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OhHello - Julie Fleischer
74 Plays2 years ago
A big shout-out for being one of our first recorded guests and patiently waiting for us to grow the audience a bit more. Thank you, Julie!
Ms. Fleischer is the SVP of Marketing at Soda Health, a healthcare tech company focused on building solutions which eliminate health inequities and create a healthier America. She was most recently the Chief Growth Officer of Encantos, a global creator platform connecting storyteachers with kids. An award-winning public benefit corporation, Encantos is on a mission to inspire kids to learn 21st-century skills by democratizing, diversifying, and personalizing what and how kids learn.
Under Ms. Fleischer’s leadership, Encantos was named one of the top six edtech startups to watch by The Information, one of the top 100 startups in 2020 by Business Insider and to Fast Company’s prestigious annual list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2021. She has been instrumental in developing and launching the Encantos brand, defining and architecting the company’s storyteaching platform, standing up a data-driven growth organization, and successful fundraising efforts. She tripled company revenues in her first year.
Ms. Fleischer was recognized by Forbes as a top entrepreneurial CMO. She is a purpose-driven global operating executive with client, agency, tech, and start-up experience across multiple industries, specializing in business intelligence, data and analytics, marketing and media. She has a reputation for building new capabilities and data-driven business models that drive transformation and unlock growth for traditional and DTC businesses. Ms. Fleischer excels at developing high-performance teams and category-disruptive strategies that challenge the status-quo in rapidly changing markets.
Ms. Fleischer is a decorated marketer, having been named Content Marketer of the Year, one of 50 women to know in Martech, and an Adweek Sustainability Star. She has held senior positions at WW, (f/k/a Weight Watchers), Neustar, OMD, and Kraft Foods, where she was responsible for rewiring the company for digital and data. She has prior experience in digital media, innovation consulting, and consumer insights.
Ms. Fleischer has worked to develop the next generation of women in marketing and media as a member of the She Runs It Board of Directors. She is a strategic advisor to JUV Consulting, which specializes in marketing to Gen Z, helping to coach their executive team and identify opportunities for growth and expansion.
She earned a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Ms. Fleischer lives with her husband in Chicago, IL. Ms. Fleischer is seeking corporate board opportunities where she can bring her expertise to oversee growth strategies and data-driven transformation.
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Transcript
Warm Greetings
00:00:03
Speaker
Oh, you've got the shoulder gym going on, Julie. All right. Hello, Julie. Hello, Jeremy. How are you? I'm good. How are you?
00:00:26
Speaker
Oh, hello. I am great. I am great. Anytime that I get to hang out with you, chat with you, discuss our industry, hear feedback, guidance, advice from you, I feel great. And when I get to do these kinds of things with you, I feel great.
00:00:47
Speaker
You're very kind. I feel exactly the same about you. So this is a pleasure. High five, my friend. I know who you are for our guests that are viewing this, for our listeners that are listening, whether it's through YouTube or Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Julie Fleischer Introduction
00:01:06
Speaker
Who are you? Can you tell me a little bit about who I'm speaking with?
00:01:09
Speaker
Yes. Hi. So I am Julie Fleischer. I am Chicagoan. I am marketer. I am mom to two extraordinary kids, a wife of extraordinary guy. And I am chief marketing and growth officer of Encantos, which is an edtech startup. And what we try to do is help kids learn the 21st century learning literacy and life skills that they need in order to thrive.
00:01:37
Speaker
I've spent my career in and around, you know, mostly consumer marketing on the company side, on the agency side. And really sort of my niche is, you know, sort of full funnel marketing brand to demand, but with a really powerful core of data analytics and kind of business instrumentation. So I love marketing and really connecting with an understanding and serving people.
00:02:03
Speaker
and using a lot of our marketing techniques, but also math to do it. That's me. That, that is a lot. That is amazing. The, the ed tech components, the, the mother, the wife, which is obviously more important than any of this understanding the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel everywhere in between. Yeah.
00:02:29
Speaker
And I love the math part that you brought into it because so many people forget about the insights, the analytics and the data. And that's actually how you and I met about a decade ago was when you were leading in being a change agent within a major global CPG and essentially finding out more data than I would say almost any other CPG out there at the time.
Career Journey and Mentors
00:02:56
Speaker
And you were so innovative about that.
00:02:59
Speaker
Walk me through and our listeners through just how you got to where you are today, just through some of that journey, just being able to understand a bit more about who made a profound impact on you, Julie Fleischer. Thank you. I feel like I've gotten very, very lucky throughout my career. And I know women were not supposed to say that we got lucky. We're supposed to say that we made it happen. But I think it's a real combination of both.
00:03:27
Speaker
I have been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and have had the kind of sort of curiosity and kind of lean in spirit and ability to sort of work outside my comfort zone that has opened up opportunities for me. But I've also been blessed with working with some, you know, really fantastic people who've shaped, you know, me and how I work and what I do and how I believe and how I approach the world.
00:03:56
Speaker
So it was everyone from, you know, Tony Weissman who was a big mentor of mine who helped me really with, you know, sort of creativity and understanding and honing and finding big ideas. Um, Bob Ripschinski, you know, sort of discovered me at Kraft and helped push me beyond my comfort zone and really sort of, um,
00:04:14
Speaker
helped me advance sort of myself through the ability to do digital transformation, see digital transformation, bring digital transformation to companies and really execute it. I was fortunate enough to work and partner with Tracy Paul on the agency side. And she really was really taught me about, you know, connecting with people and being a good manager and really understanding
00:04:40
Speaker
their interests in leading with kindness. Dini Ellsner was really sort of lessons in leadership. My friends Stephen Wolf Herrera and Susie Jaramillo really built up my confidence and taught me how to work without a net. There's a woman that I love named Aransas Savas who really is just about, you know, humanity and really feeling the world deeply and then how we use that to shape experience.
00:05:11
Speaker
And I read, you know, Adam Grant and rethink was really instrumental to me. How do we, you know, get rid of the things, the dogmas that we thought we had and sort of lean into new ideas. I love Annie Duke thinking in bets and that's sort of like where the math comes in and how can we understand the probabilities of what could or may not happen.
00:05:29
Speaker
you know, Brené Brown and leading with vulnerability and sort of humility before ambition, you know, these were really big, big moments for me in terms of, you know, people that I worked with directly, people that I've had the opportunity to read and embrace. And then I think there were some, like, I always go back to there are some pivotal experiences for me, you know, and for me, those pivotal kind of seminal building blocks are about data and how we understand people through data.
00:05:58
Speaker
It's about math and really understand, like I love to say, I start every day in the math. I start every day with, okay, well, how many people did we bring in? What's our conversion cycle looking like? What's our football? What's our average retail value? Are we ahead? Are we behind where we need, where do we need to make changes? What does the math tell us? And then also customer experience and, you know, having grown up in CPG, I think.
00:06:20
Speaker
I came from an era where we thought the brand was everything, but I think I've now leaned into an era where I think the consumer experiences everything and the consumer experience really creates the brand. It creates the relationship and it really fuels the value that one gets from whatever one does. So that was a lot, but I try to sort of pick up things from wherever I've been.
00:06:45
Speaker
That was amazing, Julie. That is part of the reason why you are a chief marketing officer, a chief growth officer, and being able to balance the math, the data, the customer experience, and have it go full circle to both in practice, people that you have worked with. You had mentioned Tony and Bob and Tracy,
00:07:10
Speaker
You just talked through different books that you've read. I've read a few of those same books and just balancing all of it while being a mom, a wife, a mentor to so many within this ecosystem, someone who is accessible to countless individuals in our ecosystem.
00:07:35
Speaker
It was really refreshing to hear you give that many shout outs. So just thank you for taking the time to think through so many people that have had a profound impact who have made you into who you are and cultivated you into such a great leader and marketer. With that said, what is mentorship mean to you? So as someone who has, I'm gonna keep it at that. What does mentorship mean to you, Julie?
Mentorship Philosophy
00:08:02
Speaker
It's such a great question. I've been a part of formal mentorship programs. Really, I've gotten more, I think, value out of informal mentorship programs. I'm on the board if she runs it. We do a ton of mentoring. I'm mentoring some diverse founders with startups.
00:08:22
Speaker
and that experience. And I think, you know, what mentorship means to me is just showing up and giving of yourself to help others understand, you know, like deal with whatever their challenges are, whatever they're grappling with. I do so mostly, you know, in the workspace. I do so a lot with young people and just helping them think through who am I? What do I want to do? How do I show up?
00:08:52
Speaker
What kinds of things am I doing? Well, where do I need to work on it? I'm a connector. I really, really love being a connector. So how can I introduce people to others who can help them with whatever challenges that they have? I think mentorship is about giving back. And one of the things that I feel like at this point in my career, because I'm more on the later side than the earlier side,
00:09:19
Speaker
I feel like one of the things that's most important to me in terms of the way I manage and show up is I'm at this point, I'm about building that next generation of leader. That's really my legacy. So how can I help others by mentoring, by managing, by nurturing, by coaching to be better at what it is that they do and to be more connected with themselves as they do it? So that's mentorship to me.
00:09:49
Speaker
great response. There were five keywords I picked up. Just show up. Give back those that was a weird finger combination I did on my hand just now that you'll see and the people watching the video will see. But just showing up just being present just being a problem solver is so important. And I love how you talk through the the informal components of mentorship.
00:10:13
Speaker
not necessarily just the formality that comes with other facets of helping people. As you know, Oh Hello gives back. Altruism, karma, and philanthropy is important to both of us. It's important to those in our network.
Charities and Personal Impact
00:10:30
Speaker
What is a charity that's near and dear to your heart that is integrated within Oh Hello?
00:10:35
Speaker
So your list is fabulous. I love all of the charities that you're integrated with. For me, I pick two if I can. Oh, I love this. Yeah. So hugely passionate about EJI and everything that they do, the Equal Justice Institute. And so that was absolutely someplace that I wanted to give back. And then the other one is a little more personal, Girls Who Code. My daughter went through it, and I feel like it
00:11:04
Speaker
Even though she did not stick with coding, it opened up so many doors for her and sort of changed her trajectory just because it taught her what she was capable of. It gave her experiences outside of her comfort zone. It introduced her to other people that she wouldn't have otherwise met.
00:11:23
Speaker
And it set her on a path where I think she recognized her power because she was able to do this thing that otherwise she wouldn't have ever even thought of doing before. So I would love to support Equal Justice Institute and Girls Who Code.
00:11:41
Speaker
amazing. Julie, this has been fantastic. You are such a great leader within our ecosystem. So excited to have you as part of the Oh, hello community.
Support for Mentorship Platform
00:11:50
Speaker
Thank you for taking the time to do this. We really appreciate it. It is so my pleasure. And I am so impressed and excited about what you're building. I think it is important and has so much value to it. And I think
00:12:03
Speaker
There are folks in our community and in She Runs It, which for all of your marketing and media and advertising tech women out there, please join She Runs It because we've got great resources around this as well. But there are people for whom it's easy to find a mentor and then there's people for whom it's a little scary. It takes a little work to ask somebody to do this, to say, I know I need help here and I think you're somebody who could help me. Would you invest your time to do that?
00:12:30
Speaker
So I love that you're creating this platform that makes it easier, that chips away at those barriers, and that gives everybody a little bit more help. So thank you for what you're doing. Virtual hug, my friend. Well, Julie, thank you. Listeners, thank you. Appreciate everybody. Thank you, Julie. Have yourself a great evening. You too. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye. Thanks, everybody. See you on the next one.