for our product? Our competitors are selling this for a thousand dollars and we’re selling it for 70. Like, what is going on? How do we do that? How do we do what they’re doing? You know so brands have these problems and you know my students are trained to solve those things. It’s pretty cool. 

51:19

In order to just get started and get your first few clients, you need some basic messaging in place so you could do some organic marketing. So you need things like you need to be able to answer these questions who am I for? Why do they need me? Why am I the best choice for them or, preferably, why am I the only choice for them? If you can answer that question, then you get a lot more points. 

51:45

What am I going to do for you, right? Nobody wants to hire you unless they know what exactly you’re going to do and why should I believe you? So if you can answer all those questions, you have your core messaging in place and then you can go and you could do your cold pitches. You could start. You could start doing your organic social media. You can put together some basic branding. If you’re not in a fancy schmancy industry, you don’t need fancy schmancy branding. You could start with you know minimum viable visual identity and then take it from there and get your first 10, 15, 20 clients by reaching out to everybody you know and telling them what you do and you know, passing this basic messaging around and then directly pitching to people who are in your ideal client profile. 

Danny Gavin Host

52:32

So you’ve talked before about your struggle of losing your sense of self in your work and clients campaigns, but that your husband helped you see the truth of the many elements of you. You’re a successful businesswoman, wife, friend and mother to seven lovely children. What do you say to people? And, of course, the Hollywood narrative that women can’t have it all, that there is no way to balance all of that, when clearly there is. 

 

52:55 – Chayale Kaufman

I still don’t think there is. I think that when you give to something, something else right loses. When you give, something else takes. It’s just the nature of things. But I do believe that I think that’s a different point than defining yourself. I do think I gave a lot to my business, but I have learned to define myself as a mother and a wife. I used to define myself only in the success of my business and the success of my clients, to the point that after campaigns it completely took me over. I couldn’t see until the next success. I had a hard time. What am I worth? Who am I? And I think that I mean I wonder. 

53:37

I don’t talk about this with other people, but I’m sure, and I’m certain because when Mishpacha had put out an article about this, so we wrote it out and family members of mine, people that knew me very, very well, had messaged me. It wasn’t like random people necessarily, but how they feel the same about themselves and they are either a teacher or they’re even not as high-level business owners, or it was just so interesting to hear that I think it doesn’t matter where you are, what you’re doing. A lot of people struggle with defining themselves by you know who they want to define themselves as, and not just as what they’re doing, what makes them successful to the world? Right, because, like, yay, you’re a good mother, you’re supposed to be a good mother, right. But like, when you’re a successful business woman, for some reason people think like, oh, like that’s out of this world, amazing. But no, you know what I mean. But you being a good mother is amazing and you being a good wife is amazing, and I just had such a hard time, you know, really allowing myself to feel that way and not just to find myself in my business. 

54:43

It took a lot of work and a lot of practice and a lot of exercises that I would do and I really did come to the point that I do feel like I can leave my office, walk in my door and feel very, very proud of my family, and my work used to be a real escape. That’s where I was getting the claps and applauded and the attention and that. So that was me. But really, you know when, when that happens and you have a fall, you fall pretty hard. So it was, it was, it was unhealthy, um, and I had to really really work on myself there. Yeah, so now I could walk, I could. You know, I used to not be able to detach myself at all. Um, now I can and I’m proud of it, but it was definitely a lot of work and a lot of exercise to do that. 

Danny Gavin Host

55:31

How did you come to the realization that you were in a bad place, where success was defined by work? 

 

55:37 – Chayale Kaufman

I think you hit people that go through something really difficult. You hit a rock bottom. Whenever someone says they hit rock bottom, when you hit rock bottom, you know you a rock bottom. Whenever someone says like they hit rock bottom, when you hit rock bottom, you know you hit rock bottom. It could be men don’t experience that as much, because I feel like I’m also a man. Like their work does a little bit more define them. It’s their you know. It’s like almost like what you’re supposed to be doing. You’re supposed to be providing for your family. You’re supposed that’s your part of your person. You know part of your persona, your job. But a woman it’s like one second. She’s really also supposed to be in the home, but if she’s getting all that thrill and attention, that’s where she feels like that’s who she is. 

56:12

The rock bottom was at a point that it was after a very, very successful campaign and I did not get a phone call the next day. The event was on a high, it was a major dinner event, whatever, and I didn’t hear from the guy who hired me the next day. The event was on a high, it was a major dinner event, whatever, and I didn’t hear from the guy who hired me the next day, a thank you or nothing. I knew that they were on a high, but he obviously was very busy. It was the next day after his event. It’s like the next day after someone gets married they’re not calling you. 

56:37

But I felt like I took such responsibility and put my life into it and I couldn’t believe I didn’t get a phone call. 

56:42

I was a mess that day, to the point, like completely beside myself. I couldn’t focus on anything else. And that’s when my husband was like we’re going out, like this is crazy. You know, you are not just your work and if you’re going to let these people like you’re going to let everyone else’s reaction define what your day is going to look like and the way you’re going to feel about yourself yourself, like you know that’s very, very wrong. Now my husband is has that personality of like understanding things in a very smart way and bringing me back to reality. So I think, after like a couple of these kinds of experiences and hitting that rock bottom, feeling like I can’t do this anymore, you know that kind of feeling I was. He was able to teach me how to really accept who I am and my other values and sometimes, you know they’ll still have to remind me here and there, but it’s nothing close to what you know, I’ve experienced. 

 

57:33 – Ameet Khabra

I love using people just to talk to them, and when I say using people, I don’t mean like using them, but like I’ve loved that conversation, because sometimes it might spark something in them or it might spark something in me. For me, my favorite thing in the entire world is going outside where I don’t know anybody and just having random conversations, and my whole thesis behind that is just like if I could put a smile on someone’s face for two seconds, I’ve done my job Like I’ve done my good deed. I can continue walking, because I know that if I’ve made you laugh, I was laughing too. You know what I mean. So then I just take that and I just sit there and I’m like, okay, I might be feeling really, really not great about this at work, but I can make myself feel better somewhere else, and I think it’s just that balance that a lot of people just seem to think that business is all in all the time, and again two years ago taught me that that’s not it. You can’t be working your business 24 seven and still yield the results. I tried. It didn’t work Like. It took me 11 months and two days to get us back to remotely close to where we were. 

58:33

When we got hit. That was a year, like literally that was just a year of me just going hyper time because I had no choice. It was my reputation or I quit, and I was not going to quit. So then for me it was just one of those options. But then I think, showing everybody that like this is what it takes, that you’re constantly pounding the pavement for 11 months and two days Is this worth it for you? Is this something that you think you’d be able to go out, go to sleep every single night knowing that yes, I do, I support the decision that I made and I’m very happy with the decision I made, or would you sit there and be like I don’t think I should have done that and I think that kind of gave a lot of people some insight into whether or not they wanted to push further than freelancing, or if they even wanted to go into freelancing, and I hate that I had to go through that for them to kind of start thinking about it. 

59:16

But I also hate that I went through that to even realize that I needed to talk about my mental health and talk about these moments where I didn’t maybe act exactly the way that I wanted to just to keep up appearances was just really eye-opening for me. So now it’s more or less of like I sit there and I go is this performative or is this real? And that’s usually like the question that I go back and forth with all the time and that kind of helps me maintain that nice little level, because some of it is performative. I’m not gonna lie here, right, like some it I just want to make myself feel good, so I’m going to do it. That’s just the long and short of it. 

Danny Gavin Host

59:48

You’re human. 

 

59:49 – Ameet Khabra

But most yeah, exactly, but most of the content that I try to put out. I just sit there and I’m like, okay, is this me actually wanting to talk about this, or is this me trying to, like, get sympathy, and then I just continue going? 

Danny Gavin Host

01:00:03

What an inspiring collection of stories and insights from these incredible women. Their paths remind us of the power of mentorship, the importance of continuous learning and the value of authentic personal branding and shaping a successful career in digital marketing. I encourage each of you to seek out mentors, invest in your ongoing education and embrace your unique voice, because your story can be just as impactful. Thank you for joining us for this special best of episode. Be sure to check out part one and the full episodes of each featured guest to dive deeper into their experiences and advice. Stay tuned for more inspiring stories, industry tips and resources coming your way soon. Talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to the Digital Marketing Mentor Podcast. Be sure to check us out online at thedmmentorcom and at thedmmentor on Instagram, and don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts for more marketing mentor magic. See you next time. 

 

45:37 / 01:01:02