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00:00:00
00:00:01
Meredith Zenkel
0 Playsin 12 hours
Thanks for listening to our episode with Meredith Zenkel.
To keep up with or connect with Meredith:
✨ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredithzenkel/
✨Website: https://www.small-dog-marketing.com/
To stay in touch with Meredith and Medbury:
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
Follow Medbury on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/medbury_agency/
Subscribe to the Medbury newsletter: https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
Email Meredith: Meredith@MedburyAgency.com
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Transcript
Connecting Through LinkedIn
00:00:03
Speaker
Hey, Meredith. hi Meredith. I'm so happy to get to do this with you. are you? I am doing really well. Other Meredith. I'm really happy to get to do this.
00:00:15
Speaker
You and I have known each other for, I don't know, how long? Less than a year, A year, probably five months. Is that it? No, it was LinkedIn. I reached out to you. So this is a
The Meredith LinkedIn Experiment
00:00:27
Speaker
funny story. I read the book Super Communicators, which is a fantastic book.
00:00:31
Speaker
And in it it said people who, where you have what seems like very obvious commonalities are much more likely to gravitate towards you. Yes. And so even as simple as having the first, same first letter of your first name.
00:00:48
Speaker
Wow. you know I had been on the networking journey. I'd been reaching out to people on LinkedIn and just wanting to expand my network with mixed levels of success. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna try to reach out to other Merediths who work in marketing.
00:01:03
Speaker
And see, I never told you this. And see what happens. And when I say I had 100% response rate, Yeah, you did. For Meredith, 100%.
00:01:14
Speaker
And every single one responded with something along the lines of, I'm so happy to meet another Meredith. I wonder if it's because I think if your name's Chris or Jessica, maybe ah that might not be the case. But I had never really known any other Merediths. It's not a strange name, but it's not a common name. Yeah.
00:01:36
Speaker
It worked. And I've actually now have a number of friends named Meredith. Should we have a psycho Meredith brunch? We're all just we can't put our finger on why, but we really like each other. We can talk about how knowing and Starbucks can spell our names. Okay, I'm happy I know that now. And I have heard the book Super Communicator, but I think of you as a super communicator for sure. Yeah, thank you. All right, I'm gonna pull up our questions.
00:02:01
Speaker
And jump in, but before we do, for folks listening who aren't familiar with you, could you just say a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Introduction to Meredith St. Kel and Small Dog Marketing
00:02:10
Speaker
Yeah. My name is Meredith St. Kel. I currently have a solo consulting practice called Small Dog Marketing.
00:02:16
Speaker
My background is in scaling startups through blended mix of business strategy, brand marketing, and performance marketing, typically in an e-commerce type environment.
00:02:31
Speaker
And I've brought that skill set to working with small, sometimes startups, sometimes just early stage businesses and partnering with founders.
00:02:43
Speaker
I love the name Small Dog. How did you come up with it? So it literally came from just sitting here. i have a small dog who sits right over there and stares at me all day. either passed out or watching me work. And just the metaphor of being small but mighty, both myself and starting my own consulting practice, but also in The kinds of companies I partner with and work with small businesses have so many advantages that you don't think of because you think small limited resources little brand awareness, all of those things.
00:03:23
Speaker
And really all of that equates to opportunities. You can try lots of things without. people necessarily seeing you fail. you have the time and agility to be creative. There's just so much power in building your own thing and starting small that I think gets overlooked so often. That's nice. I like the way you frame it as like, there's it's a strength if you think of it the right way, because someone running a smallish business, I usually feel like ah our smallness is something to lean into.
00:03:56
Speaker
Yeah.
Advantages of Small Businesses
00:03:57
Speaker
I mean, being small, you can make changes. You have a team where everyone actually communicates with each other. People don't have to operate in silo. Everyone can work together and that usually yields something that's a lot better than part of the company working here, part of the company working there. One thing I see with marketing teams in particular, it's the whole, this is the brand marketing division. This is the e-commerce division. This is the performance marketing division.
00:04:22
Speaker
yeah The reality is all of them work together and more and more they're integrated and they all rise and fall to the levels of the other. So i think there's a lot of benefits and power to being small and you still have room to be really intentional about how you do things.
00:04:42
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. I don't know if I knew that you had a small dog, but it's reminding me that Amazing copywriter, Rachel, who you introduced me to, who's doing work at Medbury, has the cutest little small dog always next to her.
00:04:56
Speaker
She does. Luna. Yes. So Rachel worked on my team. up I was the VP of marketing for 13 years and Rachel was our copywriter pretty much almost from day one. But I had a team probably of 12-ish people and half of them had dogs and we had a dog friendly office.
00:05:15
Speaker
It was like my traveling circus. We would go to a meeting and and it would be like six people and four dogs. And it was very unique, but also we made it work and it was a very creative, fun environment.
00:05:27
Speaker
That sounds very appealing to me. Yeah. I was saying to my husband the other night, I was like, should I get a small dog? That might be really nice for me as I work all day. Like the days where a little stressed, I'd be like, come here.
00:05:39
Speaker
ah Very hard. like can I can't wait to talk to you. i'm really want to dig into your work. And you and i we're exactly the same age. We've worked in the same industries over the same years.
00:05:51
Speaker
I'm really interested to hear about your journey. How would you explain to someone your professional career journey up until now?
Career in Startups
00:05:59
Speaker
Yeah, so I spent almost my entire career at company built initially to disrupt the office supply industry. I joined in 2010.
00:06:09
Speaker
We had a few starts and stops before we really launched in 2012. We had a beta launch in 2011. And I had never been in that world, that VC startup world, and in the 2010s, particularly from 2010 to let's call 2016.
00:06:26
Speaker
There was a lot of VC dollars going into primarily consumer concepts like the Caspers and the Warby Parkers and all of those companies were coming up in New York around the same time. I'm based in New York.
00:06:41
Speaker
And it was a whole world in and of itself that was very exciting to me. I started in the role ah director of public relations. I had done public relations for a couple of fashion companies in my very early career.
00:06:57
Speaker
I was just so excited. i was transparently 24. I was so excited to be able to own something and have all this opportunity. And that's one of the nice things about startups. Other more established businesses, you get a position and it's in this box that you can operate in. And it's startups. There's always more that can be done.
00:07:16
Speaker
There's always a new idea. You have almost what seems like endless opportunities to contribute. And so I was in that role probably four years before transitioning into a director of brand marketing role and then senior director of brand marketing. And then the last chunk of my time there, I was the vice president of marketing and communications.
00:07:38
Speaker
And I oversaw end to end marketing brand performance, e-commerce, creative services, marketing operations. And during my tenure, we scaled the business from When I started, we made $0 literally to over a hundred million dollars. we were acquired by a public company 2020.
00:07:58
Speaker
And we also about halfway through 2015. twenty fifteen So about five years into my time there, we decided to launch commercial furniture, basically take what we had done in the office supply space and create furniture that was built for companies like us, like those fast growing startups who needed agility, who The standard model didn't make sense. Most people buy commercial furniture through dealers where they mark up the price to mark down the price. It's like buying a car through a dealer conceptually and like buying a couch for anyone. It'll take six to 12 weeks to ship and a startup that's hiring 50 new people every three months doesn't have six weeks to get more desks.
00:08:44
Speaker
So we were the first company to really keep commercial furniture in stock and ready to ship. And now There are many companies who do that. And we really, i think changed the way the commercial furniture industry works.
00:08:57
Speaker
So I left about two years ago also. That's cool. I remember when we first talked, honestly, I want to be honest with you too. I'm not jealous that you've talked to so many other Merediths that you've hit it off.
00:09:10
Speaker
I just needed to get that out there. You're my favorite Meredith. But when you... Well, I remember when we first talked, one thing you and I had in common is that we both had stayed at one organization for 13 or 14 years, which does feel very unusual now, but we both moved up and into different roles. It wasn't like we were one role at one company for 14 years.
00:09:33
Speaker
You saw so much growth. What do you think were some habits, skills, mindsets, innate abilities that enabled you to
00:09:47
Speaker
to do that and to thrive because most folks probably couldn't do what you did. Actually, the vast majority of people. Really hungry, like really hungry. And I know we might talk a little bit about boundaries and what it's like entering the workforce.
00:10:04
Speaker
Again, working in fashion, there's so much competition for just responsibilities. i was so excited to be able to take on whatever got thrown my way.
00:10:16
Speaker
i will say I knew nothing about boundaries. i
Adapting to Change in Startups
00:10:19
Speaker
did not have any. I was just like, give me more responsibility and work and let me prove myself to you. And i just, I really loved what we were doing. I love the idea of disrupting something. love the idea of bringing fresh design to concepts.
00:10:37
Speaker
I really just felt a lot of pride in doing something original and new. I think I wasn't good at this in the beginning, but I developed a skill. I got really used to change.
00:10:50
Speaker
and being able to adapt to change quickly. Even a lot of times I didn't necessarily agree with the change, but I became really good at, I take a day to be in my feelings about it and voice my concerns. If my point was heard, then I could pretty much let it go. And the next day say, okay, how are we doing this? If we're going to do it, let's make it the best we can make it.
00:11:12
Speaker
And That was really important. The very early years were really difficult for me because I would get so married to a concept or the way I saw the company operating in the world forever that it would take me a while to come around to things. And there was a certain point where it clicked in my mind that nothing's going to be the same forever. Our vision isn't always going to translate perfectly and being willing to adapt is not only part of the job, it's part of the world.
00:11:48
Speaker
and It's what makes businesses successful.
00:11:53
Speaker
I feel like you really articulated that in a way that I hadn't thought of it before, but I don't think is so true. Like resistance to change can just be wasted energy and angst.
00:12:04
Speaker
I identify with what you're saying about being like crazy hungry and having no boundaries in the beginning and being like, you could just give me more responsibility and work. Like I, this is the only thing I'm focused on. I do think, so I mentioned like we're the same age, I think. And I, when I think back around the timeline that you and I both operated in, were both around 2009, trying to get a job when the economy was terrible and there were like no jobs.
00:12:32
Speaker
And, or at least in my experience, the jobs that were available at that time for young folks, especially were very low pay for very high expectations and having no boundaries was a good thing.
00:12:46
Speaker
And then there was from a cultural perspective, me at millennial hustle, a lot of girl boss glorification of the twenty ten s Then there was this age of quiet quitting and having boundaries of steel. So it's like, that's how, I feel like that's how the culture has been going up and down throughout our time. Yeah.
00:13:07
Speaker
And maybe you'd have other things that stuck out to you. I'm interested to hear like how you think of it too. And now we're going through, i feel like what is a mix of boundaries, but also mindfulness. It's a complex job market. There's a lot of opportunity. There's also a lot of layoffs. Things are changing really quickly.
00:13:26
Speaker
What am I trying to ask you with this question? like How have you related to those things and how do you think it has shaped the experiences that you've had?
Challenges as a Female Executive
00:13:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i definitely was a product of that bad initial job market. Transparently, and I'd always thought I would be an editor at fashion magazine. That was my dream job. And in around that period,
00:13:50
Speaker
like publishing world went through a huge crisis. Everything was shifting online. Magazines were closing. And so it was little bit terrifying. and There was also right now, even how we met, you can network with people. There are a lot of avenues to be able to do that and meet new people. And I think the importance of networking has really become very prominent and in over the last 10 years.
00:14:19
Speaker
Then it was, if you didn't know somebody, like how do you even get into a company? So I remember just feeling very lucky when I had a job. um And as being young and experienced,
00:14:33
Speaker
female, I didn't feel entitled to have boundaries. I had, i think it was what a lot of older millennials have, which is the be the first person there and the last one to leave, like never leave before your boss, do all of the things, you know, and I did that. And I think early on, I think sometimes we confuse boundary and ego.
00:14:56
Speaker
It's really important. You should always have boundaries. I actually think boundaries when you respect and they allow you to stay true to who you are. But you can't go into new jobs with ego.
00:15:09
Speaker
And I think I see that in younger people sometimes, like the I won't do that. I've always to this day have the attitude of no job is too small. I like ran a team and I had if we had someone quit and someone had to plug that hole, i was the first person to volunteer to p plug that hole because It creates a culture of everybody. It's all hands on deck.
00:15:34
Speaker
We all do what has to be done together. And none of us are too good for anything that we really need to do To me, that's not having boundaries. That's having some humility and understanding and doing what's best for the team.
00:15:49
Speaker
But just going back to the question, I think the other thing that really shaped me in this was that startup culture. To your point, at that time, it was very, hustle driven. It was like, be busy, spend fast, grow fast.
00:16:04
Speaker
It wasn't focused on intentional, sustainable, methodical growth. It wasn't focused on efficiency and productivity nearly as much as it was how quickly can we get be this big and so it created this culture of everyone's busy working around the clock all the time your whole life becomes your work life i don't know if you remember this vividly i do the culture of the ping pong table in the office and the beer fridge in the office because you're there all the time and suddenly your work life and your social life you have all these 20 30 somethings working together yeah
00:16:43
Speaker
There are things I think that benefited me about it, but i think having some mindfulness are about who you are outside of your job and maintaining that identity as much as you can is really important.
00:16:59
Speaker
And I think you can do that and work hard. And I think you can do that and... act like no job is too small for you. You're not too good for anything. But you can also do that and say when it's the weekend, unless it's an emergency, my priority is my friends and family.
00:17:18
Speaker
So it took me a long time to learn a lot of those things weren't mutually exclusive. Basically, you can have friends with work without work being your whole social life. You can say no without being a bad employee. You can do small tasks or things that, you know, a VP shouldn't be doing without people losing respect for you. Often it will, they'll gain respect for you in some ways. I think just we lived in what felt like a very black and white world in terms of what you could and couldn't do. And now I think it's become much more nuanced in a good way.
00:17:56
Speaker
Yeah. I love so much of what you said. feel like that distinction you made about boundaries and ego. feel like you hit the nail on the head with that one. Everyone's entitled to boundaries. Yeah.
00:18:07
Speaker
Ego can be complicated. Yeah. I think. And I definitely, yeah, I'm resonating too with what I think back the early years when I was at Brafton, which was an agency I was at for a really long time, ah very much similarly, it was like a bunch of 20-somethings who had just, so many of us were like 22 and 23.
00:18:29
Speaker
So I think too something that happened was everyone was suddenly It was such a scary time in some ways trying to get work, especially as a writer. i was waitressing. And I remember when I got this job, it was like $28,500 a year but to write 4,000 words of copy a day and pure edit. We used to joke. It was like more of keep yourself alive stipend until coming in and like doing the work.
00:18:55
Speaker
But i felt really lucky to have because there was opportunity to move up fast growing so I could get that responsibility I was hungry for. And also it was like, I had just graduated college and moved to this new city. and i was like, I had a sudden, had a built-in community in a way, which was in some ways so helpful. Yeah, and in other ways, it's hard to, easier as you get older to figure out how to make your life a little more diverse as opposed to just being focused on where got you.
00:19:22
Speaker
Thank you. I think all of these things I should say, like hindsight's twenty twenty It's really easy two look back at your career and kind of see the things you should have done or shouldn't have done, what was good about that, what wasn't, it's really hard in the moment, especially when you're young and you have ambition. And I've had lots of time to think all of this through.
00:19:48
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So as an adult woman now, when you look back at your experiences, how do you feel gender might have colored your experiences or the way people perceived you in certain ways, perhaps?
00:20:01
Speaker
It had a very large impact on my career and still does. i was the first female executive. i was the first person on the leadership team, the first woman on the leadership team. And that was probably six years into my time there.
00:20:16
Speaker
so I really, i worked for men there. men who taught me many things, many of which I'm in touch with and have great friendships with, but I saw one model of leadership that was very masculine in nature. And I really thought for a long time, i had to demand respect.
00:20:36
Speaker
Like I had to be tough and say no, and really lean into some of those more masculine, stereotypically male qualities. And it really took getting comfortable with myself and building confidence that I'm good at my job. I'm a good leader. I have experience to be able to lead in a way that felt more authentic to who I am.
00:21:00
Speaker
But I will say being female, have a little bit of a younger face being petite and blondes to this day, people think I'm my own assistant or I've gotten a lot of what about executive presence, how describe your executive presence, which has become coded language for you're not the picture I have in my mind of an executive. So don't think that goes away.
00:21:26
Speaker
I think when you're young and female, there's a set of ways that people can eliminate you in their heads. And when you're older and female, there's a different set of ways people shortchange you. So I think what you can do is be true to yourself and conduct yourself professionally, but you can't let perception of others dictate
00:21:57
Speaker
who you become. That's a trap I have found. Yes. feel like Russell Brand is obviously a very complicated figure for many reasons now, but I did some of his earlier content and he talked, I remember once he had this like daily prayer, he would say that was, I pray to not live in the perceptions of others. And I wrote it down and I still think it to myself all the time.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah. I want to dig in a little bit more into
Passion for Small Businesses and Disruptive Projects
00:22:21
Speaker
small dog. I know you are very in demand right now. And I know you are working on some super cool projects that we've talked on a little bit in the background.
00:22:29
Speaker
For folks listening, can you say what type of projects you're most interested in the type of work you're doing? They're probably as enamored and obsessed with you as I am. So if you might get some reach outs after this.
00:22:41
Speaker
Based on my experience, that i like to work really at the intersection of business strategy, brand and performance marketing. Usually they're e-commerce businesses. with the dual aims of creating a differentiated brand and also scaling efficiently and putting into place that go-to-market strategy. I think of myself as being pretty industry agnostic. Yes. Okay. I love that you said that because I think it's totally fair to be industry agnostic, but it's hard to get, people get suspicious of it. Keep going, but I'm on board with that.
00:23:14
Speaker
Yeah. I think people do get very suspicious of it, but case in point, i have two fractional clients. One is D2C, eTailer basically is a retail but concept, and the other is a B2B business, but also primarily selling online, or i should say primarily generating leads online. So a lot of the marketing effort is happening through performance marketing, eCommerce.
00:23:40
Speaker
While they're very different in terms of industry, A lot of the core things they need from someone like me are the same. They need a brand that's thoughtful, differentiated. They need to be aligned on exactly what that brand is and what those messages are and how they resonate with their different target audiences.
00:24:01
Speaker
They need to go to market strategy that allows them to scale efficiently, methodically. They need to. have a comprehensive strategy that connects the two. So their brands and their performance and e-commerce plans all feel, have a through line that makes it make sense.
00:24:21
Speaker
So again, completely different industries at very different points in their growth journeys, both young businesses though, and in both my primary partner in the business is kind of founder CEO position. And that's really what I like. I love small businesses, whether they're startups or not, that's gray area. Also, people have many definition of startup, but small, relatively early stage businesses where they're trying to do something that's new in some way. I say disruptive and I think people think disruptive means some big, like life altering change, but disruptive is as simple as we're going to ship up
00:25:02
Speaker
Mattress in a box for the first time folded up so that yeah it's not, you don't have to strap it to the top of your car and take it home from the store or have it delivered and be there for the delivery.
00:25:15
Speaker
Things that just little differences that better serve the customer in some way. It's me as disruptive and really partnering with founders and people who are passionate about it. I think I have such tremendous respect for people who build their own thing.
00:25:30
Speaker
And, but there are so many really inherent, easy to fall into pitfalls with being an entrepreneur and starting your own thing. So if I can be a partner that both provides guidance, support also can challenge in a way that's rooted in respect and partnership. That's my aim. i do want to execute on the brand and go to market and the growth goals. But more than that, I want to be a partner to the leadership who can help distill their thoughts and be a third party sounding board and use my experience in the startup and growing quickly world to aid somebody else's journey as much as possible.
00:26:18
Speaker
Anyone would be lucky to work with you. I know we're always, I think, I hope we find a way to work together at MedBerry at some point. Do well. We'll have it. And think the world of you. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you'd want to say or mention? And also for folks listening, where can they find you and reach out to you if they need some support? Sure. Sure. Yeah. Small dog marketing is the yeah URL one day I will own small dog marketing.com. But until that day it's small dog, M K T I N G.com.
00:26:46
Speaker
And there's a form there that you can fill out You can email me at Meredith at small dog, M K T I N G.com. Also you can find me on LinkedIn. I love connecting with new people just to expand my network and make new friends here. are about other people doing cool things and share resources and whichever way it goes, there's so many positives of expanding your network.
00:27:16
Speaker
All right, Meredith, thank you so much for doing this. I love getting to talk with you. I truly am so grateful to have you in my network and to be in touch. just think you're the best. Thank you. Thank you.