🟣Chief Growth Officer @ Thorne: Negative Split Life Philosophy w/Mary Beech🟣 | Ep. 503

0:01Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Do This Not That, and I have an incredible guest here. Who is here? Mary Beach is here. She is the chief growth officer at Thorne. Now, why am I so excited? Because first of all, my wife is a customer. She takes Thorne Magnesium every day or whatever. So I'm getting street cred by having Mary here. But Mary is leading this, not just the marketing organization, but the growth of Thorne, which is an incredible, I don't even want to call it just like a wellness this brand or a company that sells nutritional supplements, they're so much more.

0:49They are this modern direct-to-consumer business that's at one of the hardest intersections of modern marketing, where you're trying to drive digital growth in a category, this wellness category, where trust matters more than just the hype, which is like a lot of the direct-to-consumer category. So Mary's leading it all. And if you don't know Thorne, they are trusted by thousands of healthcare practitioners, over a hundred professional sports team use them. It is bananas. They are the cool kids on the block. Mary's leading it all. We're going to dig into it. Mary, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Jay.

1:26Thrilled to be here and so glad to hear your wife's a customer. There you go. I'm excited. So I feel like I didn't do justice to what Thorne really does. Can you quickly take us through just what is Thorne actually doing? Then what is your role there? Absolutely. So we are the premium nutritional supplement company. We were founded 40 years ago, actually. And at that time, and really up until maybe five, six years ago, we only sold through your healthcare practitioner. You had to see your functional medical doctor, a nurse practitioner, acupuncturist in order to get access to Thorne. And that really, you know, kind of set the bar for our quality standards, because a doctor has to be satisfied with your quality, with the ingredients that you're putting in, and frankly, with the efficacy.

2:14How does it work? At the end of the day, taking supplements is something you have to do every day. It requires compliance. And if you aren't seeing results, you're not going to do it. And docs know that. So that's really where Thorne set their bar. Today, we offer close to 170 different supplements. Magnesium is the top. Creatine is one. All across, I'd say, the range from prevention to performance. We have everything that you really need. We're also a wellness company, so we're very keen on getting people. I think one of the things that's so important to know always is that the right supplements for me aren't the right supplements for Jay.

2:53And so we really are there to help people learn about supplements, learn about lifestyle changes they can make, and learn about what's right for them and their biology, their lifestyle, their genetics. I love that. And, and, you know, I want to, we're going to get into Gen Z marketing, influence, marketing, all this stuff. But before we do something about you, I think that is really interesting for all the listeners out there, because a lot of listeners are in marketing roles that are listening. And you, you used to be in your past life, you were chief marketing officer at Scholastic, right? Chief marketing officer.

3:24Now you are chief growth officer, okay, at Thorne. And I love that because I love seeing people in marketing roles kind of move up the corporate food chain, if you will. And so is that something you did intentionally? Is this like, is growth the elevation point for a marketer? I think, you know, I've been a CMO, a Kate Spade at Scholastic, and I won't go backwards. I'm gonna stay in the CGO lane. And this is really why I think that, you know, if you think of marketing 20 years ago, and the tools that were available to us to where we are today, really from a growth and performance perspective, we are able to drive the business.

4:08And I think when we both are responsible for driving it through the marketing actions that we take, but also accountable to the numbers, because we run those businesses, that marriage is really what should be in the modern marketing organization. I run 80 % of our business directly. I'm accountable to those numbers. And so that when I wake up in the morning and I'm talking to my performance marketing team, my brand marketing team, our public relations team, that's what's on my mind is how are we performing and doing right by the brand? Because I am a brand marketer at heart. That's what I love.

4:46But at the end of the day, also by the business. And I think that connectivity serves both the marketing world and the business to have that. You know, I also having the brand hat, I'm not going to make a short term decision that's harmful to the long term brand without really thinking about it. Whereas if I was just over the business, that might be an easier path to make the numbers. So I do think combining the two things is is the wave of the future. And with performance marketing and the strength of that arena, I think it's it's a smart way to go for companies as well. You know, I love the way that you position that because I think it's such a crime when you see like memes on the internet that the sales and marketing, they don't get along or they don't talk to each other or all that nonsense, which by the way, I put on the internet.

5:31So who am I to talk? But I do believe what you're saying is true that the path of the future is that marketing and sales are units because how do you do one without the other? It doesn't make sense. You don't. And I mean, I agree with you. I think marketing and sales are usually at odds from one another. I will tell you that my head of sales is my closest peer and partner at Thorne. We sort of both walked in and said, we don't want to do what every other organization has done. We want to be aligned. And at the end of the day, the way that we're rewarded, like if my businesses are rising, we all rise.

6:05If his businesses are rising, we all rise. So I do think that alignment is far, far improved from the infighting of the past. Well, let's see if everyone will start jumping on that train. All right. Speaking about jumping on a train, one of the markets that you all go after is Gen Z. Now, I have an 18-year-old daughter and a 19-year-old son, which is in the Gen Z world. Gen Z people are 14 to 29, right? I always get confused by it, but that's the age range. That has to be a very hard market to get any attention because I see them on TikTok. I see their brains doing brain rot. So what is the secret sauce?

6:39How do you crack the Gen Z code? Yeah, I think what was so interesting to me about Gen Z and millennial, frankly, and millennials are always a lot older than I think they are. They go up to like 44. But they're incredibly interested in wellness in a way that Gen X and boomers really didn't get interested in wellness until much later in their journey. I would say it was more about prevention. So it's something I need to do when things start going south versus today. Wellness is a way of being mental wellness, physical wellness, feeling good, feeling at the height of your performance. So there's so much interest in it from that generation at a very young age.

7:20And I have I have 18 and 20 year old kids as well. And so I see their interest in it far more than that. And again, I was at their age. But what we've learned is that there's a huge amount of confusion. Like, here's this topic that you're so engaged in, you're really curious about and motivated around, but there's so much information that you're just overwhelmed about what to do. We did a wellness confidence report earlier this year where 65 % of Americans said that they were less confused by doing their taxes than they were by choosing a supplement. And that just said to me, like, wow, because doing taxes, even with the advent of AI, is still confusing and complicated, particularly if you earn, you know, if you have more than one W-2 or something.

8:03And so people find it so confusing. And so we really view our job to help remove that confusion. You know, one of our core pillars in our marketing arena is guidance. So I spend a lot of time and money putting out information about our quality, our standards, what different ingredients do. That actually isn't selling anything. It's just providing education and transparency into what is a rather like, you know, can be a rather hype, as you said, industry where it's like, oh, am I only going by the headlines? And what we found is that Gen Z will engage with that. Like, I'm surprised. Yes, they love a six second ad more than a 30 second ad for sure.

8:48But they'll also come to an hour long Reddit AMA and be super engaged to ask a ton of questions or watch a YouTube video that is more 10, 15 minutes long about a specific topic or ingredient that they're interested in. So I think it's all about creating the right content at the right moment and not just going down one lane like it is with any generation. But I think Gen Z in particular really does have a lot of curiosity. And I think AI can actually, you know, the chat tools are also helping there. The AEO tools are helping as well, helping them discern information. So one of the things that marketers, I always struggle with this is what you all are doing is you're going out and you're providing a lot of education, right?

9:32It's not, hey, buy this stuff from Thorne, we're the best. It's this is what magnesium could do for you if you took it, you know, however often. in. And then, and by the way, at the end, you know, Thorne's awesome or maybe it has your branding on it or whatever. And I, I think a lot of marketers, whatever category you're in business, consumer, nonprofit, doesn't matter, would love to do that. But then they go into their meetings and they go, well, what's the attribution? If we are just trying to provide thought leadership in our category, how do we say we did this? And it drove that. So how, I mean, you're winning the battle with yourself because you yourself are the chief growth officer, but how do you win that battle internally because that's a hard thing to assign value to.

10:10I think what's really important is it is about, I mean, I hate to use the term the marketing funnel, but it is about a funnel of content that's going to serve you at various moments. I think it's always good to remember most people go on a journey before purchasing something. Yes, sometimes we click through immediately, but most people there's multiple steps before they hit buy and they need to take in different types of information. I certainly found that true in the handbag space where you were selling something that was a considerable purchase size, like a lot of money for most people. There was a lengthy purchase phase for people.

10:44But even in something like supplementations, the price point's high for something that is not a basic need. And it's like, you have to know, I'm going to use it. It's going to work for me, all of those things. So we really look at our content and say, how can we hit various points on the funnel? So we'll have upper funnel that's really about, you know, anthemic, you know, often with an influencer or celebrity to get your attention. We'll have mid funnel pieces where a lot of times we're using, you know, doctors or trainers to really talk more about the specifics, not even about thorn, just about, you know, berberine or magnesium or creatine and what's in it and how it helps you and how it helps your life.

11:24life. And then we'll have lower funnel that's just delivering on our proof points around, you know, efficacy, around certification, around, you know, manufacturing processes. And then in terms of the attribution, we're really looking at that full funnel and saying what's working for us. I think, you know, we've had to work hard to say metrics for lower funnel are easy, you know, click through rate, you know, purchase rate, conversion. When you get to upper funnel, we obviously look at engagement, but we're also doing things like brand lift studies. where we can see, you know, if we run an ad alone versus, you know, have three ads in conjunction that work together, what is the change in consideration for the brand?

12:03What is the change in likelihood to visit the website and tool around? What is the change in likelihood to consider for the next purchase? And that's helping tell the story. Like I may be the chief growth officer, but I still have a CFO. So I'm still in that position of having to convince someone to continue to give me money. And so that type of brand lift study, you know, awareness, you know, brand awareness, customer acquisition numbers, all of those things that you were looking at. But I always present it as a full funnel, not as like the one piece that we're doing. It's like, these are all the various ways we're going to be touching consumers along their purchase journey.

12:40Yeah. I use, you know, if I rewind like two or three years ago, I used to tell people, Hey, be great on, in one platform, like be great on Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever. I just think because, you know, website traffic is different now because AI and everything else, you kind of need to be all over the place. Is that kind of the playbook? Like, are you trying to like, be like, we got to cover a lot of, a lot of places? We do. I think that, um, still to this day, I, I will experiment with the channel, see if there's resonance there. And then I think the hardest thing to do is pull back if it's not working.

13:13Um, you know, like, like anyone, like you can put your effort towards something that's working and make it better a lot easier than you can towards something that's not working and trying to get it to work a little bit. And that's hard because we often, as people want to make something work. So if we hear a brand has been, you know, a lot of brands in our space are really successful on TikTok, for example. We haven't found that to be the place to reach Gen Z. They're there for sure. But for a clinical supplement brand, we haven't yet found the right combination of elements to work on TikTok. Whereas Reddit, fantastic for us.

13:47YouTube, fantastic channel for being able to provide more information and get things out there. So we're always, you know, kind of experimenting. AEO is definitely a big focus for us. Thankfully, we've had a blog for like 10 years. So the amount of content that I have is incredible. And it's, you know, often written by doctors in the field, not directly by Thorne. So it's very validated, incredible information on our blog that we didn't generate specifically for the purpose of AEO. We generated it for our consumers and our healthcare practitioners. So that's been very helpful. But I do think it's about that like fail fast mentality and then narrowing in on what works for you.

14:28I always want to add new channels. I love it. But we try to do it in a resource light way and then see what fail fast or succeed and then, you know, double down. Yeah, I love it. Double down. Totally agree on all fronts. So you mentioned said me earlier on about uh influencers i don't know why that word crushes me i just i just use that word but okay it's probably the best form of marketing on the planet that exists in terms of performance and i know that you all you you partner with all sorts of different influencers so um and i've seen influencer programs in two different ways i'm curious about how you do it some are like hey will you post something for us a couple times great and other ones are like hyper organized you know with all sorts of deliverables and back-end performance and metrics and checking and UTMs and all this stuff.

15:11So where do you live and how do you scale a program like this? And are you on board with the influencer world? Absolutely. I think, you know, we are a quality over quantity brand. There's a level of education you need to have to talk about Thorne. And so we want to really aim for the right people talking about the brand. So we have a three-tiered approach. We do sponsorships in the athletic world that really gives us the opportunity to show up in the right places where our core customer, who we call the Proactive Optimizer, is already living. So we are a sponsor with UFC. We're a sponsor with the Charleston Open.

15:50We just signed a sponsorship with Unrivaled, the Women's Basketball League. So we're looking at how can we show up in places where consumers already are. We then utilize a limited number of paid partnerships. So we have a very strong and authentic partnership with Madison Keys, a tennis player, with Ben Shelton, who's a tennis player, Drew Holiday, who's a basketball player. These are people who already used Thorne because we are one of the only supplement brands. It's NSF certified for sport, which means they can take it without any worries about any problems in all the testing that they go through in order to be able to perform.

16:28And it works, so they need to know that. And so there were authentic users of Thorne before they came to the brand. That's really key to us in those partnerships. And then we did launch just last year, actually, an ambassador program. And I would say there, again, quality over quantity. And we do very tight briefs so that we can really take the time to educate people. We have one right now on our new plant protein. And we did a lot of education about why is plant protein good, how it does provide 22 grams of protein. And while may not be the same as a whey-based protein, which is sometimes a little higher, it's still a really good source of protein for people who can't handle dairy or are vegan and vegetarian.

17:12I use plant protein myself and love it. So it's providing all of that education and then finding the right influencers for whom talking about plant protein is natural, because that's the protein source they seek. So I think we have a, I'm really proud of that program, which again has launched. And we do look at the metrics pretty carefully, both how the influencer performs themselves, but then how also it performs in terms of delivering on our reasons to believe and our proof points. So it's the storytelling is as important as like the revenue metric for lack of a better phrase. Yeah, I love the idea.

17:46And I think everybody, if you're considering doing influencer marketing, influencer marketing is for all size companies, all brands, all categories to really look and go to your customer base and see who is a user. Because frankly, I've done programs where I'm not the customer of the thing and I'm out there jumping around saying, do this thing. And it's contrived and it's embarrassing and it doesn't feel authentic and it's so much better. So I love the idea of looking at your users and seeing who's in there that has some influence. So you're about to have influence on me. I want to, I want to, this is totally off topic.

18:14I didn't even tell you to bring this up, but I read that you've run 13 marathons. Yes. Okay. And something in some article, I read that what you do is the second half of the marathon, you do this thing where you, uh, uh, basically the second half, you're going to run it faster than the first half. And that's how you kind of like live your professional life, your work life. I need to now, I need to get all involved with this. I'm about to get inspired. What is going on here? Okay. So the concept is called the negative split. I didn't invent it. It's out there in the running world. I came to running late in life.

18:46Um, also came to supplementation later in life. I had a heart incident when I was in my early 30s, combination of stress and just lifestyle factors that I wouldn't have necessarily known. I generally look physically to be a healthy person, but you can have underlying issues based on diet that don't manifest physically. And so I had issues and I came to both supplementation, health in general, but running. And running was just a way for me to manage my stress. And to be frank, I can't do anything and not try to do it the best. So it led me to led me to marathons. But the concept of negative split is the idea of running the second half of a race faster than the first, which is really hard, because you tend to go out strong, you feel great.

19:30And then, you know, mentally and physically, things break down in the second half. I don't always do it. I've only done it a handful of times. It's very, very hard. And but I loved the idea of also applying that to your professional and personal life, like it is wonderful every day to wake up and think today is going to be better than yesterday, or I can, I have the opportunity to make it better than yesterday versus the attitude that maybe all the good is behind you. And so I do love that sort of everyday waking up, knowing that I have the power to make today and the future better, even as I, in my case, get older and more tired and all the issues that occur.

20:10It is this, I find it quite motivating. personally, professionally, and in my running career as well. So I'm happy to have you adapted. I am. You know, I'm turning 50 in a few weeks and I'm like, you know, I have all these thoughts, whatever. And when I read that, I'm like, you know what? I want to have a negative split for the rest of my career. I'm not winding down. I want to crush it with what I got, you know, the runway I've left. So you made an impression on me. I appreciate that. I'm glad. I think it's It's a great mentality for any age. But yes, I'm on the same side of the life curve as you.

20:44And I think it has been incredibly motivating for me in my 50s just to know that I'm not done. I'm not done with any of it. And everybody out there who doesn't want to be done with their life, they need to go check out Thorne. We're going to put it on the show notes. That's T-H-O-R-N-E. And Mary Beach, you can find her all on social. It's B-E-E-C-H. Mary, anything else you want to mention to the universe? you are fantastic. No, thank you. I enjoyed the conversation. It was great to meet you guys. Yes. Awesome. All right. We'll see you soon. Thanks. Wait, the party is not over. Go to jayschwedelson.com because I want to do stuff with you.

21:23I want to partner with you. When you click on the button, partner with Jay, you let me know what you got going on. Work with my agency, work with me directly, get access to all of my free resources at jschwedelson.com. And I got a book coming out this April. It's called Stupider People Have Done It. And all of the net proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. Go on Amazon, buy Stupider People Have Done It. That way you can help kick cancer's butt with me. And if this podcast wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, it might've been, leave it a review, follow the show.

21:58You are awesome. Go out there and crush it. you