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3 - Marketing Matters: Why Every Leader Should Prioritize Customer Experience with Mavens and Moguls' Paige Arnof-Fenn · Unstoppable Success Podcast

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight, influential leaders and their game-changing insights.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jacqueline Stumminger, CEO and founder of LeapToYour Success.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's LeapToYourSuccess.com.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: We help entrepreneurs, leaders, and CEOs grow their business, become unstoppable high achievers in their careers and life, gaining that 1% edge.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: We believe every professional has the power within them to leap to their greatest success that not only will impact their life, but the lives of the people they touch.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: So stick around to the end of the show and we will share with you how you can be our next guest.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: So stick around for those 15 to 20 minutes and let's be unstoppable.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, everybody.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Hi! Welcome to the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight Podcast, where we hear from influential leaders and their game-changing insights.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jaclyn Strominger, your host, and today I want to welcome our amazing guest, Paige Arnoffenn.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: So a little background on Paige.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: She is the founder and CEO of Mavens and Moguls, a global branding and digital marketing firm whose clients range from the early startup stage, Fortune 500 companies, including Colgate, Virgin, great company, Microsoft, the New York Times Company.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: She was formerly the VP marketing of Zipcar, VP of Marketing at Inc., and prior to that, she had a title of SVP of marketing at Launch Media, which was an internet startup that also was later sold to Yahoo.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Paige has worked as a special assistant to the Chief Marketing Officer of Global Marketing at the Coca-Cola Company and held a position of director at the 1996 Olympics Commemorative Cohen program and the Department of Treasury.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome, Paige, to the podcast.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I am so glad you're here.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I first of all have to say, like the Olympics thing.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Jacqueline, for having me.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: That Olympic job was my absolute favorite job before starting my own company.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was a huge sports kid, played lots of sports, watched lots of sports.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I used to just be glued to the television for the Olympics as a kid all through school.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: So working for the 96 Games in Atlanta was just a dream come true.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't even, I can't, I would just, I think my mouth probably would have been opened if I was there the entire time, like at the all the athletes and what they do and how they perform.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So before we like, because I have a question about the Olympics, but I'd love to hear your story on your rise to leadership and how leadership came into how you came into being the leader that you are right now.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I look back at my first leadership position was a kid at summer camp.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: I used to go to slepaway camp for two months a year from age nine to 16.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And my first summer at camp, I was voted to be the manager of my team.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the second summer at camp, I was the team captain.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that was my very first experience as a leader.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And my dad and both my grandfathers were business leaders.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I always saw myself doing a career in business.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that first kind of taste of leadership as a kid at sports camp, I was hooked.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I ran for class office.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was class president many times as a kid.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And in high school, I was the treasurer of my class.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: I always saw myself as a leader and future leader.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: I went back to business school and started at the very bottom of the food chain in corporate America and slowly worked my way up.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And 23 years ago, I hung out a shingle and started my own firm.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: And as you said, I'm the founder and CEO of a business that I'm incredibly passionate about.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: I joke that I'm like the accidental entrepreneur because I never thought I would start a company.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: I always wanted to go run a big company, like my dad and my grandfather's.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: When I look at leaders like Meg Whitman and Ursula Burns, when I was working at Proctoring Campbell and Coca-Cola, I saw myself rising through the ranks and ultimately leading a big Fortune 500 company like that.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: But when the internet kind of took off in the mid to late 90s, I got very distracted and jumped ship on the corporate life and went down the leadership path on a more entrepreneurial technology startup life.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I just I feel like leadership's always I'm the oldest of three kids.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I was always a bossy big sister anyway.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: My brother and sister always joke that if I'm a good boss, it's because they broke me in and trained me well.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, no to self if you're starting a family, right?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like what you can do for your kids right now.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: There, there's so many great things here.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So a couple things that that I really would love to hear, because you said that you slowly worked your way up.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the biggest things about leadership today is helping people work their way up.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious, as you were doing, as you were building and working up, did you have a great mentor or leader?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: I had a lot of great mentors and champions in my career and in my life.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, my dad and both grandfathers were role models for me.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: They both they all led organizations.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: And when I'd go visit them at work or stop by their office if I was with my mother or my grandmothers, I could see that people really respected them and that how what good leaders they were.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: You could just tell people really liked the office environment, they liked the culture, they were very proud of their work.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: And my dad and both grandfathers, they knew everybody's name.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: They'd stop and shake hands or have a nice word.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: How are your kids?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: How was your birthday?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: How was your weekend?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like they were very much management by walking around, not standoffish at all.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: People would stop by their office and pop their head in.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I always wanted to emulate that.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: I just thought that just seemed like it was in my DNA, and it was something that I aspired to from a really young age.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think when I started, so I went straight into business from college.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Again, starting at the bottom and working my way up.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think when I was younger in my 20s and early 30s, I was a little bit impatient.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: I always felt, okay, I got this.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm ready for the next promotion.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, all right, come on, you're holding me back.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let me go.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And in a way, that's good because I had the drive and the ambition.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm actually, in retrospect, looking back, grateful that I went through all of those steps on the ladder and really learned from the bottom up.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think the best leaders are ones that kind of really know what it takes.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And when they're asking their teams to do something or when they've setting a vision or a strategy, they know what it takes to do all the parts really well.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, especially when I left my corporate career behind and joined startups as the head of marketing, I did that three times.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And having started my marketing career in corporate America, PG and Coca-Cola were very good training and development opportunities.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: They really invested in their people and sent you to a lot of professional development courses and classes.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Even though there was a lot of hierarchy and things moved slowly, you really learned all the pieces really well inside and out.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: And when I joined my first startup in Los Angeles in 1997, I had to build the marketing department from the ground floor.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was hiring all the different pieces, the creative pieces, the analytical pieces.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I understood what each of those jobs really meant and how to do them.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: I had done a lot of those jobs earlier in my career.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think your team has a lot of respect when the boss knows what they're asking them to do, and you're willing to roll up your sleeves and get into the trenches and tell them, I've been there, I know this is really tedious to number crunch.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: I know what I'm asking you to do is a pain in the butt.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: But here's how your piece fits into the bigger puzzle.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And this is why it's so important that you do it when I just think people are more enthusiastic and um when they see that they're part of something bigger than their small role.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like I got the very best out of my people at every stage because I knew what I was asking them to do, and I knew I was willing to do it myself, and I had the war wounds and war stories to share with them.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: But because of that, I I just think I don't think it's a coincidence that all three of the startups that I was the head of marketing had really positive exits.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: They all did well, they were technology businesses where I came in and built the marketing department from the ground floor, and marketing drove that business to a we either got acquired, we went public, really strong exits because the marketing helped get the word out.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think my team did a just a stellar tremendous job.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: I really I think the best leaders are the ones that kind of pay their dues, do their homework, and don't ask their team to do something that they're not willing to do themselves.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the secret sauce or the magic formula when the leaders really they have the experience, they have the training, they have the vision, and they can bring everyone along with them.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: What you've just said, it's like my a little bit of chills because I really promote, I talk to people about leadership, about vision and mission and doing the work.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And everything that you just said is, I just think it's so powerful.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious about what your thoughts are on that's a formula, right?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: That is share your vision and mission, know your people, really be able to pull out the best in them, know that you can dig up your your sleeves and get in there with them.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's that story George Washington just got in there and helped their, helped his people too.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think about that now, like where what that was, how do you think companies today are doing in leadership?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And what should they what do you think they could be doing better?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: What's missing?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think there are examples of great leaders uh in every era.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think in recent, when you look back over the last call it decade, there have been a lot of examples of people who wanted to take shortcuts or not do the heavy lifting.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you see some of the companies that have run into trouble and broken the rules, or you know, when you think of some of the crypto companies that just thought if you hired influencers and celebrities to tout your brand and say good things, that was enough to convince people to give you money so that they could explode onto the scene, but they didn't really have a good business model behind them.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't, they weren't really doing the the tough work behind the scenes.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And those brands end up blowing up and people end up going to jail.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Or you have a brand that that loses their mission, vision, and we could name them, where they hired an influencer and lost huge market share.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: I often say there really aren't shortcuts, but there are lots of detours.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you've done your homework, if the the guts of the business, you're able to be spontaneous and pivot and figure out when one door shuts, how to find an open window or another door.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're not doing the work from the ground floor in every step of the way, there just aren't shortcuts to success.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not just in business, whether you're talking the Oscar, the Grammy, the Olympic gold medal, people train for a years and years to get to that level.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: There really isn't, in my experience, like an overnight sensation.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: I started my company right after 9-11, 23 years ago.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I always laugh when people say the first three years of our business, we really hit the ground running and we got a lot of high-profile clients and we had over a million in revenue.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was like a really steep fasten your seatbelt situation.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And Harvard Business School wrote two cases on our company as a model of success.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I always laugh when people say, God, Paige, you're like an overnight sensation.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: How did you get that?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: How did you do that?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, did they just ignore the fact that I've been doing like marketing and I paid my dues for almost 20 years?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was like all the roads of my life converged into Mavens and Moguls when I hung out the shingle and I pulled in the experience and the relationships, and everything came together.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it was not an overnight sensation.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, I was a summer intern.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: I went back and worked three years here and two years there, and just did paid my dues at every step of the way.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I tried to be the most prepared at every meeting.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was always overdoing it because I didn't want to miss anything.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when you have that work ethic and you have all those pieces, and again, I always, when I'm mentoring young people, I always say when you look at someone's resume, that's like the highlight reel.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: You see all the very best things.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: But anyone that's being honest could tell you a horror story with every one of those lines on their resume.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you're probably old enough to remember this.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of kids today aren't.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: But when I was young and there were vinyl records, you had an A side and a B side.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the A side was like the really popular song that they played on the radio.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the B side was something you probably never heard of.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes the B side ended up being huge, and sometimes it was just like never really took off.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think resumes are that way.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's an A side and a B side.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: The A side is what everybody shows, and the B side may not be so pretty.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's in stumbling and falling and getting up and dusting yourself off and trying it again and learning those tough lessons that you can only really learn in the trenches, that's how you get better.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really believe people fail.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think if you learn something, even if the it doesn't end up the way you were hoping and the product launch didn't really take off, you didn't get the market share you would hope, but maybe the next one or the one after that ends up being insanely successful because you learn so much in the ones that weren't as successful.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you either win or you learn.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't win, just learn the lesson so that next time you have a better chance of winning.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's so funny because I tell I share a lot about the words MMA.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like we have to MMA our business, we have to MMA our life.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're always measuring, monitoring, and adjusting, which is helping us learn about what we're doing.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you could do a launch of a product launch, and it may not do great, but that's where testing comes in.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like sometimes I think people forget about the testing part.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: I come from a background of direct marketing, and I you had your you always had a package, and if you were trying something new, you went out and saying, okay, here's what we had before, here's the new one, we got to test it, right?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Which is gonna be the better one?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're starting something from scratch, you may want to try two things to see which is the better, right?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then run with it.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: But do you think that today that maybe people don't necessarily do that testing as much or they just want to go?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you raise a really important point.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when I started my career, my marketing career at Procter and Gamble, PG is probably the most data-driven consumer products company in the world.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: They do market research for everything.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always one of the foundational steps you have to take before you can move forward.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so my bias having started my marketing marketing career there is let's see what the customer says about it.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I have had a number of clients over the years come to me and say, like, I have such an amazing product or service.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone tells me how much they love it.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand why it's not selling better.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Can you help me?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so my question is, great, can you show me any market research you've done?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Who are these people that are telling you it's so great?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: I just need to dig into the data and let me see what we can learn.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: And the CEO would say, What's funny?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: I talked to my mother, my best friend, my neighbor, my cousin, everyone loves it.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's like the red flashing sign going off because that's not market research.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's asking people who love you and don't want to hurt your feelings, who will never tell you that the baby's ugly.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: That is not gonna help you.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, you have to ask the people who vote with their wallets and pocketbooks.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: If they're not gonna spend their money on your product or service, it's not a good idea.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for the businesses that kind of throw things against the wall to see if it sticks, or they're not asking the tough questions, the other problem is market research doesn't have to cost a ton of money.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: You can use SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, there are a lot of free and low-cost tools out there, but you've got to ask the questions in an objective way.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because if somebody says, Jacqueline, tell me what you love about my business.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell me the three things you love most about this product?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's like leading the witness.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: You're basically not asking for candid feedback.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Again, they don't want to hurt your feelings and say, that packaging really isn't very useful, or I don't really get the message.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: What's the value proposition?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Seems really expensive.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I could use another product and it seems like it's just as good for half the cost.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't want to open your mind and ears to candid feedback, you're not gonna, it's not gonna work and you're not gonna know why.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the important thing for businesses today is ask the tough questions and listen.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm a big fan of just going on a listening tour.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: The politicians do it all the time.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Go out, listen to people with no strings attached.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Don't set them up so that they give you a bullshit or a bad answer.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: If you do that, you're not it's garbage in, garbage out.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's not market research, and it's not gonna help you sell more of your stuff.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: That is so bringing it a little bit of full circle, asking the right questions, whether it's marketing for your product, also, and you said the listening toward, which I think is really if I were to say it seems like it could be one of the almost like a game changing insight, which is listening, as you said, your dad and your grandfather, they would know everybody in the company, they would walk around.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Around that's a listening tour.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: You get to know the people, you get to ask the right questions.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it's whether it's to me, leadership is leading for a great product, but it's all leading the company and asking those questions.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Both the internal questions are the people inside are your product, right?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: The absolutely your employees are like your first line of defense.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: They're the ambassadors and champions.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And if your employees are unhappy, your customers aren't going to be happy.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: That is a very risky strategy to really push your people to an extent where they're just not effective or they don't get the overarching mission, vision, values, it doesn't it doesn't bode well for your customers.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you really you gotta have the big picture in mind and make sure, yeah.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing the other point I wanted to make is I think the best leaders really pay attention.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: So if you ask your employee a question and they make a little face or they pause before they answer you, it's a sign that maybe there's more there.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you might not want to hear the bad news, but it's better if you ask Bob, I noticed when I asked you that question, you kind of squirmed a little bit or you it looked like you waited a beat or two to answer it so that you could maybe sugarcoat the answer.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: What was that all about?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: What did you hesitate for?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: What are you not telling me that you wanted to tell me?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when leaders are perceptive and aware, not just self-aware, but they know their team and they really do want people to give them the good, the bad, and the ugly.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you're the kind of boss that chews people out for delivering bad news, people will not bring you bad news.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you'd rather hear it from your team than hear it from somebody down the line where you've already made the mistake or you've already invested the time and money.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I just think the more the more realistic and thoughtful the leader, the better information they're gonna get from their team and the market.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: It just open your eyes, open your ears, and trust your gut.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: When you see something that doesn't quite add up, hold it for a beat and ask yourself, why?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Why did they pause?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Why is this not working?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Why did this not turn out the way we thought?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes when things blow, I always say when things are super successful, you don't always really know why everything worked well.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: When things don't work out well, that's when you need to do the post-mortem.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: You need to tell your team, let's dig into this and learn the lesson.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: What did we forget to ask?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: What did we miss here?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Why did this not go as planned?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if you again learn the lesson and ask those tough questions, you'll never forget.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's a lesson that you'll learn really through the experience by osmosis.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you won't make that mistake again.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that is so valuable.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: That it's true.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Learn learning from what we do is so important, both from analyzing your leadership style to analyzing your product, analyzing launches.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Again, we always have to look at the results and dig into the good, the bad, the ugly, what worked.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: And something that you said I think is really key.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to bring this back a little bit, but you said asking people to having the leader dig into the people to get the truth out so that you can create an open and honest, both working relationship.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is something that the key to the the first thing that again, another game-changing insight is getting to understand the people, getting to know them.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're not necessarily your friends, but it's creating that that that respect of your people so that they're and right and trust so that they that you that they can share with you this is what's happening.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And or maybe there's something about the vision that's off or the mission, right?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: So there's as long as we're sharing that vision and the mission and being truthful about everything, it's so important.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: And truthfulness or being truthful is, I think, something that we have to get back to in some ways.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Not that we're all lying, but but no, but I I joke that who would have thought in 2024 that being honest and showing integrity would be like the killer application of the new millennium.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think people really, when things go off-road and you get used to people lying to you, or you get used to people just saying stuff to not rock the boat.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Just fine, thanks.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: How's everything going?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's great.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: They don't want to be the bearer of bad news.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that can ruin the culture of a company because if everybody's living in fantasy land and pretending that everything's going great, if you don't ask for the bad news, sometimes you're in a meeting and everyone's everything's going so great, it's okay, I'm gonna hit the pause button.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: I want to go around the table and I want everyone to tell me one thing that they think we could do better, or one thing that you heard from a customer in the last month that you think we could fix, one shock, something that shocked you, something that surprised you.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Or even uh in Sarah Blakely, who started Spanx, she said when she was a child at the round the dinner table, her dad would ask every night, what did you screw up?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: Where did you fail today?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: What did you try that didn't work?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we all need to be just more comfortable around things not going as planned and celebrate those kind of those opportunities where what did we learn from this?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: This was a bust.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, what are we going to do better next time?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you take away the stigma of we screwed up or we failed or it didn't happen.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like embrace that, it rejoice and celebrate.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: At one of the startups I worked for, we we would have weekly team meetings when the company was really small and we would celebrate the biggest failure of the week.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: All right, let's let's see what we did that really blew up.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, what did we learn from that?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when it becomes part of the culture and part of the conversation, you're not scared about saying, okay, we blew that, but we're gonna try it better this week and see if we can't get it but knock it out of the park.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that becomes kind of part of the DNA of the brand.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a much better, healthier environment to operate in.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I love that.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely love that.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: So this is I love I could talk to you probably all day because I love like marketing conversations and I'm like, I could ask you a thousand and one questions about zip car.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: I loved zip car when it started.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that was like the coolest thing.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm really curious, as a leader, what do you want to have as your legacy?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh goodness.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that it's up to me.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's I always say I'd like to leave the world better than I found it.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like people that know knew me, worked with me, were friends with me to think that living in my ecosystem improved their life in multiple ways.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: They had more fun, they laughed more, they got more done, that they had just a great time doing it, that it was like something that I added something really positive to it, that it was it was better because I was there.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I don't know.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I think I I am doing what I know how to do in the way that I can best do it.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess I just I hope it comes through in everything that I do, and I hope people would remember that with a smile.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's no, that's great.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I I think the work that you're doing is absolutely phenomenal.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, from the aspects of leadership, what is there an area that you're still working on or that you're challenging yourself with?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I think I'm a work in progress.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I have an insatiable curiosity about so many things.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, I guess I'm a little bit obsessed with all the artificial intelligence stuff happening.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like it's good, it's kind of ramping up so quickly, and I'm just trying to catch on, make sure that life doesn't pass me by.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: But I think having said that, I I encourage my clients and with my own business, I think the real benefit today, the real value proposition is the way to stand out is to show your humanity and be authentic in your interactions and your words, because we can't compete with robots in terms of speed.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: They're always going to be able to come up with push the button and then come up with a thousand-word article or a million different ideas faster than you and I can, but they can't capture the essence and the humanity and the humor.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: And as you said, you love the stories.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we have our war stories.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: We know the good, the bad, and the ugly that only we can share the blood, sweat, and tears.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the generic robotic stuff that the computer spews out, you know, that they can do the quantity, they can't do the quality.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's really important to try and have a growth mindset and always be learning and growing and experimenting with the newest tools and technologies, but don't lose the humanity and don't lose what's unique, special, and different, your value proposition and your stories.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: Don't lose that in the process.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's really true.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, Paige, I have loved this conversation.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: So tell us a little bit about where we can find you on social media.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And do you have an offer?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because you have you've got so much marketing knowledge, and I feel like every company should be talking to you.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um I could go into lots of reasons why because it's first of all, it's your I'll just say one thing.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: What you do is really amazing in terms of marketing, and I feel like there's so many companies that miss the boat on some of that stuff.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I I think I had a professor in grad school that said marketing is everything, and everything is marketing.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I used to giggle when he said it.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now that I've been doing it for decades, I think he was absolutely so the best place to find me on social media is on LinkedIn.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: And even though my last name is hyphenated on LinkedIn, it's all smushed together.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: And my website, mavensandmoguls.com, M-A-V-E-N-S, A N D M O G U L S dot com, I have tons of content free on my website.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've got, I think, 25 pages of articles, I've got two pages of podcasts, I've got one page full of videos.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's all free and it covers kind of everything under the marketing umbrella.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if you find articles that resonate with you or a video and you have questions, I'm happy to set up a free call to discuss it.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: And if we can be helpful, I would love to continue the conversation.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I have a client that always says, because my last name is hyphenated and my company name has an ampersand in the middle of the Mavens and Moguls.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: She's there's just too many things for me to remember.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: And whenever she can't like immediately get a hold of me, she googles page and mavens, because those are the only words she can remember.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I pop right up on Google.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: So thank goodness for search engine optimization, it still works.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can always find me that way too.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's right.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll include all of that in the show notes.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I so appreciate you coming on.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: And for those that are listening, please share this.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Go to Paige's website, take a look at herself.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: She is a rock star, she's smart.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: The companies that she's worked for are absolutely amazing.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so they've done well.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you're in great hands if you're connecting with her.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for being a guest.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you guys for thank you, Jacqueline.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: This has been so fun.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: I could talk forever about this stuff.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate it.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jaclyn Stromager, and I want to thank you so much for listening to the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight, Influential Leaders and Their Game Changing Insights podcast.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you are a successful CEO, entrepreneur, or leader in your industry, and you have insights you would like to share, we want you to be a guest on this program.
• 35:51
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• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have gotten something out of this interview and you'd like to share the episode on social media, just go ahead and take a screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on socials.
• 36:09
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• 36:22
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• 36:26
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• 36:30
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• 36:35
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• 36:37
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• 36:48
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• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Just plug in my name, Jacqueline.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's J-A-C-L-Y-N.strominger S-T-R-O-M-I-N-G-E-R, and follow me on all the socials.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for listening and remember, be unstuck.