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OhHello - In House Marketing Mavens
56 Plays2 years ago
If you didn't have the chance to watch, listen, and LEARN from 3 mentors that are part of OhHello Inc. 🌞☕️ OhHello.io's community yesterday...we got you. That's what friends are for 😎 We recorded the lively discussion between our "In House Marketing Mavens".
These 3 NA In House Marketing execs- Natasha Shaikh, MBA of Wells Fargo, Emily Flanigan of Infobip, and Michelle Butz (Allstate, Root Inc.) knocked it out of the park! We talked about #leadership #culture #teamdevelopment #marketing and #mentorship
Giant thank you to these 3 executives - we sincerely appreciate you taking the time to help others.
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Transcript
Introduction and Event Overview
00:00:13
Speaker
Oh, hello. Hi, everybody. I am Jeremy Bloom. I'm the founder and chief mentor.
00:00:20
Speaker
of ohello.io. And I have three very special guests with us today. I have Emily, Michelle, and Natasha. We're starting on time. In the past, we've started these a few minutes late. But some feedback was, hey, when people are making and setting the time to do this, start on time.
00:00:40
Speaker
So part of the reason and rationale we're doing these are to give back, to provide mentorship, to provide education, further learning and development within the ecosystem of marketing, tech, sales, media, the list goes on and on.
Panelist Introductions
00:00:55
Speaker
And something that a lot of folks have reached out about in terms of topics has been
00:01:00
Speaker
Understanding what what the hell is in-house marketing? What does that mean? What are the roles of in-house media? What's the roles of? being an owner of that so we put together an amazing panel and we're gonna keep this fresh we're gonna keep it light we're gonna invite people to jump in and I'm going to be quiet. I'd like to go around the horn and first and foremost Natasha if you can kindly introduce yourself and
00:01:27
Speaker
Well, thanks,
Roles and Responsibilities in Marketing
00:01:28
Speaker
Jeremy. I'm actually was super excited when you finally asked me to be on one of these. I was like waiting for that call. Um, so I'm Natasha Sheikh. I head of the paid media center of excellence at Wells Fargo. It seems super fancy as like, Ooh, what does the center of excellence do? Um, so I'd say as a marketing organization, we have transformed. I feel like we go through a cycle every few years and I've for context, I've been at Wells almost seven years now.
00:01:55
Speaker
So we are now moving back to a decentralized organization. So what does the CEO do? So because now we have marketing in different line of businesses or each business unit, we need someone to have oversight of hoping to make me the strategy where we buy, who our partners are, all for strategic efforts, so that all fun stuff is what I do. That's a lot. That is a lot. You do a lot.
00:02:21
Speaker
Yeah, in seven years, you've probably worn multiple hats, many hats, and we're excited to hear about that throughout the next 40 minutes or so. Michelle, nice to see you. Nice to see you too. Similar to what was just mentioned, I do a lot of those things. Specifically, I pulled media in-house at Allstate. This was probably about
00:02:46
Speaker
nine or 10 years ago. So I've been doing this for a while did this at Allstate and then subsequently managed media at a couple of companies after Allstate, but very similar we just mentioned. Awesome. That's a lot of responsibility to overseeing bringing business in house and also overseeing different lines of business. And we're excited to have you get deeper into that. Emily, Emily Flanagan, thank you for joining.
00:03:13
Speaker
Thank you for having me. So I am currently working at Infobip and I'm the head of marketing for the Americas. And so I lead a team of 16 talented marketers that are across the Americas located in the US, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina. And I have a mixture of skill sets on the team. Some are generalists, some are specialists, but we cover the areas of content.
00:03:42
Speaker
Social PR and AR integrated marketing partner marketing marketing automation and paid acquisition. That's a lot.
00:03:52
Speaker
It's a little bit of everything on the team. A little bit of everything for sure. And having a team of nearly 20 people in-house. Can you get a little bit deeper in terms of what Infobip is, just since it's a European-based company for those in the Americas that may not be as familiar since you've been making such an immense impact? I know this, but would love for the audience to understand.
00:04:14
Speaker
Yeah, so the company is based in Croatia. We are a cloud communications platform and so the company started out about 15 years ago, primarily as an SMS aggregator. So we have direct
00:04:30
Speaker
direct connections to over 700 of the carriers around the world. So over the course of the 15 years, we added an additional OTT channel. So WhatsApp, Messenger, and things like that. So we do that globally all over the world. But what we do as a business is we help your business create a better customer experience. So as you're chatting with your customers,
00:04:58
Speaker
you're offering them the best of the best in the brand experience and talking with customer service. It could be as they're exploring purchasing items, but we can pretty much do anything for anyone in the way of CX. Amazing, amazing. So since all three of you are in-house marketing mavens, which is the topic here today, what would make the most sense is truly just going from talking about
00:05:27
Speaker
What do you do? What it means? What it means for your organization? What it means for yourself? What it means for your teams? How you build teams? The kind of different responsibilities that come with your role. We'd love to just go back, Emily.
Managing Teams and Prioritization
00:05:43
Speaker
We're going to go back around the horn in the opposite direction.
00:05:46
Speaker
As you have, as you explained that you've got teammates that are all across the Americas, you're working with a company that's based in Croatia. It's a global company, many, many carriers and constant communication. Help us understand just how do you mitigate your crime and your responsibilities? Because as I'll stop with that question.
00:06:09
Speaker
So it's a lot to navigate through the course of the day. So I can say for myself, it's about constant prioritization, trying to say, first of all, is this task that I'm receiving, is it going to help us reach our goals as a team? And if it doesn't, then why are we doing it? So you have to constantly say this to yourself every single day. You have to go through this.
00:06:36
Speaker
I think another thing is helping the team navigate, right? So I think first and foremost, in my own responsibilities, I look to take care of my team first and advocate for them and help them navigate through the day. And if there's something blocking the way, that's my job to clear it, right?
00:06:52
Speaker
If they can't get their job done, then I help them clear the path so that they can get their job done easily. And so I think it's just a constant reminder of staying focused, defending your own time. People, they're going to want to fill your calendar with tons of meetings. Are they really necessary? So you have to ask yourself these questions every single day and just be active about managing it.
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah, you certainly have to be judicious with your schedule. Natasha, as you and I, when we first started chatting a couple minutes before we went live, just understanding when you're handling business across the Americas, across the US, and you're dealing with East Coast hours, you're dealing with West Coast hours, you have different CMOs for each individual line of business. How do you manage and how do you mitigate your responsibilities for your team?
00:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say I wouldn't survive without my super, super amazing team. Like they are truly the backbone of my success. And I think as long as I make sure they're successful, I'm successful. I think over the years, um, I love what Emily said is everyone wants a piece of your time, but you're only so much, right? You can only scale if your team can scale and represent you in a lot of those conversations. We can do the most of your time.
00:08:16
Speaker
I also feel people have made leadership very complicated over the years and you have to do so much for team building. And honestly, leadership is truly as easy, like you just have to make your team happy, be there for them, keep them like their growth top of mind and enable them to do their best job. My team is completely pure dispersed. I have folks on the East Coast, folks on the West Coast.
00:08:44
Speaker
I've asked to get my leadership like super simple, like we meet Monday morning, like what are our priorities for the week? What's happening? What's on your plate? Tell me what's going on? We basically line on these are our priorities. Everything else sounds like a next week problem. So we just handle it that way. And then I also like to have a check in midweek, like are we on track with everything? That's the only way I can I can scale, right? I get
00:09:11
Speaker
My team laughs at me. I'm usually quadruple booked throughout the day. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to do this. Not going to go to that. How about you go to this one? This seems to be less important. Let's reschedule or this could be an email. So that's we also got to clear our calendars up. I love that you had you talked about leadership. How does one become a leader? Oh,
00:09:40
Speaker
I'll speak for myself. And then I love Emily and Michelle, like how they think about leadership. But I've always found a lot of personal growth and satisfaction in growing talent. Like I have all since my early two mobile days growing like the West Coast account team. So for me, it's something I've
00:10:02
Speaker
enjoyed and like purposely sought out. I know leadership is not everyone's cup of tea, especially when you have to do like the HR side of leadership. But I think some people want that opportunity. And also, let's be real, some people are thrown into that role, and they usually don't survive or do well. But you know, I feel like corporate America and our our how we think about roles and growth here.
00:10:30
Speaker
For some reason, growth is always looked at. You have to be a people's leader. Not everyone is meant to be that people's leader. I think having that having that lens of finding out, like, yes, this person actually interested in growing and growing people, I think they're there's the one that automatically shine as leaders. Otherwise, you're just a manager.
00:10:54
Speaker
I love how you just explained the difference between a leader and a manager. I'm very passionate about that as well. Michelle, with your experience of building teams, leading teams, can you get a little deeper into the way and the style of how you lead, how you develop? Yeah, it starts with hiring.
00:11:17
Speaker
I built the team at Allstate up from scratch. So I had the luxury of being able to hire every single person on my team. So I could really have a say in who I chose to be part of this team. The people I chose were absolutely stellar, amazing. Some of the smartest people I've worked with in my entire career. And part of leadership is empowering them to become leaders. So there could have been temptation to me try to
00:11:48
Speaker
try to manage everybody and try to have day-to-day direct contact with everybody on my team, which was around a dozen people. But I found that empowering a few key people on my team to be my sort of in-betweens was really what unlocked success for us, was having those really, really strong
00:12:08
Speaker
delegates for me and my time and I completely trusted them and I knew they were doing the right thing for the business and being able to stay in post contact with a few people versus everybody was very, very helpful.
00:12:21
Speaker
So a lot of delegation and trust. And it sounds like you curated a culture by being able to bring people starting from scratch versus many people within our industry is plural when they take on new roles. You don't know what you're getting yourself into. There might be some bad eggs, so to speak, or some eggs that might need to be hard boiled.
00:12:50
Speaker
Um, with that said, Emily, what about you? Like when you go and you're, you said you've got folks in, in Chile, you had mentioned all across the Americas, you'd mentioned, I believe you'd said Columbia. How do you differ? How do you, when you're dealing with different languages and being a messaging platform and a communications platform, how are you, uh, properly delegating and helping to push your people to succeed?
00:13:18
Speaker
Well, I think in addition to being a servant leader, I think that you just have to be a good listener, right? I think regardless of where people are at, even though you have the cultural things that happen depending on where people are living, I think being a good listener is really important in leadership so that people feel like they're being heard. You're advocating on their behalf when you need to.
00:13:49
Speaker
you get to understand them as a human being, that you're listening to maybe what they want out of their career, where they want to grow to, that you're helping to enable a growth path for them, and that you're working with them on that. And I think really, you know, you mentioned something about team culture, and I feel like that's really important as well, right?
00:14:10
Speaker
like just laughing together, you know, knowing that we can depend on each other for things. And as Michelle had mentioned too, it's a huge bit of that is trust. Just trusting that, you know, you can hand off something to your team, to your teammate and they'll get it done. Or, you know, just knowing that you can depend on the other parts of other people on your team. I think that's a big part of leadership as well. And
00:14:40
Speaker
And honestly, also recognition, right? Totally. You know, like a job well done. Get deeper. Get deeper on the recognition part. Do what? Can you get a little deeper on the recognition part?
00:14:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think, you know what, I've been spending a lot of time on this just in my day to day right now, which is, you know, I think in the tech world, now the way the economy is, and we know that, you know, tech is kind of having a lull and hiring and they're having to let go of people and things like that. Recognition can't just always be about
00:15:16
Speaker
you know, giving someone a raise or a promotion because you might not be able to do that. And so I think it's all about these little things that you can be doing that are really going to make the difference in somebody's day and make them weather the storm, you know, at your company or through difficult situations.
00:15:32
Speaker
And I think that comes in recognizing people, you know, within your team, within the greater org, you know, maybe small gifts to say thank you, extra time off. It can be a little things, not necessarily the big ones.
00:15:47
Speaker
Those are great points. Natasha, when it comes to recognition and when it comes to laughter, that was something else that Emily said that put a smile on my face. What are some key traits that you do to push your team to help your colleagues? Being at a giant, well-respected financial institution like Wells, when you have so many people that you're dealing with in and out every single day,
00:16:12
Speaker
You need to remember to laugh. You need to remember to humanize things. And we'd love to hear about some of your tips and tricks. I also really appreciate Emily reminding me because we get so busy in our daily lives. I think I always forget that we need to do more
Communication and Team Interaction
00:16:28
Speaker
of the recognition. So I want to thank you for that, Emily. So it's going to be good. You guys are going to laugh. But, you know, being a big organization, we were kind of stuck on the old school Skype.
00:16:42
Speaker
We weren't using a lot of modern day collaboration tools, but I've been grateful since we moved to Teams. Everyone's GIF game and meme game has gone through the roof. My team is really killing it, I'll have to say, on the Teams game. I think it has really changed how we are interacting on a day-to-day basis, just not forcing people to be on camera, but also the exchanges, the whiteboarding, being able to chat more, laugh more, share more.
00:17:11
Speaker
I think has been, it's something, again, so small, like, gives that opportunity. I think my most frequently used gift is that dumpster fire, where the dumpster is on fire and you're still in water. And floating is probably the one I use the most in my day-to-day life, because that's how I feel almost every day. I think it goes a long way in just bringing like the human moments of us together and also just reminding us that, you know, we're all here to work.
00:17:40
Speaker
We're all here to, you know, our nine to five, but we also have lives outside, like what's happening in their lives. What big moments are they celebrating? Also being empathetic to someone who might be going through some challenging times in their personal life. I think if you are there for them, then I think there's so, it drives so much loyalty and appreciation for you as like a team leader. So your team actually reciprocates equally. I think that goes unnoticed quite a bit.
00:18:08
Speaker
So those are some things we are very, very aware of. We're trying to keep mindful of. But one thing I will say, well, Spark, what's really, really good about is formally recognizing employees. We have a whole recognition portal. They try to make it a whole thing. We can send e-cords to any employee across the bank, like, thank you for being here on this project for me. And that actually goes up to your manager and your manager's manager and everyone of the org can see how you're being recognized, even by your peers. Every small thing, I think this goes a long way.
00:18:40
Speaker
Amazing. Yeah, recognition and empathy are really important aspects. I appreciate you pointing out some of the ways that Wells and you as a leader go and take on those feats. Michelle, when it comes to recognition and when it comes to hiring, promoting,
00:19:01
Speaker
Help us understand a little bit more about just like how promotion cycles and retention cycles for for the marketers that are watching for the Procurement teams are watching for the legal teams for the media teams for the partnership and agency folks that are watching as we have seen
00:19:18
Speaker
Truly depending on where you read and we're between 300 to 500 thousand people that been within the tech ecosystem Not currently employed When you see when you are running a team operating a team What can you do as a leader to help with those promotion cycles? I
00:19:39
Speaker
Or if there's stagnation, like how do you help, like how do you communicate when, I'll keep it at that. I don't want to load too much on your plate in one question. So I will be honest, that was one of the biggest challenges I had with this team. It wasn't a huge team.
00:19:57
Speaker
And like I said, I had to kind of lay out what the structure of the team looked like. And very transparently, we pivoted that structure quite a few times. I will say it was really dynamic as we listened and learned what, you know, became better at what we were doing. So need to pivot and create new positions or move people around. But because it was a smaller team, there just was like, I couldn't compete with the
00:20:22
Speaker
promotion or the levels at an advertising agency where people can change accounts or move to a different department or move up more frequently, we just didn't have that luxury. So I will say that was a real struggle and trying to keep people motivated and excited to keep learning and progressing without maybe necessarily having a new job title or a new box on an org chart to move into was definitely a challenge. So that's where a lot of that recognition and
00:20:54
Speaker
That was kind of the lever I had to incent people and keep them motivated, send them to training. Allstate had a lot of training I could send people to. We also had a lot of, what am I trying to say, events and partners. What is the word I'm looking for?
00:21:22
Speaker
Like, Tube Mobile University was one that was a big incentive for people to go to. Totally. Yeah, continued education, events where there was just networking and learning. And like Natasha was saying, the personal development where each person, where each teammate of yours, the harder they work,
00:21:43
Speaker
Those that shine the cream of the crop get to attend those events Whether it's going to a conference in Vegas or in Napa or in Manhattan, wherever it might be Emily when you're overseeing a large marketing team and trying to
00:22:08
Speaker
continue to make an immense impact in the Americas when a company is established in Europe. Help us understand how you delegate and how you divvy up all of the different products, vehicles, when you're talking about social versus display versus search versus events versus like,
00:22:34
Speaker
Help us understand, and for those that are in sales, we've got a lot of sellers that are watching that constantly are going to be reaching out to heads of marketing. What kind of advice would you give them based on these particular ways that you are slicing and dicing your time and responsibilities?
Regulations and Partnerships
00:22:54
Speaker
Oh gosh, okay, so that was the multifaceted question. Yeah, do you want me to, I'll just go back. Let me take a step back. Okay.
00:23:01
Speaker
understanding that you've got a lot on your plate, your team has a lot on your plate, when you're delegating amongst the different responsibilities, help us understand how you prioritize those responsibilities. And then we can get to the next question externally about sales. Right. Okay. So when it comes to prioritizing our, our initiatives, we, we have a planning that we do.
00:23:26
Speaker
completely in lockstep with our revenue team. And also completely in lockstep with our global marketing team. So first we understand, okay, what are the global revenue goals, right? What are we looking to do as a global organization? And then we take a look at, what are we looking to do as a global marketing team together?
00:23:47
Speaker
And then we further start to segment the plan into what are the goals for North America? What are the goals for Latin America? And then we go to create our plan based on those goals in our regions here that we're responsible for in the Americas. And we try to stay to our plan. And I think that that's the most difficult part of it.
00:24:10
Speaker
we try is navigating the day-to-day because look we have a team of so many amazing skill sets and I think that we get a lot of tasks and asks of us that aren't on the plan and so we have to learn together as a marketing team to
00:24:31
Speaker
diplomatically say no. It's hard to say no to the team when they're asking you to do something. But you have to keep the goals in mind, first and foremost, and not take on too much. And that's something we continue to navigate as a team. And so we just recently got assigned an agile coach to help us work through this capacity problem and just keep
00:25:00
Speaker
Like I said, on track what the things you're supposed to be doing and then you keep a backlog. And so we're learning to be better at this day to day.
00:25:10
Speaker
Great answer. Thank you for being able to parse together my discombobulated question. The follow-up question would be because you are a B2B SaaS platform and understanding what Infobip does, when you have a myriad of different sellers reaching out to your team, how do you basically defend and reserve your time, your team's time? And then how do you also decide, huh,
00:25:37
Speaker
This wasn't necessarily a plan, but this is something that we're intrigued about. We want to learn more. Yeah. So I, you know, I mean, I'm sure everyone here on the call and people listening, they get an onslaught of the sales emails. Yeah. And I really feel terrible that there's somebody out there trying to do their, their sales job. And I don't really, I can't answer all of them. Right. So, uh, and the same thing with my team. Um,
00:26:04
Speaker
So I eyeball the ones that look interesting for us, either to contribute to our current plan, or like you said, they just look really interesting and irresistible. And so I try to explore those as I can. I encourage my team to do that as well, because like you said, you never know when something cool might come up. I got one of these the other day, and I have this little thing underneath my desk. And look, I'll show you. Who can turn this down?
00:26:30
Speaker
it's a printed brochure with a digital video screen in the middle of it. So I stopped what I was doing that day, asked the guy, tell me more about this, right? So there are those things that come up, but at the end of the day, if it's something that's like super complex, that's a platform where we're going to have to do a data integration, we're going to have to go through
00:26:47
Speaker
you know, security and privacy review, I kind of back burner those for a period of time where I know I have the time to commit to that exploration. But I do have an ongoing list right of the things that are cool. You know, just to reference back. So when the time comes for that one thing, I have the list. I love that. Natasha, how about you?
00:27:10
Speaker
I do some things very similar to what Emily does, like my emails blown up. I feel bad that I actually don't respond 90 percent of the salespeople reaching out, and I've been in sales. I know how hard it is. I apologize for anyone on sales who's hearing this. I have a lot of empathy and appreciation for how difficult that your jobs are. But they come very tone-deaf, if I'm going to be honest. Everyone gets that generic sales pitch, hey, I came across your profile.
00:27:40
Speaker
our business is insert name of company is going to solve all your problems. You don't even know half my problems. So if I were a seller, I would advise them like, see what you can find out about a business. Like I had someone who reached out to me this morning and thought Wells Fargo is a media agency and was telling me, how do we make your agency better? I'm like, clearly you have no idea what they do. But you know, if you ever see someone that's super interesting, I do because
00:28:09
Speaker
I know my team spans a lot of different disciplines. We span measurement, data, paid enterprise partnerships. I'll send it to the right team. People on my team's like, hey, what do you guys think? If like we do a post check, they're like, yeah, this seems interesting. Then we'll like reach out and give the meeting. It's like, it's unanimous. Eh, maybe not so much. Or I know what it is, not interested. Then unfortunately we won't entertain that call.
00:28:36
Speaker
Sure. What do you do to stay sharp and to stay ahead of the curve? Because of all of those different formats of media that you just mentioned and the different teams that you manage and the responsibilities that come with it, there's a lot going on in our industry. There's so much innovation.
00:28:56
Speaker
What are some tips and tricks? What's the Natasha playbook? I don't have a lot of time to go to a lot of the conferences for what's happening. But I do encourage people to read a lot. What I've done is I've actually bought a lot of these research company subscriptions for all the employees, everyone in marketing. There's so many good resources. The ANA is phenomenal. Business Insider, Inside Intelligence actually really, really good research. And we all have our own research teams.
00:29:26
Speaker
If you can find the time to just get those summaries, hit your inbox, scan what's important, read more about them. I think that's where I found the most value for myself as a marketer, like keeping in touch with what's exciting and what's new. And I think for everyone in media, privacy is our biggest challenge. And if you're not reading all the regulations and those fun 30 page documents on all the new laws that are going to make marketing more hard.
00:29:53
Speaker
You are doing yourself a disservice. Your privacy legal counterpart needs to be your best friend. Like I'm literally taking my privacy legal to my next conference with me because it's all about regulations and what we can and cannot do.
00:30:07
Speaker
I'm glad that you mentioned regulations because having three different people, three different executives and experts within our ecosystem, financial services, insurance, B2B SAS, but also because handling different countries, different areas, there's a lot of different
00:30:26
Speaker
levels of regulation and privacy taking place obviously within our ecosystem. How do you team up with your colleagues? They might have a more data-centric mindset or they might have a more legal skew. What do you do to complement one and each other? I think it's honestly partnership. I'm going to just knock on with it. I have been blessed with a lot of really good
00:30:57
Speaker
partners within the privacy legal and just privacy space who are willing to help us understand like, all right, this is the letter of the law. But what do you do? And how do we find like what fits and what makes sense without just going across the board? Sorry, I just saw Matt Rustine's comment and it's making me laugh. And I think you just have to build that relationship and partnership. It doesn't happen overnight. And oftentimes you will have a partner
00:31:27
Speaker
who knows nothing about your space, but what are you going to do about it to bridge that gap? That's great. That's a really good way to explain it. We've got a myriad of different questions coming up, which is awesome, because we've been going for about 32 minutes. And we want to be able to open this up to those that are watching. So Matthew Rutzing just asked, with travel and experiences coming back into play,
00:31:57
Speaker
uh post-covid what do you want to learn or experience like what excites you and i think this is for everybody just because obviously we're not just sitting well i i suppose it looks like uh three of us might be working from home right now but and one of us might be uh at an office but we're coming and going we're not sitting in uh sitting stagnant what excites you guys about what opportunities jumping on planes jumping on trains jumping in cars
00:32:26
Speaker
I even though I'm in an office, I'm basically the only employee in marketing in all of Nevada, so that is no different than working from home. I I really love meeting my people, teams, coworkers, peers, people who haven't seen from other lives. Matt, I just saw a couple of months ago at Adobe's conference, so it's it's always the people that excite me because you always forget how much you learn from your peers.
00:32:54
Speaker
and the members and how much like there's so much of knowledge or happiness and careful conversations. I think that's probably what I miss the most. Emily, Michelle, how about you?
00:33:04
Speaker
Yep, I love going to conferences and meeting peers and picking people's brains, talking about what they're doing, what's exciting them, what boundaries are they pushing right now, what technologies are they excited about. And I always came back from those conferences with a list, a long, long list of follow-ups, of articles to read, of areas to go investigate for them. That's what I loved, just kind of that sharing of ideas and really playing off each other.
00:33:33
Speaker
Emily, kicking it to you. Yeah, I have to say it's the same, right? It's getting out of the office. My co-workers right now in office in this office are dogs. They're not like the most collaborative in the world. So I really love being around, you know, my team and I get the opportunity to be able to travel internationally for that.
00:33:52
Speaker
So it's really about being introduced to their cultures. They're constantly like, here, drink this, eat this. I get to see where they get to hang out when they're not at work. So it's the moments like that that I really love. And then I am a nerd for industry conferences. I do love meeting other people. I like the actionable takeaways, the notebook filled with ideas as well. I come back from the conference, I'm looking at it, and I think, ooh, we should do this. Or ooh, I'm going to talk to the team.
00:34:22
Speaker
to see if we can explore this. And I think that's the fun stuff. I agree with you. That is the fun stuff. Having those actionable, just tangible notes that you come back with and you just want to go through it all with your team. You want to be able to just act, just do, instead of just being stagnant, for sure. Michelle, looks like you've got a great question from Mr. Tom Reardon. Hi, Michelle. Any secrets you can share as to how you hired so effectively at Allstate?
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so I, not just at Allstate, but when I've hired people throughout my career, I'm a big proponent of hiring for soft skills and culture fit versus I have to hire somebody who has experience doing property and casualty insurance. That typically doesn't prove to be a winning formula, but if you hire somebody who seems like they're going to be able to fit on the team, they're eager to learn.
00:35:18
Speaker
They're a good communicator. They understand marketing. They understand ad tech. They're willing to push boundaries with you and move to the unknown. They feel comfortable in the uncomfortable, if you will. That's how I tend to define my superstar employees versus strictly hiring for having experience in a certain vertical or doing a certain task. Natasha, how about you?
00:35:47
Speaker
I couldn't agree more. I try to find, because I feel everything in life is teachable, except how to be a good person and how to work with other people. So as long as you know that and have some background, I think that's what I index more towards when I build high performing things. Because if you don't know, there are 40%, 50% of the job, guess what? The other 50 is teachable. But I really don't teach you how to work well with others.
00:36:16
Speaker
So well said, so well said. Seeing that it's about 37 after, we'd love to talk a little bit more about mentorship and what all three of you just spoke about in terms of just the way that you delegate, the way that you listen, the way that you laugh, the way that you communicate, and the way that you lead, essentially, as marketing leaders.
Mentorship and Leadership Insights
00:36:36
Speaker
We'd love to understand, Emily, just what mentorship means to you as a head of marketing.
00:36:43
Speaker
So I it's something that I've over the past, you know, a handful of years. It's something that I've really grown to to enjoy. I feel that when you're earlier in your career or maybe you're
00:36:55
Speaker
a specialist, right? And you're wanting to learn about other areas of the business or other or learn about other skill sets. I think, you know, being able to guide people with your own experiences so that maybe can inform, you know, their path and their choices that they go to make. Like, I feel like that's a really valuable thing to convey to people. And I know that, you know, as I was mentored by people,
00:37:20
Speaker
It's something that I was really curious about was about to like, well, what did you do in this situation? You know, how do I know that I'm making the right decision? And I think that's where mentorship is most valuable. And, you know, in my opinion, and your opinion matters that that's what mentorship is about. Michelle, how about you? Yep, I've been doing a lot of thinking about this over the last couple of days. So I have two thoughts here. First, I've been in a lot of
00:37:50
Speaker
formal mentorship programs mostly facilitated by the companies I've been at that felt really forced and they weren't really a great match. So it was basically me raising my hand saying I wanted to be mentored and somebody maybe raising their hand, maybe being forced to as part of a development plan, being volunteered to be a mentor match. It wasn't, it wasn't a great fit. So I, in retrospect, and what with words of wisdom I would give to my younger self would be to be more assertive and to identify the people that I admired at my company and being
00:38:19
Speaker
brave enough to go ask them to be my mentor. Looking back, I worked with some amazing, very strong, particularly women leaders that I learned a lot from by observing, but I could have learned so much more from by actually actively being in a mentor-mentee relationship.
00:38:39
Speaker
I think so much of it is also just the informality of it versus the formal mentorship programs, being able to access people, access a mentor, access a mentee and just have a real down to earth live conversation. Natasha, what does mentorship mean to you? Well, I mean, I think can we just acknowledge like mentorship is just hard. It's, it's everyone can like, it's easy. You just need to find someone. I mean, it's really not because we're so busy in our day to day lives and like,
00:39:06
Speaker
so much going on professionally, personally, how you take the time out to actually grow someone. It's hard on not only the mentor, but it's also there's less, no one really acknowledges how much onus is on the mentee that wants to be mentored. Like, are you going to reach out? What do you want to learn? I think mentorship is only successful when the mentee is like as excited so that the mentorship like, right, I will take time out of my day
00:39:32
Speaker
to help you to grow. And it's truly that being that courageous to reach out to people that you think you want to emulate in your life and want to learn from. It's very similar to Michelle. I've had the luxury of working for some pretty phenomenal male and female leaders. And you think mentorship's only in your early years, but one of my former bosses in her late 40s was like, I'm just going to reach out to this former guru for mentorship.
00:40:02
Speaker
asking for mentorship at this age, I'm like, maybe there's something to be learned at every age. And I feel like that's something to remind ourselves and not be afraid to seek out because people are always open to sharing their experiences and they grow them. We just never reach out thinking they're too busy. You probably are, but you never asked them to take the time out.
00:40:24
Speaker
So well said, Emily, I could see that you were smiling when Natasha was saying that in terms of just mentorship at different stages in people's careers and different ages. How did that resonate with you?
00:40:35
Speaker
Yeah, look, you're never too old for mentorship. I'm 46 years old and I still ask tons of questions and need tons of guidance as I'm growing as a leader myself, right? That's things you're continually learning new skills and adapting what you know. And I think that, yeah, like Natasha said, it's important to continue to learn and to learn from people that have probably been there, you know.
00:41:01
Speaker
I love that. I love that. All right. To wrap things up, what kinds of tips, tricks, advice, just parting words of wisdom would you give to those that are watching? We'll start with you, Michelle. Tips and tricks on what? In-house? Tips and tricks on running an in-house team. Tips and tricks on just being a good leader. Tips and tricks on just career advice in general. If you could have like
00:41:25
Speaker
I'll give you each, take a minute, just get whatever's off of your chest, say whatever information, whatever, just parting words of wisdom that you can just give to anyone watching. That's where they can be inspired by what you have to say. I would say never get comfortable. That was my big takeaway at Allstate. When it started to get comfortable, I knew we weren't pushing hard enough. So keep reading, keep learning, keep networking, keep asking questions, keep pushing boundaries.
00:41:55
Speaker
in my experience that has been the most successful and most personally rewarding. Amazing. Emily. Oh, I'd say mine is a lot like Michelle's, right? It's stay curious, always challenge the status quo, and make time for yourself to learn new skills or add depth to the ones you already have. And I feel like we don't make enough time for ourselves in the day-to-day, and I think that's really important to remember.
00:42:20
Speaker
Personally, that's a great one just to think through for all of us at any time, just being able to do something different. And then that's one of the reasons I decided to start building this platform and community is just to do something different, to engage a different part of my brain and skill set. So I love that you just mentioned that. Natasha, how about you? I mean, there's nothing that hasn't already been said, but I guess just always question your own self.
00:42:48
Speaker
also because we make decisions every day, a lot of them. And at what point do you go back to you? Did I make the right decision? Is that still the right decision for us given that we have changed, I have changed, the business has changed? And I'll just be comfortable in questioning your own self because I know a lot of people feel very out of place like, no, don't question my work. Question yourself because that's the only way that you will grow.
00:43:17
Speaker
That was great. That was great. Well, I want to thank the three of
Conclusion and Future Events
00:43:21
Speaker
you. Natasha, Emily, Michelle, thank you for taking time out of your day to speak to the Oh Hello community as we're building up this platform. It's so meaningful to me to have such wonderful people be a part of this, to be a part of this community and to have friends within the ecosystem that can give this kind of advice and guidance.
00:43:41
Speaker
I have so much respect for what the three of you are doing. So just want to say thank you. I'm grateful. Thank you, Jeremy. Happy to be here. So thank you for everyone that's watching. Oh, hello.io is going to be launching later this summer. Additionally, we will have more LinkedIn live events. This has been a great success, having a lot of fun doing these as well. Thank you, everybody. I appreciate you all. Take care.
00:44:10
Speaker
Thanks Emily, thanks Michelle, thanks Natasha. Bye. Bye.