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Hire? Outsource? Or AI?: How & When to Build Your Marketing Team's Skillset
32 Plays2 months ago
Which roles do you hire, what skills can you outsource, and when can AI fill the gap? Building a modern marketing team demands smart calls on how and when to scale your team—without blowing your budget.
In episode 2 of B2B Marketing Pint, Brendan and Brian crack a cold one with marketing leader Heather Ritchie who shares hard-earned insights from her time leading teams at global giants like Nokia and scrappy startups too. You’ll learn:
– The must-have hire for early-stage teams
– What skills to outsource—and how to avoid common traps
– How AI is reshaping hiring and team design
– What to prioritize when budgets are tight
– Heather’s top 3 hiring mistakes—and what she learned
Whether you're building your B2B marketing team from scratch or planning to scale, this episode brings clarity (and a bit of comic relief).
👉 Subscribe for your bi-weekly dose of high-proof B2B strategy, straight from the pint glass.
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Transcript
Introduction and Beverage Choices
00:00:27
Brendan Ziolo
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our latest episode of the B2B Marketing Pint. um Brian, let's kick this off the right way. What fine beverage are you enjoying today?
00:00:38
Brian O'Grady
I love that question. And the answer today is a steam whistle Pilsner made near me in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and I highly recommend them.
00:00:50
Brian O'Grady
How about you folks?
00:00:50
Heather
I like it.
00:00:52
Brendan Ziolo
Well, i am i used to be a very big fan of this local, or well, not local to me, but local to some of you brewery called Collective Arts.
00:01:03
Brendan Ziolo
When I drank alcohol, I was super happy to hear they have a non-alcohol version. ah So big fan. So I'm drinking the Collective Arts non-alcohol IPA today.
00:01:15
Heather
You know, that one's pretty, I gotta say.
00:01:17
Brendan Ziolo
there And the bo the cans are all different and stuff. So it's very cool. um
00:01:23
Heather
I like it.
00:01:24
Brendan Ziolo
But more importantly, what ah we're joined today by Heather, who likes my pretty beer can, as you can see.
00:01:32
Heather
Yeah, I do.
00:01:34
Brendan Ziolo
ah And Heather, what's in your glass?
00:01:37
Heather
Okay, well, I'm having a sober carpenter, right? Also a non-alcoholic version because I have the volleyball carpool to be driving right after this.
00:01:47
Brendan Ziolo
Excellent. So our gus so so far, we've excellent.
00:01:48
Heather
But I've got my nice frosted glass to go.
00:01:52
Brendan Ziolo
Cheers.
00:01:53
Brian O'Grady
I am a bit.
00:01:53
Heather
Cheers, guys.
00:01:54
Brian O'Grady
Cheers.
00:01:55
Brendan Ziolo
So, so far we've learned that Heather is a very responsible carpooler on the call.
00:01:55
Brian O'Grady
I'm jealous.
Heather's Professional Journey
00:02:01
Brendan Ziolo
um But the plan I hope is to, ah you know, learn a bit more about Heather ah and obviously cover another important topic to all of you as you scale your B2B marketing teams as Heather's done a lot of this in the past. So as a very quick introduction, um Heather is a longtime colleague of mine, friend,
00:02:24
Brendan Ziolo
ah former boss, believe it or not, she put up with me for a period of time. ah We worked together at Alcatel, Lucent and Nokia for for a number of years.
00:02:29
Heather
Absolutely.
00:02:34
Brendan Ziolo
ah She was also generous enough to be one of Zinc Marketing's first clients. ah So we've worked in that capacity as well. ah And what I like and learned a lot from Heather, is she's got a lot of experience in marketing.
00:02:49
Brendan Ziolo
ah She's worked in a number of different roles in marketing. She's led a number of different teams, some better than others, I'm sure. ah She's built some teams.
00:02:58
Brian O'Grady
Thank you.
00:02:59
Brendan Ziolo
um And
Building and Empowering Marketing Teams
00:03:00
Brendan Ziolo
I learned a lot in terms of leadership and team building from Heather, because I know this is an area she's super passionate about. um And she really empowers her teams and ah helps them go to the next level. So hoping we can all learn um some good lessons from her today.
00:03:15
Brendan Ziolo
ah Hopefully she will be generous enough to share some um mistakes and what she learned from them.
00:03:21
Heather
I've got lots of those.
00:03:22
Brendan Ziolo
ah But we won't push we won't push too hard on that. So welcome, Heather.
00:03:25
Heather
You can do multiple episodes on those.
00:03:28
Brendan Ziolo
Welcome, Heather, and thanks so much for joining us today.
00:03:32
Heather
Well, thanks for having me. This is great. I get to have a pint in the afternoon, talk with a couple of marketers. going to
00:03:40
Brian O'Grady
Yeah, i'm I'm quite intrigued now. I was intrigued in the pre-show meeting. I was intrigued when I read the notes and now I'm more intrigued. I'm intrigued cubed. ah And the reason the reason for that is because there's a chance I've made at least my fair share of hiring mistakes along the way.
00:03:58
Brian O'Grady
i'm I'm very happy to report the team we work with now SearchWarrant is rock solid. For those who are listening and and thinking of calling their lawyers, i'm not talking about the team at SearchWarrant today. ah But to get there, to get there was not smooth. To get there was painful and a rocky road because I do a lot of things, but I guess my my chops were not HR chops to begin with or not hiring chops to begin with. So I might be taking some notes and writing down some of the things I hear today. I'm looking forward to learning. Let's put it that way.
00:04:28
Heather
Well, let's hope I've got something to share.
00:04:32
Brian O'Grady
I'm confident.
00:04:33
Brendan Ziolo
ah
00:04:34
Brendan Ziolo
So maybe I'll kick it off with kind of our first question and we'll we'll see where this leads us. But, you know, when you start out building your marketing team, Heather, you obviously need a lot of different skills.
00:04:45
Brendan Ziolo
Marketing is a fairly vast scope and in some companies it's more vast than others and sometimes includes things that may not necessarily be marketing by some definitions, but it still falls to that team.
00:04:52
Heather
Mm-hmm.
00:04:59
Brendan Ziolo
ah What's the most important thing skills that you're looking for when you first start building the team. And then maybe the flip side of that coin is what are some of the skills you just don't think you need initially?
00:05:13
Heather
Okay. So, I mean, at the risk of stating the obvious, it really depends on what you have on the bench. So at Nokia, most of my teams were fairly established. You have to tune them here and there or help structure them here and there.
00:05:30
Heather
But my last two jobs have been with smaller companies. My last job I came in, there was one other person. And this job that I just started, there are two people. So it's it's taking a look at at what you're starting with and trying to find some of those complementary skills.
00:05:45
Heather
But if I were to say I'm starting from scratch, I think the most important hire that I would be making right from the beginning is the core capability set, which is product marketing. Someone who deeply understands the product market fit.
00:06:01
Heather
You know, they're able to go into brand positioning just to really understand what matters to customers and how to communicate that in a meaningful way. But then on the softer side, particularly with a startup, but I would say, you know, it matters in big companies too, but on a startup, it's just put under the microscope, is really taking a look at that energy and scrappiness and curiosity because, Brendan, you know, you've worked in startups before.
00:06:28
Heather
Like, how often do you go in with a tailored job description that actually, you know, stays, you know, between those lines? Like, I, you know, never.
00:06:36
Brendan Ziolo
it lasts a good It lasts a good five minutes at least.
00:06:40
Heather
Exactly. So you want someone who's got a little bit of flexibility, a lot of curiosity that can go and and dive in and and figure stuff out.
00:06:49
Brian O'Grady
That's cool. ah i'm I'm already learning things. Okay. this is making sense to me. ah So with that in mind, let you let's say you so you show up, new gig, you've got a team of two or small team.
00:07:00
Brian O'Grady
ah What
Skills for Building a Marketing Team
00:07:01
Brian O'Grady
are the things you can teach if there's a gap and what are the things you you can't teach and that you shouldn't try or or are are there are there such delineations?
00:07:05
Brendan Ziolo
Thank
00:07:11
Heather
Um, I like to think you can teach a lot of stuff, especially as a parent, you like to think that you can teach a lot of stuff, but like I, this is where his softer side really matters. Right. And it's, do people have an appetite to go and learn?
00:07:25
Heather
I like to look for energy, you know, when I hire, like, you know, you gotta to be feeling that from someone I've got the energy to go out and do stuff, figure stuff out, but just like asking questions.
00:07:38
Heather
I was, uh, recently on a call. We were talking about different staffing decisions. Really smart guys is someone we were talking about and capable of so many things. But the question mark around him was kind of, you know, how much did he go and learn and how much did he grow over a period of time?
00:08:01
Heather
And I think that that's an amazing mark of someone. Like, you know, when you talk to someone and you're like, oh, my goodness, over the last two, three years, I've watched them really grow. Someone like that. And that's a hard thing to teach.
00:08:14
Heather
Hunger, curiosity, ability to grow.
00:08:19
Brian O'Grady
That is hard to teach. um um Your parenting references resonated with me because um and don't have many parenting riffs either. I guess that's not not high in my skill set. But the one I do have is if you taught the kids to be confident, if you can raise confident kids, almost everything else can follow because they've got the confidence to to follow through on that. And maybe that maybe that's similar in in a hiring perspective. If they've got the enthusiasm if they've got the confidence to go for it, um maybe that's the prerequisite.
00:08:49
Heather
Yeah.
Outsourcing in Marketing
00:08:51
Heather
Yeah. I take a look at my son. Right. And there's like, you know, I can go figure out how to play guitar. I can go figure out how to code a game. I can go like, you know, just, I think that, you know, you have that. I think it's great.
00:09:02
Heather
It's It's the same for staff.
00:09:03
Brendan Ziolo
Do you think, yeah, but Heather on that one, do you think the company stage matters? So I'm, I'm very much with you as you're talking about, like in the startup example, that's perfect, right?
00:09:12
Heather
No,
00:09:16
Brendan Ziolo
Because, everything's going to change quickly. You're going to be asked to do things quickly. And let's be honest, startups don't generally have the biggest budget for hiring either. So there's kind of a, you know, you can hire someone who's maybe a bit more green, but enthusiastic where you can't afford the experience. Right.
00:09:36
Brendan Ziolo
But what you're talking about here, like, does that also apply to the equally large companies? Like, did you look for the same at Nokia, right? When we were together, You know, did you look for that same enthusiasm growth or do you think it's different at the larger companies?
00:09:45
Heather
Yeah.
00:09:52
Heather
Um, yeah, i always like to have energy on the team. Right. And, you know, folks that are capable of, of, of growing and stepping into a leadership.
00:10:03
Heather
The only time that you'd start to trade that off is if you had really deep subject matter domain knowledge. Um, But I mean, ideally, those things would go hand in hand in, you know, that ideal world.
00:10:20
Brian O'Grady
Okay, so if you've got your team, you've got, let's say you're in your startup small team, you've got some hot skills, you've got some enthusiasm, some energy, but there's probably not everything.
00:10:28
Heather
No.
00:10:30
Brian O'Grady
And you might be short something.
00:10:31
Heather
no
00:10:32
Brian O'Grady
And that that brings us to ah how are you going to get it? And so that brings us often to outsourcing and Brendan already mentioned budget. So Is there a right, what are your, what are your hot takes on I'm looking for outsourcing for particular skills? How do I find it? What's the right ah way to to book it or pay for it?
00:10:52
Brian O'Grady
um For those of us who do need to go out looking occasionally to get extra help, either because we're really, really busy or because we've just been asked to provide something, a skillset we know we're not good enough at and we want to bring in someone better.
00:11:05
Brian O'Grady
What do you, what do you think? What do you got for us?
00:11:07
Heather
Okay, outsourcing is one of the best gifts to marketers, right? You know, especially especially in a startup where, you know, you want to be able to scale without over committing.
00:11:23
Heather
And I've actually loved when you're doing some of the outsourcing and you find someone who will do the fractional job because you don't need it full time. And then you you fall in love with them and bring them onto the team.
00:11:36
Brendan Ziolo
Thank you.
00:11:36
Heather
I recently had a ah guy like this that at my last company where I brought him in. I'm like, I need you to plug a hole for me. I've worked with you before, right? I don't need you full time, but I really need that skill.
00:11:47
Heather
And he just worked out so well. He was such a fit that we were like, okay, we want you on. um But when you think about outsourcing, I think about it a couple different ways.
00:12:01
Heather
I think first about like, hey, what what do I really need in-house and what do I want to outsource? And I think when I go in-house, I think it has to be core competencies like that brand, right? The positioning, the messaging, right? Those core functions that are like, you know, close to who we are.
00:12:21
Heather
And on the execution piece, I think that's where outsourcing gives you a ton of leverage. um So I think that that's one part of it, right? so you know, core stuff in-house, right? a lot of the execution out of the house.
00:12:38
Heather
But then I think, Brendan, you were talking to me a little bit about budget as well. um Within there, I look at price points that I would want to be paying for things.
00:12:49
Heather
And I think right now, I don't think I've ever worked for a company that doesn't care about getting the most out of there their budget. And I think that that needs to be a core skill, like for all of us, like, because, you know, if you're going to lead a team,
00:13:02
Heather
And more and more when we come into board meetings or into investor meetings, I've been asked for a return on investment in marketing. And one of the things I've also been talking about is efficiency gains.
00:13:15
Heather
Are we getting more for less, right? So we're seeing some sort of efficiency.
00:13:18
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah.
00:13:20
Heather
And so I look heavily at that price point I'm paying for a service. Hey, Brendan, you you would know this. you know, I think it's probably been imprinted onto you at Nokia, when all of a sudden you're like working in a global market, you can see the difference between like a price point in India versus California.
00:13:43
Brian O'Grady
Big time.
00:13:44
Brendan Ziolo
yeah
00:13:44
Heather
Yeah.
00:13:46
Brian O'Grady
In fact, okay.
00:13:46
Heather
And eve
00:13:47
Brian O'Grady
I dive in with a question because that's a really good one because I bumped into this all the time. I spent some good time in India with IBM. Um, How do you know? I mean, if you don't speak all currencies, you don't speak all cultures, how do you know if spot that value for money? If you're operating, someone comes to you and says, I've got a hotshot in Colombia. I've got an amazing person in Romania.
00:14:09
Brian O'Grady
um You should check them out for that skill you desperately need. Is there, are there, are there techniques for knowing where you're at in in terms of the market there? You want value for money, but you want to be fair. um That's an area I've struggled.
00:14:22
Heather
Um, well, I think that's when like, Brendan's really good at this. Brendan used to like, I've had Brendan, you were a phenomenal hire, right? Because you would also have, you'd be looking at writing. You'd be looking at their actual work.
00:14:32
Heather
It wasn't just people show up and they give you nice answers on a, on an interview, right? You took a look at what they actually deliver. So I'll look at, um, references and I'll look at their, their book of work as much as i as much as I can.
00:14:43
Brian O'Grady
That's right.
00:14:48
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah, I always just on that point and then I've got I want to circle back on the global point, but i I mean, I teach at the local college now, but I've also done like workshops for students and stuff like this. And I'm always intrigued because I'll be on this panel with maybe non tech, non startup type people.
00:15:06
Brendan Ziolo
And they're like, you know, you got to do your resume and you've got to do this and you got to do all this kind of stuff.
00:15:06
Heather
Mm-hmm.
00:15:11
Brendan Ziolo
And like, I'm the renegade on the other side was like, Throw all of that out. I want your LinkedIn profile done. I want a website with all your stuff. If you're hiring to be like a video person, I want a YouTube channel. Like i I want you to do the work you're going to do for me and then show it to me.
00:15:27
Brendan Ziolo
And it doesn't have to be clearly about the company or the technology or anything. Like one of the great hires I have at Zinc Marketing and I hired her when I was at Nokia was she built her business on social media.
00:15:42
Brendan Ziolo
I mean, what better what better skill set, what better learning is there for a social media person than, I've done this already for myself, I can now help all of you do that. um And I just think that's an amazing proof point. And like,
00:15:56
Brendan Ziolo
I'm not sure I ever saw her resume in retrospect.
00:15:59
Brian O'Grady
but
00:16:00
Brendan Ziolo
I'm going to assume I did because she was hired as a co-op and I'm going to assume there was a resume somewhere in there, but it's not what stood out, right?
00:16:11
Brendan Ziolo
It just wasn't. It was the examples. It was the clips she shared and stuff like that. so you know, on the hiring point and, you know, if there's any future marketers listening, You know, that's what I would encourage. It's less about your experience and it's more about what you've done. Now, realize there's a bit of hand in hand there, but show me what you want to do for me.
00:16:31
Brendan Ziolo
And that can make all the difference. And i think it can be applied to the outsourcing. Right. You know, if you're if I'm hiring, ah you know, Brian, you'll like this one. If I'm hiring an SEO agency, um do they rank first for their company? Right.
00:16:46
Brendan Ziolo
I mean, i've i've i've I've had some apply or send me proposals when I was on the client side and I couldn't find them. I'm like, yeah, maybe not the best fit right now.
00:16:59
Brian O'Grady
Thank you.
00:17:00
Brendan Ziolo
course, now everyone's Googling zinc marketing and not finding them. So I've just doomed myself, I guess. But um but yeah, I mean, that type of stuff to kind of prove what it is.
00:17:11
Brendan Ziolo
But back to the question on global, I think there's pros and cons to that, Heather. And I hear you on price point.
00:17:19
Heather
Mm-hmm.
00:17:19
Brendan Ziolo
you know, the obvious con is time zones. I think we've all worked in global companies and, you know, finding that five minutes of overlap between time zones when everyone's free to meet ah can be difficult.
00:17:22
Heather
Yeah.
00:17:32
Brendan Ziolo
So someone's always compromising on their time zone. And as long as they're aware of that, you're aware of that, et cetera, I guess it can work, but but that's a struggle. But I also think there's the, you know,
00:17:46
Brendan Ziolo
the quality, the, you know, certain skills in certain areas, certain expertise in certain areas, etc. So I mean, I guess I'm saying there the con is the con is the time zones. But then when you're doing this price point can't be the only one there, I think there's other attributes. And maybe we're circling back to some of this.
00:18:05
Brendan Ziolo
How do you judge that quality, ah which was maybe Brian, your your point there?
00:18:11
Brian O'Grady
or Or at least the value for money, because Heather made the good point that, you know, you've you've been entrusted by this company with this budget.
00:18:13
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah.
00:18:16
Brian O'Grady
You are a steward of this budget. It's your job to get the most for it that you can. And nobody can be an expert in everywhere at all times. So how do you know you're getting that value for money there? And I guess you guys have already got a long way to answering that, which is if you've actually seen the work product, and at least you know you're getting good work product. that That's the beginning.
00:18:33
Brian O'Grady
You can maybe dial in the dollars over time.
00:18:38
Heather
understand where you want to put the dollars, right? Because, you know, for example, if you're looking at design, sometimes you need fast churn, right? Hey, clean up the slides. I've got a pretty solid brand profile. Here's how you use it, right? Like kind of factory, right? If you would, right?
00:18:55
Brian O'Grady
Mm-hmm.
00:18:56
Heather
Let's get that stuff done. But then sometimes I need a design house that is really helping me with core graphics or to refresh brand or help with videos. So I think that's the, you know, you can look across the marketing spectrum and there's probably that factory premium and understanding which is which goes through so many different areas.
00:19:20
Heather
And then I think though, if you take that notion a step further, especially for new entrants, if you're a factory, right, and your value is, hey, look at, I could get some stuff done,
00:19:36
Heather
Now you're also competing with AI.
AI in Marketing
00:19:39
Heather
It's not just you're competing with India and Budapest, right? You know, if your writing isn't adding something on top of AI or the design on top of AI, then you got to go take a look at what you're doing and ask yourself a question of how do I make myself more valuable?
00:20:01
Brendan Ziolo
and it's interesting you you went there because yeah i was I was starting to think the same thing around, you know, the skill set, the hiring, the outsourcing question, and now the AI.
00:20:13
Brendan Ziolo
You know, Heather, can you kind of comment on How AI has evolved your thinking and your approach in building and scaling a team? Like, so kind of, you know, we talked about outsourcing. We talked about skill sets.
00:20:27
Brendan Ziolo
Has AI changed the skill sets? Has AI changed what skills you might hire or outsource, et cetera? Kind of bring that all together for us because obviously it's been a big change, I guess, everywhere, it's safe to say.
00:20:41
Brendan Ziolo
um But in this particular area, how do you see AI impacting it?
00:20:46
Heather
So um I had a holy shit moment with AI a few years ago and it happened.
00:20:52
Brendan Ziolo
Do we have to censor that, Brian? Now, I'm not sure we've come across this yet.
00:20:54
Brian O'Grady
I think we're okay. I think we're okay.
00:20:57
Brendan Ziolo
We're okay? All right. just
00:20:58
Heather
you want me to, I'll give it to you a less, like, why don't I give you the safe version so you can cut it out.
00:20:58
Brian O'Grady
Oh
00:21:03
Brendan Ziolo
you No, I want a big, nice.
00:21:03
Heather
All right.
00:21:04
Brendan Ziolo
we need a new bleeping sound.
00:21:06
Brian O'Grady
ah yeah, hear the sound effects.
00:21:06
Heather
Oh, okay. Yeah. Believe me Okay. I like that. My mama might not, but...
00:21:13
Brendan Ziolo
All right. Sorry, sorry, sorry. That was a distraction. But, you know, new podcast. We're learning as we go, Heather.
00:21:20
Heather
All right, so my holy shit moment. um And this one happened for me. at like I was with a startup and we were going through a cash crunch. um At that point, I didn't have a lot of support on content development. And you know we always used to joke at Nokia about zero-based budgeting.
00:21:40
Heather
Right. And this one really was zero based budgeting. So it was myself doing a lot of content for launches, trade shows, websites. And this is right around the same time that GPT came out.
00:21:53
Heather
So I started playing with it. And you're starting to realize, oh my goodness, what a massive boost on productivity this could be. And it just got me going, right? So I'm in a bunch of these CMO groups where, you know, people are talking about all their different use cases. I've got some friends who are really deep into it and we're exchanging notes.
00:22:13
Heather
I'm reading, listening, trying to immerse myself in this as much as possible. And I've kind of come to this conclusion because, I mean, the other night I went out and people were talking about a whole bunch of people who've never tried it, used it, and it just kind of blew my mind.
00:22:22
Brian O'Grady
Thank you.
00:22:30
Heather
I'm thinking this way, like if I'm not up on the technology and understanding how to use it, I'm irrelevant in five years. And so is my team. Like this is now part of our core productivity skills.
00:22:43
Heather
And so at my last company, there's a couple of folks who are also like thinking the same sort of way. And we just pushed ourselves, you know, how do we embed AI or at least experiment with AI in all different aspects of of marketing? And that's, you know, that's been fun.
00:23:01
Heather
It's also been a little bit scary. um But that question of value keeps on coming up. And so I look at it like content. If we circle back to the beginning, right? What's the most important hire? is Someone who deeply understands brand, deeply understands product market fit, deeply understands customers, right? So you're able to use AI to help you generate some content, get some ideas out on the table, but you have the subject matter expertise to tune that and get that going in the way that it needs to go.
00:23:34
Heather
I also think one of the most important skills that marketers need to have right now is just the ability to ask really great questions, right? So you're learning, evolving, right? And you're prompting your AI engines in the in most important ways.
00:23:53
Heather
And then the other part is to really about prioritizing someone who's got their their head on and understanding, okay, what's important for the business and what do I need to to work on?
00:24:04
Heather
so So to me, it's impacting all different areas of marketing. I've got to hire someone who's got that mindset, who's going into it. Maybe someone who's going to teach me a whole bunch of cool new things, um but also has some ability to do something that's on top of what AI can provide me.
00:24:23
Brian O'Grady
Yeah, I think there's a lot of people probably tuning in hard on how best to put AI to work. ah Some days I feel like an expert. Some days I feel like a moron and those that that can be one day after another using the same AI tool.
00:24:37
Brian O'Grady
I will share one anecdote, though, that i I learned along the way with my team around the same time ah you bumped into it when it first became popular. ah My team got together and we said, all right, we need to be all over this. So what's the best AI for design? Okay, design person, you're going to play with that.
00:24:51
Brian O'Grady
What's the best AI for SEO? Okay, SEO person, you're going to go play with that and so on and so forth. And for a number of months, we met all the time and uniformly people were kind of, well, it was kind of, sort of, it was okay, but nobody was getting excited.
00:25:05
Brian O'Grady
I'm missing something.
00:25:05
Heather
Oh, okay.
00:25:06
Brian O'Grady
We're missing something here. So then we shuffled the roles. The design person took on the SEO AI and the SEO person took on the writing AI and we shuffled the responsibilities.
00:25:18
Brian O'Grady
And almost immediately, the change was apparent because instead of asking ai to do something at the level of an A player, what you're already really good at, because that's your profession, you asked it to do something you're not strong at.
00:25:31
Brian O'Grady
And all of a sudden, you were getting B, B plus results, A minus results in something you're normally weak at. And it changed everything quickly for us there. So it's like, oh, okay, we've been going over this the wrong way. So we shuffled it.
00:25:42
Brian O'Grady
And, you know, we can still, you can still learn something from it in your your core strength. But I think you'll get more gains faster if you're asking it to help you with things that are not your core strength.
00:25:52
Heather
That's cool.
00:25:53
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah, that's very cool.
00:25:55
Brian O'Grady
That was neat.
00:25:56
Brendan Ziolo
um So i I think I see Brian's beer, you know, starting to work its way down and get a bit bit empty. um But I don't want to, I don't want to end I don't want to wrap this up without um touching on your mistakes, Heather.
00:26:14
Brian O'Grady
Oh, yeah.
00:26:14
Brendan Ziolo
ah favorite A favorite topic and you know, clearly Clearly the reason we will never have a return guest to this podcast. um But oh well, what can you do?
00:26:25
Brendan Ziolo
So, you know, maybe I'm even happy with one mistake that you've made.
00:26:30
Heather
Oh, see, I was going to give you a boatload.
00:26:31
Brendan Ziolo
is that Oh, see, I would say i was going to give you know, you've made so few.
00:26:33
Heather
Hmm.
00:26:35
Brendan Ziolo
Could you please pick one?
00:26:37
Heather
Hmm.
00:26:37
Brendan Ziolo
But no, we'll leave it open to you. But are there any mistakes you have made? building out your team, scaling your team, um you know, and and and hopefully the lessons learned on those as well.
00:26:52
Brendan Ziolo
I'm sure our listeners will have, will recognize one or two if ah if you share more than one. um I know Brian and I will recognize all of them, I'm sure.
00:27:02
Heather
Well, hey, am I might give you my top three.
00:27:02
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah, what what mistakes, what mistakes, what have you learned? And yeah, just, you know, give us a couple if you can.
00:27:10
Heather
um i think one of my big mistakes is really been moving too fast, especially when you're starting a new job and you're eager to prove yourself, right?
Reflecting on Mistakes and Areas for Improvement
00:27:20
Heather
You you go in and you're just like, let's get to work.
00:27:23
Heather
And you don't pause and ask enough questions. And especially with hiring, i think, Brian, you were talking about like, you know, I've pulled the the trigger on on getting folks in a little too quickly because like, I'm eager to get going and they weren't the right fit.
00:27:41
Heather
But once you hire, right, it's it's, you know, you're stuck for a little bit. um Whereas my favorite team that I ever had, I spent a lot of time interviewing.
00:27:54
Heather
It was about 60 people and I talked with them each individually, right? Because I was trying to figure out group leads and whatnot. And I spent quite a bit of time And through those conversations, I discovered quite a few things and I made some shifts. I think I turned over like 30% of that team and shifted some some folks into new leadership positions.
00:28:13
Heather
And it blew me away, right? Just the the people and then you they stepped into roles, they led, right? And just people that were operating just at a fraction of their potential, all of a sudden, you know, were a little bit unleashed and we saw the kind of potential that they had.
00:28:32
Heather
but that was when I went slow. So that's one. The second one is, i mean, for someone who does communications, it's embarrassing to say, ah communication right is has been as been a big one. And I think sometimes we're so busy doing our work and we assume people know what we're doing or, you know, what's what's happening or why we're doing stuff. And, you know,
00:29:02
Heather
They don't. And I think it's so important to communicate like what you're doing, why you're doing it, success, not success. um And that's ongoing.
00:29:16
Heather
And I think if i if I really look at it, this communication piece has probably been one of my my biggest areas where I've constantly got to remind myself, just make sure you communicate what's happening.
00:29:28
Brian O'Grady
That resonates strongly. I know you probably have a number three, but i gotta i got to jump in on that one because
00:29:33
Heather
Good.
00:29:33
Brian O'Grady
if i' made If I've made 10 mistakes, ah to quantify it, ah eight of them can be traced back to miscommunications. There's maybe two that were someone did bad work, maybe me, or someone did the wrong work, maybe me, but eight out of 10 mistakes I've ever made come back to a miscommunication somewhere or a lack of or poor, all about communication. And that, yeah, I'm also allegedly a communicator. That's embarrassing. and You're like, facepalm.
00:30:02
Brian O'Grady
How did let that happen?
00:30:03
Heather
Oh, yeah. Totally. Totally. And or the avoided conversation.
00:30:09
Brian O'Grady
Yeah.
00:30:11
Brendan Ziolo
And I'm not, I mean, I'll, I'll be honest, Heather, cause I think of you as a, a great communicator. So I, I am actually surprised you picked that knowing you, um but yeah, I mean, it Brian's right.
00:30:17
Heather
ah
00:30:24
Brendan Ziolo
I mean, a lot of this stuff does circle back to that. So, you know, great, great that you recognize it.
00:30:28
Brian O'Grady
What did you just say? Did you just say what I think you said?
00:30:32
Heather
Yeah, you've got it on.
00:30:32
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah. Well, well, well, you know, ah now since I've got to bleep out the cursing, I'll bleep out the Brian was right part as well from this.
00:30:33
Heather
You've got to record it.
00:30:40
Brendan Ziolo
this part of the episode.
00:30:41
Brian O'Grady
it was going to be a good day.
00:30:41
Brendan Ziolo
um But yeah, i just, I mean, just, just, you know, Heather, that is, that's, you know, very forthcoming, but yeah, a bit, a bit surprising to me, but you know, it's a lesson we can all learn, right?
00:30:53
Brendan Ziolo
Communication is, is very important and we can all do better at that and probably many other things too. um
00:31:00
Heather
Here we go. And if I if I give you a third, i do.
00:31:01
Brendan Ziolo
Did you have a third? Yeah. Did you have a third, fourth, Heather?
00:31:03
Heather
Well, I mean, I've got I've got 10, right? But four more.
00:31:06
Brendan Ziolo
Okay. Well, let's just, let's just cap it at three.
00:31:08
Heather
Three big buckets.
00:31:09
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah.
00:31:10
Heather
um Misjudging fit.
Team Chemistry and Communication
00:31:14
Heather
And I say this, I think it's probably the older I get. i used to think that you can make a lot of things work.
00:31:21
Heather
Hey, look at, you know, if I sweat this out, if I'm coaching a lot or even like even myself. right? If a job's not working, your relationship with your boss isn't working or your relationship with with with the team, um call it.
00:31:38
Heather
Because I think at the end of the day, um
00:31:43
Heather
one of the things that holds people at an organization is the bond of the group. I like to think that Hey, I can go to work and hey, Brendan, you and I went rounds on a whole bunch of things.
00:31:54
Heather
Like we had some healthy debates, right?
00:31:56
Brendan Ziolo
Thank you.
00:31:56
Heather
And, you know, I still wanted to go out for dinner with you at night. And that's to me is the bar, right? People who make you better, they're going to challenge you, but you still want to go out to dinner with them at night.
00:32:08
Heather
If you are like booting out the front door, making some excuse not to join the dinner, right? Then, you know, it's probably not right. So go and have some fun and make sure that you're looking for that sort of a, that sort of a team.
00:32:25
Heather
And I think now in my fifties, I'm realizing just how much that matters.
00:32:33
Brian O'Grady
That resonates. I can tell you for a fact, number of years at IBM, you could work all day together in whatever city and over dinner, as much or more important work got done for the sake of the team and for the sake of the company and the bottom line and the shareholder.
00:32:44
Heather
Yeah.
00:32:47
Brian O'Grady
That's the cohesiveness part.
00:32:50
Heather
Yeah, and did you laugh at dinner?
00:32:52
Brian O'Grady
A lot.
00:32:54
Heather
And that's that's ah that's when you know, right, that you've got some kind of chemistry and a great team. And I'm always looking at coaches and stuff, and I was listening to Steve Kerr the other day talking the Golden Strait Warriors coach. He also coached the U.S. men's Olympic team.
00:33:10
Heather
Talk about how important it is, those team dinners, those bus rides, right, or those one-on-one dinners and all of that afterwards. And I just i think that you can't. You can't undervalue that.
00:33:22
Brian O'Grady
Yeah, you probably can't buy chemistry.
00:33:22
Heather
And so if it's not there,
00:33:23
Brian O'Grady
You probably have to build chemistry. you probably can't buy it.
00:33:27
Heather
Yeah, which kind of takes you back to the first question.
00:33:30
Brendan Ziolo
And I do know, and I knew, do you know, Brian, I think it goes back to our first time working together that I think we had a mantra that we wrote out that, you know, all good ideas come out of the bar.
00:33:41
Brendan Ziolo
Um, you know, there's numerous ways like that.
00:33:42
Heather
which then brings us right back to the beat.
00:33:44
Brendan Ziolo
So, you know, now, now we did, we did have a very quick corollary to that. I don't know if you remember this, Brian, but you had to edit and review those in the morning.
00:33:53
Brian O'Grady
Heavy editing. It
00:33:54
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah. Was, was the gut was the, it was the key factor there.
00:33:54
Heather
Oh,
00:33:57
Brendan Ziolo
And yeah, but very important, very important.
00:33:57
Brian O'Grady
was a review cycle for sure. Yeah.
00:34:01
Brendan Ziolo
Cause yeah, you did you just, you just couldn't publish those, uh, from the bar. Um, but on that note, um, Kevin Haller- we really, really appreciate your time today, ah thank you so much i've known you for a while now um which i'm sure you find hard to believe to. Kevin Haller- And I always learn stuff when we talk and this today is is clearly no different, so thank you for sharing your insights.
00:34:25
Brendan Ziolo
ah sharing a pint with us. Hopefully you have more left than Brian.
00:34:28
Heather
cheers
00:34:29
Brendan Ziolo
Oh, I don't know if you do. ah And, ah you know, any final thoughts, words of wisdom, you know, so to speak, we'll give you the last word.
00:34:32
Brian O'Grady
Thank
00:34:39
Brendan Ziolo
I'm sure we won't, but for now, we'll give you the last word.
00:34:44
Heather
um one that it's been really fun right it's great talking with you guys and i i love the energy that you bring to it it's um it's great and i think really for for listeners if i were to say one thing.
00:34:59
Heather
It's that notion of everything is, is changing so much right now. It's just a really great time to get curious and to play and experiment. And, um, you know, it's makes it so much more fun.
00:35:14
Heather
You don't want to get to this job where you know how to do it and you get stale and uninterested, right? Now's the time, particularly with AI where things are really reinventing itself. And, um,
00:35:26
Heather
I think it's a really interesting time to be in marketing.
00:35:28
Brian O'Grady
True. Hopefully not too many marketers go into marketing because they don't want to have fun.
00:35:34
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah.
00:35:34
Brian O'Grady
So I think I think fun might be an underrated part of this profession.
00:35:41
Heather
That's true.
00:35:44
Heather
If you're doing it right.
00:35:44
Brian O'Grady
All right. Do we have to I would like to keep doing this all afternoon, but do we have to stick a pin in it there? do We have to finish Brendan.
00:35:50
Brendan Ziolo
ah You know, I i think our our listeners may appreciate us not going on all afternoon, Brian, because I'm worried that's a slippery slope ah for everything here.
00:35:58
Brian O'Grady
Absolutely.
00:36:00
Brendan Ziolo
um But yeah, let's ah let's put a pin in this one. Hopefully, Heather will come back at some point. um but we'll ah We'll edit out the mistakes or we'll promise not to have her share those next time.
00:36:13
Brendan Ziolo
um But, you know, to our listeners, we really hope you've enjoyed this episode. ah Don't forget to subscribe, share, leave a review and make sure your fellow marketers know about this B2B marketing client as well.
00:36:25
Brendan Ziolo
Thanks again.
00:36:27
Heather
Thanks.
00:36:29
Brian O'Grady
Thank you, Heather.