Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Entrepreneurial Challenges of Running a B2B Saas Startup
102 Plays2 years ago
What a difference a year makes for B2B Saas entrepreneurs.
In 2021, business was booming, venture capital was flowing, and the focus was customer acquisition and growth.
Today, the economic landscape is bumpy, venture capital has evaporated, and customer retention is paramount.
In this episode of Marketing Spark, Lately.ai CEO Kate Bradley Chernis talks about her professional challenges and how she's navigating the B2B SaaS waters.
She also talks about Lately's struggles to raise venture capital and Lately's bootstrapped approach to marketing.
Recommended
Transcript
B2B Landscape Changes: Boom to Volatility
00:00:07
Speaker
If you're a B2B entrepreneur, a lot has probably changed over the past 18 months. Last year, business was booming. The rising tide lifted all ships. Times were good.
00:00:19
Speaker
Today, it's a different landscape. The global economy is volatile, and many B2D SaaS companies are focused on running a tight ship rather than driving pro.
Meet Kate Bradley-Cheris and Lately.ai's Journey
00:00:29
Speaker
To provide some perspective on what it's like to be in the eye of the hurricane, I'm happy to be talking with Kate Bradley-Cheris, CEO of Lately.ai.
00:00:39
Speaker
I talked to Kate in March 2021, seems like a long, long time ago, at a time when lately was emerging as a Red Hot company that had just raised a round of venture capital. Welcome back to Marketing Spark. I love Red Hot. Well, it's better than the alternative.
00:01:00
Speaker
Right. It's true. Thanks so much, Mark. It's really nice to be. I feel like, you know, I make so many friends and so the best part is to reconnect with you and, you know, just to have that familiarity. So thanks for
AI in Sales and Marketing Copy
00:01:15
Speaker
having me back.
00:01:15
Speaker
No, welcome. Glad to do it. Before we start, let's level set by giving people a quick positioning overview of lately. What does it do? Who does it serve? What are the benefits? And how is it unique? And that is a lot. Many questions in a short period. Yes, you can. I'm sure you've done this a lot. You probably got it down. Pat.
00:01:39
Speaker
You're gonna have to compare from last year because it always morphs as time goes on. Lately uses artificial intelligence to write high-performing sales and marketing copy on social media. That's the short, quick one-liner, but it doesn't really do us justice, as you know, because it's a bit more complicated than that, which we can get into.
00:02:01
Speaker
One of the things we are excited about is working with companies of all sizes, so small, medium, and large. And, you know, that's a big no-no in SaaS world, as you can't address everyone all the time, but we do.
Human-AI Collaboration in Content Repurposing
00:02:16
Speaker
despite what they've said, and we can, and we can do it the same way, which has been, we wanted to prove this point this year, and we did, was that I can talk to enterprise the same way I can talk to small, medium business and reach them and convert them the same way. So that's been really kind of a fun thing to rub in and say, you know,
00:02:41
Speaker
I told you. The other thing that's crucial to what we do is repurposing content. So artificial intelligence, as you know, Mark, is dumb. It's just a robot made of metal somewhere in the sky, in our case. And humans have to train artificial intelligence just like a garden. You have to tend the garden.
00:03:02
Speaker
And for us, that means feeding long-form content to the brain. So it has multiple reference points that it uses to know what to grab and to turn into social, right? So that repurposing factor turns out is a huge problem for everyone, right? What do I do once I have this amazing podcast like you have? How do you market it?
00:03:26
Speaker
How many social posts should you post about it? Is it social only? Is there a newsletter happening? Are you posting it online? I know you have a long list of things, but that problem is difficult for so many because we're, even if we work for a large company, we feel as though we're an army of one or we actually are an army of one, except that the army part isn't working so well.
00:03:50
Speaker
Talk a little bit about how lately's positioning and messaging have changed over the past 18 months. You said off the top that you're looking to reach different types of companies and
00:04:06
Speaker
What is the trick from a positioning standpoint so that your so what you say the story that you tell resonates with all of them because they all have different needs and different challenges and different ways of of using the technology. So what's been the biggest challenge from a positioning standpoint and what has been some of some of the keys to success on the change side repurposing is a big one. So just that word alone, you know, it
Lately's Core Functions Explained
00:04:33
Speaker
For us, it's very easy to, we do two things. One, we build a custom writing model for you and we learn the words, phrases, and ideas that will resonate most with your audience. That's the number one thing. The number two thing is the repurposing. So our greatest challenge is
00:04:51
Speaker
How do you make that one, right? Because I don't have a long time to give you both. But one without the other really kind of cuts the legs off there, you know. So we've constantly experimented with that.
00:05:06
Speaker
Sometimes when I'm talking to, especially enterprise, I've learned there's egos
AI vs Human Creativity in Marketing
00:05:12
Speaker
involved. So the positioning that we use there is slightly more delicate so that no one feels threatened by artificial intelligence, number one, right? And the user is always the same, small or large. It's always the digital manager, whoever that is. Now, if you're a small company, that might also be you, the owner, for example, right?
00:05:37
Speaker
Or you might have, you know, multiple hats there. For them, the idea of saving money and eliminating an agency or another team member is very appealing. And so I don't have to tiptoe around that. But I've also learned that
00:05:55
Speaker
Artificial intelligence is a scary word for so many people. And I think you'll remember from our previous conversations is that we talk a lot about the humans and the AI collaborating together. So we've learned in the last year to really double down on that. Like I said, AI must be trained. It's not here to, our AI is not here to replace anybody for good reason, not just because I'm saying it as a nice thing, but marketing and sales,
00:06:24
Speaker
only works when you have that spark. You buy from people you like or trust or you're not likely to double down and pull your wallet out for something that's just falling flat for you. And so the spark always comes from the human interaction. So learning how to convey that.
00:06:51
Speaker
why that's important. I mean, the opposite of that, by the way, is that then people are like, well, what do you mean I have to do work? They want their cake. They want to eat their cake and have it too, basically. That's right. Yeah, they want both, you know, like, okay, so like, one of the analogies I always say is, you know, the electric toothbrush mark, you still have to hold it to your mouth.
00:07:16
Speaker
For at least the next little while before some robot appears in your house probably own my Amazon Right. Yeah, Alexa brush my teeth. How weird would that be? You know, I'm just thinking about the Jetsons, right? It's coming and Jeff Bezos will be the mastermind Oh One of the words that I did want to ask you about is repurposing in the marketing world there are catchphrases that marketers going on to and it seems like from
00:07:46
Speaker
reading a lot and looking at LinkedIn, is that repurposing and distribution are like the one two punch for content marketers. It's their obsession. You know, a couple of years ago, it was long form content or videos or, you know, high value content. But now it's about repurposing and distribution. So how do you capture what people are talking about the words that they're using and integrated into your marketing without torquing your position in your messaging?
00:08:16
Speaker
You know, we do go with the flow. We're no dummies, right? I mean, with AI even, when we first built lately, we never talked about AI. We had no idea that was what we were building. And in fact, even when we were first aware of it, we were cautious before we even used that phrase, but it became a hot button. And I knew that it would drive investors to us and help leverage the SEO off it.
00:08:45
Speaker
It's not that we're trendy, but we're paying attention. I mean, your question about how do we not let it kind of interfere or poke a hole in the core of what we do, I mean, the core of what we do is
00:09:00
Speaker
We make fans, we don't make sales. That's what we do. And that comes from my background in radio and just to remind anybody who hasn't met me before. I used to be a rock and roll DJ. My last gig was broadcasting too.
00:09:15
Speaker
20 million listeners a day for XM satellite radio. This is in fact my Uber power. What I've learned to do is to emanate that from within. First, I make my employees my fans. I love them so much, Lauren, Chris, Katie, Kristen, Jason, Greg, Brian, etc. But they also want us to win. We've learned to take the mindset we have internally and treat our customers the same way and our targets the same way.
00:09:45
Speaker
And it's how our AI operates also, right? So everything emanates from radio, from me. We've learned, by the way, to fold that into how we talk about the AI. If you want, I can, because I don't think I had this language when we met before.
The Emotional Impact of Music and AI Content
00:10:02
Speaker
I think you were talking about AI last year. There's a lot about the power of
00:10:07
Speaker
social media and efficiencies. That seemed to be the theme that you're talking about. We should make a spreadsheet of this. It's so funny. Of all the things you talked about. Yeah. Well, OK. So will you indulge me? I'll zero in on this. So when your brain listens to a new song, Mark, it must instantly access every other song you've ever heard before in the single moment.
00:10:33
Speaker
And what it's trying to do is to find familiar touch points so it knows where to index that new song in the library of the memory of your brain. And again, in this moment, an instant, because your brain is doing all that accessing, you've got nostalgia and emotion and memory and all these things that are just coming forth to play.
00:10:52
Speaker
It makes music so powerful, but also those things all make up for the underbelly of trust. Now trust is why we buy. Similarly, when you write me an email or a text message or a Slack message or a social media message, I read it and I hear your voice in my head because your voice, as everyone's voice, has a frequency. It's a song. There's a note.
00:11:20
Speaker
to your voice. All sound has a frequency to it. And so there's a similar thing that must happen. You as the author, if you want to really engage me, have to figure out ways to give me familiar touch points, give me familiar access points, and trigger nostalgia, memory, emotion, trust.
00:11:41
Speaker
So this is what fuels the bedrock of our AI because lately's AI, while it studies you and all your analytics, it then defaults to a series of other best practices. First one is me and how I write. I have a 98% sales conversion. Don't you want that? Of course you do. So let's take the best practices of what I do and, and pre-train the AI so that you can benefit from the same idea.
00:12:10
Speaker
fans, not sales. And so AI is integrated into the platform. Last year, it wasn't there. What has been what's in the past year been like from a business and entrepreneurship perspective?
Entrepreneurial Challenges in B2B SaaS
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah, is the lows the lessons learned because obviously, as you said, you are a radio personality who sort of stumbled into becoming an entrepreneur.
00:12:40
Speaker
And I imagine that you're, like many entrepreneurs, you're still on the learning stage. What's the last year been like? I mean, it's been certainly an interesting time to be an entrepreneur and certainly an interesting time to be running a B2B SaaS company. For sure. And that's the nice way to say it, I think, you know, like, there was AI last year, by the way, but we were learning how to describe it and talk it, talk about it and to connect all the dots. And
00:13:07
Speaker
The story is everything. That's something I learned a long time ago. The story is everything. People, I mean, my husband reminds me about this all the time. Our wedding is a good example.
00:13:19
Speaker
People there are events in your life that people will always ask about and you want to be able to describe them in a way That's where they're walking away with the story, you know So so what what is that? You know at our wedding by the way, he played me down the aisle to don't stop believing I am and and
00:13:47
Speaker
What was that HBO show about the mob that it had just ended? Sopranos. Sopranos, sorry, yeah. So the Sopranos was like hot and heavy then too. So we were riffing off what was popular. And then surprising and delighting my family who didn't expect any of this. With Lately, part of the thing about being an entrepreneur is knowing
00:14:10
Speaker
what stories to tell and when to tell them, when to evolve them, to your point, right? This year versus last year, knowing when to equip others to be able to tell the same story, because that's so important as well. And that includes, again, my employees, as well as my customers and other evangelists, you know, I'm, I'm creating exponential megaphone here, right? The,
00:14:39
Speaker
other thing in the last year. I mean, for us, so recently, by the way, like when the market turned down over the spring and summer, a number of my investors were reaching out like, Hey, are you okay? Everything okay? And I was like, same shit, different day. I mean, are you kidding me? Like, in startup life, it's always awful. Everything is awful. Once in a while, there's something great. It's a blip and it's just as terrible as a blip. It's this twinkle, you know, and, and
00:15:05
Speaker
I'm the worst at celebrating that as my team likes to remind me because I'm half glass empty always, you know? But that was my reaction was like more terrible things are happening. I mean, you know, in case people don't know as a female entrepreneur, there's only 2% of all women owned businesses hit the million dollar mark. We have not yet. We're almost there. Drives me crazy. We've been almost there for like two years, but then,
00:15:34
Speaker
In fundraising land, only 2.7% of all venture capital goes to female entrepreneurs. So I've raised $3.7 million. None of it comes from VCs. It's all been angel money. I still, I still can't get that damn badge. I can't do it. I don't know why. It's very frustrating to me. It's like a, I mean, anyone else would stop trying, but just, it's like this one thing that eludes me and it really makes me angry.
00:16:05
Speaker
Um, so, you know, the last year has been exciting, but also as we touched on before we started talking the layers of, you can't, you can't take out the stress of life and COVID and politics and global warming and whatever else is going on in the humans, you know, my team. We're very open. We all talk about each other's lives and share because we have to, right? We have to.
00:16:34
Speaker
know that in order for you to have a good day of work, you can't be worrying about the person in your family who just had a heart attack, literally, or my mom has COVID or so-and-so's kid is going to college for the first time. All the mess, all the mess is part of it. Talk a little bit about Lately's approach to marketing.
Marketing Strategies: Earned Media and Automation
00:17:03
Speaker
I think obviously one of the company's biggest assets is you, the power of personality and having someone who's comfortable telling stories and talking to people and having a very public persona. How have you managed your role as the company's biggest sales and marketing asset?
00:17:27
Speaker
with how the company's marketing has evolved. Because obviously, it's easy to depend on you to drive brand awareness and bring prospects in. But at the same time, you need traditional marketing or regular marketing, or non Kate marketing to do its job. So how has the mix evolved over the past 18 months? Yeah, so I'll
00:17:53
Speaker
I'll explain what we do because it's replicable. It's hard, I'm warning you all, but this is what we do. So we have a 98% sales conversion on our enterprise side and on our SMB self-service product side, it's anywhere between 20% and 45% because we just launched five months ago, so we're experimenting. But 98%, pretty good. Why? So what we do, Mark, is
00:18:21
Speaker
You know, I came at it thinking, okay, I know obviously that marketing is valuable, and if you build it, they don't come. You have to set it up long before, right? Because there's nothing worse than needing an audience when there's no one there to listen to you. And so I had, you know, started building social media and all that kind of stuff. But
00:18:41
Speaker
Traditionally, my understanding was we needed to create content ourselves, but we never had time. And I'm the best content creator in the company, and I don't have time for that at all. I mean, I have a thousand other jobs, you know? And I couldn't afford ever to really take the time to hire someone who could write exactly like I would want them to, because of course, I'm micromanaging about that particular thing.
00:19:06
Speaker
So I had a an epiphany of sorts when in the beginning of 2020 a lot of people wanted to interview Everybody because everybody had a podcast suddenly, right? Right. It was a huge trend. Yeah Very trendy, of course very trendy and I was getting a lot of requests because I'm a female entrepreneur Rock and roll DJ AI. I'm interesting the epiphany I had was wait a second what if I took this earned media and Ran it through lately
00:19:38
Speaker
So now I don't have to create owned media anymore, but earned media is easy for me. I don't have to think about this interview. You send me questions. I actually really don't read them because I can answer anything you give me, and it's better. It'll be a better show if we do it kind of spontaneously. I don't have to prepare for this, and I don't have to do anything afterwards. I just give it to my team. So we upload it to Lately. It breaks apart everything you and I say. It's looking for the words and ideas.
00:20:04
Speaker
that it already knows my target audience are most likely to like, comment, and share. And we, and it breaks it up into like 40 social posts. My intern, I call her my intern, Alex, she's been working for me for five years. She's a real human being with a full-time advertising job, and she's great at it. Somehow keeps working for me. Love her to death.
00:20:24
Speaker
And she takes what's come out of the AI. She tends that garden a little bit, make sure it's not off the rails. We publish it on both our brand channels and all of our employee channels, because together we're stronger, right? So making the employees the advocates as well. And then we look to see online who's liking and commenting and sharing. We start conversations with them. And it's very easy because everything is visible if they qualify or they don't qualify. So by the time we move them into a demo, they're hot.
00:20:53
Speaker
right? There's no cold happening here, right? So that's one thing we do. The other thing in parallel with that is we believe that we're all in it together, and we put our money where our mouths are. So we look online for our targets, our customers, and each other internally. When people talk about us, when there's occasions, like say my customer, Jen McFarland, let's say she wrote a book,
00:21:23
Speaker
Then we would grab her social post about writing a book. We put it in our sharing is caring channel that we have in Slack. And the whole team, even my engineers, is tasked with liking and commenting on this content. So we do it for our customers. We do it for our targets. Not a day has passed in three years where someone hasn't spontaneously written about us on social media. So every time we see that, we pop that in sharing is caring, and then anything I write generally as well.
00:21:51
Speaker
So there's a lot of, and this is manual, by the way, this is the part nobody wants to hear. But you got to do it, you know, like, and it's also the fun part. I mean, today, Chris Bro, whose wife is Kate Snow from NBC, he's my teammate, and he posted a Twitter post about her writing a blog about bringing their son to college. And so of course, we all piled on, you know, because
00:22:20
Speaker
We want to help Kate. We want to celebrate this joy in their lives. I know something about Chris that I might not know, which is important to know. This is a big deal for his family today. And that empathy, that sympathy, it goes a long way. I mean, people poo-poo social media and think, well, why does someone want to know what cereal I had? But that's not the point. The point is when you build that relationship,
00:22:51
Speaker
Total strangers will do things for you. They want to help you. People's nature is inherently good. They want to be part of a winning team. Everyone wants to be part of the winning team. Aside from you being the content engine that you run through lately to generate all this great social content,
00:23:13
Speaker
What else is in the marketing mix? What else are you doing? Are you advertising? Are you creating content? Are you leveraging SEO? Or are you basically focused on a few small channels that you're doubling down on?
Exploring Paid vs Earned Media
00:23:28
Speaker
So until recently, there was nothing else. Like we don't have a budget for paid.
00:23:34
Speaker
We don't have the time. The only content we were creating was we were doing like a live office hours every week where Lauren, my COO and former head of customer service would do like a 30 minute kind of rundown of how Lately works or maybe interview some other expert, that kind of thing. And even that we tanked at the last few months because it wasn't
00:24:01
Speaker
I mean, in the end, it's content for us because we would take that too and run it through lately, you know? We're about to relaunch that and revamp it, which is another story. We just sent our first newsletter out in three years and I didn't write it. That kills me to hear that. I'm a content guy, you know? It's so embarrassing. Newsletters are supposed to be a good thing. You know, everyone says they're amazing, but okay, so that's happening.
00:24:31
Speaker
It's happening, and it's only happening because I found a few extra dollars to have, and I found someone who, my friend Jen, who could write exactly how I wanted to write and knows enough about us so there wasn't any training required there. We did start doing LinkedIn paid ads about a month ago, just with a very small amount of money to do an experiment.
00:24:53
Speaker
Because like you said, I mean, so consistently what I do is I do three of these interviews a week. Sometimes I'll do a guest blog somewhere. And we always are driving 1,000 people to the website, 1,000. Sometimes it's 900, sometimes it's 1,200, but it's 1,000. And to your question is like, well, how do you double that? How do you scale that? And we're doing the same thing always. So we know that we've created this replicable model.
00:25:19
Speaker
So I can make other people, me's, right? Lauren, Chris, Katie, I can put other people on the cover of the magazine. That's one way. Right. Which isn't necessarily scalable. So you have to either make more content, which we're trying to do with the, I haven't raised in three years. So like with the budget we have, beg, borrow, steal, um, or paid ads. So our idea is,
00:25:47
Speaker
even with a small amount of effort or money, probably we should be able to get 2000 in, very small amount. And that's what we're experimenting with now.
00:25:58
Speaker
It would be fair to say that the social media landscape has changed a lot. The players have changed a lot, or at least some of them are doing well and some of them aren't.
Social Media Platform Insights
00:26:11
Speaker
So rather than ask you to give me a nice succinct answer to what you think of the social media landscape, I'd like to do a rapid fire round. And the way it works is that I'm going to
00:26:22
Speaker
give you a word or a couple words and I want you to riff on them and you can riff as long or as short as you like. But almost top of the mind reactions and you're probably very good at this because as a radio personality, you're probably used to doing things on the cuff and on the fly. But let's try this and see how it goes. Are you game for this? Yeah, it's been so fun. I love you're doing this LinkedIn.
00:26:47
Speaker
Now, personal stuff is traveling so well on LinkedIn. I've been experimenting quite a lot with it, from pictures to videos to sense of humor. I can go way out there. I can use words that I normally would only preserve, like ballsy, for example, for other channels.
00:27:05
Speaker
And I can talk about, you know, being on vacation, like I always bring it back to work. But I've been seeing my posts triple in views when I'm just talking about life. The other thing on LinkedIn, which is so interesting, if you talk about God, boom, algorithm bumps that up. Fascinating. And negativity is nothing new. LinkedIn always drives negativity. So negative stories, I'm failed or whatever.
00:27:32
Speaker
So I've been drip feeding those in to see what's the algorithm really thinking about, which is curious to me.
00:27:42
Speaker
Stevie Nicks. Stevie Nicks. Yeah. So that viral video of the guy on the skateboard, and he was skating to, was it dreams? I think it was dreams. And just that one 30 second lick. And so then who was her teammate? And my brain is like, so
00:28:07
Speaker
Not who are the guys in the band with her? Help me. Help me mark Lindsay. Thank you. I think it was Lindsay Buckingham. Yeah, so Buckingham did a skateboard thing during during the during the same song and then
00:28:18
Speaker
She sang over, you know, the piece. So that, I loved that. I thought it was amazing because so much, so much of the music on TikTok are these like annoying songs. I don't know where they come from. And so it was a great break in the, you know, the thing. I mean, for me, what I, what I like there is I love watching guys skate to Michael Jackson.
00:28:39
Speaker
I'm into the roller skating. I don't know why. But I can see now everybody janking the system. It's just about dancing and pointing, right? That's the thing. So I wonder when that will change. Hootsuite integrated with them recently. TikTok for B2B SaaS companies. Yeah. I mean, we're not doing a good job of it because we don't have the resources, frankly, to do it.
00:29:05
Speaker
And so I just dabble over there. I just poke around so that someone doesn't call me old lady. It's Twitter. It's the beast. I love the Twitter. I don't understand what the hell Elon Musk is doing. No, I don't think anybody does for that matter. So you're not alone.
00:29:25
Speaker
Oh, that guy's crazy. But it's our bread and butter. I mean, I don't, it's funny, I don't, LinkedIn is where I personally live, but Twitter is, I'm more live there because the SEO seems to be so strong for us. And it can withstand a huge amount of quantity, which is where it lately thrives. I hate Twitter chats. Sorry, friends who've recently invited me to do one, which I've said yes to.
00:29:56
Speaker
because they're always so, they're seated. Everybody's prepared beforehand, including me. Everything you write is already pre-written, you know? And so when I do them, I try to write things that people don't expect me to write. You know, I joked, but somebody once called me insouciant as an insult, and I looked it up, and I thought, best compliment ever.
00:30:20
Speaker
Facebook the evil Empire Exactly. You said it. I mean it's I I almost never post there I look because there's people I know that do and I otherwise would never keep in touch with them, but it does feel
00:30:35
Speaker
Like, you know, when you walk into an old camp and it smells like mold, like that's what Facebook feels like to me, you know, sounds terrible. And meta, what the hell is meta? They're ruining a perfectly good word there. Thanks. What about Facebook's evil twin sister Instagram? That's the other place I personally live. I don't post a lot, but I find out a lot about my community there, and I really like that.
00:31:06
Speaker
kind of gossipy person, you know, hate to say that about myself, but I am. I'm interested in what's happening around me locally. And that's where I find out there's a new taco stand. They finally opened down the street. Thank God. You know, there was a, there was a, there was a forest fire up at Mohawk mountain in the well, Minnewaska state park, which is like blows my mind for around here. So that's where I get my news. Um, I also, one thing on Instagram is like,
00:31:34
Speaker
What is up with all the posing? There's so many people I know who work, who I know professionally. And then on Instagram, there are these sex pots. It's a little embarrassing. Social commerce.
00:31:51
Speaker
Social commerce, like do you mean like NFTs like that? No, but selling stuff via social, you know, when your Instagram feed is just teaming with offers to buy shit and crappy stuff that you probably wouldn't want to buy otherwise.
Navigating Social Commerce and Influencer Trends
00:32:03
Speaker
I totally have gotten sucked in it. I've totally bought weird things that I have frownies are right over there. You know what they are there. It's tape that you paste you paint or you you put over your wrinkles and go to bed and hope they disappear. That doesn't work.
00:32:18
Speaker
I don't know. I still haven't done it yet. I've had them for like four weeks. All right. One of these impulse buyers, eh? What about social audio? It's interesting. Clubhouse, apparently, it split itself apart. And remember, I think when we talked last year, Clubhouse was still popular. Any thoughts about social audio? For me, turn off, because I've been there. And I did that already. And I had a personal bad experience that
00:32:48
Speaker
skyrocketed me out of radio. But I love the theater of the mind, Mark. I love that Clubhouse exists. I feel like I'm not interested in playing telephone and just hearing how much people have a conversation and overhearing that. That sounds inanely boring to me. And
00:33:12
Speaker
What a fucking time waste, to be honest with you. If you haven't been enchanted by that before, I get it. I haven't been in for a while. For me, there's no value there. I guess, can you record now? I don't know. But previously, you couldn't record, and so then if I can't record, it doesn't become content for me to use to promote. This is how I think.
00:33:34
Speaker
there's almost nothing I do that isn't specifically for something lately, much to my husband's great, you know, chagrin. Well, that was the inherent flaw of a clubhouse as you couldn't record anything. It kind of went into the ether, right? So there was no, there's nothing you could extract. What about something close to your heart or lately's heart as social listening? You know, you and I both know buzzword because
00:34:03
Speaker
The hard way is the way. I mean, if you go to Instagram and you go to Twitter and go to LinkedIn, you are social listening. You are paying attention, right? You don't need a platform to do it for you. That sounds like the lazy way to me, right? I mean, we're always very quick to know who's talking about us and what they're saying because we're just paying attention.
00:34:25
Speaker
I think it sounds like that's becoming more obvious than, but every once in a while I meet a customer who like doesn't, you know, wants to know if lately he's doing social listening specifically. And I just think, well, when's the last time you logged into Twitter? And they're like, I don't know, months ago. And I'm like, well, I mean, you're an idiot. There you go. There you go. Final one. Then this is one that, that I love cause I, I, I don't really understand it is, uh, is influencer marketing.
00:34:51
Speaker
I get what you're saying. Because, of course, everything I do is influencer marketing, right? I mean, at some level that you do naturally. I mean, there's nothing more powerful than word of mouth, except for rewards, which the airlines all figured out, you know? But it comes to influencer marketing. It's like people try so hard, right? And really, I don't know. I think they try hard to be influencers, and it should come.
00:35:22
Speaker
It should be organic rather than forced. It should be. I mean, you know, because we're we all want to monetize everything. Of course, we're all the problem is that you're pointing out is everyone sciences everything to death. So they want to break down.
00:35:36
Speaker
the perfect algorithm for influencer marketing. Whereas just sometimes you just got to let it happen. There's unpredictable unknown. I mean, marketing is unknown. There are unknowns that happen. You have to include that in your plan or in your process and leave room for it to happen.
00:35:56
Speaker
The influencer stuff, by the way, the reason I have frownies is totally that reason. Like I saw a friend of mine was using them. I think that everyone cottons on eventually. And that's why trends are trends. And that's why tried and trues are tried and trues. Just because you put a name on it, like influencer marketing doesn't really change what it really is.
00:36:25
Speaker
Right. Which is trust. We talked about trust. Yeah, exactly. That's true. This was not the most rapid of rapid fire rounds, but that's okay. Sorry. People seem to like it. They seem to like the fact that this is the way that we sort of we talk off the cuff these days. And so it's a great way to cover a lot of ground in a short period of time.
Empowering Female Entrepreneurs and Closing Thoughts
00:36:47
Speaker
You know, again, great insight into lots and lots of different things. And it's great to hear that
00:36:52
Speaker
that you're doing well and that lately is continuing to thrive. Good luck on getting over that one million revenue figure and see if we can even get the people over in Silicon Valley or other valleys to give you some money. That would be nice to see in 2022, 2023. Thanks. From your lips to God's ears, Mark. So one last question. If people can't find you on social media or LinkedIn or any other platform, where can they learn more about you and lately?
00:37:22
Speaker
Well, try hard, people. It's not that hard. Try harder, I think. Yeah. Try harder, yeah. Dub, dub, dub.lately.ai is us, and I'm Kate at Lately.ai. You can always just email me and say, I heard you with Mark. You sound like totally crazy, and you'll be right. Then I'll respond.
00:37:42
Speaker
Well, thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, and of course, share via social media. To learn more about how I help ATB SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic advisor and coach, email mark at markevans.ca or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you later.