Career Adaptability: Marketing can lead to many other things (podcast episode #103)

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Where do you see yourself in five years?

I always hated this interview question. It’s not that I’m against planning; it’s that I’m for flexibility. And I don’t want to get trapped in a five-year plan.

I try to focus on delivering value today helping people out, and improving my future self for tomorrow, and from there, opportunities naturally arise.

So a lesson from this episode’s guest really resonated with me – ‘be open to where your path takes you.’

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Melinda Marchesi, Chief Marketing Officer, Prosper Marketplace.

Since its founding in 2005, Prosper Marketplace has originated $28 billion in loans for two million customers. Prosper Marketplace is backed by leading investors including Francisco Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, Third Point, and Jefferies.

Marchesi manages a team of 30 and a $50 million marketing budget at Prosper. Throughout her career, she has managed teams as small as five and as large as thousands, and marketing budgets from $20 million to hundreds of million dollars.

Listen to Marchesi’s full story and gain insights for your career by tuning into the episode using this embedded player or by clicking through to your preferred audio streaming service using the links below it.

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Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

Here are some lessons from Marchesi that emerged in our discussion.

Be open to where your path takes you

If you would have told Marchesi 20 years ago that she would be working in financial services, she would have said that you were crazy! Coming out of college she had a clear vision of a career as a journalist – until she became one. She realized she wanted to be the one ‘doing’ not writing about it.  As she ventured into publishing, she discovered that business was more her passion.

Specifically, she delved into digital communications, eventually transitioning to a communications consultant and marketer, and ultimately to a job at Chase Bank. She loved her time at Chase and has spent the better part of her career now in financial services for companies big and small.

Stay open-minded about your career path, even if it doesn’t seem to fit at first. Sometimes, it’s about letting your skills and interests guide you to unexpected opportunities.

Marketing can lead to many other things

Yes, she is biased! But she has seen some of the most effective leaders have backgrounds in marketing. Many marketers are hesitant to explore opportunities beyond their discipline. But she has worked for some great CEOs and heads of companies who began their careers in marketing and communications. She personally has taken on general management, technology, operations, and servicing at various points in her career.

While her heart belongs to marketing, many skills are transferable. Marketers approach problems with a consumer-centric mindset. That helps with effective communication and motivating others across all levels of an organization. Don’t just work inside your box!

Know the numbers and how your work impacts them

This was an important lesson Marchesi learned during her first CMO job. She made the mistake of multi-tasking during a presentation by the CFO of the business. After the meeting he pulled her aside and asked, “does this stuff not interest you?” and went on to explain how the company’s financials impact the marketing budget and the work her team does. It was a big wakeup call that she couldn’t leave the ‘numbers’ part to someone else.

Marchesi made it a point to sit with her finance partner and had her walk Marchesi through the business’ P&L until she understood everything. Her advice to others would be to familiarize yourself with that side of the business, and really know and understand the numbers so you can have a voice when it comes to investment and ROI.

Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you

Early in Marchesi’s career, she fell into the common trap of believing she needed to have all the answers. Over time, she realized how impractical and exhausting this is. Instead, she has come to understand the importance of knowing the trends, but surrounding herself with trustworthy and competent people who excel in their respective areas. She has hired the same highly skilled colleague at several companies because of his experience and knowledge in digital marketing – more than she will ever know about digital.

It is important for managers to embrace the mindset of ‘I may not have the answer, by my team does.’

Lessons (with stories) from people she collaborated with

Marchesi also shared lessons she learned from the people she collaborated with.

Respect people’s lives outside of work

via Jack Borbley (retired from Willis Towers Watson)

Borbley, who has since retired, was Marchesi’s boss early in her career and had a lasting impact, to this day. He emphasized the importance of treating your team with the same empathy you would show family. When her first child faced serious medical issues after birth, she realized she couldn’t juggle coming back to work as planned and requested a leave of absence. Borbley, recognizing her dedication and effort, encouraged her to prioritize her well-being and family responsibilities.

He assured her that there was no pressure to perform at the level she was at before having her son, and when she felt ready, she could gradually ease back into work. This was pre-WFH days. As a woman and a new mother, Borbley’s understanding and support were invaluable to her.

She remained grateful and loyal to him throughout her tenure there. Inspired by him, when employees are struggling, she has always had the approach of “We will all have struggles in our personal lives over the course of our career. It’s your time now. Work can wait.”

What are YOU going to do about it?

Via Thasunda (“T”) Duckett (former CEO of Auto Finance at Chase and current CEO of TIAA)

Duckett was the CEO of Chase Auto when Marchesi was CMO and played a pivotal role in her professional development, including taking a chance on her in this bigger role. Shortly after joining the executive team, she had a one-on-one meeting with Duckett, where she presented a list of challenges and setbacks. Duckett patiently listened, then sat back and asked, “what are you going to do about it?

It was the first time a manager had said that to her. She realized at that level, no one is going to solve your problems. She was responsible for finding solutions and taking action. To this day she doesn’t like passing on any problem to the CEO that she hasn’t tried her best to solve first.

Passion and curiosity fuel the best work

via Kristin Lemkau (CEO at J.P. Morgan Wealth Management)

During Marchesi’s tenure as business-line CMO, Lemkau held the position of the Chase CMO overseeing all marketers. She has never had another boss or mentor that put that much energy and enthusiasm into her work. Lemkau was passionate about the company brand and results, but also passionate about making sure they pushed boundaries on how to think and approach problems.

This meant connecting them with amazing outside speakers and the best innovators in the industry, having inspiring staff meetings with flip charts all over the room, and pushing for advanced analytics on all campaigns well ahead of its time. It was also bringing the team together for a lot of fun events and unforgettable dinners that kept their spirits high. Lemkau’s energy was contagious, and Marchesi tries to bring that to her teams – both in and out of the office.

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Transcript

Not ready for a listen yet? Interested in searching the conversation? No problem. Below is a rough transcript of our discussion.

Melinda Marchesi: You know, we only have limited resources. Is this better than something else? And we do have processes for like officially vetting that. But even to get it on the list I want. And if the answer is no, by the way, I completely respect that. But if it's yeah, it's it's I'm going to play the CEO card a little bit and say, this has this has led to, small problems and lessons and that's why I, I really try not to bring too many awards, but getting by and I'll do that all day long and have to.

Intro Dude: Welcome to how I made it in marketing from Marketing Sherpa, we scour pitches from hundreds of creative leaders and uncover specific examples, not just trending ideas or buzzword laden schmaltz real world examples to help you transform yourself as a marketer. Now here's your host, the senior director of Content and Marketing at Marketing Sherpa, Daniel Bernstein, to tell you about today's guest.

Daniel Burstein: Where do you see yourself in five years? I always hated this interview question. It's not that I'm against planning, it's that I'm for flexibility and I don't want to get trapped in some five year plan. I try to focus on delivering value today, helping people out and improving my future self for tomorrow, not knowing what it's going to bring, but knowing from there opportunities will naturally arise.

So I like a lesson for my next guest. Be open to where your path takes you. Here to share the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson filled stories, is Melinda marquez, the Chief Marketing Officer of Prosper Marketplace. Thanks for joining us, Melinda.

Melinda Marchesi: Thank you so much for having me.

Daniel Burstein: Let's take a quick look at your career. Just cherry picking here. I know you've had a lot of roles. You've been the global digital marketing director for Towers Watson. Melinda spent 11 years at JPMorgan Chase and company, where she's had many roles, including head of credit card customer acquisitions and being the CMO of both the mortgage and auto lines of business.

And Mullen is also an independent board member for Harley Davidson Financial Services. For the past year, Melinda has been the CMO of Prosper Marketplace. Since its founding in 2005, Prosper Marketplace has originated $28 billion in loans and just surpassed 2 million customers. Prosper marketplace is backed by leading investors including Francisco Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, Third Point and Jefferies, and Melinda has 30 direct reports now and a $50 million marketing budget.

But you did mention to me that she's had from five to thousand direct reports, doesn't care about that number, and she's managed all the different kinds of marketing budgets leading up to hundreds of millions and said it's a lot harder the smaller the budget is. So give us a little bit of that background and you also tell us, you know, what is your day like?

CMO at Prosper Marketplace?

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah, I mean, it's a CMO job is different depending on where you are. I've had super structured corporate type roles as a CMO. I've had looser type of jobs that have turned into things like a CEO more than a CMO. I would say where I am today at prosper is a more traditional CMO type job, where it's everything to do with marketing communications that impacts this company from internal communications, PR, branding, and then all of our direct marketing and things that really help build the business and grow the business.

This particular job is also hyper focused on growth and hyper focused on getting us ready to go public, which is why I was interested in working with prosper. So my day is very varied in what I do, but for the most part, it's representing marketing in the broader business, whether that's with our investors, with our executive team, and also just throughout the company.

How is marketing communications going to help solve our business problems and how are we going to help grow? For me, of course, that's all a lot of zoom calls. I do work remotely. Half of our our workforce is remote, and we use Zoom and Slack like many other companies. And that is how we communicate. And we do it the best that we can.

We do have some in-person type of meetings, but for the most part, we are a virtual workforce and we actually have done very well with that. I think we we work quite well together in that kind of situation. I also work East Coast hours. My company is a West Coast based Silicon Valley company, and so what that means is my massive zoom calls starts at around 11 ish in the morning, East coast time, and goes to seven, in the evening.

And I do some of my more independent work before and after. But, there's a number of us in this situation. We also have plenty of central time folks, so we all make it work by by focusing our collaboration time in that sort of East Coast afternoon. That makes sense.

Daniel Burstein: Oh, that's that's where you are now. So let's look at the path you took to get here and the left hand stories along the way. So, your first lesson you mentioned is be open to where your path takes you. So how did you learn this lesson, Melinda?

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah. When, I was finishing up college, I was a journalism major, and I thought for sure I wanted to be a journalist, and I was a journalist, so very entry level journalist. I worked for a few magazines and local newspapers and things like that, and ended up in publishing. And fairly early in my career, I realized I don't really like being a journalist.

It was a wonderful background for me, but what really got me interested was the business side of things and the advertising side of things. And where is the money coming from and how are we influencing people? And that really just took me on a much different path. I ended up in a in a consulting job that helped companies communicate and disseminate information online, which are back in those old, old days was brand new.

I love that, and that sort of naturally translated into digital marketing at that company. And one of our clients was Chase at the time, and I ultimately ended up working for them. And I we mentioned I mentioned this earlier to you. If you had told me I would be in banking and I'd been called a banker, and it still makes me sort of laugh.

If you had told me, I would have been a banker with my creative background, I would have never believed you. and but now I love it. I've been in financial services for 15 years. This is what I do. This is my profession. And I think if I had been too pigeonholed and siloed into thinking about what I was going to do with my career, these opportunities wouldn't have come up.

And even my latest one, this was something brand new. I haven't worked in fintech exactly before, and I'm still open to those possibilities even at this point in my career.

Daniel Burstein: Can you think of anything in your time as a journalist that you still used as a marketer today? Because I think that journalism background is such a good background for marketing. So for me, I, I went it was in a school, I was an advertising major, but I was in the J school. So I got some of those base level classes, but I still call them and use them today because, for example, I teach a session in our AI guild.

It's helps marketers build their funnel. And so one of the things we do is group coaching. And often what I see is marketers there. So focus on that hype and that appeal and that selling, selling, selling that the offer isn't even clear. And so I call back to that just journalism, you know, background, the who what, where, why all that type of stuff.

And I always give that advice. Many if people are struggling with their landing pages with their funnel, just think like a reporter. Just make it clear. Like we can always layer on appeal and hype and that stuff. Just make it clear. So that's been helpful for me. Is there anything from your journalism background that you still call on today and use as a marketer?

Melinda Marchesi: I love that. I love your example and I definitely think like that every day, probably to this day. The other thing, and this is not even so much more of my journalism training, I remember I had done, a police ride along, which I'm not even sure they would let people do that these days, but, it was fascinating.

And, and the assignment was to write about it and what happened. And it was in the city of Richmond. not a great place to be late at night doing a ride along, but fascinating experience. I wrote this amazing article. I was so excited to turn it in, and I got it back and I got to be. And I was really mad.

And I went to my professor and I said, why on earth would I get a B on this? I spent so much time on it. He said, you sell the name of the police station, ma'am. That is an automatic. It drops to the next grade and he's like, I guarantee you, you're going to check your spelling of everything, go forward in life and I'm telling you, that is stuck with me all of these years.

And it was a fantastic lesson to learn really early. Be very careful with what you're doing and don't get the bait.

Daniel Burstein: That's a great example because when we when we would hire reporters, our closing flip, McLaughlin and I used to call it the McLaughlin test because his name is spelled McDougall, you know, but there's a lot of people that would do the whole thing. It would be well-written, it'd be all it would be great. And they would spell his name MC laid up and I'm like, yeah, that's that's you can't.

Melinda Marchesi: Just.

Daniel Burstein: Person.

Melinda Marchesi: You just fail.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, yeah. Don't get to see his name wrong. all right. Your next lesson you mentioned, marketing can lead to many other things. I think you kind of started telling us this. What else have marketing led to for you?

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah, and and part of that, too, is I even look for some at some of the leaders I've worked for. And you'd be surprised how many you know, some businesses have actually had some level of marketing in their past. And the reason is I think marketers look at problems a lot differently. They always put a customer in the middle of problems, and that could be a marketing problem.

But it could also be, I don't know, a payments problem or a problem with understanding directions. And when you use that as the basis of every, every type of project and assignment that's handed to you, I think you can do all sorts of jobs pretty well. And I'm not saying I've done every single job perfectly, not even close.

But I took that same approach to some things in my in my career that were way outside the realm of marketing. I ran, brick and mortar stores for a while, which was fascinating and way out of my comfort zone. And the first thing I would do when I went into the store is talk to the customers. What are the customers saying?

What feedback are you getting? That might be very different than how a true sort of operations person. Not that I'm knocking operations, which is a different approach. And I think when you start off particularly as a marketer and you get really comfortable with having being that customer centric kind of leader, you can do all sorts of things that are that that can take you in all different paths.

Daniel Burstein: That's great. Can you give a specific example of something you learned from the customer, and how you learned that you could be from those conversations in the store? Could be a B testing, could be a million different things. And how you apply that in a non marketing role because for example, I mean I love this where we always talk about customer first marketing.

We've done research about it. It's what we're all about. for example, when I interviewed Christian Zhivago and talk to her about it, her big thing was, as you said, interviewing the customer, that's what she was, interview the customer. And she would encourage, you know, that's not like ab testing where it's like a valid sample size. But from her experience, she would say, you get to ten customers, maybe even five.

You're going to see patterns and you, you know, you maybe there might be a few outlier customers, but you want to dive into those patterns and figure out what's going they're going on there. So do you have any specific examples of like, okay, here's how I learned something from the customer, what I learned and how I apply that to a non marketing role.

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah. When I when I would visit some of our we call them stores. They were fine financial institutions. you know talking to customers. One of the big things they would talk about because a lot of our customers, were very hard working, a lot of hourly kind of employees. And I said, what's what's the biggest challenge?

Like, why would you not come here and go to a competitor? And they said, you're not open during the hours. I need you to be open. so I need you to be open at seven in the morning. Sometimes I need you to be open late at night. You're working. We did have some variation. We weren't completely oblivious to this, but how dramatic that was didn't really sink in until I really saw it.

And we ended up instituting. It was actually sort of early eye to figure out which areas had more demand, and we completely reshuffled our hours, even on a daily basis, which can be a little confusing. But, you know, Monday, Wednesday and Friday we open at seven. Now, the other days we stayed open late and then some basic retail stuff, but things that we really hadn't thought too much because we thought like a bank, you know.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. I mean, that's what bankers hours is not a complimentary. Right? We don't say that's a compliment. Yeah. No I love that example. I, I had struggled that with myself when dealing with financial institutions. It's like come on give me give me some Saturday hours or some some I think institutions have gotten better. So many. It's like an hour.

You're like two hours are open is what I'm working. here's another lesson you mentioned. Know the numbers and how your work impacts them. And so what really interests me about this role here, this lesson is I'm a creative person. I came from a similar background. I am not working in the financial industry now and could not imagine that.

So I wonder how coming from that creative background, working again, moving to the financial industry, you learned the numbers and you figured this out.

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah, and it wasn't easy, I can tell you that. And, you know, when I talk to, especially folks in college who are interested in marketing, which is becoming more and more popular these days, you notice that. But, I always say my biggest advice to you is to take some accounting classes. I never did that. I ended up auditing an accounting class later.

It's like, I have to understand that it's going to go against your nature as a creative, right? Bring person and you're not going to like it. But it is so important because if you don't know how to read, the company results, you don't know what a PNL looks like. You cannot be a CMO full stop, because you don't know how much you're able to invest.

You don't know how the the, the impact of the return on investment is going into the company. And you need to be able to advocate for the right things. And if you don't understand the numbers, you can't do that. You know, if you want to focus more on maybe the creative branding side, okay, you might be able to get away with that for a little bit.

But if you want to be a direct marketer, responsible for bringing in revenue to the company, you need to understand the entire thing and, you know, I remember as a CMO, the CFO, chief financial officer at the time, pulling me aside and said, I think you need to learn this more. And being sort of shocked, like somebody is telling me that I'm not doing well at something.

And I really realized I didn't understand it. And I spent a long time learning that, making sure I was comfortable with it.

Daniel Burstein: You know, many CMO was I interviewed. One thing they'd say is, you know, make that CFO your friend, right? Oh, I guess that's going to help with your marketing budget. And everything. and I understand what the company needs to like. You're talking about, boy, IPO going public. There's a lot of numbers involved, and part of it is telling the story around those numbers and making sure it's, you know, serving great audiences.

But I want to ask you another question about numbers because financials that's a I agree it's important to learn. I was a business minor. I took financial accounting. I did hate it, but I did learn a lot. Appreciate it. I did it with other numbers. you know those numbers that tell us about a customer. So I wonder if you have any specific examples of how you dive into any number that tells you about the customer or something you learned about the customer, what you did about that, you know, for example, when we've taught our audience about this, we've talked about a data pattern analysis and kind of showed them like, okay, here are

some specific types of data points you'd want to look for. Essentially, you're looking for patterns in these numbers. And what does it tell you about the customer. What can you do based on that. And again, sometimes it's not necessarily you act on it right away. That gives you a hypothesis to test and kind of move forward from there.

It's not like past data is always indicative of future behavior, as the financial industry would say, but it does give us ideas for what we can do going forward. So I wonder if you have any specific examples you can think of. Okay, here's here's a number that I really know or numbers I really focused on taught me this thing about the customer.

Then we were able to do this and serve the customer better.

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah, well I'll give you an example that happened like this week.

Daniel Burstein: Okay. That's fresh.

Melinda Marchesi: And you know, it's a little bit marketing 101, but it was a reminder for all of us. We were working on, an email campaign and for us, we're in the lending business, part of lending and our money back. It's just we sort of expect to be paid back eventually. and, we were struggling a bit in that area.

And so we started a brand new marketing campaign that was email focused use email before, but this had a lot of new tactics. We were comparing A and B of the control that we had been typically doing with this brand new campaign, and there was a lot of pressure around it. We need this to work. and so the control winning would not have been a good outcome.

And so, we were going through all of the numbers and they set the controls or the test rather, is losing and said, well, let's log because it's I've been wrong many times before. It's hard to believe this is losing. Let's take a look. And what they were focused on with the team is focused on was open rates and click through rates and some of the high level, you know, email marketing kinds of numbers that we all look at, what they didn't look at was the ultimate collection rate, which is what we call, you know, how much money we were able to recoup from our customers from that that was winning.

And so don't stop. You forgot a piece. You forgot to talk to your your colleagues and operations and get their their feeling on what actually happened. And the champions actually winning.

Daniel Burstein: That is a wonderful example. And that's a great example of understanding what your primary KPI is like. To your point. Like those are some secondary KPIs opened. And I'm, you know, if you can trust opens anymore. But yeah, it clicks. And some of those things, those are secondary KPIs and maybe could teach us something if the primary KPIs aren't working.

But yeah, that's the primary KPI. This is what we're trying to do this we're trying to influence. And I think that's important too, because it's understanding the customer's motivations, is that you could get less people clicking through, but if they're the right people doing the right, absolutely. That's a win, right? Is that what you're experiencing?

Melinda Marchesi: Exactly. Yep. That's exactly right.

Daniel Burstein: Perfect. so you I like how you mentioned a talk to those people in operations because another lesson you said is surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. So how did you learn this?

Melinda Marchesi: I mean, I think early on as a manager, I always wanted to be the one that had the answer and at least could speak to everything on my team. Super impractical. and and exhausting. You're not going to be able to do that. So I think over time, I've learned. Make sure you surround yourself with the experts, particularly in things that you aren't strong in, and rely on them.

I, I over my career, I've gotten more PR brand minded. I did not start off that way. A lot of people of our vintage started off more in the branding, creative side, and then learn the digital side. I was completely opposite. I still to this day, make sure I either have a very good PR firm on retainer or really good comms brand people around me because I'm going to look to them for their expertise.

Sometimes I pull the CMO card and say, I just, we're going to do this just because I have a good feeling about it. But otherwise, I really want people around me who know their specific areas really well. I've had two people, one in particular. If you listen to this, I'll know who is who have worked for me several times.

This is now a third company, because I know he knows way more about his expertise is digital analytics, and I won't ever know. And so rely on the people who work for you, especially in the CMO level. You're not going to be able to do it all.

Daniel Burstein: So I think that's a great lesson. But talent is scarce, marketing talent is scarce. So can you give us an example of how you find in recruit, Empower people? These people are smarter than you because I think, you know, a lot of listeners would agree with that. But how do you do it? And for example, I interviewed Marco Muller, who's a CMO of a viva, on how I made it in marketing.

And one of his lessons was confidence is everything. And he told this story about this intern. I love this story. He was, visiting Peru and this intern was working in Lima. And we just when he walked in the door in this office in Peru, I think he's working for SAP. And the intern was waiting for him in the lobby, and he really wanted to talk to him.

And he's like, well, I'm going into this meeting all day, and the interns like, I'm not going to like, get you after the meeting. Like, I know, you know, you're only in the country for 24 hours. I need to talk to you. And so I gave him some time. You sat down and the intern had some great ideas for what they were doing wrong in Peru and how they could improve.

You know, they're up there, marketing there. And so his lesson from that is like, you know, wow. Like I when I was an intern, I didn't have that level of confidence in me. You know, I really attracted the right people now to my team that can do this, not only having the confidence but the skills and all these things.

And but always go back to like, okay, that's what we want. How do we get there? So I wonder if you have any experiences of what you do to recruit, to empower, to get those people that are smarter than new around you?

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah, yeah. I mean, first and foremost, I mentioned this. It's, looking your virtual Rolodex. People even have a Rolodex and more. We might, but, knowing if I have an open position, first look to who I know. But then who do they know and and what kinds of skills? And we're looking for. And it's amazing how helpful people will be to others when you're looking for something.

And I try to repay that all the time. If someone needs assistance in finding a job where they have an opening, I always respond because it's the way that we keep our networks going. But outside of that, if you're just do it, if we've all done recruiting and getting people in the door, you know, my assumption is by the time that I see a candidate slate, they have on paper what we need, at least in theory and the resume, I look more than anything else for cultural fit.

And what I mean by that is, yes, do they get along with people who are looking for that? Well, they seem like they're a good fit for the group and for working with me. But the other thing is, I look for curiosity more than anything else because I feel like if you have that and you have that drive, we can teach you all sorts of things, particularly as a more junior person who's who's open to a lot of different, of, of things that can happen, a lot of different possibilities.

And I think that that's I'm wrong here or there. But for the most part, if you can tap into ask questions like what's interesting happening in marketing these days instead of, you know, how do you improve ROI? I feel like that's already been discussed. See what they say? I really feel like that curiosity will take people very far.

Daniel Burstein: So that's that's an interview question you ask. You ask them, what do you think is interesting going on in marketing these days? Yeah. That's great. I like that question. I've never heard that before. Yeah. yeah. I mean, I think because you also want to tap into I think curiosity you mentioned is right. And I know that's a trait of journalists.

Right. but I also I think that that leads to a passion as well, when that question you ask because, you know, sometimes I've interviewed people and they're clearly interviewing for a job. and so they've like maybe check the boxes and you're asking the questions. Right. But sometimes you could just tell there's that excitement that they're like, this is not a hobby for them.

It's almost like that. Like they really get into this. And what's the customer's psychology and what's, you know, the latest things that are going on. So that's a really good question.

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah. And I do I do a lot of skip levels. with my team. I just have one right before we got on this call and one question now they're used to it. So I can't catch them off guard anymore. But one question I always ask is, what what kind of cool stuff are you working on right now?

And it could could be things I know about. Usually it's something I don't know about and see what they say. And some of the answers are just great. And I can tell who's going to be a really up and coming marketer. Just from that simple question.

Daniel Burstein: I like that. That's good. well, speaking of people, that's a key thing in marketing, right? We get to make things, we make them with people. And in the second half of this episode, we're going to hear some lessons from people. Melinda has, worked with people. She has collaborated with. But first I should mention that the How I Made It in Marketing podcast is underwritten by MC labs.

I the parent organization of marketing Sherpa Labs. I has specialized expert assistance apps and libraries to help you with your marketing, all trained on a patented methodology built on the results from 10,000 marketing experiments. It's free to get started. So just go to MC labs ai.com and start using it. That's Mech Labs ai.com. All right, Melinda, let's take a look at some, lessons from people you worked with.

You mentioned that Jack Bob Lee, who is, worked at Willis Towers Watson a few days now, retired. and one thing he taught you was respect people's lives outside of work. So how did you learn this from Jack?

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah. And this isn't necessarily a marketing specific lesson. It's just a leadership lesson. And a lesson in humanity, I guess. I was a new mother. I just had my first, first child, who had a lot of health issues in its early life, and I just couldn't do all of it. And so I went to Jack and I said, I need to take a leave of absence.

This needs to be my priority. And he said, how about instead of taking a leave of absence, do what you can, when you can, and ease back into it when you can and when you feel like you're able to? And that was amazing advice way back that my son is now 21 years old, by the way, and six foot two and doing great, but I'm.

Daniel Burstein: Happy to.

Melinda Marchesi: Hear it. yeah. but, this was well before work from home. We didn't have the technology and that was not anything people did. the flexibility that he gave to me was so meaningful and important was super loyal to him the entire time I was there. And I also took that every time, because I tell people, you know, life is long, your career is long.

At some point, all of us will have something and you know, if someone's going through something, now is your time to support that. Come back when you can. I can't tell you how many times I've repeated what he said to me. And it's it's not just to get the karma or whatever to come back. It's just the right thing to do.

And hopefully people will take that and pass that along and as they move through their career. So I will always be grateful to him for that.

Daniel Burstein: So I like that idea. You manage a remote team though, and I wonder how you stay informed about people's lives. If there's anything specific you do working remotely. Because one thing I've noticed in remote work is, you know, if we're not careful, it becomes a lot more transactional. So, you know, we hop on a zoom, we're going from meeting to meeting.

We don't really we maybe say, oh, how is your weekend? Blah, blah blah, we're on slack. Hey, how are you doing? But we're asking for something. It's a markedly different experience. Then we work together in the same office I see in the lunchroom. I see the water cooler. We grab lunch together that brings together. I actually really do know what's going on with your life.

Yeah. Do you have any specific examples of how you make sure you do this with your team?

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah, and just to be clear, I am a big fan of being in the office at least some part of the time. I do think, as in, I'll tell you how we handle that a little bit here, but it's tough. I think it's very tough to get to that personal level without having at least some time in the office.

So the times that we do get together, which is several times a year, we make sure everybody comes in. It's 100% dedicated. Focus on that team for at least a few days. And that really does help. You know, I would love to do it more, just not necessarily practical to do it more. But you need to and it's not going to the typical meetings on those days.

It's like we are going to focus on sure, some business and things we need to take care of, but more of the social side we do. One of the things that we do remotely and in person that sounds more transactional but ends up not being, is what I call a show and tell, where people can come in and talk about, you know, it's usually a side project or an interest or something that they're really involved with that they want the rest of us to know about.

We do those once a month. Sometimes it slips a little bit, roughly once a month so that we can it really helps to learn what makes people tick. And then I talked about the one on ones. We have a persona sounds silly, but we have a plugin for slack called donut and I do not work for Slack or Donut, but I actually find it to be really helpful.

What it does is randomly picks people in groups that you choose, and for me, it's my entire marketing team. It's also across the whole, prospect organization. So I'll get to people and it will assign you a zoom conversation every other week. So I really get to kind of, you know, to think about it does this for me.

and there are occasions where I wake up, I'm like, got three donuts today. They end up to be the best conversations. I learn more about either the person or what's going on than the typical meetings that we have that are set every week. So you don't have to do three donuts a day. That was that was a big example.

But I probably do two a week and really get to know people. and to make sure that you're connecting and on that kind of level as much as you can.

Daniel Burstein: So how is a donut different than a one on one? Is it just because they're not. It is a direct org structure or.

Melinda Marchesi: it is a one on one okay to do anything about it. You can set it up and say, I want to meet with everyone in my organization. it's random, but same number of times over the next year and it will send you it will say, hey, you know, I Yankees next, your next meeting. This is a time that looks good for you.

Are you okay with that? Yes. And it puts it on your calendar. You can't. You can ignore it, but you don't want to want to do it.

Daniel Burstein: No. That's great, that's great. I thought it was like an app that like once a week, automatically like delivered donuts. And everyone had donuts together.

Melinda Marchesi: Having really fun.

Daniel Burstein: You call this an app?

Melinda Marchesi: I guess it's like a virtual donut and coffee or something like that. Yeah. No, it's like, yeah.

Daniel Burstein: I mean, anything that can kind of that's the challenge is you've got certain things like you've got to prepare for Q3, you got to get that campaign done. Like there's certain things on your schedule that you're going to do. You have to do them. So I do like what you're saying, because unless you kind of force those things, that would happen naturally.

I think they're called collisions at Bell Labs. they're not they're not there. It's harder to make them happen remotely. So. Yeah.

Melinda Marchesi: And by the way, this isn't just me. Even our CEO makes this a big part of his day as well. He recognizes this isn't necessarily ideal. So we we are all doing this at at the leadership level. He was just in New York. And anyone who was in New York base, we took them out to dinner. That's you've got to make the effort in unusual ways.

Daniel Burstein: All right. Cool. here's another lesson. It's, a question. What are you going to do about it? Sounds a little accusatory at first, but I do like this question.

Melinda Marchesi: That's a little.

Daniel Burstein: But you said you. Yeah. You said you learned it from the Sunday tea. Duckett, the former CEO of auto finance at Chase and the current CEO of TIAA. So it was an accusation. How did this unfold?

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah, yeah. And if anyone knows T she's she's an amazing mentor and leader and probably wouldn't be surprised by this story. but this is my first CEO or CMO job working for a CEO, which was at the time. And, first job in sort of the C-suite. And I remember having a one on one with her early on, and it was essentially my list of grievances, you know, problems.

I was having people who weren't listening to me, why I needed more budget. Yeah, yeah. Took advantage, listened and sat back and said, what are you going to do about it? And I remember being embarrassed, but also it was just this. It just hit me that at that level, no one's going to solve your problems for you or, you know, at that level very long.

These are my problems to solve. They were not from I mean, of course, if there was something dramatic that needed attention, she would be there. And I would expect that from any CEO or manager at this level. But these were my things. And instead of bringing her grievances, you need to bring what you're doing about it or honestly just solve them.

Just got a million other things to think about. And so, it was a really big lesson and sort of a time where where the professional maturity had to quickly catch up to what, what the expectation was. And but I really, commander, for doing that and not taking on my problems because it made me grow up really quickly in that job.

Daniel Burstein: So I think that's a great example. There's a great lesson there. But let me ask you the flip side of it. So can you give a specific example of when you have had to go to the CEO or someone else in the C-suite, go to go with someone else? And how you figured out with this, I cannot solve it alone.

I need to do it with this other person. Why? You don't have to share any bad details about it, but just to give us a general, lesson, because this is a great lesson you mentioned I learned this in my career, too. I worked with the CFO. He told, I think I mentioned this in pre call. I you never heard of this, but the monkey story, there was a famous Harvard article that we're all walking around these monkeys on our back and what we do and maybe a dysfunctional organizations, we want to give someone else that monkey.

Right. So for example, you know, we've got to come up with, the Q3 budget, but to come up with that Q3 budget, we need to know what's a media projection. So we see the media projection person in the hallway. We say, hey, I can't come up with the Q3 budget. You give me the media projections and then you walk away thinking, okay, now that person has the monkey.

I don't have the monkey anymore. And that's that's a dysfunctional culture. However, there are times I make up my own analogy that doesn't work. If we work in a zoo and the gorillas are going crazy and they got out of the cage, I probably cannot get them by myself, and I need to figure out who I need to work with, you know, to collaborate to get those gorillas out.

And that's a bad analogy. But so can you give us an example of I 100% agree with this approach. When is a time where you had to like, okay, I do need to go to the CEO or a colleague in the C-suite, and here's how we need to solve this thing together. And I need to make the case to them so we can do this.

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah. I mean, yeah, and I'm still do this regularly. I would say the most regular example, the that I, that I see is when we want to try something new that is an investment. So we have a business case built and we're ready to go and why can't everybody see why? This would be a fantastic experiment. And you know, I try and we all try to to get sort of support across the organization.

And most of the time we're successful, sometimes we're not. And that would be a time when I would knock on the door and say, I just want your opinion of this. Do you think this is a good idea? Would you be supportive of this? Because particularly brand new initiatives at a small company like ours, you know, we only have limited resources.

Is this better than something else? And we do have processes for like officially vetting that. But even to get it on the list I want. And if the answer is no, by the way, I completely respect that. But if it's yeah, it's it's I'm going to play the CEO card a little bit. So this has this has complexity.

Got the CEO. small problems unless it's and that's why I, I really try not to bring too many of those but getting buy in I'll do that all day long if I have to as well.

Daniel Burstein: So I'm glad you brought up the investments, because this brings up a question I always have an ask. A lot of cms's is what role does the CMO play in making sure that the customer delivers on the value proposition where promising? Like where at what level is it stay in your lane, you work in marketing and what level is it like?

No, I need to get into some other things like product development or whatever it may be in your organization to make sure that we're building that product the customer wants. Because you brought up some great, examples before of I'm talking directly to the customer. I've worked as a CFO. I've worked in these other lines of business. I understand how a company needs to be customer first, customer centric, deliver value to the customer.

Once you're only in that CMO role, you know, we could work in silos and be like, look, you just sell the thing. We're going to figure out how to build it. So what is your experience or advice there on where the CMO gets involved in the actual product building or delivery or what have you?

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah, that's a really good question. That example of the brick and mortar and changing the hours. I was a CEO outside product and marketing underneath. I could just argue with myself if I wanted to. So that was that was just convenient. but that's not that typical, at least not in my experience here. For example, a process where we do have a separate product team and marketing team, we work extremely closely together.

And I'd say there's two things that are a little bit different about how we work together here that I think have been effective. One is, we have a, funnel analytics team, which when I got here is like, wow, we have a funnel analytics team, a whole team dedicated to that, which I thought was fantastic, and I take no credit for it.

It was already here when I got here. that team dual reports to me and the head of product. So first of all, poor guy, but he handles it very well. But the reason for that was very purposeful, because he's seeing the impact of marketing and he's seeing the impact of the downstream funnel and can make the connections, and is actually a really nice connection point between the teams.

And I was sort of a diplomat between the teams to say, yes, we need this in marketing, yes, we need this in product. And it's all 100% supported by data. It's been one of the more effective things I've seen, sort of operational at this company. I think it was it was a great choice. So there's that. The other thing is we started instituting a very, mathematic approach to our investments.

And it's not just a return on investment or revenue. I mean, that's part of it, but it's also scored for level of effort. Who needs to get involved? Vendor, dependencies. And we actually come up with a numerical score now. And so we all have, you know, held hands and said we're going to go by these scores. It's actually working pretty well.

And so there are times when a marketing activity goes way up to the top for a variety of reasons or to the bottom, but I'm okay with it because we have to make these trade offs. But it's very data driven trade offs. Okay.

Daniel Burstein: Because we're got a scorecard, we got a process. We're all on the same page. We realize we can't do everything we're prioritizing.

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah, perfect. But it's pretty good.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. Well, I mean you have to have some system where it's just, who's got the strongest opinion or can, I don't know, the squeaky wheel. Right.

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah. I'm going to work, you know, this day and age.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, absolutely. so is there another lesson here? You said that passion and curiosity fuel the best work. And you learned this from Kristen. Let me call the CMO. sorry. The CEO at JPMorgan Wealth Management. How did you learn this from Kristen?

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah, and that was a good stop at the time because she was the CMO of JPMorgan Chase for many years. And that's when I worked for her. we sort of had this matrix environment where, the close of business lines, which I was reported into, you know, but they also reported in to the overall CMO for, for JPMorgan.

And that's when I reported to Kristen. And she's also a great example, by the way, of someone who marketer, advertiser, communicator, 100% and is now the CEO of a very important line of business at JPMorgan, took all those marketing skills and is not a CSO, give her a lot of credit for that. But the thing that I loved, I mean, she was an excellent marketer, very passionate about the brand, all of the things you'd want in a CMO.

She's so much fun. And she made sure that was part of our work. I should probably say it wasn't every day I felt like every day to me, you know, just the way she approached everything, she always made sure to bring in speakers. And we went off site a lot and did not expensive, extravagant things, but just things together that were fun.

We went to games and sorts of stuff that had nothing to do with our jobs, by the way, but she felt like that was crucially important to working together and to get royalty and to understand even the brand we would go to chase on to and send all sorts of things. And so she was really a favorite of many, many people and, and somebody that that many looked up to at the time and I'm sure still do just because of her approach, I think is stodgy.

It is. She was not.

Daniel Burstein: Well, I'm glad you mentioned the stage, because what I want to ask is, you know, you've talked about curiosity, you mentioned passion. And I wonder, what did you do as a CMO working on JPMorgan Chase to keep that passion and curiosity going with with your team? And what do you do now? And I wonder if that differs. And the reason I ask is because, you know, JPMorgan Chase, I think that might be the biggest bank in the world.

Or if not, you know, it's one of the top few. It's a big company. Prosper. We mentioned it's not a startup. It started in 2005, but it is a smaller company. It's pre-IPO. And so one of the so the thing you hear from people at the Big Fortune five, fortune ten, fortune 500 public companies is like, oh my gosh, you get lost in here.

There's all this external pressure from the street. You know, that's our focus. Our focus is shareholder value or, you know, the business press. All this stuff is going on. It is hard to be passionate and actually see something that you work on. Drive to completion. Say, I've had some ownership there. I made that in marketing to use a podcast.

On the flip side, then you hear from people in smaller organizations or, you know, startups, hey, there's less planning here. We're just throwing things against the wall. There's no structure, you know what I mean? There's no, you know, some of those things that you have in the bigger companies. We don't have that level of resources we got at you just, you know, work with what we've got.

And so what I've been my experience is, like, you can always see what you don't have, but let's see what you do have. And so I wonder, as a CMO at JPMorgan Chase, what you would do is, or how would you call on to get that passion and curiosity and best work for your team versus is that the same or different of what you do now, that smaller pre-IPO company with resources but not that mammoth level of resources?

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I just think because at the behemoth companies, I always say your experience is typically very deep and very narrow. You've got a tiny, tiny little something, but it goes super deep and you have a lot of resources at your fingertips, a much different type of job than something like a prosper, where I wear 17 different hats and so does everybody on my team.

And you have to be comfortable with that or not, or be comfortable with the narrow or not. But, you know, I think to get people passionate in that your job is really pretty narrow is just to really dig deep and also think outside and still think outside your lane. People get sort of siloed into thinking, I can't work on product or I don't have an impact here.

You actually can. I did a lot at Chase that I would say, especially in the auto business, was actually more product design than marketing because I had something I wanted to market and no product to support that. So ultimately through like, okay, run this product for us. and I think that was a little bit unusual. And so the people that sort of went along with that with me tended to be more successful as well.

So it is still possible to think outside your smaller companies. We're doing that every day. We have no choice but but but to, to to look around and see what we can find. I think maybe one of the biggest differences is small things that a small company can make a very big difference. Small things at a bigger company might not get us noticed, but here you can think outside your lane and really impact the the bottom line and really have a chance to tweak something.

And it changes our business. We've had several examples of that lately. Retweet something in the funnel. It's like, wow, what just happened? You know, Chase, that would probably be lost because they're doing that all day long.

Daniel Burstein: What I want to ask you about that example where you said you did something that was really more product than marketing, because I think that would be a great example of what someone in a smaller company would say is easier to do here. And yes, it is not impossible in a large organization like Chase, but you would have to go through 17 committees and legal and compliance and make sure it works across all these different markets and these different languages and these different regulatory frameworks, all the stuff.

And by the time you're done is five years down the road in the market, changing doesn't matter anyway. So being as you were able to do that, I that is a I would say a mammoth accomplishment. My hat's off to you. Is there something you learned from that? Yeah. About how you were able to shepherd that and make that happen?

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah. I mean it's just pure perseverance. I'll go back to Kristen Lumpkin. She would say, by the time I get something approved, I've lost the will to live. But you I hope she doesn't mind me saying that, but,

Daniel Burstein: I thought you were going to say I lost the market because the market changed. Wow. No. That's perfect.

Melinda Marchesi: And so she was joking. Of course.

Daniel Burstein: Yes, I hope so.

Melinda Marchesi: She's obviously gotten plenty of things through it. Yes, there is 70. Just keep at it. I mean, I think if you have a good idea and and you can speak confidently about it and you get the right ear and this is the time where you can call on your CEO or, or your colleagues around you. don't give up.

And it's very easy to slink back into your job and just do the original thing you're hired to do. But you want to do that, you know, be creative. And and yeah, it's probably going to take a year. Sorry, Chase. I'd say that's probably shouldn't take a year to get something approved. But man, when it does and it gets funded and you're you're off and running and it's great.

And yeah.

Daniel Burstein: I've spoken like someone who started her career as a creative. I love that you never lose that creative in you. Right? You never lose it.

Melinda Marchesi: No. Nope.

Daniel Burstein: That's wonderful. All right. Well, Melanie, we thank you for sharing so many stories. So many lessons. Yeah. we had to break it down to what are the key qualities of an effective marketer.

Melinda Marchesi: Yeah, I, I could have put this in my best lessons, too, but, I think do not assume even if you were doing this, as long as I have, that, you know what people are going to do. So a lot of times it will never work or that creative is not going to work or people aren't going to respond to that.

I'm not all people, and I think a lot of people will put themselves into it. I would never buy that. I would never do that. You you might not be the person we're looking for. I mean, again, I can fly the CMO card if I want and say, okay, this one, we're not trying. But for the most part, you have to let the data tell you what what's happening.

And you mentioned this earlier and people's, preferences. And also they change all the time. So what worked a couple years ago probably won't work now. Do not presume try, try, test, test. Let the data tell you what's working and when it's not, try and test again. You know, I think fewer than they always got to like that color.

We just had this in this company trying out some new color palettes. No one's going to like that color. Guess what. Guess what? One that color. So that. Yeah.

Daniel Burstein: No. And you know that. Yeah. You know I know you talk about the data when you get creative background. I've a creative background. That is one of the things I like about testing is where it's fun of it's that's that curiosity factor of, I don't know, let's roll the dice and see what happens. I don't think this would work, but let's see, because the thing that I've always struggle with in my career and you might have to, I am not the customer for many of the things I've worked on.

So it's like you said, I wouldn't do that. You know, I love when, the designers would say to me, your art director does like, this is too much copy. I would never read it. And I would argue, like, well, if your refrigerator broke and you're looking for a new refrigerator, you might want to know how you know a bottom refrigerator different from a top refrigerator?

If not, you care less, right?

Melinda Marchesi: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one.

Daniel Burstein: Perfect. Well, anyway, thank you so much for sharing your career and your lessons and your stories with us today, Melinda. It was a joy. It was a joy learning them from you.

Melinda Marchesi: Now. Thank you so much for having me. It's fun.

Daniel Burstein: And thank you to everyone for listening.

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