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Diverse Voices, Bold Choices: Lindsay Tjepkema's CMO to CEO Journey
64 Plays10 months ago
Episode Summary:
Join Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO and co-founder of Casted, as she discusses the nuances of her transition from CMO to CEO, the distinctive challenges she faced, and her passionate pursuit of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. This episode offers a deep dive into the significance of diverse perspectives in driving business success and the resilience required to lead in the tech industry.
Key Topics Discussed:
- Transitioning to Leadership: Lindsay shares her personal experience moving from the role of CMO to CEO/Founder and the unique challenges of each position.
- Embracing Diversity: Highlighting the multifaceted nature of diversity, Lindsay discusses her proactive efforts to incorporate diverse backgrounds, experiences, and thoughts into her company culture.
- Navigating Board Dynamics: Insights into the art and science of board management and how storytelling and communication play a crucial role in this aspect of leadership.
- Startup Resilience: Lindsay speaks to the resilience needed to steer a startup through economic shifts and the strategic decision-making involved in times of change.
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Transcript
Empowering Women in Revenue
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Resilient Revenue, a women in revenue podcast series designed to magnify the voices, victories, and valuable insights of trailblazing women in revenue-generating roles. Each episode will showcase stories of resilience, mentorship, and self-advocacy. You'll learn exactly how these remarkable women are breaking barriers, redefining success, and showing us the transformative power of unity within the tech industry.
00:00:31
Speaker
So join us as we embark on this enlightening journey toward equality and empowerment in the world of resilient revenue.
00:00:42
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Resilient Revenue, the Women in Revenue podcast, which is brand new and we're so excited to have this out on the airwaves for everybody.
Introducing Lindsay Chepkuma
00:00:55
Speaker
I'm Hannah, your co-host, and I am a Women in Revenue board member. I also help lead the Speakers Bureau.
00:01:02
Speaker
And I'm super excited to be here with Lindsay Chepkuma today, and she is the CEO and co-founder of Casted. And Lindsay and I have had some great conversations actually earlier this week, and I'm just excited to continue that conversation around leadership and her journey.
00:01:21
Speaker
Yeah. Welcome to the show, Lindsay. Thank you, Hannah. We must make this a regular thing. We're just going to... You can come on my podcast and then we'll like find other people's podcasts and we'll just keep chatting and recording it. I love it. This has got to be a thing now. Love it.
Lindsay's Career Journey
00:01:36
Speaker
Would love if you could tell us just a little bit about your career journey and how you have landed CEO at Casted after a long marketing career. So let's dive in and just chat about how you've gotten to where you are.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yeah, I spent almost the entirety of my career until starting Casted as a marketer, right? And now I lead a marketing technology company that sells to marketers. So I'm still very much in the marketing realm, but I went to college for marketing. I've been in marketing my whole life, specifically B2B, been on the agency side and on the corporate side, large companies and small.
00:02:13
Speaker
But I was always on the path of marketing, specifically kind of in the brand and content, more creative side of marketing, and just kind of was on the path for 15 years of progressively more responsibility, progressively finding more and more of my niche. I was on the track to, in my mind, lead marketing teams for the rest of my life and just get hopefully better and better at that and more accomplished at that.
00:02:38
Speaker
And then this opportunity to start a company, Casted, that solved a problem that I had as a marketer on that path, fell into my lap. I couldn't unsee it once I saw it. And so I shifted gears. And looking back, it was a lot bigger of a shift than I think I even realized at the time. But yeah, I always thought that I was just going to be a marketer, doing marketing, leading marketing forever and ever.
00:03:05
Speaker
And now here I am instead serving marketers from a CEO and founder seat.
Marketing Complexities and Challenges
00:03:11
Speaker
Love it. I love marketing to marketers. It was like my favorite to be able to speak to that audience where you feel the same being a marketer and like it's the best persona, I think. I feel like you get so many like creative liberties because you know that like they get at the core of what you're trying to do. So you don't have to almost oversimplify that piece of it. I don't know.
00:03:38
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's the best and the hardest, right? Because man, trying to market to marketers, they see through everything. They're jaded to everything. Everything moves really fast. And once you're inspired by something that somebody else has done, everyone else is already doing it too.
00:03:57
Speaker
It's a whole different world and I don't know, for me at least, I don't know if I could ever go back to not. So yeah, it's a double-edged sword because it's the most creative, it's the most fun, it's speaking to your peers, you get it, you know the audience firsthand, but it's a tough crowd, it's a tough audience to try to engage and be unique and cut through and be relevant.
00:04:18
Speaker
Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. We're maybe a little like a little jaded. We have our guard up like our B.S. some things. Yeah. Yes.
From CMO to CEO
00:04:29
Speaker
For sure. Well, let's talk about that journey of marketing leader to CEO that you that you mentioned. And we were just actually talking before we hit record about that specifically. And I mentioned, well, you know, the CMO tenure is so short these days. It's like a revolving door. I think somebody had posted actually on
00:04:48
Speaker
LinkedIn the other day, an image of the CEO's door that was closed, the CFO's door that was closed, and then it was a revolving door for the CMO. That was hilarious. Frighteningly accurate, yeah. It's true. It's painfully true. It's been true for a long time. I've worked
00:05:07
Speaker
for a lot of CMOs, I thought if I was so lucky someday I would be a CMO. I never actually was. I was a VP for a global company before starting Casted, but I certainly went from what I thought was a CMO track to now CEO. I work with a lot of CMOs now. I work with a lot of marketers who want to be a CMO, and I'm glad that
00:05:30
Speaker
what kind of word is getting out there that there is a lot of turnover because it's really hard not to say that other C-level positions or other leadership positions aren't, not that at all. But the CMO role in particular
00:05:45
Speaker
One, marketing, like teaching, and lots of other roles is something that everybody has a lot of exposure to. Everyone goes to school, so everybody feels like they know how to be a teacher. Everyone is marketed to, so they feel like they know how to be a marketer. And there's lots of other jobs like that, too. But in marketing, everybody feels like they know how to do marketing. And so you have that against you as the ultimate marketing leader in an organization. A lot of scrutiny from every angle. It's an ultimate unifier. You've got to pull together C-level agendas
00:06:14
Speaker
perspectives, opinions, egos from product, from the limitations of finance, from the CEO, from every angle of the organization. You've got to unify it all into one voice, into one perspective, and then you've got to get the rest of the company behind it. And then you've got to get results, you know, and you've got to be creative. You've got to be the most creative voice in the room and also deliver
00:06:40
Speaker
pipeline that's going to fuel the entire business. You're very much the tip of the spear. You're like the captain at the front of the boat saying, this way. It's tough. It's no wonder to me that there's a lot of shakeups. I'm sure burnout comes quickly. The expectations are incredibly high, especially now.
00:06:59
Speaker
It's no joke. Yeah. It's kind of an oxymoron too, because it's like we always say you can't be all things to all people in marketing, but as a marketer. Yeah. Yeah. Like you actually, you do. You have to be many things to many people and then like you said, kind of unify and align. And so challenging. P.S. I'm glad I'm not on the track anymore.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny because, you know, here I am sitting in a very different, very difficult CMO or CEO founder, which has, for sure, that's a whole different conversation. It's a share of challenges. But like, man, weighing the two, it's like, CMO, there's a lot of pressure yet being all things to all people, having to get buy in at least to a certain level from everyone, having to be clear and decisive. And ultimately, you're a conduit for the voice of the CEO.
00:07:53
Speaker
and you know ultimate leadership and man it's it's a lot it's a lot of pressure to deliver.
00:07:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so thinking about that, then, what prepared you? Like, what have you taken from your time in that marketing leader seat that has been really helpful for you in your CEO seat? And then, like, what is that difference of, like, what's more challenging? What are the things that you're bumping into that you're like, oh, I didn't have to deal with this before? Yeah, so a couple of
Storytelling in Leadership
00:08:23
Speaker
things. One, storytelling and the importance of brand and the importance of voice and some of the things that I think a lot of other
00:08:29
Speaker
founders or CEOs think comes later is like a luxury that you can think about later. Like, oh, we'll tell great stories later. We'll think about our brand later. We'll think about our culture later as a marketer. You're like, no, that's probably the first thing. Like, who are we? What are we going to say? What are we doing here? Are we going to tell people what we're doing here? That's a leg up that you have as a marketer turned CEO. Another is like having sat in the seat of a marketer and how
00:08:57
Speaker
impossible it feels to everything we just talked about, to harness, wrap up everything that's happening in the business into one ball of yarn and turn that into compelling value that you present to an audience that drives revenue, that drives pipeline and be able to measure predictably
00:09:20
Speaker
with what that marketing team is going to be able to bring in. Having sat in the seat of like, is product going to launch on time so that this entire campaign that I've done to launch this new feature is going to go live on the right day? Having sat in that seat and having to do more with less and really understand what the implications are of a budget cut to marketing, having sat there, I think I have so much more deep empathy for a marketing team and that you can't just sprinkle marketing on something and have it
00:09:49
Speaker
work. When things get tight, cutting marketing, there's a lot of spend that happens there, but there's a lot of deep, long-lasting implications when cuts happen in marketing. I think having sat there, the empathy is really important and valuable. I think those two things are probably the most
00:10:08
Speaker
valuable, but then I think also flip side, now that I'm in this seat, one thing that I can't say enough to marketers is to understand the money-making model of a business. Go ask, whether you're the CMO or
00:10:23
Speaker
marketing intern. Go ask leadership. Tell me how the finances of this business work, even if you have to hide the numbers, regardless of what level you're at. Tell me how this works. Tell me what the priorities are, because when you fully understand that and you understand why your budget's getting decreased or why your pipeline goals are getting increased, it just makes a lot more sense, which makes it a lot more doable, right?
00:10:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that's a good call to action too for transparency around business ops and how the business makes money and how the targets are changing and how does that break down. And I know I've had exposure to that since day one in my career and it has been super valuable, so, so valuable.
00:11:09
Speaker
I'm curious because I thought of something else too. And a lot of our women in revenue members, you know, I would say we're very split between folks that are earlier in their career and moving up that ladder and also women that are more senior in their career, which is fantastic because we get this awesome mentorship and nice giving. And yeah, it's really great. But one thing I was thinking about that might be interesting for the audience is
00:11:34
Speaker
How has the relationship changed when you're thinking about that upward relationships in terms of investors and the board? And you start to get more and more exposure to that as you rise in your career, especially as a marketer. As a director, you might be hopping on for a short piece of the call and then as a VP, you're attending the whole call and as a CMO. So how does that look as a CEO?
00:12:03
Speaker
seat, meaning how does that translate to like once you're in this seat, if you have that exposure? Yeah. And like how is your approach to building those relationships and like being in that room and being a successful communicator, knowing that your chunk of what you own is obviously much larger than it was.
00:12:23
Speaker
Yeah, one, I'm still learning all the time. Board management is an art. It's both an art and a science, and it varies from company to company based on who's on your board and who your investors are. But again, I think for me,
00:12:39
Speaker
Going back to that storytelling and you said it, communication, knowing that it's more than numbers on the spreadsheet, that it's, okay, what factual story is behind the numbers? And something can look really great in a spreadsheet, but in reality, what does that mean? What does that mean for the team? What does that mean for the culture? What does that mean for the brand? The story of how those numbers are going to become a reality or how those numbers came to be.
00:13:05
Speaker
is really, really important in gaining trust and buy-in. Something that so many people say, I've heard it lots of times, is myself, from my investors, is people invest in you as the person at the front of the company. Yes, they invest in the product, they invest in the idea, they invest in all of your KPIs, but they invest in you. If you're relying on
00:13:28
Speaker
a deck or a spreadsheet to get that buy-in, you're missing a huge opportunity. You're missing the whole point, right? Because your investors are investing in you. They're investing in your ability to not only communicate to them, but like turn around and be able to make magic happen in the marketplace and with your team. So I think, again, that's kind of all I've ever known to do. And it's a real big advantage that marketers turned CEOs have.
00:13:57
Speaker
Yeah, you can build a relationship with the spreadsheet, right? You build a relationship with the person that's leading the company. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, and you have to learn how to then create the story around that, you know? Like the data, they're not gonna, I mean, maybe they'll dig into it or maybe they'll ask questions, but like,
00:14:15
Speaker
they would rather have the story up front. They would rather have like, here's what we're doing. And then like that trust of where do you want to dig in? You know, but like you should always be able to tell that story up front from your spreadsheet, from your deck is what I'm hearing from you. Mm hmm. Exactly. It's always balancing where you've been with where you're going and why they being, yeah, sure, the board near investors, but everyone else should believe it and should buy into it.
00:14:46
Speaker
Well, let's shift gears a little bit. And I want to talk about something I just mentioned earlier that's really important to us at Women in Revenue, which is mentorship.
Mentorship and Self-Advocacy
00:14:54
Speaker
We obviously have a mentorship program and lots of women who participate. And in our annual report that we do every year, we're on our fifth year.
00:15:03
Speaker
We uncovered some really interesting facts about mentorship. And obviously, like we see all the benefits, right? Like mentorship can help you get more money. It can help you have more confidence. It can help you understand the pathway that you should take for your career. But I think it was like a statistic and this came from outside the report. I think it was like less. There's like only one third of women, professional women actually have a mentor.
00:15:29
Speaker
Which is kind of sad and women don't know where to go and I like I see it in coaching all the time People know that they need mentors, but they're like, I don't know where to go. I don't know how to start this I don't know, you know what that looks like which this could be a whole separate podcast in itself but anyways, what I'm curious about from your perspective is
00:15:50
Speaker
how that shows up in your world. You know, how have you leveraged mentorship and self-advocacy to navigate through all of your transitions and through this transition from marketing leader to CEO? Yeah, broadly speaking, I'll dig into it.
00:16:08
Speaker
I think I fall into that two thirds that never really had a mentor, like Asterix, because I do have really important people in my life, but I didn't get started. I think that when I think of mentorship, right, wrong or otherwise, I think of getting into a really large organization that has a mentorship program that pairs you up with someone who takes you out to lunch
00:16:26
Speaker
once a quarter and like helps you on your career journey. I never had that. But I have had people along the way that gave me chances, at bats, advice, guidance, opportunities that I didn't ask for, that I didn't go out and get, that I wouldn't have known to get on my own.
00:16:45
Speaker
But for me, they were seasons. They came and went. I had a boss in my first job that gave me opportunities that no 22-year-old ever should have had. And looking back, I'm like, wow, that was some really great mentorship, but that was a season. And more lately, and I think the reason why, is I was
00:17:07
Speaker
raised to believe like, hey, you can do anything. You go do it. You can do anything. Go do it yourself. I think to a detriment. Don't ask for help. Just go do it. And I think that I missed out on a lot because I felt like I perceived, I wrongly perceived that I had to do it on my own. If it was going to be my success,
00:17:25
Speaker
I had to do it. I didn't know who to ask for help. I wasn't really surrounded by a lot of people that I felt like, okay, really perceived. Everybody's listening now and thinks I was there for some chance. It didn't seem like a thing that I could or should do. I had to prove that I could do it on my own. Now, that said, more recently, since I became
00:17:45
Speaker
CEO, I have been introduced to and really learned firsthand the value of those relationships and mentorship among friends. And having somebody who has expertise or the ability to guide or support, even though they're a friend, it's like, hey, can I ask you about this? I need to phone a friend. And to me, that's been kind of a new thing. In the last several years of my life that I
00:18:12
Speaker
Gosh, I wish I had known when I was younger. You have the tendency to just put it on your back and go figure it out. And sitting here today, I wish I had known sooner that that's not the case. Asking for help is a good thing. And sitting in this seat, if I am asked for help or I see others asking for help, I see that absolutely is a strength, not a weakness.
Intuition vs. Guidance
00:18:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting that it's like that balance because I do think it is so important that you have that like self motivation and drive and and the confidence that like I can figure it out I know the answer because at the end of the day like I do believe that we all know the right direction we should be moving in we all know like
00:18:55
Speaker
you know, internally, we have our intuition like that guidance that I think allows us to really figure it out. Yeah. But on the other hand, like that is important. On the other hand, you just need that like well-rounded sphere of like I have my own internal guidance and I have others where I know when to go to them. I know when to be.
00:19:16
Speaker
I know what to take and leave because sometimes mentorship is not helpful. I'll say it, women in revenue, I'm sorry. But on the other hand, it's just that balance of knowing when to lean on your mentor and knowing when something is going to come from within, which it sounds like you've leveled out with that. Getting there, yeah. I think I look back at so many situations that
00:19:43
Speaker
I wonder now if it was just immaturity and look, we're all immature our entire life. Like you spend your entire life maturing, right? But certain situations where stories you tell yourself about, you know, this isn't fair or this isn't right or I'm in a bad situation or I need to do this where I
00:19:59
Speaker
I coached myself either into a different situation or into believing something that looking back, maybe a mentor could have said, let's unpack that a little bit. Why do you think this? And what if you did that? And have you considered? And no regrets, but it does beg the question of,
00:20:19
Speaker
you know, what could have been, what would have been, how could I have learned something, how could I have learned a lesson a lot sooner if I hadn't relied on my own very limited understanding of the situation at the time?
00:20:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, because you, I mean, you can't always see it, right? Oh, for sure. But on the other hand, like not everyone has that skill to coach themselves through it. Like not everybody can say, this is my pride, this is my ego, like I've got to get myself out of this situation. That is, I think that's a skill that people have and not everyone has it. And yeah, you kind of wonder like, okay, but what would I have heard from somebody else's perspective?
00:21:01
Speaker
And I'm spared myself, you know, telling myself stories that were just, you know, my pride or my ego talking to me.
00:21:10
Speaker
Yeah, that somebody else could have kind of burst that little bubble. Mm hmm. Perhaps. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like what we're getting at is just that holistic, I don't know, like holistic community and like you being a part of that or support circle or whatever you want to call it. I refuse to use word try because we need to stop doing that. But but I think really like looking at it from a holistic point of view, like yes.
00:21:35
Speaker
It's your mentors. It's your sponsors. It's your people who are going to provide you with support on a very different personal level, like your partners or your family. And it's yourself. Like yourself is a huge part of that circle. And I think we forget that sometimes. It's true. It's very true.
00:21:53
Speaker
So thinking about the tech landscape, which you've been a part of for a while now, we know that adapting and being really agile is super, super important.
Adaptability in Tech
00:22:07
Speaker
I'm thinking about pivoting, you know, obviously like marketing leader to CEO, that's a huge pivot. But I'm sure that you have had many other moments in your career where you've had to pivot or innovate to like stay ahead of the game, make sure that you're moving with the landscape. And I'm just curious if you have any stories there and any lessons that came from that experience.
00:22:31
Speaker
Yeah, and you know what? That's one thing that I should have mentioned earlier that I didn't about what advantage do marketing leaders, CMOs have when they move into the CEO seat?
00:22:41
Speaker
flexibility, adaptability, endurance through change. That's all we know as marketers is like, all right, we're going to do this big launch. Just kidding. The product's not ready. And so therefore we're going to do this other thing. Just kidding. We don't have any budget. It's just like that's that's what we do. Like we're just we're chameleons and that's absolutely the role of a CEO to at least at least sort of start up.
00:23:03
Speaker
is run, run, run, run, run, turn, run, run, run, run, run, turn, and make sure everybody behind you is turning along with you. Gosh, an example, I think really recently, I think not just me, but looking at the past four years. I mean, we started casted my day one was April 29th, 2019, right? So I had a solid handful of months before the world fell apart. And gosh, the name of the game has been adapting and saying like, okay, what does our product do today?
00:23:32
Speaker
And what's the message to our audience this morning? Just kidding. What's it going to be now? You know, we have gone through a lot of decisions over the last four years. One, just as a startup, that's like learning as we go and like, oh, we tried this. That didn't work. Let's try something else. And as I just mentioned in the world, like we've all lived through the last four years and what we're going through right now in the economy.
00:23:57
Speaker
It's been changed. And I guess the story there has been, it's not necessarily pivoting. It's deciding. It's constantly, constantly deciding. Do we stay or do we go? Do we keep moving forward? Do we stay consistent? Like, is this an opportunity for us to pivot, to change, to do something differently, to say something differently, or to literally just keep moving forward? How do we use this to our advantage? Do we use this to our advantage? Do we stay quiet? Do we get really loud?
00:24:25
Speaker
do we hunker down for a minute? And we've done all of those things over the last four years. And so I think, I guess in summary, being a CEO and founder for the last handful of years has been many, many, many decisions about related to pivoting. And marketers are best suited for that, in my opinion.
00:24:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's perfect. It goes back to we're going to have so many marketers that are like, I'm going to come become a CEO. I'm, you know, you know, I mean, the pressure and the risk of becoming a CMO and the opportunities versus the pressure and risk and opportunities of becoming a founder and CEO. I mean, if you're going for safety, I think you should probably find a different different path altogether. Yeah. But if you're going for adventure, there might be something there for you.
00:25:18
Speaker
I love it. So speaking of like pivoting in the last four years, I think another element that comes up in that and I think is really in marketers faces too, because they are that external view, is thinking about diversity and inclusivity. So obviously, as a marketer, you're thinking about that. As a human, you're thinking about that. As a CEO leading a company, you're thinking about that.
00:25:47
Speaker
So, I'm curious how you weave all of that together and what you do to ensure that you're prioritizing diversity and inclusion efforts.
Diversity and Inclusion in Leadership
00:25:57
Speaker
I'm so glad that you brought that up because it is. It's something that matters so much to me as a person. It's one of the reasons that I ultimately decided to start a company because I was like,
00:26:06
Speaker
maybe be part of the change I want to see with that too. And we have at Casted and Hiring have always tried to do our best in making sure that we are prioritizing diversity in all instances. Like, are we thinking ... There's everything that is front and center with gender and race and age and sexual preference and
00:26:29
Speaker
all of these things, but there's also education and outside of our geographical community and just differences of background, parents and non-parents and different walks of life because the diversity of thought matters. I can't believe that the conversation is still happening about trying to convince people that diversity of thought matters and it makes such a positive difference.
00:26:55
Speaker
We try really hard to do that in a really small team, but every opportunity that we have, we do. And same thing with voices and having people on podcasts and being part of other organizations that are trying to do good. It's something that we talk about all the time. It's something that as a team is really important.
00:27:10
Speaker
And then, you know, for me, I get asked a lot and I'm sure, you know, being women in revenue, I'm sure everybody, you and everybody in this community gets asked a lot about being like a woman leader, a woman CEO, a woman in revenue, a woman in tech. And it's, gosh, man, it's, I wish that it was like a panel and we can, I want to hear your thoughts, like on everybody else's thoughts because it's such a double-edged sword because I want to
00:27:35
Speaker
raise awareness and I want to turn up the volume and I want more people talking about it but I don't want just me talking about it and I represent just one small piece of diversity when there's so much more to that that I want everyone talking about it and like once you do start talking about it
00:27:52
Speaker
are you playing to the stereotype of a woman leader talking about women in leadership? And so I don't know, it's super, super, super, it's super important. And I think the best way to lead is in action and in what we can all actually do to get more people, more women, more diversity, literally and figuratively around the table, more voices being heard. And we talked in our other conversation about like,
00:28:20
Speaker
once those voices are around the table.
00:28:23
Speaker
letting them be the voices that they are. Don't bring, for example, one aspect of diversity, a woman, to the table and then expect her to be someone else, to be the stereotypical CRO who has been a man. Let that person be that person and let that diverse insight come through and shake things up. I think that's where we'll start to see some real change.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. And we can make this a panel. I think it's interesting because I just feel like people really need like you describe diversity really well. And I think people really need to understand all of the layers of diversity and break that down and think about what assumptions do I have around even just that word diversity? What does that mean to me? What does it mean to the people around me?
00:29:20
Speaker
And I will break it down for my five-year-old. It's like thinking about nature and animals and all of the fauna and flora that we have. And if everything was just the same, nothing would survive. Nothing would live. Literally, it would not last very long. It would not be very fun. Right?
00:29:41
Speaker
So like the diversity in nature shows us how critical it is to have and replicate that in, you know, human form. And I think that nature tried to do that for us. And now we're at this point where it's like, OK, but we also have we also have a stay in that. We also have to continue to push for that just because of how complex we are as human beings. So that's the way that I like to think about it.
00:30:09
Speaker
And I try to keep it simple because I have a kiddo who needs to learn about these things. But yeah, I mean, it is really, really important, I think, for us to think about the different layers. And I have another example. I just saw a woman talking on TikTok and she's part of the Indigenous community and she was talking about the movie Barbie.
00:30:28
Speaker
And think about the movie Barbie, right? And you're like, all hail, you know, we're putting in a positive spin on feminism. We're calling out the patriarchy. But when you think about the history of Barbie and you think about actually look at the organization at the organizational level, look, go look at who's on their executive team.
00:30:48
Speaker
You know, no look at who's on that board. You will. I'm sure you won't be surprised. But anyways, like they also reference how important diversity was in that movie. However, it's very limited. It is through one layer. They talk about how important diversity was through the indigenous perspective. And there's little to no zero representation in that movie on that topic.
00:31:12
Speaker
So, I mean, I just think it's like having these examples to share with people is really important because you go in and you're like, oh my gosh, we're really like going all in on diversity here because Barbies, you know, talking about the patriarchy and women and but that is literally just a liver.
00:31:28
Speaker
tiny sliver and it might feel good because you're represented in that if you're a woman and maybe if you're a white woman, it might feel even better. But yeah, I think we really kind of have to step back, zoom out and be like, well, what other layers are we talking about here when it comes to diversity? A hundred percent. And another thing in tech in particular is age. You know, I mean, like the ageism that is rampant. I mean, it's like just
00:31:55
Speaker
That's a big part of it too. And there's so much there and it doesn't mean that any one person or anyone organization has to tackle every single part of it at that moment. And every sliver does add up to a lot, right? But I think it is important here to like
00:32:12
Speaker
call what it is and be like, hey, we're working on it. Here's the sliver that we that we're working on right now. And we have big goals to work on so many more. And next step is this. And we're we're going to keep doing better. Let's just have the conversation and like keep having the conversation and and make people more and more comfortable with having the conversation. And it was saying like, look, we're working on it and we're learning and we're trying to learn more. And we know we don't know everything.
00:32:37
Speaker
But we want to, we want to learn. And that's, I feel like that's getting better. We have a long way
Power, Privilege, and Diversity
00:32:44
Speaker
to go. Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting because it's so divisive these days. Yeah. And a part of me too, like feels like it's getting better in certain areas. But I also sometimes can't tell if that's because I've become more protective around
00:33:01
Speaker
like where I put my energy and who I put myself in front of and where I use my voice. Yeah. Or if that's actually what's happening, you know, because I definitely have gone through that journey myself of like feeling, you know, moving through that like victim curve and
00:33:16
Speaker
learning about and being comfortable with my identity, speaking out, using my voice. I was angry for a really, really long time, really, really angry because I hadn't fully processed a lot of the issues for me around my identity and being a woman of color and being in tech and seeing all of it play out.
00:33:37
Speaker
Now I'm at this place where it's like, it's resilience, it's growth. I don't get triggered when we have these conversations. We need more people there. We need more people to go through that process of that unlearning, that making you're not the victim. Obviously, there's a case, and we talked about this too, about calling out oppressors is very important, but mindset wise, being in that growth mindset where you can move into that space of speaking from resilience, moving from resilience.
00:34:05
Speaker
So, I think we just need more people to go through that journey for themselves. Cough, cough, a lot of white people need to do that. When you're given the opportunity to open the door, open it.
00:34:20
Speaker
Right. And I have been I'm not saying that I've like using myself as an example of doing good, but just simply like trying to be aware. But like there have been many times where I've been called out is like, oh, you're you're this woman leader, like diversity. Let's come talk about diversity. I'm like, listen, like I am a white.
00:34:38
Speaker
married, straight, woman, I'm 40. I have a college education and I'm a CEO now. I don't represent diversity. I have had some situations that I can speak to and that make me more empathetic and I have my own experiences. But if this is a conversation about diversity, there need to be so many more voices at this table than me.
00:35:02
Speaker
That can be, I know for me, can be really uncomfortable of saying like, okay, it's a lot easier to be quiet. It's a lot easier to say nothing. It's a lot easier to say, okay, I'll do my best. It's a lot easier to not broach the topic, but man, it makes a big difference and to go get sweaty and to get uncomfortable and to risk saying the wrong thing because you're trying desperately to do
00:35:24
Speaker
good and to do better and to bring up other voices around you and to use opportunities to turn off the volume. It matters. I hope it matters. Yeah, it does. I think it matters to enough people that we can make change. I think what you also highlight is the connection between power and privilege, right? Like there's a really great power and privilege or wheel
00:35:49
Speaker
And I recommend everybody go check it out and see where you fit within that because it's like on the outside You have the marginalized folks and there's all of these different sections of diversity, right? Like are you a citizen? What gender are you? What language do you speak? What is your wealth status look like? What's your body size? Are what is your neurodiversity? Where do you sit on that spectrum? And so then you have that marginalized circle and then you move in and in and in so then it's like, okay your middle class or
00:36:19
Speaker
you have some disability or you're able-bodied. So the closer you get to that power center, you know, the more that you can do, the more privilege that you have, the more that you can do, the more that you need to start thinking about all the other areas of that power and privilege circle. So I think that's a really great resource and something that kind of you highlight a little bit about, I'm just right here, I'm pretty close to that power center, but we still need to be thinking and talking about like, here are all the other voices we need at the table.
00:36:48
Speaker
100 percent. I love that. I'm going to go find that. Yeah, no, I can't remember who created it, but it really, I think, speaks to like intersectionality as well. And that's something that not a lot of people understand, too. Yeah. Oh, this has been such a great conversation again, of course. I would love for us to wrap up and think about our women in revenue persona and audience and, you know, whether they are women who are
00:37:15
Speaker
looking to do what you've done, you know, going along in their marketing career on that CMO track, or maybe they're in that CAEO track, or maybe they're seasoned executives already, but what would your advice be for them?
Pursuing Career Aspirations
00:37:30
Speaker
Just do it.
00:37:33
Speaker
I mean, easier said than done. I think that if you are even, if you're on that track, if you are a seasoned marketer and you even have it in your mind of switching tracks in general, like CEO opportunity, founder opportunity, switching tracks, I think not one, I think it's important to kind of like affirm or validate, like not everybody has those feelings.
00:37:54
Speaker
It's not something to chalk up to, like, oh, everyone feels this way. I'm just going to stay on my own path anyway. Like, if you're having those thoughts and those inklings or this opportunity fell in your lap that you're really thinking about, that's special. It's worth considering. Like, it's worth thinking about.
00:38:11
Speaker
We've spent this whole conversation talking about life is full of risks. CMO is very risky. It's a lot of pressure. And so don't stay the course that you're on because you perceive it to be more safe or secure. Life's too short and it's worth the adventure to go do something that you can't get out of your head. It's worth the learnings. It's worth the reward. It's worth the lessons that you'll learn along the way, for sure. It's worth the personal growth, for sure.
00:38:40
Speaker
Yeah. Just do it. Get the opportunity to bring up others around you. Like, that's a pretty cool thing too. Yes, lift as you rise is something that we all need to keep in mind. And yeah, I mean, aligned with women in revenue 100%, of course. Well, I appreciate you. I'm so grateful that we've had this connection and have gotten to do it twice this week. Yes. So, yes. Thank you for joining us. And I can't wait to chat more. And I can't wait to get both of our episodes out.
00:39:08
Speaker
Yes, and for all the listeners, we'll have to go find number three that we're going to go make happen somewhere. Just follow along. I love it. Thank you so much. This has been wonderful. That wraps up another episode of Resilient Revenue. These narratives are more than just personal triumphs.
00:39:26
Speaker
They embody the collective journey that we undertake as we strive for a future where every woman, no matter her career stage, location, industry, or demographic profile, has the opportunity to excel in her chosen field. Women in revenue exists because we know amazing things can happen when driven, talented, bottom-line-oriented women are fired up and collaborating to grow their careers and organizations.
00:39:52
Speaker
We invite you to join our amazing community of 7,000 plus members. If you'd like to become a member for free, head on over to womeninrevenue.org to join today. See you next time on Resilient Revenue.