Why Your One-Person Marketing Team Is Set Up to Fail

Sean Weisbrot: And I'm like, 19, but like, I'm lost. I don't know what I'm doing because I wanna escape the matrix basically. Right? They, they hear this term from like Andrew Tate and they're like, yeah, I wanna escape the Matrix. And they like get to that point where they quote unquote, can escape the matrix. They don't need to go to college, they don't need a job. As long as they keep their head on straight and they don't blow the money they're making, they'll be able to make enough sustainably for a long time. But. They don't know what they're doing. They don't know why they're doing it. They don't have a plan for the business and therefore they don't know where it can possibly go. Uh, right. So, so I always tell them, Hey, like, do you have a number that's gonna make you happy? I. Are, do you? Do you need 10,000 a month to be happy? Do you need a hundred thousand a month? Personally? Take home after tax? Welcome back to another episode of the We Live To Build podcast. This is episode number 206 with Caitlyn Marola, the founder and CEO of MOV Marketing, a 5-year-old marketing agency based in California that focuses on startups. I wanted to talk with Kaitlyn because she runs her company through the lens of transparency, something that is very difficult with startups. In this conversation, we talked about how she finds clients, how she works with clients, how she thinks of the future of her business, how she's changing herself right now as the company is growing, and much more. So if you like the founder's journey. And teach me something, then this is going to be a great episode for you. Let's get to it. I would say by far the most difficult client to work with is that of a startup founder. Why do you wanna serve them? What is it about startups that makes you feel like it's worth it every day?

Kaitlyn Merola: That's a great question. Um, yeah, I love serving startups. I come from startups. My early career was in B2B Tech startups. Um, so it's something, I know, it's something I've been in before. Um, I like the fast-paced. Hyper-growth nature of a startup that's doing well. Um, I like how decisions get made at a startup. Um, sometimes. Um, I like that we're able to pivot quickly to new things, try things, AB tests, startups are a little bit more. Um, nimble in that way and allow us to do that. Um, whereas bigger companies that have been around for longer, um, they have bigger teams that we have to deal with. Lots of different personalities. Sometimes there's red tape, big long approval processes. Um, so that's why

Sean Weisbrot: I, I used to have my own startup and I found that it was still very difficult to get things done.

Kaitlyn Merola: Hmm.

Sean Weisbrot: Especially because sometimes there weren't enough people to get everything done, and so I would try to step in to do something, but then my COO would be like, no, you can't do that. That's not your job. Like, I'll, I'll do it or I'll figure out the right person to do it, but like, just no, just don't do it. And we would get into arguments because he was right, but I wanted to move. Yeah. And so he would, he would block me from doing what I thought was the right thing, but I knew that in the long term he was helping me to do what I was supposed to be doing. Um, so I'm sure you come across these kinds of instances where, uh. Maybe not the right person is the one doing what needs to be done or exactly. Do you Exactly. Do you have a specific example of that you could share? Yeah. Without naming games? I think

Kaitlyn Merola: so. A lot. Yeah. A lot of our clients will have one or two marketers on their in-house team, whether they're junior marketers that we support, or maybe they have like one marketing leader and that person has one junior person. Um, so we're seeing that happen a lot where there's a marketing generalist on the in-house team and they sort of. Maybe have an inflated view of what their, where their skills actually lie. Um, and that, that's great. They wanna be helpful in all these different areas. But you can't be proficient in paid search and also be a copywriter and be a graphic designer and be posting organically on LinkedIn every day and be doing events and be doing a BM. It's just not one person's job. So in that way, it's just setting this person up for failure by saying, Hey. You're a team of one, here's the whole marketing program, get it all done and then let us know how it went. That's not fair. Um, so that's where we come in. In a lot of cases,

Sean Weisbrot: I feel like if I look at LinkedIn or Twitter, I'll see a million people that, that say that they're, they can do all those skills.

Kaitlyn Merola: I know.

Sean Weisbrot: It's like, well, which one can you actually do?

Kaitlyn Merola: Right. Can you even do one of these?

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I mean, a, a lot of startups say, oh, we want generalists to help us to start and then specialize over time. And I feel like my specialty is being a generalist, but I struggle to promote myself as an advisor and a consultant because a lot of the problems people need to solve are specialty problems. However, my specialty is in helping them uncover those problems from a holistic, high level point of view As a generalist. So, I dunno, just food for thought.

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, we've been working with a lot of fractional CMOs lately, which is an interesting relationship because that's their job is to kind of strategically guide the effort. Let the client know where they should be allocating their budget, be that strategic lead, and then our team can kind of be that person's team to get it done. And that works well.

Sean Weisbrot: So transparency is something that is extremely important, and I feel like transparency is not really the norm in early stage startups because the goal is to pretend publicly that everything's fine, so that you can make your investors happy, you can get more clients, but privately, typically things are shit show. So. How do you get your clients to be transparent with you? Basically treat you as if you're actually part of the team rather than just an outsource provider wherein they're telling you the truth, not what they want the world to see, so that you can show the world what they want to see while you know what's really happening.

Kaitlyn Merola: Totally, yes. So we've been really lucky with our clients. I think it's because we are so transparent. They mirror that with us. Um, we're super responsive. We have Slack channels with every client. We hop on Zooms all the time, like we're right there with them and we really make it. Feel like we truly are an extension of their team. We're not an outsourced vendor. That it takes a little bit of time to get to and then explain what your needs are, and you have to meet about it. Then you have to meet again about it. You have to put the strategy together. We're right there with you. We're able to kind of pivot, do get something done, grab a design file for you, like we're right there. And I think that helps. Garner that trust where a client really feels like we're on their team and they can be true and honest with us about where they're at, what their needs are. Numbers are down, things aren't looking the way we want them to. How can we turn this around by the end of the quarter? Things like that. They come to us with and. That's okay. We're right there to kind of be like really solution oriented, um, and be like, we are on your team. Let's, let's do this. We're seeing the same numbers. You're seeing, we're checking your dashboards and your reporting every day, just like you are. So it feels like a shared effort.

Sean Weisbrot: How do you look at those numbers and, and turn them around because, okay, I guess this is a, this is a longer winded question. It is very easy for someone who's not well trained in marketing to look at the vanity metrics and go, oh, those things are great, and then ignore the actual important things. So in terms of transparency, how do you get them to acknowledge that the vanity metrics are what they are, but they're not important and you should be looking at something else?

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah, that's a great question. So that happens quite often with our clients, like even just. The other day we had a client that was like, Hey, one of our big KPIs for the quarter is to make sure that we have eight blog posts, go live a month. And the first question is, why? Why? Well, can you give me an answer as to why that is? Why is that a KPI when they can't answer that question? It opens up a dialogue. Okay. I think from my lens, having done this for hundreds of startups, I think what you're trying to get at is you want a blog to be happening. You're not sure why. Let me tell you kind of what the purpose of a blog is today, and then let's back into frequency from there. We don't need to do eight a month and not have any clue as to the purpose behind that. That's a lot of work for very little payout, so. In that way, it's like asking the right probing questions, helping the client understand what their KPIs should be from a marketing lens today in 2024, and then backing into like what those numbers should be and helping them and really kind of letting them know that we have some skin in this game too. Um, and we're all in it together. That helps with that transparent sort of conversation.

Sean Weisbrot: How do you, how do you explain what a blog is without pissing your client off?

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah, I mean, we had a client once come to us and they were like, all of our blog posts in the last year have just been ai. I'm like, you can tell like your blog, I don't understand what the purpose of this is, if that's all you're doing is just copying, pasting out of chat GBT, like what are you measuring? What is the goal of this effort? So it's a lot of reminding them that a blog has an SEO. Piece to it. And a lot of times that's the main primary goal of a blog is just to make sure that we're serving Google as it relates to SEO. Mm-hmm. Organic, SEO rankings. That's real. It's not, we're not writing blog articles for you and making sure that you like it. I'm not really concerned whether you like it or not. It's being written for a purpose that will put your business where it needs to be online. Your preferences, the person I'm speaking to at the client company doesn't matter are relevant matter.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, exactly. So recently I embarked on a multi-week project to get the podcast up to, uh, snuff, whatever you want to call it, to make it more professional. One of those points was. I had redesigned the website. The redesign was finished once ago. It had a new template for the blog posts. So I knew that I'd have to go back and redo the, the template for every single blog. And I'd been doing this for years. So there was like 200 blogs to re, to review the template for. But on top of that, the last episode I had created a blog post for was one 15. But when I started the project, I was at 1 94. So about, you know, 80 something blog posts that I needed to create from scratch four. The podcast for the website so that if anyone tried to come to the website, they would see that I'm not lazy. And you know, the website actually is up, you know, up to date. And what I thought would be interesting was adding transcripts for them because one interview could have 10, 15, 20,000 words. And I thought Google might really like that. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I don't know. But. I am in the middle of doing the transcripts now 'cause I've done everything else and it's, it's an absolute headache. Um, luckily I used a program that use an AI to translate and uh, to transcribe and it's an amazing tool, but it doesn't have the guest's names and it doesn't have them formatted. It has, um. Uh, conjugate, not conjugation. It has punctuation, but it doesn't have paragraph formatting. It's not nice. So like I still have to pay someone to go and review it all. 'cause if, if I do it, I, I, I've got 167 transcripts to go through. So I am, I'm deeply, uh, focused on SEO while painfully hating every second of it. So I completely understand the, the point of trying to figure out what the hell's the point of SEO and, and what you're doing with it and why you have it. Yeah. Um, I'm literally just doing it for Google to be like, Hey, there's words about entrepreneurship here. We should probably show entrepreneurs this page. Basically. Something like that.

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: So it's literally, it's, it's been hell. It's it's a job. Yeah.

Kaitlyn Merola: It's a full-time job. Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: So what are some things you're thinking about when trying to determine if someone is a good client?

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah. Vetting clients. That's, that's a great one. Um, I'm always looking for startups that have a really clear grasp on what they do. So whether you're SaaS or you are. Like a professional services company that's sort of in tech. It depends on kind of who you are and what you're doing. Hmm. But you have to have a clear grasp on that part. You don't necessarily need to know about kind of how to do the messaging or how to kind of determine your buyer personas that, that we can come in and help with that stuff. Um, but we've had clients before that are like, we've changed the way we talk about our product. 10 times in the last two years, and we still wanna keep changing it. We have butting heads internally as to like the CTO wants it to be this, the CEO wants it to be this. So we're doing both and we're tested. It's like, no, you cannot test on. What your product does, does it do it or not? Like that part you have to have a really clear grasp on, um, and then we can come in and sort of position that in the way that it needs to be positioned to the right folks online. Um, so that's always really important.

Sean Weisbrot: That's a really complicated thing that I learned because when. Wow, this is, uh, makes me cringe to think about it. PTSD basically. So basically we were building a, a tech company. We're building a product, we were developing features and for the longest time I was responsible for coming up with the feature specifications because it was my vision and I. The problem was I didn't know how to decide what were the right features to develop at the right time because we were pre-launch, so we didn't have user feedback. And while I was doing this, we then had the, the COO and the marketing director trying to figure out. When are things going to come out so we can start to develop the wording around it so that we could start the messaging and the blogs and the engagement to get people interested about, Hey, this product's coming out. These are the features for it. And so the, the marketing is not something that you, like, you can't publish something, you, you can't publish code today and start promoting it today. You have to. Like prepare what you're gonna develop for the next like six months or a year, and then start creating the messaging for it 2, 3, 4 months before it comes out so that people can be aware that this thing is coming. And I've even thought about this recently for the podcast. Someone was talking to me 'cause I'm trying to figure out how to make it possible to grow much faster. And someone said, oh, you have all these shorts clips, are you doing teasers for new episodes coming out? And I was like, no, I'm not. It's a good idea, and I've thought about this in the last few days. They're like, what's wrong? Why aren't you able to do that? Because you have the the full episode ready to go weeks in advance. Why aren't you getting the teasers ready? I said, well, the problem is my long form editor is selecting the shorts and then sending them to my short form editor, and the short form editor is getting it to me. Well, they're doing it at such a pace where episode 1 96 came out and I was getting the shorts from episode 180 9, so I can't possibly promote. A teaser when something is coming out six or seven weeks after the, the full episode. So obviously there's a problem with the way my team is running, which is preventing me from doing a thing that could potentially create mystery and, and tension and want people to, to come. And so I. Um, yeah, marketing requires a tremendous amount of thought and planning, and as you said, if the team internally has no idea what the hell they're building or who they're building for or why they're building it, their marketing is gonna just not be able to hit any points whatsoever for potential clients. Right,

Kaitlyn Merola: exactly.

Sean Weisbrot: So how do you go about finding clients? Or do you only do inbound or what's your process for that?

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah, so we, you know, everything that we do for our clients in terms of inbound marketing strategies, tactics, campaigns we do for ourselves. Um, so we kind of treat MVE marketing as another client, um, which is great. We, I. Tap into our collective networks. My network has been amazing. We always will either get introductions or full, like referrals from current clients, other, the startup community. It's like everybody bounces around from different startups. So it's like, yeah, this person was at this client company, they jumped to a new client company. We kept the old one, and now we're in the new one too. Like that. A lot of that goes on. Um, so it's been good. I mean. It's a lot of referral. Word of mouth.

Sean Weisbrot: That's great. We should talk more after this about that. Okay. I might have some services, uh, that are complimentary for these clients. So people think about PR as an extension of marketing. Do you provide an EPR? And if not. Why not? And what is the separation there and what should teams, companies know about that difference?

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah. Yeah. We don't do PR yet. We could expand into pr. We've explored that option before. However, it, we've had great success partnering with PR firms. And sort of tag teaming a client together where it's like there's a PR firm, there's us, and together we sort of make up all of what that client wants to be allocating their budget towards PR done right. Is. A lot of work. I mean, you have to scan every news outlet, like find out where your client company was mentioned within articles. Is it a good mention? Is it an okay mention? Is it something we wanna share? Pitching all of the C-suite members and their chalk points and things that they might wanna be doing, getting them booked on podcasts, getting them booked to do different interviews than following up to get. The date for when that interview's gonna go live. And then it's a lot. Um, and our role kind of in the past with PR has been like, Hey, they wanna do a press release. Let's help them write it. Like let's help them produce the press release. If it's something about a new product enhancement or a new C-Suite member joins a team. That kind of stuff like company news. Um, but all of the other sort of principles that make up PR. It's really best left to a PR firm that does just that in our experience.

Sean Weisbrot: You just gave me a SAS idea.

Kaitlyn Merola: Oh.

Sean Weisbrot: Um, I, I don't know if anyone's done this yet, but basically like, uh, sentiment analysis based on a keyword to go, oh, you know, if the, if the name is your company, and it'll tell you, oh, you appeared here, here, here, here. So there's a company called Ground News. I dunno if you've heard of them.

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah,

Sean Weisbrot: ground news does sentiment analysis, uh, as well as political leaning left, right, and center for different news outlets and specific articles. It wouldn't be a far cry to do something like that, but you know, instead of, uh, left, right center politics based on, uh, sentiment analysis of who's writing it and, uh, why they're writing it and. Therefore being able to do your own research and not have to pay a PR firm. Although, don't tell the PR firms I said that actually. No, it'd be really, it'd be, uh, PR firms would be clients, basically. I, I, I could see that.

Kaitlyn Merola: Totally. Yeah. I mean, speaking of data, like we've been using a lot of like first party data with our clients, like doing our own surveys to their own audiences, like doing polls on LinkedIn. Like there's a lot of different ways to collect data from your own customer base or your own audience on LinkedIn. Through email campaigns, there's a lot of ways to do that. Um, so you don't need to rely on third party data or rely on some team to do that.

Sean Weisbrot: Have you heard of Playbook ux?

Kaitlyn Merola: No.

Sean Weisbrot: It's a, I, I interviewed the founder like two or three years ago, and what they do is allow companies to do like, uh, user testing with live product. So that they can get a sense of what the customer actually thinks as they're using it.

Kaitlyn Merola: Mm-hmm.

Sean Weisbrot: So I don't know how deep you go into that, but that could be interesting. Even if you don't use it, it could be interesting for your clients to use.

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah,

Sean Weisbrot: I should get them to sponsor this episode. Have you ever had to fire a client? And if so, what was the decision making behind deciding to let them go?

Kaitlyn Merola: Yes, we have. Um, I have done that a few times. Um, a lot of times it's based on a lack of understanding around our working dynamic. Um, it's being. Disrespectful of our team's time. It's pinging us on Saturdays and Sundays. It's pinging us at midnight. Everything being a fire, um, that needs to be put out immediately. Everything's high priority. That dynamic doesn't work for us. Um, we don't need to put up with that. Mm-hmm. Um, so we don't, so if after. However many attempts to kind of speak to a client about the dynamic and how we need to be working together. What can we do better to make sure that you're understanding how much lead time we need for something, what the delivery process looks like on our end, how our team operates, what more can we provide in terms of transparency and visibility to get you to a place of understanding? And we do that. And we do it again and again and again, and nothing's changing. We have to move on because at that point, the efficiency gains that we're so desperately trying to infuse into the relationship, if that, if that doesn't get us anywhere, then we can't continue on with that client, and we've definitely had that happen a few times.

Sean Weisbrot: This is kind of a side question, thinking about marketing. As I mentioned, I've been thinking about marketing for my podcast and I feel like my audience are your clients. But I don't know how to reach them and get them to be like subscribers, people that binge the content because I feel like I'm speaking to them from my own experience and that they really badly need to listen to what myself and the guests that I have are saying. From a marketer's, uh, from marketer's point of view, how do you think I could best find those people to become the audience and get them to become like fans?

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah, that's definitely, I. Tough. It's getting tougher as we sort of move year to year, especially as like new platforms keep popping up online, like where people are living. Like people spend their time online so differently and that keeps evolving. Um, we have clients even that have tiktoks now, like it's a constant sort of ever changing. World on the internet where people like to spend their time, what they like to listen to, what they like to watch. So it, it's definitely like an ongoing investigation into, okay, it feels like some of our listeners are a part of these LinkedIn groups. It feels like some of our listeners based on X, Y, Z. Maybe it's a survey, maybe it's a poll. You know, ask them for that feedback. They'll tell you, like kind of like, oh, this is where we spend our time. This is what we like, like ask them for that information. And that might help you uncover sort of where they are, what the right call to actions are, what the right carrots are to kind of offer to them to get that in exchange. So it's, it's like a. It's an ongoing effort for sure.

Sean Weisbrot: I'm working with a community, it's a Discord server. They have about 6,000 paying customers, and they're mostly agency owners and e-commerce brand owners, and they also have like a 10,000 person subscriber. It's like a lead, lead newsletter. So they haven't converted into paying members yet. And so I was like thinking, how can I get the podcast in front of their people? Because I also do webinars with them like once every few weeks. And so for me it's like, oh, well, if they can see my podcast and then they see I'm doing events, maybe they'll wanna join the events more. And maybe they'll become subscribers and maybe they'll, uh, you know, for, for the community, maybe they'll convert from this, you know, lead list to a, a member so that they could access me more. Inside of the server because I'm, I'm there and active. Uh, and so I was talking with him, you know, the, the guy that runs it about, you know, who are they, what do they like and all that. And we, we discovered pretty quickly that I have an episode that would be very interesting to them because I interviewed a person who runs a $30 million per year supplement brand in the US and he makes his money a hundred percent from affiliates. So he doesn't put any money into ads. He doesn't have organic. Uh, UGC social and like, he just has people that are running affiliate ads on his behalf and he is like, that's amazing. They would love that. They've probably never even thought of running affiliate programs.

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah,

Sean Weisbrot: so, like you said, doing surveys and all that, I, I talked to the person that knows the people and so was able to pretty quickly uncover. So now I'm thinking, oh, okay, I can, I can write a little blurb, you know, for them to promote this specific episode to this specific list of people and, and see how it goes.

Kaitlyn Merola: Totally. That's awesome.

Sean Weisbrot: How did you get your first client?

Kaitlyn Merola: Um, let's see. It was a lot of cold messaging, a lot of LinkedIn trolling. Um, our first client. Took a meeting with me from a cold message. He was, so I went to Yukon. He, he went to Yukon, so I used that alumni Yeah. Messaging. Um, it was a long shot, but he was like, oh, a fellow Husky. I'll take a meeting. So that was my first meeting. Um, I ended up booking him as a retainer client, which I was. Shocking to me. I was like, wow, I can't believe I just did that. Um, but that was lots of LinkedIn, lots of cold, me, like I'm talking 50 cold messages a day, four months. Um, just to make sure people knew I existed. Um, lots of ping my own network and email newsletter, Hey, this is what's going on at mov, this is what MVE is. MOV is real like just. A lot of that until people started introing me to friends of theirs. People started to say, Hey, my colleague is actually doing this thing on the side. Do you wanna talk to him? Yes. Like, and then it just started to kind of pick up from there.

Sean Weisbrot: Were there ever any times that you wanted to quit at at any point? Oh, not at any point over these years. Not, not just when you're starting.

Kaitlyn Merola: I think there's been a lot of times where I've wanted to like. Change my vision and like, I think the biggest thing that sometimes I've like vacillated on is like, how big do we wanna get? Like how big do I want this to be versus how like small and kind of boutique vibes do I want it to stay? Um, and that I vacillate a lot on. Um, so like my vision will change based on that. I've never actually wanted to. Quit. I've definitely been burned out, tired, stressed, like that is sort of always the current state. Um, but I've never wanted to quit. Just change, I think.

Sean Weisbrot: Are there any specific moments you can remember, uh, in your journey with the business that you felt that burnt out? 'cause I, I have, I have ideas and I, I've kind of talked about them publicly, about the points at which I think. Founders get burned out when running agencies, so I'm curious to hear what your actual kind of experience is.

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah, I think early on I had a hard time with delegating, like seeing good opportunities to delegate things that would have historically been mine. Like, oh, I do that and like just blindly without even thinking, just keep doing it instead of, oh, well I have a team now. I'm hiring and growing and bringing new people in, so the team keeps getting bigger. Yet I still keep doing these things that could easily be delegated to people on the team that are better suited to be doing them, that have the expertise to be doing them. I need to pause, take a step back before I just keep going and going and going. Think about how to bring the team in, how to delegate things accordingly, so then my time can be freed up to do the high value activities like. Pitching, like selling, like looking at our model, understanding our revenue, what does the forecast look like? Those are the things that I should be spending my time on, really working on the business, not working in the business. Um, and so that's been something I have to always kind of keep thinking about as we grow.

Sean Weisbrot: Do you recall about what your monthly revenue was at that time? 'cause So basically the, the, the thinking that I've had is. Founders start to burn out agents, agency owners start to burn out around 20 to 25 KA month because they haven't really hired anyone yet. They may have like a contractor, but mostly they're still doing everything themselves and the demand is higher than their ability to serve. So they start to piss off their customers and they burn out, and they get depressed and pissed off and stress them. And wanna give up or, uh, or they don't. Um, and then they typically fi, I think they find someone, and then maybe like they get to maybe 28, 29, 30, 32, 35, and then they start to maybe have another problem and then realize that maybe they need to hire another person. So, yeah. I'm curious, uh, about what time your revenue was that you've, you felt that, like, that burnout and that need to hire the first person?

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah, so I hired my first person when we were at, right at about 30,000 a month. Um, and then I hired the second person when we got to about 40, so on and so forth. But I think for me, the biggest like moments of burnout that I have felt is like now we have a team of eight, and I think the burnout chapter has been like more prevalent. Now that we have such a larger team, because I feel like I'm trying to manage everybody, coach everybody, be that mentor for everybody, guide them in terms of our values, our mission, what we're here to accomplish, make sure the client delivery is where we need it to be. Standards are met. Client satisfaction's high, that all of that sort of being like the gm. Is a lot while I'm also trying to work on the business pitch, sell, go to events, make sure that we have the right collateral, that de describes what we do. Like making sure that I'm on top of trends and patterns in our space. What, what's going on? How does AI impact us? How do we use ai? Like those are the thing. So for me, it's like the larger the team, almost, the more they need from me. Being there enough for them as it relates to coaching and sort of making sure everybody's on the same page while also trying to do CEO level things at at the same time is where sometimes I feel like I'm coming up short in some of these areas because I'm spread too thin.

Sean Weisbrot: So it sounds like you need to hire an operations manager.

Kaitlyn Merola: Yes. That's our next hire.

Sean Weisbrot: So you already looking for someone I.

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah, we actually have somebody that we are looking to bring on this summer that we've been in talks with. It's such a big role. It's, I've tried to hire into this role before. It has not worked out, um, because I think I still have such a tight grasp on like how I want things done. Our brand, the way we do things, the way we talk about things, the way we pitch ourselves. Like that all needs to be like very much aligned to my vision and if. This person isn't right there with me on the same page. It, it doesn't work. So we have somebody that I'm putting through the paces right now before we bring her in.

Sean Weisbrot: As important it is for your vision to be the thing that shines through. That person also is gonna have their own ideas, and I feel like for them to feel successful in the role and to want to stay with you long term, you are gonna have to. Give up a little bit of control for them to have their own ability to express themselves and kind of add to the vision. How do you feel about that? Totally.

Kaitlyn Merola: Yep. Yeah, for sure. So we have so many different, so like I said, we have a team of eight. Every person on the team brings such a like colorful background and expertise in what they're bringing to the team and. Like delegating, collaborating, having that open dialogue with each person on a team. It does help me to remember that. It's like you guys also have really awesome experiences, um, scenarios that you've been in that are similar to the scenario that the client's in like step forward and. I wanna hear what you have to say. I wanna hear your input. I wanna collaborate with, with you guys. Um, and that makes us all better, including me. So I'm not so much sort of married to my own forward vision, to the point where I'm not able to hear others, especially those on my team that are like, Hey, we should be doing this. Have you thought of this? It's like. That's a great idea. Let's, let's flesh that out and see how we might be able to add that into our service mix. Those kinds of ideas. I'm always open to, and I think this person in particular, this ops manager sort of director person, um, I'm definitely gonna wanna make sure that they feel like they have a voice. They can be vocal with me, they can bring their own experience and expertise to the table so I can kind of. See my way out of client delivery and client satisfaction and sort of working in the business. So it's gonna be a little bit of a dynamic that we'll have to kind of figure out.

Sean Weisbrot: Hmm. So it seems like the idea of a boutique kind of agency is losing out against your, your desire for maybe a slightly larger business. Would you agree with that? Since you're will willing to hire an ops manager?

Kaitlyn Merola: I think so. Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: So what's your ideal size of a company? And it doesn't have to be a headcount. I mean, I, I don't know how you look at it. Either it's a headcount or it's a revenue. Um, 'cause this is something I think about all the time, I think, and I've had a lot of conversations with people who are running, I. Companies and they've never really thought through like why they're doing what they're doing and what they want. Yeah. Yeah. And so like you, I've interviewed people and they're like, yeah, I'm, I'm doing 30 KA month with my, you know, SMMA, my social media marketing agency and like 19, but like, I'm lost. I don't know what I'm doing. It's like, well, why are you doing it? And they're like. Because I wanna escape the matrix basically, right? They, they hear this term from like Andrew Tate, and they're like, yeah, I wanna escape the matrix. And they like get to that point where they quote, unquote, can escape the matrix. They don't need to go to college, they don't need a job. As long as they keep their head on straight and they don't blow the money they're making, they'll be able to make enough sustainably for a long time. But. They don't know what they're doing. They don't know why they're doing it. They don't have a plan for the business, and therefore they don't know where it can possibly go. Uh, right. So, so I always tell them, Hey, like, do you have a number that's gonna make you happy? You know, or do you, do you need 10,000 a month to be happy? Do you need a hundred thousand a month personally, take home after tax to be happy. Like, what are you doing it for? Right? One, one guy I spoke to, he's like, well, I've got three kids. One of them is like a newborn. And I wanna work less so that I can spend more time with my kids. And I was like, great, how much do you need to do that? What's that number that you need to take home in order to be able to feel like you can take time to spend with your family? And he is like, about 30. I'm like, great. So you need about 120,000 a month, 150,000 a month to be able to take 30 K home. And so you're five times smaller than you should be. And he is like. But I'm taking 30 K now. I go, but you don't have time for your family. You just told me you wanna spend time with your fa, with your family, but you also feel like you're not able to spend time with your family. 'cause you're burnt out, busy working on your business. Mm-hmm. So for you to take 30 home and have time for your family, you need a team. And in order to have a team, you need to do over a million dollars a year in revenue. Congratulations. You have a goal. And he is like, uh, you know, I never really thought about that. So I guess long-winded again, have you thought through that and kind of if so, do you have a, a concrete goal?

Kaitlyn Merola: I don't have a concrete goal, so I think for us it's, I don't have like a headcount goal. I don't necessarily have like, oh, when we get to this revenue mark I'll be happy or. I'll have these five things when we hit this revenue mark. So then I'm gonna stop. Like we, I don't have that. Um, what I have is how can we serve as many good fit startup clients with the right sized team of experts? How big can that get? How, how efficient can we be in our tech enablement people business? How can we keep doing that? How big can it get? That's sort of like the question that I'm seeking the answer to. Like, we hit a million, we're on track to do 2 million. It's like, all right, well I don't wanna, that I don't have a goal that's sort of like, oh, well, once we hit three, then I'm good. Then let's just maintain. It's like I, you can't maintain, I wanna see where the limit is. Like maintain. We have tried that honestly, when we hit a million, it was like, let's just do a million for the next five years. So let's just maintain this size and, and this sort of, you can't client. Team mix. I don't, I, my soul like does not operate well when I'm in maintenance mode. I have to be in growth mode. I have to be thinking about what's next. I have to have that sort of north star other, like maintaining what we have is just not who I am. Um, so. It's always kind of like, all right, well the unknown is exciting. How big could this get? What does big mean? Is it a revenue number? Is it a team size? Is it number of clients? What does that look like? I don't know yet, but I think we have the model. It's just scaling it.

Sean Weisbrot: There was a movie that came out a long time ago called Shan Redemption. Not sure if you saw it.

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: There's a line in the movie that says. You either get busy living or you get busy dying, and basically in terms of a company, you're either growing or you're dying. There is no such thing as maintenance.

Kaitlyn Merola: Literally. That's a good way to put it.

Sean Weisbrot: Because your revenue is either going up or it's going down, because if it's staying the same, you're dying.

Kaitlyn Merola: Right, totally.

Sean Weisbrot: Because there has to be some reason why it's not growing and Exactly. Yeah. T typically. The reason why it's not growing is because of the founder.

Kaitlyn Merola: Mm-hmm.

Sean Weisbrot: Which is why you need that general manager. Yeah, for sure. It's time. I have a really close friend and his brother started a A B2B SaaS about 12 or 13 years ago, and they've been grinding their asses off this entire time. Bootstrap, uh, they never raised money. Yep. And it was only after like nine or 10 years that they started to like, grow, like really, really grow. Mm. I mean they, they had been doing over a million dollars a year in revenue for a while, but it wasn't until like this past year that they're gonna surpass five or six. They have like 30 employees, but they, they realize that there's a lot of problems in the business. And I pointed out to them 'cause they tell me the problems that they have. 'cause we've known it for like 25 years and they tell me the problems. And I, every time my answer is like, yeah, the problem is you, I go, you're doing your sales. 'cause they had an issue with like their sales person. So they got rid of the sales, the head of sales, and they took on responsibility of sales. And I said, you gotta get out of sales. Nobody can do it better than me. Yeah. But you're the CEO, you shouldn't be doing sales. Like if you're doing sales, you're at conferences, you're going to hotels, you're talking to. So they do like a hotel. Yeah. Um, backend and front end. So they, they have specific people to talk to. So I'm like, yeah, you know, you have a marketing issue, you have a pro product issue. Those people weren't great at their jobs. You let them go. You took on the responsibility. You are stopping your business. You've gotta get out of it in order for

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: you to be able to do your job. So that, because they have like 30 employees now, so it's really important for them to have specific department heads to focus on those things. Yeah. So it's, it's a lot more than just a, a general management at that point, but, um. Yeah, at this point they're, they've just acquired a company, uh, because some of those clients were also clients of theirs and some of their clients were, were client, were, you know, could use that software. So it was like a synergistic, you know, we can make more money by having our clients use the other soft, uh, system. And those people could use this because I guess it was like a web design agency, so, okay. So it's like, oh, we can design, you know, not only can we provide the software for you, but we can also design your websites and we can hook in our software to your websites so we can make your own. 'cause your website sucks. So we will do it for you and we'll make it a lot better and we'll optimize it so you can convert, you know, people coming in to sell and we'll just make more money from all that. Um, it's a very wise, very interesting, uh, thing. And they told me the whole process of like, the acquisition. It was really fascinating to hear the, the psych, the psychology behind it. I may end up bringing them on, uh, to interview them at some point to talk about these things. Uh, they were actually the first people I went to when I wanted to start the podcast. 'cause they were the only people that I knew that were doing like really well in business at the moment. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, I wanna interview. And they're like, eh, we're not ready to talk about that kind of stuff. But like. I think it's time.

Kaitlyn Merola: That's awesome.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. So just have to convince them. So, so is there anything that I haven't really asked you that you feel would be interesting to talk about or share based on your experience?

Kaitlyn Merola: Um, no. I mean, being an entrepreneur is hard. It's rewarding, but it's hard. Um. I think if you have an idea and you wanna do it, go for it. You can always go backwards, but you can't always go forwards. Um, so I think that's it.

Sean Weisbrot: Can you though, I, I feel like, uh, I had this conversation with my marketing director, my COO years ago, and he said, A startup is this kind of thing, especially in the marketing area, that once you start, you can't really stop. It's like a moving train. The minute you start your marketing activity, you can't really stop unless the money literally runs out. Otherwise you will screw your business. Yeah, and I even, I even have a good friend who runs a startup and he had been running the startup for several years and he was wondering why the company wasn't really growing. Now what they're doing is very niche, so obviously it's difficult to grow in that space, but he. He thought that what they were doing was working until he had someone come in who was like a marketing expert or whatever and helped him realize that like they weren't doing any marketing. He's like, oh, you need to market if you wanna get more customers. He literally, like, nobody had taught him this and he had gone to an accelerator with like a Microsoft sponsored accelerator in, in France, and nobody taught him like how to do marketing for his company because he's a tech guy. So he doesn't understand marketing, so he's like, oh, I'm gonna build this product and people are gonna come. So now they're growing because they're doing marketing, but they struggled for a long time because they weren't.

Kaitlyn Merola: Yep.

Sean Weisbrot: So

Kaitlyn Merola: definitely a momentum.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. What is something really important that you've learned from. This entire process and kind of how have you changed as a result?

Kaitlyn Merola: Yeah, I think I'm definitely more confident in my own decision making. I feel like staying true to myself, staying true to my vision, it takes a lot of. Self-confidence to do that, especially when you have clients and employees and people around you, partners and friends that wanna give you advice. I mean, a lot of people have opinions about what you're doing, um, and you have to really stick to your guns and stay true to what you're setting out to do. And I've kind of learned that I have the confidence to do that, and I'm, I feel really rooted in that now after five years of doing it. I think I have a really good handle on that and sort of what I'm interested in, what I'm not interested in, the ability to say no, um, while also understanding opportunities to say yes, even if it's something you've never done before. I feel really rooted in like kind of who I am and what the decisions are that I'm making. Um, whereas in the beginning I did not feel that, so I feel like that evolution has been really, really nice.

Sean Weisbrot: How would you like to see the company change, and how would you like to see yourself change in the next few years from a result of that growth? I

Kaitlyn Merola: would like to keep growing, as we've mentioned. Um, I'd like to see our team continue to grow. I'd like to personally sort of step back from being in. Client services and sort of being that account manager face for our clients and bring people that are far more, better suited for that, far more experienced in that to do that work. Um, so I can take a step back and really continue to work on the path forward for mode of marketing and, and what I want in terms of its future. Um, so yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: Thank you, Caitlin.

Kaitlyn Merola: Of course. Thank you.

Sean Weisbrot: Thanks for sticking with us to the end of this episode. We know that you're going to like the one that we have next week, and don't forget to click here to watch the next video. We know you're going to love I.