The SEO Blog Era Is Over. Here's What Replaces It.

19:02Melissa Rosenthal:Have you seen any pushback from these publications being owned by the brand? Like I can't really tell for state of brand who owns it, which is probably maybe a good thing. But I think about these companies who have tried to start, let's just say, we'll just stick with a blog. And you go to that blog and you're like, well, of course, Adobe is talking about that because they sell this. And it feels like there's less trust when content's coming out from a company that has incentives to, you know, to get you in and sell something to you. So how do you think about that when building these publications for companies?

19:34Yeah. So the separation of the third party domain that we build. So I don't know if I said that we do build a third party domain. It's not on their blog, which allows us that psychological separation from like, Hey, this is just Adobe's blog. And it allows Adobe to free themselves from the box checking of like everything that they publish needs from to be from the Adobe perspective. So it actually like creates this, like both psychological freedom for the reader and for the person we're interviewing. And then for also the customer, because they don't feel like they need to be as precious about every single thing from the company's perspective because it is a news perspective.

20:13So yeah, it's powered by, in many customers' cases, it's powered by them. But we're so used to seeing that on media sites anyway that it kind of doesn't matter anymore. Like we just find that that psychological separation really allows us to like do everything that we want to achieve that companies can't achieve on their own websites.

20:30Melissa Rosenthal:So when we think about building out podcasts and things or even bringing companies in, the arm's length is actually helpful because we're like, we don't want to be caught up in your brand guidelines and your different legal teams. Like we just want to make good content and like, yeah, arms line gets better. And also it gets good guests on. Yeah, this would never work if it was like going through legal every day. I mean, you know, like we have public company customers and for them, we have guidelines that we work into our tools and to make sure that edits and everything are going through these checks and balances so that we're not like doing anything where they're like, that's a huge competitor or that could move the stock market.

21:04Like we definitely don't want to do that. in any sort of, I don't know, maybe in a good way. But we don't want to really touch that. So we're cautious and we're very communicative. It's such a human thing. We've productized it enough that our tools allow us to do it at volume and scale because we've now done thousands of interviews, thousands of pieces. But it's human enough that a lot of these are judgment calls and a lot of them require like, hey, yeah, let's do this or brainstorms. Yeah, there's a very human aspect of this. What about distribution?

21:34Melissa Rosenthal:That's always top of mind when putting content out. Like you all have sounds like amazing traction of the amount of readers and then you're getting featured on LinkedIn. Like what does that look like to get distribution like that? Because I feel like some people could just put something out and it's just like there and no one finds it and they're like, oh, bummer. Yeah, we are. I would say distribution is something like we were thinking about more than anything else. Like I think about distribution 24 seven. We have a couple of ways that we distribute right now and we find distribution one to person, which is we do interviews with ICPs, especially customers that want this to be somewhat of a demand gen channel.

22:08And we talk to them and it's distributed to them. They have an amazing response experience with it, like a podcast. And then we see it circulate around their company. So that's one to company. And then we also then create really awesome assets for them to share on LinkedIn. So one to network, tagging our customers in there, thanking them for the great conversation. So there's definitely a human element of distribution. Then there's obviously GEO and like AI search and optimizing for that. Those are very like more specific pieces that are like, oh, they're not intent-based because they're not bottom of the funnel, but we're thinking about like when someone is searching about a very specific news topic or X, Y, and Z, how do they show up?

22:44So it's that. And then we are, you know, really thinking about like the future of distribution as it relates to basically building our own distribution that also acts as a funnel for their distribution. So these publications that we're building out are now starting to get a ton of traction. We're looking at those as like, hey, can we build our own syndication network? Why not? And then the other piece of it is organic LinkedIn distribution. So we're trying to now champion people within companies to say, hey, you have this awesome news vehicle. You should be posting this out because not only does it help with AI citations, but it also drives organic traffic back to back to your publication in a pretty meaningful and sometimes very viral way, depending upon how you're posting it.

23:27So that's how we think, I mean, it's very human. The whole distribution thing is very human. Like we're not really trying to gamify the way that like blogs did with like, we're going to spin up 500 programmatic pages. Like that's really so far from the way that we think about distribution. And when we're successful, the distribution is very human and it creates discourse. So people are finding it from people, from conversation, from themselves, from the company slacks and from network. Yeah.

23:54Melissa Rosenthal:So for LinkedIn, how many people do you need posting and linking back for it to actually become successful? Because I look at LinkedIn sometimes and I'm like, most people don't have followings. Most people aren't on there engaging enough to get traction with an audience. And so I'm even imagining telling employees at a company like, hey, make sure you share this. And then they share it. And it's like, how many people do you need sharing it? So a lot of companies use like employee advocacy tools, and they're just posting blog posts. And it's like the number doesn't matter. You could have 150 people within a company post a blog post and it's not going to perform.

24:30But if you have two people or one person at a company strategically posting news in a very stylistic way to grab attention around a really good headline, you're going to have more traction there. It's like, it's still very human because it's like people on LinkedIn want to read things that are valuable to them. I think 90 % of the content on LinkedIn right now is utter garbage. So I think if you could add like thoughtful discourse to the conversation, you are going to shine. Like we had a customer, like we have a bunch of customers that people are sharing out the news pieces around the topics that are really hot and their posts are being featured in LinkedIn news.

25:05And it's like, it's amazing because that's the network effect being featured in LinkedIn news. It's not even like, it's not even our customer posting on LinkedIn. It's like the network of the people that are sharing their content out are being featured on LinkedIn. I'm like the viral coefficient and network efficient of that is much more interesting to me.

25:22Melissa Rosenthal:I'm going to have to go and look through some of the content being shared because I'm so interested in how to make LinkedIn cool again. Most of the state of brand pieces I have, they have 500 shares. It's pretty robust. I think what I always tell them is this is like everything in life is consistency play. Like you only get to where you are if you are consistent and you show up every day. And like, I tell myself that like every single day, some days are hard and you have to show up and like, just do the thing. And if you're consistent over time, like I really do believe that good things happen.

25:56So that's something I try to employ upon like the people that we're working with. It's like, this isn't about like one or two posts. This is about like showing up every day and taking the news and the vehicle that we're building and creating an effect around it because you show up and be consistent about it. And you're going to see great rewards from that, like a hundred percent. And if you don't do it, see consistent rewards over like three months, like, or two months after being consistent, like we're doing something really wrong. It's not even that long. Like the time commitment's not that long, but you have to commit at some point.

26:25Melissa Rosenthal:I love that. Anyone can do two months. I should TM that. Just be like, anyone can do two months. Yeah. Yeah. It's very motivating actually. That's awesome. Okay. So you mentioned blogs a few times. I'd love to hear your perspective on the future of blogs because many companies still do them. And I know when you and I spoke last time, we talked about this, like back in the day, the SEO blog slot machine, I think was your words. And I know you played that game well at a certain point. And so I just would love to hear how you're viewing the space now. I think that it's tough because like, you're just playing this, like a Russian roulette because you just don't know anything that's happening and how to optimize for that is a gamble.

27:11It's not human driven. Your blog will never earn an audience ever. So you're always going to be playing the slot machine game. So I don't love that. That's not great. Do I think it's valuable to have content that is extremely intent-based and hyper-specific for very specific audiences that isn't generic at all on your site? If you're a dev shop, having an insanely technical blog. Yes, I do believe that because that's A, going to show up in AI search, I think forever if it's well-written and well-authored and really thinking about like, it's a playbook. Two, it's not news, but it's a playbook. Like it makes sense.

27:49And three, like it's going to be valuable and people landing on it as a result of it being on your company site doesn't matter. I think psychologically because it's a playbook. It's like, who cares? I think that's the future of a blog should be they should be like technical blogs and playbooks and like that's it like generic blog content is at this point you're just doing it to do it like there is no value and there is no like it's over like it's over I don't I hate the whole like it's dead but it's it's over in its current form and I think we have to be okay with that and I think thinking about the bifurcation of like your blog is that place but then your other and your media ecosystem as the other and the driver of growth is like a really interesting and probably like future forward way of thinking about it.

28:35So I won't say the blog is dead, but I'll say like it needs to change a bit.

28:40Melissa Rosenthal:Who was it? Wasn't it maybe Mark Andreessen who said every company needs to be a media company? And I think he said that maybe a decade ago, like a long time ago. So some people spotted it a long time ago. I mean, that's like Andreessen has become like the ultimate media company. They are a hundred percent of media companies. So yeah, he was right. It's also interesting watching what you're doing where so much of every industry is shifting into video big and then you're shifting into text. Yeah. Yeah. So I'd love to hear, you know, what had you kind of land on that? Video is hard to scale. Video takes time.

29:17Video has different distribution that's sometimes harder. and I feel like video is always at the whim of that distribution where it almost becomes less human unless you become the person that is known for that video. Or text can be bylines, it can be other people, it can be anonymity, it can be news. There's so many more formats I think that work in video for something that wants to be scaled. I'm not saying that like if you are, you know, also if you built up an insane brand and you're able to then scale that into video, that's what I would do. Like if, if state of brand and state of AI become an insane thing and I become known for them and like, that's a great thing.

29:59And it's like, okay, now the likely, like now you should just expand it to video and doing masterclasses or whatever it is I decide to do. To me, that's like a good funnel. I'll say, okay, a hundred percent, but I would never start with video first. Not, not today. And I love video. Like I built an entire video team at ClickUp. Like that was like video was my baby so yeah it's weird to say that I and also like I don't know everything is cyclical and everything becomes like what was old is new again so I don't know right now like that's the way that I feel about it I feel like text is text is like kind of where where it is

30:30Melissa Rosenthal:what about the conversion piece what I'm thinking about you've got now you know state of brand over here and then you've got out love over here and I didn't I didn't see much branding for out lover on state of brand like how do you think about converting people over to actually I don't know I don't know when you checked. So on state of brand, we are running like a thousand banner ads on every single article that says out lever. It's like, if this caught your attention, it's because we built it out lever. Like it's so, it's so over. Um, so it's not like, I looked when we first talked, so maybe when it just launched.

31:04Okay. Yeah. I guess it's happened so fast. So, um, we don't, it's not like the state of brand it's a state of brand. And then if you go to the bottom, it's like, it's powered by out lover. This is what out lover does. And then we have sponsored content. We have ad units. I can't believe I'm excited about banner ads, but I'm so excited about banner ads because they're all contextually aligned to the articles. So it makes a lot of sense. We've had, I mean, it's insane, like thousands and thousands of clicks on the banner ad units and almost like a 40 % conversion to demo inbounds from that. So I'm very excited about banner ads right now.

31:37It's crazy. The inbounding from our business across LinkedIn and across our demo form is like 10 ,000x. It's like crazy. So yeah, it's very exciting. So I'm super pumped about banner ads. And yeah, I think that we're going to start to roll those out for our customers too. Kind of, we're like, all right, I'm so afraid to do it. I wanted to reject everything that media had taught me, I think. You go into it and you're like, okay, so let's not do that. Let's not do that. But I think banner ads really work. And I think people, especially when they're smart and they're contextual and people have become really used to them on media sites because they're all over and the experience is so bad, that if we can create great looking banner ads that are just contextually aligned to the content in really smart ways where we don't have to play a DSP or a CPM game, we're going to have better success.

32:25Melissa Rosenthal:I love your quote that I want to have this in a clip of, I'm so excited about banner ads. I'm like, no one has said that in a long time. And that's a good clip worthy piece of content If you told me 10 years ago that I would say that, oh my God. Also, I mean, like I built a native advertising model. So like for me to say that it's like a really weird thing, but yeah, I don't know. That's really funny. I should find myself 10 years ago talking about how banner ads are dead. That is funny. I love that. I mean, it's also cool thinking about this because in a way it's like simplifying. We had so many, we have so many complex ad and media buying platforms and you don't really always know what you're even getting and even understanding the metrics is hard.

33:07Melissa Rosenthal:And so when I think about having your own own channel that you can also see how your own banner ads are doing and updating them quickly without having to go through a third party platform. Yeah. And it seems nice. Yeah. And it's not, you know, there's no bot traffic because it's direct traffic. You know, it's not being run through a third party ad network. Like it's all direct to you. So yeah, you can like the performance is like, oh, it wasn't like, 10 ,000 bots that click the ads. So yeah, I think that's a great point. Made everything overly complex. So going back to the simplicity of that is kind of a maybe nice thing for people to land on.

33:39And then I think, yeah, the second part of the reporting, which is just like, there's been ad fraud for so, so, so long that you don't have to worry about that. And you're also like, when you think about these advertising models for our customers, it's not CPM, it's not traffic based. It's quality of people sharing and its relationships. And it's becoming known in a very hyper-specific industry, but they don't need to sell ads against that.

34:00Melissa Rosenthal:So it all just becomes... Have you ever wished that your entire video production workflow lived in one place? Well, you're in luck because that is LTX, the creative suite that was built by Lightrix, all for AI video production. It takes you from idea to final 4K video, all in one workspace. And under the hood, you've got LTX2, the next generation creative engine, powering native 4k synchronized audio and cinematic quality fast so if you make content professionally this isn't just another tool this is your new creative home go explore it at ltx.studio it's like this you know really cool motion yeah i wonder i mean it feels like other parts of every industry are also simplifying i mean i even think about let's just say when everyone started getting into cloud code and started rebuilding software really quickly, just custom to them.

34:54Melissa Rosenthal:And then all of a sudden you have less, you know, smaller marketing tech stack, smaller stacks everywhere that you're like, well, now I just have my own and I know how it's working. And maybe I only need this one tool because that's, you know, it either has the data or it has some capability that's just like, I don't even want to try and make that. But do you see that, you know, for as long as you've been in this space, like things just actually starting to simplify more or do you see other areas getting more complex? I mean, it seems like we, You know, I joined ClickUp when it was like, like the SaaS, like growth at all costs, like the SaaS explosion, I guess, of like thousands of SaaS companies being built.

35:26And I was like really excited about that when I first joined. And I was like, oh, like there's so many cool tools out there. And I use Lucid for charts and I use this for that. And at first it was very exciting for me. Like I don't, I was like that about that. And then over time you just get like, oh my God, I have to log into 20 different things. This is horrible. So the consolidation of that, and then that's why I was super excited about ClickUp because it kind of does all these things that other companies are doing. And it started, we put in charts and we put in chat and we started doing this thing where it's like this one place for everything.

35:58That was a nice feeling because it was like, I don't have to use all these other tools, which just became this like, between meetings and doing your actual work, it's too much. So yes, but then with AI, it's happening again. Like we're working towards a consolidation, I think ultimately, but right now it feels like a SaaS explosion of thousands of different things that you have to use. When I think, I mean, we kind of know, I think, I won't say it, like who will kind of win within AI. I think Figma should be a little worried. That's all I'll say. Yes.

36:30Melissa Rosenthal:There's definitely quite a few companies that, yeah, we're killing it that I'm like, Ooh. Yeah. I, I tried to design last night and I was like, Oh yeah, this is in insane. I mean, it's just crazy that you can just screenshot software now and be like, make this for me. I mean, I did that with go high level and I was like, go high level still not working the way I want. So can you just make me a go high level? Tell me exactly what I have it doing in here now and then make it. Yeah. You can customize software for your exact usage of it. Like, which, which I think is like, that's another really, you know, I could talk for an hour about that.

37:03But I think it's everything else is so opinionated. And like the problem, it's like, this is how data should be structured. And it's super rigid. And it's X, Y, and Z. And this is the interface that you have to use. And like, for 99 % of people, like that's so frustrating. Like you want it for your use case. And like, it's so interesting. Like we had to rebuild the CRM, which now you can kind of do very fast. But like, how many CRMs are on the market? And there was nothing that actually fit our use case. So the answer was build it ourself. So when now you can build yourself something in a week, like it becomes very dangerous.

37:35Yep.

37:35Melissa Rosenthal:Yeah. I do wonder what this is going to look like when, I mean, because in one way I see that most enterprise AI projects failed or will fail probably because of how they were built, like building all these like AI projects and silos and everyone's very excited. And then there's that, but then I think there's going to be a resurgence of people like, okay, now I know the capability. I know where we're at and I know how to build in a more holistic way to make sure the whole company supported and we stay focused on the goals of the company and build things in a cohesive manner. So it'll be really interesting watching this next period to see, you know, what do people actually choose to rebuild versus more like integrate in a nice, you know, company.

38:13I think it's like the empowerment of people that can build their own software and have an understanding of things that they couldn't before is probably the key unlock, at least for right now, where like they can align on things that like it was so siloed before that it's not anymore. So I mean, yeah, I think for at least the short term, like that's definitely.

38:31Melissa Rosenthal:So what do other marketing leaders come to you and ask or like, what are you all brainstorming? So I'm sure you have a lot of people circling you just because of the way you think and the things you're experimenting with. Yeah, they're like, how are you doing what you're doing? Like, that's one. Two is like nothing is working. That's two. Three is like we realize that everything is becoming like super flat. We need to like stand out and like we're not going to win the way that we thought we were going to win 10 years ago or five years ago or the GTM and like everything has shifted. So like, what do we do?

39:03Like, what's like some thoughts on like that? Those are like probably the three most common things that people say, like, which is so interesting. I think when like money was free to, you know, like raising was just, we don't care what the ROI is. So like, let's just do the thing. And like, now we're in the space where like, it's harder to do the thing and there's less resources to do the thing and you need ROI on everything. So we're at this interesting inflection point where we've kind of hit this 360 where we were for the growth at all costs, like SaaS era, but everything is still the same in terms of the ROI questions and the headcount questions, right?

39:40Which is like, you got to do this with a really lean team, which was not the case five or six years ago. So really interesting time. So many things have just like flipped. But the reality is companies still need to grow and they need to differentiate. And when everything can do everything now, and there's no light differentiation between product, it's like, what are the true differentiators that allow you to stand out and allow you to make noise? And like, I think we overcomplicate marketing. And like, if you can kind of just to think about those like two principles, you know, marketing and brand are like amazing customer service, unique point of view, virality, but like word of mouth, like referral based virality, And then like consistency and product.

40:21Like product is sort of there, but like it can't be a shit product, but it can be just as good as something else and you can win. And I think like that's really cool. It's actually a really special thing right now. Like you can build something that someone has had a, you know, has cornered the market in for 15 years and you can build it in a couple of months and have better customer service, have better experience, rethink about brand in a way that they can't catch up to and win. I love that.

40:48Melissa Rosenthal:that's inspiring and fun to think about the space that we're in right now i think it's fun i think it's fun i think like what i think it's fun if i was the cmo of one of those companies and i had to like run every state of brand piece by my founder or someone or a board or explain this like the beauty of like what i'm able to do and when i work best is when i just do and then people are like oh how'd you do it how'd you do it how'd you do it and then it's like okay well i just showed you how I did it. But like the whole bureaucracy of like, moving really slow is a total killer of all of this. So yeah, I feel very grateful not to have to deal with that and be able to coach others and help others do the thing, but not have to deal with it myself.

41:27Melissa Rosenthal:Yeah, yeah, no, that's good. I mean, you definitely see the companies who win are the ones who are shipping things in like a week, not going through quarterly cycles and annual planning. Like it's the ones who are like, no, we need to ship this in a couple days. And so what are some big bets that you're making that maybe outside of things like state of brand, outside exactly what you're doing, like where do you see the market going and what things are you thinking about right now that most don't even know you're considering? I feel like in my mind, it's so funny because it's like, you know, everyone's like, oh, how did that just came out of nowhere?

41:57You know, like it's always the thing. But like, I've been thinking about this for two years, like every single day of my life for 24 seven. The stuff that we're building, I think is like, I'll say it now on this podcast. And then if it works, you can go back to this and clip it out. And if it doesn't work, we forget that's ever happened. We'll delete it. Gone. I mean, we're thinking about everything. We're thinking about the human, like we are betting big on people in very human ways of like how the differentiation is people. And there are so many pieces of that within organizations that we are really excited about as it pertains to the extension of what we do now.

42:34The news is like a small piece of like where we're headed and but it's all based on the humanity and the things that we've seen with what we've built today and those are the ideas and the springboards that we've gotten for like what we're building tomorrow but we're building some really crazy stuff and uh i think it's like people are going to start seeing it all over and then just be like how did this how did this happen just kind of like the way that stayed a brand i've been kind of quiet on linkedin for two years like i i couldn't put my mind and my thought and my resources into doing this because i wanted to do it for our customers first and then it was like okay now is the time to pour with gasoline on the fire and like really like ignite this into like a really big thing.

43:09But, you know, people are like, wow, it just came out of nowhere. And I'm like, oh, it kind of didn't. Like we've been doing this just like not screaming it from the rooftop. So people, I think if I had to summarize it before, I can like share what we're actually building. It's like, it's people, it's people first. And while everyone bets on the AI portion of it, we're going to use AI to allow us to do the things that we want to do with humans.

43:30Melissa Rosenthal:I love that. So what do you think about, you know, in-person gatherings. I feel like there is a big desire for people to get together with other people. Who knew? And how do you all think about that with, yeah, having events and whatnot? That's a great question. I am so bullish on like events. Like I think they are so valuable. Like when I go to events now, it's like, oh wow, like that was really valuable. Like that was a valuable part of my time. Like I'm glad I did that. So I'm very bullish on them in terms of like how we tie into it? I'm not sure yet. I don't know if that actually ever becomes a part of our model.

44:05There's parts of it where we are building community and that becomes valuable because you can feed those people into events. You can invite them to places. You can have them at dinners. You can award them and celebrate them at conferences. You can do all this great stuff with them. Maybe building the vehicle and the mechanism to be able to do the events, but I don't really want to become an events business. And I, yeah, I think we're going to stay away from that in terms of like what our infrastructure is. But in terms of empowering it, like I think we have a good idea of how we will do that. But I'm very bullish on them.

44:38I think it's the same thing. It's like you're so saturated. And as everything becomes AI written or AI talked about, like you just want to have conversations with real people because that's what's actually happening. Like when I, when people like speak all the time, and this is really interesting because I think as a CMO, it can kind of become very lonely. So you're a CMO and you're on LinkedIn all the time and you're not talking to other CMOs outside of groups, maybe some are not. And you're just seeing all this stuff about how everyone is adopting AI and it's across the company and they're doing all these things and they're replacing their marketing teams.

45:12And I'm sure I've heard this so many times now, CMOs are like, oh my God, what? Like, we're not doing that. How is that happening? But the reality is it's not really happening the way that the narrative is shaping it. So I think for those people to have real conversations about how people are actually doing things in person, like that can't be replicated. Because the conversations happening behind closed doors are usually more of the reality than the thing that you're seeing, like, blasted across LinkedIn or other, you know, professional networks.

45:41Melissa Rosenthal:Yeah, that's a good reminder. I mean in one way it's like oh yeah duh but also it's so easy to get caught up and like oh man I saw many people yes same like you know it's like I this sounds like very in control but we all do it we're all looking at stuff every day and we're like oh god like is that really happening and then I talk to people and I'm like I don't know if it is I don't know like you know you start questioning it and you're like am I gaslighting myself but then like it the reality is like if you have enough of those conversations, you realize that it isn't quite at the scale that the narrative pains it to be.

46:15Melissa Rosenthal:Yeah. And a lot of times what I see too is the narrative is coming from the solopreneurs, at least the ones that I follow, where I'm like, yes, of course you just launched a hundred things in an hour because there's no other complexities of a company. And so I think that's the people who are the biggest influencers on LinkedIn that are saying all these things, let's just say doing with Claude and all these things. And I'm like, well, yeah, enterprise company leaders should not be looking. They can look for inspiration maybe, but not assuming that also your other peers are doing that too, just because this person who has one employee said that they're doing it.

46:49Or X. I saw someone, it was like a month or two ago, and it was like, I replaced my marketing team with this new Claude agent. I was like, first of all, it got like 3 million views. And I was like, okay, what is this? So I'm looking at it and it's like automated commenting in LinkedIn. from people's accounts. And I'm like, wait, this is replacing your marketing team. That was your marketing team? That's what they were doing? I'm concerned. I'm like, if you're like, maybe like a single local business, like maybe like, but it's like, so that narrative is like, it's an echo chamber. But if you go on X and all of those clips have like millions and those product clips have like millions and millions of views, like it's easy to get caught up in that and think that that is reality.

47:31Melissa Rosenthal:yeah I'd love to hear I'm seeing this thread even though it seems like what you've chosen through your careers kind of isn't connected but if I think back to like your first internship being at BuzzFeed and having this like thread of this kind of thinking where do you think this came from like where is this like drive and excitement in these worlds coming from I think it's like me as a person, part of it, you know, like, um, like I'm a very curious, like competitive, creative and passionate person. And like all of those traits, like allow me to be this person. I like really care about my career, like a lot.

48:05Like I want to do things that are impressive and cool and like groundbreaking and differentiated. And I think like that, I mean, that fuels kind of everything. Like if I was just kind of like a bland, like, all right, like, I can get it, you know like I work 24 7 so I think a part of that is just like in you right like it's even if you've worked at I mean I've always been at startups so I'm an entrepreneurial entrepreneurial person to start um and being able to operate that way has always just been kind of my north star guiding light like I just want to like break things um and like make noise and like command like attention and command of that so I don't know I think that's probably where it comes from I mean like at BuzzFeed the reason I got the internship I was actually like in college and I was like I need to get out of college like I need to like leave early or graduate early so I did all my stuff to be able to graduate early and I was like I want an internship like you know junior year and um I like was obsessed with BuzzFeed and I was constantly trying to create content that outranked the editors that worked there at just for fun and then you know I wanted to go into the music industry, but I was like, that's dying.

49:10Like, how do I, like, I can't do that. And then it was like, well, I'm like spending all of my time, like all hours trying to like create viral content. Like maybe I should just apply for this internship. You know, it was just like, what is driving me? It wasn't like, I need to find a job. I was like, oh, what am I really passionate about? And I was super passionate about music, but I took an internship at a music place and I was like, oh, this is not, this is not for me in any capacity. And I don't like where this is headed. So I pivoted and just found the thing that I was spending all my time on.

49:42And I think that that's always like a really good barometer of like what you're going to, what's going to be able to drive you, make you really creative and passionate about the thing. And then you can weave that narrative through everything that you do. So I don't know. I think that's harder today. I don't want to discount that like the world has changed, but it's also not because now like the playing field is leveled a little bit more. Like if you're driven, like someone, I don't know, someone or throughout my career, people have asked me like advice on like how to get jobs and like well you got to be doing the thing that the job is telling you that you're going to be doing before you do it like you have to be doing it like if it's like being a creative person like what is your creative project that you're showing them when you walk in the door that differentiates you from everyone else like that's what stands out like I I hired at BuzzFeed this guy and he um he was working at a tobacco factory in North Carolina during the day and he had gotten in with like a really interesting kind of creative like proposal and I was like oh like what what do you actually do I was like and he's like oh at night I create these viral stunts and viral websites and like all this stuff and like literally he was spending all this time outside of the tobacco factory like doing this so we hired him and you know he's an insanely creative person he went on to go found this like really creative agency called mischief they do like supreme style product drops it's like insanely viral very big but it was like it was like that is like the person that I gravitate towards because I'm like oh well that person's like a passionate driven, like this isn't a job for them because they found their passion.

51:08So I don't know. I always try to find that. And that's like kind of how I see myself.

51:12Melissa Rosenthal:It's such a good hiring tip, especially in this market of like, yeah. Cause I even think about when I first started working at Google, they did not hire me for my like career history. They found these side projects, this medium publication, these iPad apps I made, like they found all this random stuff on me. And when I came, I was like, let me tell you about my current role. And they're like, no, no, no, we don't really care about that. We care about these other things you've been working on. I'm like, oh, okay, sweet. Cause that's actually more interesting to me than what I'm doing now. So, but even now it's still relevant if I think about, yeah, hiring like such a good reminder to find.

51:46I mean, I would say now more than ever, like, because now you have the tools, right? Like then it was just not everyone would be doing that. But today it's like, you can teach yourself to vibe code pretty easily, like create something interesting that is applicable to where you want to be and what you want to be doing and being like, I built this cool thing. Like, that's kind of it. Like people want to see that because there's just so much opportunity that if you're not taking that opportunity yourself, like, are you really going to apply it? And like, I hate to say this, but like, obviously like there's a lot of people being laid off and like headcount is now like diminishing.

52:18So to stand out, you really need to be special.

52:21Melissa Rosenthal:Okay. I want to, I want to know, I feel like you obviously are very innovative with your thinking and the way that you think is different than most, almost all B2B marketers I've talked to. Where do you get your inspiration from? Like, who are you following? Who are you talking to? What are you reading? How are you like getting outside your industry to like kind of look around? Like, what do you do? Get me into your brain. My co-founder is also my husband. He's quite inspiring. So yeah, I feel like that's a secret weapon because like we really enjoy this. And it's like a gamification for us because it's like we're building our business, but we're also very passionate about work.

52:56He also comes from a very non-conventional background to wind up where we are. He was a musician and then was a leather jacket designer and then ventured into a plus-size women's leather jacket brand and sold that and then decided to start to code. So yeah, very weird, not really traditional backgrounds, but I think that makes us both very excited about the prospect of just creating something new. So he's very inspiring to me because just the way that he thinks is really awesome. I think that I am inspired by the way like companies are building today because it feels so like it is the wild west and I'm like those times were so exciting to me because it feels like we are on the cusp of like I know everyone's really fearful of it but like I think we're on the cusp of something really crazy and like it's a it's such a defining time in like our in our history as like a society and our technological advances and we've never been through this before quite like this.

53:55So I'm like, oh, to be alive and to be able to build during this time is like incredibly inspiring. So I'm very inspired by what people are building out there because it's like these products, some of them couldn't have existed. Some of them are so thoughtful in their thinking around like the application layers of like data and how the data is being used. And it's just like, I don't know, all of that is really inspiring. And it's inspiring for like product. It's inspiring for like creativity. It's weaving things together. It's making things easier. So I think like a lot of that, like, it's like, oh, what a time to be alive kind of a thing.

54:28Like I look at it that way because I have to see the optimism and opportunity in it, especially as you're building something. And I hope that like the people that are building, like, I think they all feel that way. And for the people that like, don't feel that way, that feel stuck, I think to myself, like, get out of your stuff. Like, this is a great time. And if you're ever going to take a bet on yourself or take a bet on something, like, this is the time because the playing field has really been leveled in a way that it's never been leveled before. So that is incredibly inspiring. Like I always love the times in which like, I feel like the playing field is leveled because there are so few times in history where like you can catch up to, you know,$50 billion SAS company that's been around for, you know, 20 years in a few years, in 18 months, like companies can eclipse that today.

55:14So I think it's just like, I don't know, I'm very inspired by the time we live in and the news I consume every day. So it's not an individual person. It's really just like the opportunity that I see across like the ecosystem that what's happening right now.

55:28Melissa Rosenthal:Man, I love that one. That's an epic clip right there. And I also think it's a phenomenal way to end this episode. I love ending on notes like this. So Melissa, thank you for coming on Marketing Trends. I loved having you on. Where can our listeners, our viewers find out more about you and what you're up to? So yeah, find me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on there. I feel like I should be less active. Like you'll be like, when do you sleep? But yeah, find me on LinkedIn. I'm there. Check out thestateofbrand.com, launching a new publication in a few weeks. So we'll be excited to share more on that.

56:00But thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun. I love these conversations because they're energizing and inspiring. And hopefully they inspire other people because I think like there's a lot of the same, even like when I listen to the podcast, I'm like, I wish someone was saying something different or just like a slightly different perspective on things to get someone excited about like what their potential could be now because there's a lot of doom and gloom as much as there is optimism and there's definitely like, it's the most polarizing time I've ever seen. So to get people excited is an exciting thing too.

56:29So hopefully I can do that.

56:31Melissa Rosenthal:I love that. Thank you very much. Thank you.