Open-Source Start-up Marketing Strategy: Sometimes you need to poke the snake (podcast episode #147)

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I love the movie City Slickers.

If you’re unfamiliar, Billy Crystal is a Manhattanite, has a midlife crisis, and goes out West on a cattle drive to try to figure life out.

Spoiler alert, the crusty old cowboy teaches him that the secret to life is – ‘One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean shhh…” Well, you get the idea.

It struck me that this is a great brand lesson as well. You’ve seen the stats – our ideal customer simply gets hammered with messages every day. And there are so many things your internal team could work on. How to break through the noise? How to prioritize? I love what my next guest told me – “If you don’t have one clear position of who you are and why they should care, you’re just throwing spaghetti at a wall.”

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I sat down with Margaret Dawson, CMO, Chronosphere.

Chronosphere has raised $343 million in three rounds. In its Series C round in 2023, the company was valued at $1.6 billion.

Dawson leads global marketing efforts at Chronosphere, overseeing a budget of $12 million and a team of 23 working on digital experience, corporate communications, demand generation, customer marketing, ABM, Marketing Ops, and Product Marketing.

Hear the full episode using this embedded player or by clicking through to your preferred audio streaming service using the links below it.

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Lessons from the things she made

If you don’t have one clear position of who you are and why they should care, you’re just throwing spaghetti at a wall

Early in Dawson’s career, she was a foreign correspondent and broadcast journalist. She learned then that to garner people’s attention and get the story out you had to weave a compelling story and entertain your audience. Importantly, you had to take a stance and decide what the one big thing was you wanted your reader or listeners to take away from your story.

She took that storytelling experience to corporate communications, where over time Dawson developed her own messaging and positioning framework. She has versions for a company, a product, and a campaign. With nearly every organization she has worked with, either as an advisor or employee, she starts with the messaging and positioning framework.

It usually starts with her asking a critical first question to about 20 people at the company: ‘What is [company name]?’ Typically, she receives 20 different answers, and that’s when you know it’s time to go back to basics.

Sometimes you need to poke the snake

Dawson saw a sign in Florida once that said, “please don’t poke the snake.” It was winter, and she guesses some tourists thought it was fun to take a stick and poke it into a snake hole where the snake was sleeping, and what came out of that hole was a pissed-off snake. She now uses that phrase to describe what organizations sometimes need to do to break through the noise of a crowded market.

This is especially true for start-ups competing against an 800-pound gorilla in the market. You will never be able to match your competitor’s marketing budget, brand awareness or customer base, but you can disrupt them and the market – by taking an opinionated or even controversial stance that makes you stand out. Or by creating a uniquely creative campaign that focuses on a single competitive element of your product versus the big guys.

For example, when she worked for a network security company, they were competing with Cisco, who at the time was touting its intelligent network. Their campaign was based on “keep the networks dumb,” as they believed the intelligence should be higher in the stack. They did content marketing, speaking gigs, face offs, media relations, and analyst relations – among other marketing strategies – to stand out.

It was low cost and high impact. Many start-ups or even larger companies don’t try this strategy as it takes courage to go head on with a large competitor and spokespeople/executives willing to stand up and have an opinion.

Integrated marketing moves the needle

We use the term “marketing” as if it is a single thing, but we all have seen marketing organizations that are highly distributed and siloed. Corporate marketing, product marketing, field marketing, digital marketing…all reporting to different people with different incentives and goals.

However, Dawson has learned that if you can bring all the different pieces and people in marketing together and agree on a common theme and direction, you can change the world (or at least significantly increase your share of voice and revenue). At one large company, Leigh Day (who ran corporate marketing) led the team to build an integrated marketing editorial calendar that had a shared quarterly theme.

Each quarter, they spent two days together planning for two quarters out – looking at everything that was happening across the company to attach a theme that made sense. During that quarter (or sometimes the theme carried over for two or more quarters), this theme permeated their marketing.

There was demand generation content or a specific campaign, they did product announcements aligned to the theme, they built SEO plans and content to move their performance of key terms aligned to the theme, they did primary market research around the theme, which led to content, PR, presentations, webinars, and more.

When they first began this journey, they had the goal to shift the attention of the market from a competitor’s name to their product name. Everyone knew this competitor’s name. In six months, they went from nearly non-existent to shifting how the market talked about this space.

She has used this integrated marketing calendar approach at every company where she runs marketing – today, she does it in a tool like Asana or Trello, but good old-fashioned spreadsheets work, too.

Mentoring is a two-way street

Dawson’s first boss in Detroit was a woman 20 years her senior. While her boss taught her basics of marketing, sales, account management, and client relations – her greatest gift was modeling authentic feminism and leadership. Dawson is the person and leader she is today because of this amazing woman, and she has been paying it forward ever since she worked for her.

What Dawson learned in mentoring and coaching hundreds of women and men over the years is she always learns as much (if not more) from her mentees as they do from her. Everyone is a mentor, regardless of age, experience or expertise. She once was mentoring a young woman who wanted to learn more about leadership and strategic marketing, and in the process, she taught Dawson all about social media.

In every relationship she builds, she asks two questions: What can she give to help that person, and what can she learn from them?

Lessons from the people she made it with

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should

via Ava Gustafson

Learning to let go is difficult for any business leader, but Gustafson helped reinforce that lesson in Dawson when Gustafson reminded Dawson that Dawson didn’t have to write an email herself, other people on the team could own the task.

Don’t focus so much on winning each battle that you lose the war

via Bill Henshaw (now deceased), former father-in-law and commercial real estate professional

Dawson has never forgotten this lesson, and when she finds herself getting frustrated or impatient and wanting to fight a small battle, she hears Henshaw’s voice, reminding her to step back and really think about whether that one battle is worth the fight – and to keep focused on the bigger picture.

If you channeled the characteristics that made you so competent and made you authentically you, you would have the greatest power

via Carole Tellier (now deceased), former VP of Accounts

Dawson still uses the equation Tellier taught her over 25 years ago: Your Competency + Your Feminism = Your Power! Tellier taught her that being a woman in a mostly man’s world didn’t mean you had to hide your “feminity” – whatever that meant to you. And in fact, if you channeled the characteristics that made you so competent and made you authentically you, you would have the greatest power.

We do not serve ourselves or the world by hiding our light or being afraid to stand tall

via James Ericson, former theatre teacher at Beaverton High School, Oregon

Mr. E once said to her, “to most people, you appear to be an average person, but when you decide to shine and let people truly see who you are and all your talents, what they see is a young woman who is stunningly beautiful.” What this taught her is that we do not serve ourselves or the world by hiding our light or being afraid to stand tall.

His words and coaching helped Dawson stand up straight (literally) in spite of being 5’10”, to not worry if she was not the smartest or more beautiful person in the room – but to embrace what she did have to give and to see that as something beautiful.

Discussed in this episode

Outside-In Messaging: Nothing counts more than the language of the customer (podcast episode #75)

The 4 Pillars of Email Marketing

Building Brands: People and culture matter a lot, mentorship matters even more, product matters the most (podcast episode #119)

Marketing Campaigns: Lose the brand ego and lean into humility (podcast episode #130)

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Full Transcript

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Margaret Dawson: If you went to 20 people in the company and asked them what is company name, you would get 20 different answers. And there's just this fundamental thing that we get stuck into where we we try to be everything to everyone or we're afraid to say, you know, okay, ABC company is a package delivery company. And then someone says, wait, you do more than deliver packages.

You also answer phone calls. Are you also answer this or you do this right, and we just want to continuously be everything or be more because we think that's more powerful. For Cronus fear you know. Know what is Cronus fear? We are an observability company. Like, what we do is observability. There's a lot of different ways you could talk about it.

And they have. And I think what people try to go to is how you do things or what you do, not who you are.

Intro: 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 Burstein, to tell you about today's guest and.

Daniel Burstein: I love the movie City Slickers. If you're unfamiliar, Billy Crystal is a manhattanite. He's got a midlife crisis, and it goes out west on a cattle drive to try to figure life out. Spoiler alert here, but the crusty old cowboy teaches him that the secret to life is one thing, just one thing. You stick to that and everything else doesn't mean you get the idea.

It struck me that this is a great brain lesson as well. You've seen the stats. Our ideal customer simply gets hammered with messages every day, and there's so many things your internal team could work on. How to cut through that noise, how to prioritize love. What my next guest told me. If you don't have one clear position of who you are and why they should care, you're just throwing spaghetti at a wall.

Here to share the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson filled stories, is Margaret Dawson, the CMO of chromosphere. Thanks for joining me, Margaret.

Margaret Dawson: Thank you Daniel. I love that movie.

Daniel Burstein: Perfect. And it's a good intro. I didn't I didn't let Margaret know what the intro was. I just said one thing.

Margaret Dawson: I'm so curious where you were going. I'm like, what are we talking about?

Daniel Burstein: Well, let's take a quick look at Margaret's background. So you know who I'm talking to. Just just cherry picking from her LinkedIn. There are several more roles, but she was a foreign correspondent for Businessweek magazine, the founder and managing director of Weber Shandwick, Taiwan office, director of international PR for Amazon. She directed the product management team for Microsoft's network security business, VP of Product marketing at HP Helion, and has been the CTO Chief of Staff at both RedHat and IBM's APL.

But for the past year she has been at chromosphere. Chromosphere has raised $343 million in three rounds in its series C round in 2023, the company was valued at $1.6 billion. Margaret leads global marketing efforts at sphere, overseeing a budget of $12 million and a team of 23 working on digital experience, corporate communications, demand generation, customer marketing, ABM marketing ops and product marketing.

So that's a lot to lead. Margaret, give us a sense. What is your day like as CMO?

Margaret Dawson: I feel like we forgot events or something. There's so much I mean, everyone knows that in marketing it's an expanded thing. What is my day like? I will say the one thing that is consistent because no day is the same is I start every day at 7:30 a.m. Pacific with my leadership team for a stand up. So every day of the week we're together at 730.

We have people across West Coast, East Coast and Europe. And we check in with each other. We make sure we are aligned on priorities and it's just a great time to kind of regroup, especially, you know, early in the week, like Mondays, Tuesdays, oftentimes there's a fire drill. Like this week, we found out the Magic Quadrant was going to be published on a Tuesday.

And we didn't expect until August. So that was a little bit fun. But other than that, I would say it is really a combination of I always look at data at some point during the day. So I'm in Salesforce or I'm in some other tool just seeing what's happening and if we need to change direction, since we are fairly agile, we are a slack company, so I don't even want to think of how many hours I spend, a day answering slack messages.

It's the new email, and people think you're synchronous, which we all know how fun that is, because it's not anymore. Because when you have 500 slack messages coming, you, you can't be synchronous anymore. And, you know, I hate to sound, cliche, but it really is a combination of doing everything from strategic thinking. I try to read as much as I can about the market.

It's cranking stuff out and writing or getting with someone and trying to figure out how to create something. You know, it's looking at the data, it's working with the different teams. I have a lot of one on ones, across my team and peers. So, you know, I think my job is just being that bridge and, you know, always making sure that everybody's feeling positive and we're aligned on priorities.

Daniel Burstein: I'm tired just hearing it. How do you how do you keep the fire going? How do you keep the spark. You have time to like come up with the ideas?

Margaret Dawson: I just love this work. You know, the number one thing people have always asked me is, why are you so passionate? Like, how do you keep that? And I get up at four in the morning and start with yoga and meditation. So I'm even more annoying than that.

Daniel Burstein: Nice. But before we jump into some of the lessons from earlier in your career, I want to talk about something going on just pretty recently, because you told me one of the most fascinating pieces of information I've heard in a long time. And I'll tell you why. You know, marketing Sherpa, we used to do benchmark reports, and we would ask about CMOs marketers top challenges, right?

It doesn't matter as B2B or B2C or big companies or small companies, it was always the same thing. It doesn't matter if it is a recession or if a cameo communist booming. It was always the same darn thing. Not enough budget, right? Yet when we tie. When I introduce to you I said you had a $12 million budget, but it didn't start there.

It started at $17 million. And the reason it was cut, you can't blame anyone else, will because of you. So more. Yes. So the market is listening. Why on earth did you say that your budget should be cut from 17 million to $12 million? And can you give that extra $5 million to some of our listeners because they want that budget?

Margaret Dawson: No. To the last question, I can say that definitely, very easily when I started, I mean, it's been now it was last fiscal year looking at the new fiscal year that we were walking into, and I went in and immediately started thinking about, okay, well, what's our target IRR for the coming year? What's our current bookings? You know, what's our revenue numbers like all the all the numbers you can't see completely before you start somewhere.

And what is the benchmark for my budget. And I looked at, you know, the latest benchmarks around percentage of operating expenditures, percentage of revenue, percentage of IRR forecasted. And I was not just hot. I wasn't even in the same park. And I just could not justify spending that kind of money. And the other thing I found is that for the last four quarters, the team had not spent their full budget.

So not only were we out of whack from a benchmarking or just a responsibility standpoint, we weren't even able to spend the money that we were given. And there was lots of reasons for that. Maybe it was silos, maybe it was whatever. So I sat down with the CFO and we looked at different, you know, parts of the business.

We looked at different benchmarks. We agreed on a benchmark. And, you know, at 12 million, I am really comfortable with where we are for that. The stage that we are at, at the growth rate that we are at, we will get back to 17 and way beyond that. But for where we were at that moment and for this fiscal year, that was the right thing to do.

And I think what I mentioned to you that I find interesting about this, is that our numbers or our results did not go down with the budget. In fact, they went up. So there was something about focus. There was something about discipline. We're doing bigger things and less things.

Daniel Burstein: Well, you know, there's also something about ego. And, you know, when you come in as a CMO, I think we all just want the biggest turf and the biggest patch and the biggest budget. We do. You know what we always talk about? Hey, don't be as siloed on how I made it marketing. Think about the greater business need.

And I think that's a great example of putting your money where your mouth is literally.

Margaret Dawson: I think this is where being chief of staff twice changed my perspective. I've been in roles where I was responsible for looking across all parts of the organization, whether it be a data perspective or an OKR perspective or a people perspective. And I think that changes you, and I think it makes you a better marketing leader. But it also just I'm always thinking about what's the impact like, is this is this hurting our margins and is that going to hurt our valuation?

Is that is this hurting our ability to fund salespeople? You know, do you give a headcount away because, gosh, we really need more to more engineers, more than we need to more, you know, PR people or whatever. I think, you know, the more you do that, I'll tell you. And the credibility it brings to marketing and to your leadership.

Is high, right? Because marketing isn't known for that, as you're saying they're known for, you know, we need more money. We can't do what we need to do.

Daniel Burstein: In fairness, not just marketing every departments that way.

Margaret Dawson: But I know I will tell you one thing. The CFO has actually said to us, like, do you need more money in the second half? Because I feel like you should be asking for more money in the second half. So again, when did you ever heard a CFO say that? So going back, the reason he's saying that is because we are in credibility from what we did before.

Daniel Burstein: You got them on your side. Well, let's take a walk through through your career and see what lessons we could wring out of that. As I mentioned, you have had a long and storied career, many roles. And then last time I mentioned in the beginning, I love if you don't have one clear position of who you are and why they should care, you're just throwing spaghetti at a wall.

So tell us the story of how you learned this lesson. Margaret.

Margaret Dawson: It started when I was a journalist and when I would be interviewing these very senior people, CEOs of large technology companies mostly. And it was so telling to me, the ones that could very quickly clarify who they were, you know, what they were trying to do in the market, why people should care about them and the ones that just couldn't.

And as a journalist, you know, you're constantly trying to really get to that, that nut or nut graph, as we used to always say at Businessweek, like what's our. Net graph? And if I was spiraling and couldn't do it, that told me something. And I took that. When I flip sides and went to the company side, I was always amazed how every company I went into and again, it didn't matter if it was a Microsoft or, you know, a series, a startup, you know, one company called SCM forum that I was at, if you went to 20 people in the company and asked them, what is company name, you would get 20 different answers.

And there's just this fundamental thing that we get stuck into where we we try to be everything to everyone, or we're afraid to say, you know, okay, ABC company is a package delivery company. And then someone says, wait, you do more than deliver packages. You also answer phone calls, or you also answer this, or you do this right, and we just want to continuously be everything or be more because we think that's more powerful.

For chromosphere, you know, what is chromosphere? We are an observability company. Like what we do is observability. There's a lot of different ways you could talk about it. And they have. And I think what people try to go to is how you do things or what you do, not who you are. And I think the example you and I gave earlier, like if I said, what is marketing Sherpa?

If you're like most people, you would immediately start to tell me what you do, right? Oh, I run a podcast and marketing Sherpa produces content and we not other. But I said no, that's that's what you're doing. What is marketing Sherpa. Right. Is it a marketing expert platform? I don't know, I don't know how how would you define marketing Sherpa if I said was marketing?

Sure.

Daniel Burstein: Marketing sherpa it's a publication. But the way we would talk about it, because we talk we talk about this. Do you know, value proposition that, you know, marketing Sherpa we inform and inspire customer first marketers and entrepreneurs with how to stories, case studies and these in-depth discussions with key Okemos like Margaret about their campaigns and careers.

Margaret Dawson: But again, you just went to what you do to your. Yeah. So it's the how. It's the what. It's not it's not the definition. So I what you started with education part.

Daniel Burstein: That's the part you think about.

Margaret Dawson: Missing for many.

Daniel Burstein: Companies. Okay.

Margaret Dawson: Yeah. And you can still put, you know more definition around it. You could say marketing Sherpa is a, you know, marketers publication. I don't know, you could you could put some, you know, defining words around it or something. So because just a publication or a marketing leaders publication or a, you know, best and I hate best in class, I don't know, I mean, I think the application.

Daniel Burstein: For when we say publication for marketers and entrepreneurs, but yeah, we're best in class now.

Margaret Dawson: The I also want to say leading number one best in class, right? I'm like, no, you're not like you don't get to say that. Right. So so that's the other thing we do.

Daniel Burstein: No, I and I really encourage companies out there. So we would call this a value proposition. And you need credibility or you need exclusivity. And one of the things I would really encourage publication out there. So you've been in the role I'm in. You've been a journalist, you've received press releases. I cannot tell you. There's no book that is not a bestselling book.

There is no golf course. That is not a championship golf course. There is no software company that is not scalable. There's no company that is not best in class or leading. And so because of that, these adjectives have become entirely meaningless. And you need specificity, right? The one thing we learned as writers is show, don't tell. You need specificity.

But let me ask you. So you talk about going into the company, asking these questions in the company. How do you get the customers in voice to voice involved as well? Because when I asked, when I interviewed that fashion, the CMO of type, one of his lessons was outside in messaging is the important factor for success. And he told the.

Margaret Dawson: Story he would men.

Daniel Burstein: He would go to industry events and he would not just ask what they cared about. He wouldn't just ask about specific features. He would get people to rank them. Because sometimes the feature that you sell in your software, they like, but it's number seven or number eight, you know, on their feature set. So so how do you get the customer voice in there too?

And make sure it's not just company language?

Margaret Dawson: I love that you asked me this because if you asked my team, the one thing they hear more than anything else from me, probably on a daily basis, is customer in, not product out. And whether that's how we do our campaigns or whatever. So what I always do is research and you just mentioned he goes out and has some staggering things.

That's exactly what you do. You get data, primary research, secondary research events are an amazing way, you know, to talk to people and check your messaging, focus groups, all of that is important. I am fortunate in that regardless of what role I've had, I've always been close to the customer, close to prospects. You know, I've been partnering with sales and account teams to go out and and work with customers.

So I'm always learning every single day from talking to customers, which I would say, I still see a lot of marketing leaders that do not meet with customers. And so if there's an encouragement in that, it is that so you've got to have that. And I'll, I'll give an example. When I started at Red hat, all the demand gen was in the business units and they were product specific.

And we started, I think it was in 2015, a research project that worked to get the top priorities for technology investments and the top funding. So like, how do you think about your priorities? You know, what do you need to do this year? What are you investing in? What are you putting your money in for this year?

And it was always interesting to see if those aligned or didn't. And that is become a research product that they continue to produce today. I still read it and use their data. And that informed our integrated campaigns that informed our sales plays. And it was it was great because you could start every conversation with a customer, a prospect and say, hey, here's the top four things we're hearing.

Does that resonate with you? So it's mandatory? Sorry, that was a long answer, but.

Daniel Burstein: That's a great answer. And I love the analytical thought, the data driven approach. But sometimes marketing is a little swashbuckling too, right? There's a little bit of gusto in there. And I love your next lesson. Sometimes you need to poke the snake. So what on earth does this mean? And how did you learn? I'm guessing you didn't learn it in a spreadsheet somewhere.

Margaret Dawson: I did not know. Well, the same poke the snake I got from a sign in Orlando, Florida, and I think it was during one of the Gartner conferences, and there was literally a sign by a hole that said, please do not poke the snake. Our snakes are hibernating and they are not happy if you wake them up.

And my first thought was, wow, I can't believe someone actually needs a sign that says that. Which means somebody was taking the stick and poking the snake. But then I, I use that now and sometimes I say poke the pig. And I don't know when it changed, because I don't know why you would poke a pig. So I we need to stay to poke the snake.

But it's basically as a startup especially. But any challenge or brand, you can't just use messaging or use position that sounds just like the other people, especially if you have an 800 pound gorilla in the market, because you're never going to break through the noise, you're never going to have the millions and millions of marketing dollars that that company has.

They've already established themselves, you know, in that position. So the question I always ask, especially when I'm a challenger brand, is, okay, what's a position? And it sometimes could be controversial and sometimes it's just a point of view. So if you're not courageous or you just don't have the cultural appetite to kind of take someone on, then poke the snake might just be this is a different way to think about it.

So at Cronus Fear, I would say they poked the snake the moment they founded it, because the founders came out of Uber where they had created this observability platform and said, we're tired of paying for every, you know, terabyte, petabyte, whatever mission data you have coming into the system. We're going to flip that business model on the head and only charge people for the data they keep, not the data they bring in.

Now that's becoming more common. So the question is how do you poke the snake? We did a couple things. So there's a guerrilla marketing version of this, which is our biggest competitor, had their show in New York, and we set up a coffee cart on the sidewalk outside their conference and gave away free coffee and gave away post cards and basically had, you know, controversial messaging like, are you tired of spending too much?

You know, and needless to say, we got there. We lasted there about three hours before security asked us to move, but it was very powerful for that time. I would say more recently we did something where rather than being competitive directly, we just created a campaign that was going to be unexpected and it was called logs a Palooza.

And we were launching a logs product. So we just created this massive campaign and theme and music. We wrote a country western song, and we went to baseball game. So there's ways you can poke the snake. That is fun, but it still has to have that unexpected nature to it. And it's especially. Yeah. Go ahead.

Daniel Burstein: Well, I was gonna say, how do you know when the startup is ready to do this? And I asked because of this reason, I said we used to call this as be careful when you poke the bear and you call it a bear, because when you poke the bear, the bears come in for you. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Or to use a Shakespeare quote like, if you if you come after the King, you better not miss. And I say this because I've worked at some very big software companies and some smaller ones and the bigger ones, you know what they all sell it is it's the all in one solution. Everyone wants to own one solution, right?

Once you get on the radar of that bigger brand, you risk the the chance that they'll just co-opt to you. I mean, they do quietly. That'd be great. But I'm just co-opt you by putting their features into into their platform. So how do you make sure you're ready to poke the bear, poke the snake, and get on their radar?

Because there's a benefit to not being on their radar yet, too.

Margaret Dawson: Sure. And you can just not make revenue and never get differentiated. And you know, right, right, right. Close the business. But, well, I think there's more than that for, as a warning. Sorry if you hear my dogs barking, they could co-opt you. They could just throw your product in in L.A. if you're talking about, like, a really large company and all of a sudden they're giving away for free, right?

Or they could sue you, which we're a very litigious society in the United States. And I will tell you that half the time I've done something like this, there has been a cease and desist letter written. It's never I don't think I've ever had a full lawsuit against me. But we've definitely I've definitely had cease and desist and you say, oh, okay.

Sorry. Or you say it's perfectly legal. You know, this is where you always go to your lawyers first and say, hey, here's what we're planning to do. What is the risk level? And then to be honest, you have to have a CEO, and an executive team that has courage. And, you know, I've always gone to my CEOs and, you know, gone to the leadership team that I'm on and said, you know, our what's what's our courage, what's our risk, you know, tolerance.

But in terms of when I think it's any time you realize you're just not getting the airwaves, as we used to say, we still say that, the internet waves. I don't know what we call it now, but, you know, when you're just so overwhelmed and you can't break through the noise, you've got to find a way, for people to pay attention to you.

And you can take the time to become a leader and to do all these good things. But I think it's it's very typical for a company to think they have to sound very corporate and conservative to compete against a company that is well-established. And I would say you actually need to do the opposite. Like, why do you want to sound like an IBM?

And I've worked for IBM. It's a wonderful company and their stock is doing great right now. But as a startup, I don't think I want to sound like IBM because I'm not IBM, right? I have to bring out different differentiations and ways of positioning myself so that people want to take a bet on a startup that maybe only has one product, and not everything on a platform.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, and I love how you first sense in that. Well, I can also not get any revenue because, I mean, that's what it comes. What it's going to be scary.

Margaret Dawson: I mean, what percentage of startups fail? What percentage of startups still fail today?

Daniel Burstein: Oh yeah. Well, no, I mean, I could see going into the CEO going in, especially to the legal team and just being all the concerns about the blowback. But there's always that the risk of not doing something.

Margaret Dawson: So and that's why I say if they don't have the tolerance for risk, like to do something really sexy, poke like, poke the bear, could we tickle the bear and just have a unique point of view?

Daniel Burstein: There you go.

Margaret Dawson: That's the right.

Daniel Burstein: It's tickle the bear. Can you tickle snake? I don't know, I also do want to mention that, but I'm in Jacksonville. That was an Orlando story. And people in Florida get a lot of bad rap that was aimed at tourists. I'm sure not Florida man or whatever you hear people talking about that got a bad name.

Margaret Dawson: Okay.

Daniel Burstein: Okay. It's not inside of Floridians. Anyway, so you mentioned that this fun, this fun guerrilla marketing approach. But there's really so many different things we can do. A marketing when I, when I opened up and talked about your title and all the things you manage. Oh my gosh, such a big portfolio. And you said that's what it comes down to.

Integrated marketing moves the needle. So how did you learn this lesson?

Margaret Dawson: This is something it's a good question where I first learned it, but I think at Red hat was where we implemented this with success. And I kind of go back to it because that was I mean, we were about $1 billion company when I started there. And we were building out a portfolio. We had corporate marketing, product marketing, you know, different pieces of marketing all over.

And we decided to take on Docker. I think I can say this now because this is like historical lessons. So Docker had taken over the airwaves, right? Everybody loved Docker and we were trying to position containers. So this is before even Kubernetes. I don't know how technical your audience is. But anyway, we're going historical and application development land.

And so we decided everything we were going to do for two quarters was going to use the terms containers. Right. We were not going to use the term Docker, which is become ubiquitous. Right. Docker equals containers. We said we're never going to say the word docker, we're only going to say containers. And we're going to explain why we're going to just like tons of content, like every SEO term around containers.

And we're going to intentionally never align it with the brand Docker. And in six months we went from like zero share voice to surpassing share a voice with Red hat and containers. And then the company decided to change the name of their open source community from Docker to I want to say, well.

Daniel Burstein: I think.

Margaret Dawson: My memory's leaving me, which just handed us a gift. And so what we learned from that is, okay, if everybody focuses on the same theme, the same terms across all of marketing, right? Like it has to be intentional. That and it's not 100%, but let's say 70, 30 and 70% of that, you are focused on that theme.

And so what came out of that was we created these quarterly integrated marketing themes that were aligned to our campaigns, were aligned to sales plays, ended up, you know, aligning to product eventually. And we'd go all in and we would do this work across all the different marketing. And I give the woman who ran corporate marketing at that time lead a huge credit because it had to be collaborative if just product marketing did it, or just corporate marketing or just, you know, another part of it, it wouldn't have worked.

It was that we're all going to talk about, you know, whatever it is, like modern application development, I don't know. And it has to align with data. And we would do research every quarter on that topic as well, which goes back to the data. Right? So you can say, hey, 72% of people are doing this, but I have taken that.

And everywhere I work in all the companies I've advised, I bring this really easy spreadsheet that's called my integrated marketing calendar. And it's it could be quarterly themes. You could be bi monthly. It just kind of depends how agile you are, how fast you can create and move. Sometimes it's a six month theme. I've worked for companies and it's a year thing because it takes so long to get the engine, you know, cranking.

But the point is that everyone is aligned, all the levers are moving with that theme and you can move. You literally see the needle move, whether it's your voice, whether it's engagement numbers, whether it's number of leads and qualified leads, that you're bringing in deals that are aligned to that product, which, you know, lined up to that theme, every single time I say it because you're, you're spending money, it kind of goes back to your one thing, right?

You could put $1 million across 100 things, or you could put $1 million across 1 or 2 things. And we all know how that's going to end up in terms of metrics.

Daniel Burstein: Well, as CMO, how do you build a team and hire to have truly integrated marketing? Because even, for example, when I do the content for Email summit, even email, which is just one sliver of marketing, right? I have to build up key pillars of what do we even mean by email and what are the key steps. And so integrated marketing, obviously people listening that's not new IMC.

They probably learned it and you know, marketing one on one in college hopefully. What does it look like where the rubber meets the road like you're now you're hiring. You're aligning your team. You're building it. How do you make sure it's truly integrated?

Margaret Dawson: I think it's interesting that you say that because I think you're right that integrated marketing is not a new concept, but I don't think it's done well rarely. And how you hire against it, what normally I do is actually flatten the organization. One of the reasons integrated marketing breaks down is because we tend to build out these very large silos.

And they start building out their own budgets, their own plans, and marketing becomes distributed in a way, whether it's all under the CMO. But as many CMO know, there's often marketing outside of the CMO purview. So the first thing I often do is create a flatter organization that means more direct reports for you, but it breaks down those silos a lot.

So that's one. Two is you've got to have a plan where everybody's aligned to the same OKRs. So you can have an integrated marketing plan, and everybody's still measuring themselves against different targets and different areas. So you've got to have 2 or 3 top goals and key results or metrics aligned to that. That kind of forces everyone to be going in the same direction.

So it's not just the calendar or, you know, the thematic alignment, it's the metrics behind it. And then you're right, it's the organizational structure. I think it's also just being really transparent.

Daniel Burstein: All right, Margaret, talking about building a team. Mentoring is a key element of that team. And you said mentoring is a two way street. How did you learn that lesson?

Margaret Dawson: The one example I can think of immediately is I had a woman on my team who was doing social media, think early social media. So at an early 2000s, I guess, and I was, you know, mentoring her and coaching her. And at one point she says to me, she goes, you have to get on social media like you have to post every single day.

And I'm like, no, I don't like, you know, I'm an executive. Do you know that? Say that? She's like, no, you do. And then she showed me the data and she gave examples and she started writing posts for me. And she literally mentored me about building a brand on social media. And I remember thinking at the time, this wasn't just a tactical lesson, right?

She was literally helping me build a voice on a channel that I just had never used and was not comfortable with, and you know how you can be authentic or how you can, you know, get awareness on that channel. And she was 25 years old. And at the time I remember thinking like, there's no way I'm going to learn anything.

Like, oh, I have this young woman. She's never really worked in marketing, but she just embraced this new channel and just learned everything she could about it and became an expert in that. And so, you know what that taught me? And it's been true. I mean, I could give a million examples of this where for everything I think I am providing or coaching or encouraging or championing or sponsoring a person that I am mentoring, every interaction with that person, there is something I learn, whether it's positive or it's negative, and the fact that so many people still lack confidence, right?

And what is our role there? But regardless, there is a learning you take away. And the thing I always say to people is mentoring isn't an age or a level of experience. Mentoring is sharing because everyone has something to give that the other person can learn from. And so I've tried to flip. I don't think mentoring needs to be, you know, more experienced people with less experienced people or older people with younger people.

I think you can have peer to peer mentors because everyone has their unique experience and something that they are great at, or that they are passionate about that we can learn from.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. And we actually have a great lesson a little later in the episode about that. But let me ask, as a leader of their team, as the leader of the team, is there anything you do to make sure your team has the right mentors? Because, for example, when I interviewed Jana Partners or over at the CMO of education, one of her lessons was people and culture matters a lot.

Mentorship matters even more. So, you know, that's kind of the funny thing with the team where it's like mentorship. It's kind of a personal thing. But as you mentioned, sometimes especially younger employees, that confidence thing, they don't have the confidence to go out and get the mentor. So is there anything specific you do as a team leader to to get them the right mentorship?

Or is this. No, this is something they've got to figure out on their own, and I can just encourage it.

Margaret Dawson: No, I think you have to be intentional, because the thing I've learned, especially about early stage, employees, is that I don't think they know how to do that yet, nor do they often take that step. So I think the easiest thing to start with is just to think about what would be most helpful for that person right now.

Is it confidence or just, you know, learning marketing, or is it, being more technical, like what would help them in their career personally and professionally and then, you know, align them with someone that you think would be, the right fit. And I think you also have to look outside your own company. Unless your company is very large, then it's easy to stay within it.

But, you know, one thing I've experienced most of my career is there weren't a lot of women leaders. So once I became a woman leader, you know, I end up having 30 mentees in the company because I was like, they all wanted a woman leader as their as their mentor. Right? So I think you have to figure out what is the most important thing and then validate that with a person like, you know, from what we've talked about, I feel like right now for you, this would be the most helpful thing.

And ask them, do you care if it's a man or a woman? Do you care if it's someone in the company or outside of the company? What you know, what kind of person do you feel safe with? Because she's right. I love what she said. You know that that connection, that relationship is huge. Because good mentors, I think, become much more than just a mentor.

They really become your champion.

Daniel Burstein: And the first half of the episode, we talked about some lessons from some of the things Margaret has made, whether that's brands or campaigns or teams. In the second half, we'll learn some lessons from some of the people that mentored Margaret. But first, I should mention that how I made It a marketing podcast is underwritten by Mic Labs, I the parent company of marketing Sherpa.

You can get conversion focused training from the lab that helped pioneer the conversion industry in our AI Guild and a community to collaborate with. Grab your free three month scholarship to the AI Guild at Joint Mic Labs ai.com that's join Dot Mech Labs, ai.com to join the community and get AI working for you. All right, let's talk about one of those two way mentoring examples.

I think this is a great example that actually you mentioned that lesson from Ava Gustafsson and that she taught you just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. So who is Ava and how did you learn that lesson?

Margaret Dawson: So Ava is, woman on my marketing team now who is a rock star, very, very talented. And she ended up taking on a new role in demand generation and handling all of the nurture campaigns. And she and I were partnering on emails. One of the things when we looked at the data around our email marketing is that it just wasn't very good.

Our open rates weren't good, our clicks were rates weren't good. We had some that were. But she and I are constantly partnering on this and trying to figure out how to crack that nut. Like, I'm sure marketers all over the world are without using ChatGPT. You know, typically we're trying to make it sound as human and personal as we can.

And at one point, you know, I raised my hand like I always do and said, oh, well, why don't I crank that out? And she said, you know, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should choose. I've got it. And I loved it because she reminded me of a couple things. She's absolutely right. Just because I can do it and maybe I could do it faster, maybe I could even do it better.

Who knows, right? Does it mean I should be doing that? And every manager's had those moments right where they have to let go and allow the process to take its own course, even if it's different from the way you would do it. But I also just love that she stood up to me and she's done it many times.

She's just a very direct, courageous young woman, and I learn from her all the time because I don't think I was anywhere near that confident in myself. Like she's just very grounded in who she is. And so just watching her and how she operates teaches me something every day.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. So how do you balance that as you've grown in your career? The balance between actually the creation itself and the managing of the people who do the creation, because I know, like my background is as a writer. I know your background is as a writer. For me, writing is thinking, you know what I mean? So it's not just, okay, the act of the email needs to get done or whatever, but when you write, something happens in you.

You channel the customer and you just get into that mindset. And so something I've definitely seen in my career and I've heard from others, is you start out with this thing, you're passionate for this creation, but as you grow in your career, you kind of have to let the other people create and get these whole new and different skills.

So I just wonder how you manage that. The creation itself, which is probably what brought you into all of this, is that overall managing and shepherding that you have to do as a CMO.

Margaret Dawson: What I do and what I always coach new managers to do is agree on the result. Like, what would success look like for this thing? I mean, you could take something as simple as an email usually, or a marketing plan. And say, you know, okay, what is success? What is our timeline? And you can do check ins.

But as long as your share definition and that result is achieved, you don't worry about the how and you don't even worry about the what unless the quality is an issue. Because if it's achieving the goal, you've got to let go of everything else. And the the way that I kind of, I guess, handle not being that creator is those check in moments where you still have those coaching moments where it's like, oh, you know, you might think about this, or would it help if you structured it this way, but you still don't like do it?

And I will say every time I lose that lesson and get frustrated and don't take that time to breathe and just let them go through it. And just like I don't have time for this, like I'm just going to fix it, it always backfires because the people say, oh, well, if I'm not moving fast enough, you know, Margaret's just going to come in and micromanage this or fix it.

So you've got to really stop yourself and, you know, give that breath, give that space. Between your stimulus and response, as I like to say, and, and allow them to fail or allow them to succeed or allow them to learn. Because otherwise, you know, why are we here? Like, you know, if you just want to do it by yourself, you're never going to be able to scale and get it done.

So I think it's just always thinking of that, that destination and agreeing on that and then letting the journey be that person's journey.

Daniel Burstein: Well, sure. But is there anything you do so you don't lose that edge, though? You know that edge you have when you've got your fingers on the key? I learned on a typewriter, you get your fingers on the keys.

Margaret Dawson: To fast on a typewriter.

Daniel Burstein: Right? What you said is the exact right management approach. I can't disagree with it for a second, but I mean, as the creator. No, as a creator, I.

Margaret Dawson: Mean, okay, I.

Daniel Burstein: Love to write. I love to create and and you can kind of drift from it if you don't. I love the clock.

Margaret Dawson: I, I have I have drift and I'll tell you what, I get it back. So I, we just had this conversation. The timing of this question that you're pushing me on is so ironic, because great for a year when I came to Cronus Fair up until just recently, the other thing that I thrive on is speaking. So getting on the stage and speaking goes back to probably my theater days.

Who knows? And I wasn't writing, and so I started thinking about it. Okay, okay. Well, what what am I passionate about? And all these things, you know, that I can start writing about because one of the challenges I have is not only delegating all that stuff, but when I do write, it's for someone else. I'm writing the CEO's, you know, platform or I'm, you know, trying to create messaging for the company.

But it's not it's not my story. And so just recently we were talking about hybrid cloud, which I am very passionate about, hybrid cloud architecture. And my editor said, well, we write a blog about this like you're so passionate about this. And then I did a presentation about it. So like, I've got to find that creative outlet or you're right, I am not a happy person.

If I am not figuring out like, what's my thing? Like what's my story? It goes back to that one big thing, like, I've got to have my thing at every company I work at that is is a different perspective, even if it's something everyone's talking about. But it's my way of thinking about it. And I, you know, I, I find it all the time.

This one has taken a little bit longer because there was a lot of things that needed to be done, and I just literally did not have time. And you're right, I wasn't as happy.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. Absolutely not. I love that you keep your toe in the water like that. That's perfect. All right, let's talk about this. Is it really a bigger life blessing? Love it. Don't focus so much on winning each battle that you lose the war. You said you learned this from Bill Henshaw. Who is your former father? Lloyd's.

Now, this, is also a commercial real estate professional. So how did you learn this lesson from Bill?

Margaret Dawson: We were, on holiday, actually. I can see us. Like we were standing on a deck of a cabin, and I was telling him some story from work, like he was kind of my my work mentor. You know, we had a very interesting, relationship for father in law, daughter in laws that our kind of connection was always business and markets.

And like, he was just the person I'd go to get reality check, you know, other things. And I wish I can remember the story, which is ironic, I don't, but I was telling him something and he's like, why do you have to fight every single thing? And I said, Because I'm right. And he's like, it did. It doesn't matter that you were right.

Like, why do you have to be right on everything? It's such a young person thing, you know, we just are righteous about everything. And and he said, okay, so did you win that battle? I said, yeah, I did. He's like, but what? At what cost? You know? And I said, what do you mean? He's like, what was the cost of you winning?

He says, was there a relationship cost? I said, well, maybe. Yeah. The guy was kind of pissed and well, his team was kind of pissed. And he's like, okay, what about what else? Like what other reputational, you know, cost did you have? Is this going to keep you from being brought in to a team the next time?

What what what happens the next time you need something from that team? Right. And he just started asking me all these very practical questions, right? That we could ask each other now, but I hadn't I couldn't step back and see that. And so his words raised just said, look, just because you, you know, win the battle, you may lose the war.

So just be very clear on every battle. If it's needed to win that battle or if there's something bigger that you need to focus on and, you know, I've thought about that a lot. Where, you know, in the moment, I mean, take budget. Let's go back to where we started, right? Like, is it really important that that $100,000 of that million dollars for that thing is what you absolutely want to fight for, or do you actually want to wait and think about how you can integrate that into your next fiscal year plan, which is a much bigger battlefield, so to speak, than in that moment.

Getting 100 more leads at. Maybe that's a bad example, but I think we constantly are in that moment and reacting and thinking this moment is the only thing that matters. Whereas if you just take a second to step back and I think the lesson is bigger than just the battle, it's that, like you said, you write out, you know, your way of thinking is writing.

Often my way of thinking is speaking, which you you can't do that with everything, right? You can't just every, every conflict or every question that you have doesn't mean you have to voice it.

Daniel Burstein: That's so true. And what I mean, what a great perspective that experience has, what great wisdom it brings. But I wonder when hearing you say that, how does that affected how you sold creative ideas in your career? Because I had a creative director who told me a very similar lesson. He said he would ask me, is this your hill to die on?

You think this is your hill to die on? I will fight with you for this idea. And he's like, what if it's not Daniel? Maybe just let this one go and let let's win the next one, you know what I mean? So that is such a part of being in marketing. It's pitching ideas and it's they get shot down and they lose them or they get changed, or we feel like they get gutted or all of these things.

And and I think your lesson ties into that. So, so when it specifically came to like the creative element of the ideas, did you use that lesson as well, or how did you navigate that?

Margaret Dawson: That's a great question. I did that. Now that you say that I hadn't really applied it to that process, but absolutely. And the thing I can think about is, you know, when you have, let's say you have a big event coming up and you're thinking of themes, I always think I'm the most brilliant at themes, right.

And at my last company, I remember we were coming up with themes for our big event, and the creative director, who I'm sure also thinks he's brilliant at the theme since he's a creative director, came in with this theme and I was like, I don't like this theme. And he's like, but everyone else loves it. And there was this moment where I'm like, is fighting this theme really what?

You know what I want to do right now, you know, or is there something else here? And so what I realized is the theme was clever is just I was thinking on a totally different, you know, kind of plane at that moment. And so what I did focus on is that he couldn't it was I was like, okay, how are we going to line up kind of the portfolio to this theme?

How would the agenda fall together for this theme? Like he was thinking big, you know, big picture kind of thing. And so how I got through it that time, whereas I disagreed and committed because I didn't love the theme, but everyone else loved it. I was like, okay, I'm there's something I'm missing, but it's not worth this battle at this moment.

What we should focus on then, if that's our theme, is how do we make sense of it and how do we line up everything and how do we have fun with it and how do we create, you know, the pieces all around it. So I was able to kind of, you know, get my creative seeds, I guess, sowed a little bit by just focusing on some other pieces of it.

But that was really hard because I just kept thinking my theme was so much better. But there is a moment where you're like, oh my God, just like, oh.

Daniel Burstein: Well, as a CMO, you failed there. Because what most creative will tell you is what motion those will do will just ultimately change to say, well, I came up with the idea originally, actually, that was my idea all along. And yes, let's go with it. I like my idea.

Margaret Dawson: Oh, that's right, I forgot about that. You're supposed to take credit for other people's ideas. No edit edit up. Everyone loved the theme, and I remember going back to it and saying, okay, I totally like I was wrong, like that was such a good thing.

Daniel Burstein: Well, this brings up this, this other bigger question of how do you how do we bring our authentic selves to work, right? How do we find that balance? And one of the lessons you said you learned was if you channeled the characteristics that made you so confident and made you authentically you, you would have the greatest power. You said you learned from Carol tell.

You're a former VP of accounts. So how did you learn this from Carol?

Margaret Dawson: So this was my very first job out of college in Detroit in the automotive industry, which like technology, is almost all men. And she was the only other woman, in this company. And I worked for her. So it was amazing. My very first boss at a college was a woman in a very male dominated industry. And when I got out of college and I'm aging myself here, especially in Detroit, you were taught to be like a man.

We wore suits with padded shoulders. You know, we were meant to. You know, you're supposed to be aggressive and you're supposed to like everything was supposed to be. If you act like a man, you will be successful. And I remember the very first day I walked in. And we're not supposed to swear in this. So let me think of how to rephrase her quote.

I walked in her room and I was meeting her for the first time, and she looks up. She goes, what the are you wearing and what the is with your hair and what are you doing? Like literally that was like her first three sentences. And I just stood there. I remember thinking, oh my God, this is not going well, right?

But what she taught me over time is that if you are competent. And you are a woman, you have some femininity. And when she said femininity, it could mean whatever that means to you. Like I am not a, you know, pink, fluffy, feminine person, but I, I have my version of femininity and what she was, she had this like mathematical equation that I've always used, which is your competence plus your femininity equals your power.

And it's not your competence without your femininity. It's it's it's additive meaning you being in this, you could translate this into whatever is your authentic definition there. But it's it's being that authentic person you are, which always means your light is shining and you're showing up as your best self with your confidence is what makes you powerful.

You could be competent, but if you're hiding that light, if you're hiding that version of yourself that is that authentic person that is inside you, then you've lost your power. Competence alone or personal power alone. You know, our personal authenticity alone. Like you, it's that combination that is just so powerful. And I think I really worked at that authenticity.

It's it's a core value of mine, both as a person, as a leader. And I think what I see so often in men and women or all genders, really, is that that fear or that inability to just shine your true light, you know, and let that be there because of probably feedback and you know, what's happened to you in your life.

But if we can get that back and you see people that have it, it is so powerful and they can be so successful in whatever they do.

Daniel Burstein: So you're the Carol now. We're all down the road starting to like, I mean, do you still see this as, as big as a challenge as when it was when you were coming out of college? Or do you think this young do you think this generation has figured this out more, or do you think, no, this is just human nature.

We're at the same place. When I entered the Detroit auto industry.

Margaret Dawson: I'd love to say it's gotten better, but I will tell you, regardless of gender or age or experience that I talk to, I see 90% of the people that I coach or mentor or just meet or talk to are still struggle with being truly authentic in work, especially, and sometimes in life. I think we just, over time, listen too much to the input and the feedback and the social norms around us.

And it just becomes harder and harder to sometimes go against the grain or just be that person. And I think, you know, we see that now, you know, with so many die initiatives dying on the vine, that doesn't mean that as leaders, we can't still provide that safe space where people can show up authentically. And I think it's important because I don't think our teams will be as innovative or successful if we can't somehow allow people to just shine and their competency becomes, you know, part of that, because people are always going to be performing more when they feel like they want to show up and they can show up as themselves.

But no, I wish it had gotten better. I don't think it has.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. You know, I feel like social media has had an effect here, and I can't tell if it's a positive or a negative effect, because on the one hand, social media is this channel where everyone does get to express themselves in some way and can bring it into work, especially in B2B and different things, where when I was coming up, it was just, you know, the people around me and like at Agent Adweek, that's why I'm like, how do we get that?

We're going to the ads or you know, whatever award show like that was it. You didn't have, like this constant stream of these other copywriters and how they're, you know, living their best self. But on the flip side to then it's like, is that a whole other side of conformity because you're seeing this constant stream of, like, how you're supposed to act.

Margaret Dawson: So I don't think it's even that what I would say is early Twitter days, I felt I could be authentic in my voice on social media. And there was dialog like, I remember there be those of us arguing about like early cloud computing. We'd be arguing about cloud and architecture and blah, blah, blah, you know, and it was like this.

You could, you know, drop an F-bomb on Twitter and nobody freaked out. I will tell you, you know, LinkedIn is about the only thing I use because I don't even know what's going on. Everyone else, I'm trying blue Sky right now, but it's not that kind of place anymore. It is not safe to be yourself on social media.

And you can see people that are they get victimized. So I think social.

Daniel Burstein: Refer to that will follow you throughout your career.

Margaret Dawson: You know, to be honest, that's true. You know, I think that and everything you say on everything we're saying here, who knows where this will go viral and. Right. So, I would say social media is an inauthentic channel. So I think we can still be true to ourselves, but I think it's with caution and with a little bit of bars, you know, handicap bars on the sides of us kind of keeping us, from going too far because I just think it's too dangerous right now.

Maybe I sound old, but I just. I don't think it's worth it. Honestly.

Daniel Burstein: Well, let's let's end on a positive.

Margaret Dawson: I was gonna say it sounds so philosophical and sad. Also.

Daniel Burstein: Not that you're wrong. Now that you're on a positive note, I love this was we do not serve ourselves or the world by hiding our light or being afraid to stand tall. There's probably a separate social media lesson there, but let me ask you how you learned that. You said it was from James Erickson, former theater teacher at Beaverton High School in Oregon.

Margaret Dawson: Yeah. That's correct. So my last high school I went to, so I moved 13 times as a kid. But my last year and a half I was at Beaverton High. A whole nother podcast on that one. And, I was an awkward. So I'm very tall. And 510 when I was a teenager, I was very skinny. I was not an attractive child.

Let me just be honest. Like I was a very awkward child and teenager, as many of us are as teenagers. But, I loved theater. I was a singer, you know, and we were taking these, portraits for a musical. No, Nanette. Of which my role, Lucille, was like the kind of sexy older. Like, I had a jazz song that I sang.

I mean, it was just an amazing role, and I was really struggling with fully playing this role because I didn't believe myself to be beautiful or sexy or any of those things. Right. But I had to become this, like middle aged woman. And so he had us take, photos like, you know, just like you have in Broadway, like the beautiful, you know, shots that you see of the stars.

And my photo was stunning, like, I remember because. And he put them up on the wall like we were all framed and on the wall, like, before opening night. And I was walking over to the wall and I was looking at my photo, and I remember thinking like, who is that person? And that's when he said, he goes, I get it.

He goes every day you're this awkward kid and you're, you know, you pass by. Probably most people don't notice you, but when you want to, like, really shine your light and be what's inside you, that's the woman. Like, look at that woman. That's you. Right? And I will tell you, it changed that character for me. Like, I showed up the next day at dress rehearsal and I took on this like I am a 40 year old, sexy, amazing woman, right?

And I felt it inside, and I just taken his words with me because I think so many of us look in the mirror and all we see is what's wrong. You know, I'm never going to be shorter. I'm never going to be more attractive. I'm never going to be any of these things. But and it kind of goes with that.

The one, the carol, you know, less than it goes together. It's like when you just can feel grounded in who you are, you become more beautiful. And I don't mean just like the Vogue magazine beautiful, but like, you just people see it, like people shine and I would say the one thing and I've been trying to write a book on this for five bloody years, so hopefully, it will get done one of these days.

But that is the message. And then this goes across marketing, this goes across everything, is that if we can allow each other and allow ourselves to just be grounded in who we are and shine our light, I will tell you, you'll be successful. Your companies will be successful because it's it's addicting, right? And people want to be around that.

Daniel Burstein: So let me guess this. And you could tell me if I'm right or wrong. You know, I definitely heard from a lot of leaders on how I made it marketing that there was this imposter syndrome when they started to get a leadership position and they had to grow into it. And so when you first got into leadership position, was it like your time in theater where you were more playing that role and then does it transition to you are actually authentically this role?

And I think this is maybe just an encouragement for everyone listening if their first move into a leadership position, or am I just way off base on that?

Margaret Dawson: No, you are spot on. You know the fake it til you make it thing. And I think the only thing I would add that I think we sometimes do when we are playing the role is we think we have to be like not ourselves as we play that role, like we tell ourselves, oh, I've got to be, you know, more like a man or I have to be stronger and you don't.

But I think it's completely normal. Everyone has imposter syndrome, you know, and I mean CEOs of major organizations, I will tell you, you get them to the side because maybe before they go on stage, they're terrified, right? They don't think they're going to be good enough. And, it kind of reminds me, I'll end on this note where there was the best child's book that I used to read to my kids, and it was called Everybody Poops.

Daniel Burstein: I love that, but.

Margaret Dawson: It's the best book any mother out there go get that book. And here's what I'll tell you that it did for me when I first started speaking. I'd like large events or, you know, as a leader like, oh, she leads this, or she's a C-suite executive or whatever. And I was still feeling like, gosh, do I really belong here?

I would walk into that boardroom or I would walk on stage, and the words I would say to myself is like, everybody in this room poops, you know? And it just made me stop worrying about it, right? Because it just humanized everyone, you know, in that situation. And I realized they're no different there. No better. You know, at the end of the day, we're all just humans and we all poop.

So that's the greatest lesson that everybody poops.

Daniel Burstein: That's a great lesson. Then I think I can make that the name of the episode. So we talked about all these stories and lessons from your career. Margaret, if you had to break it down, what are the key qualities of an effective marketer?

Margaret Dawson: We said one at the very beginning. Customer in, not product out. You have got to be close to your customer. You've got to be close to your market. Have a point of view, have a point of view about your company, about your product, about your program is about your data. Don't be that marketer that sits in the corner, you know, to get a seat at the table, you need to have a point of view and you need to understand the product, which is the next one.

Like know your product, know your service, whatever it is your you're selling. And I would say also use data like, you know, when young people ask me about what they should study, when they tell me they're going into marketing, I tell them math and statistics, and they look at me and they always say, no, I said marketing, marketing.

And I said, you should study math. I spend more of my time in data than I do creating or writing. So learn to love the data. And I think those are the big I mean, you need strong communication skills. You need to be creative. I mean, there's so many things that go into marketing, but I think those are the ones we don't think about as much.

Daniel Burstein: Well, thanks for sharing your point of view from throughout your career with us, Margaret. I learned a lot.

Margaret Dawson: I learned a lot. Thank you. It was fun.

Daniel Burstein: Thanks to everyone for listening.

Outro: Thank you for joining us for how I made it and marketing with Daniel Burstein. Now that you've got an inspiration for transforming yourself as a marketer, get some ideas for your next marketing campaign. From Marketing Sherpas extensive library of free case studies at Marketing sherpa.com. That's marketing Paycom and.