Jolie Shapiro00:02.352
Hey everyone, welcome to Revenue Mind, a podcast where revenue leaders talk about all things mental health. I'm Julie, your host, and with us today is Balaji. Welcome Balaji.
Bolaji00:12.974
Hey, how's it going?
Jolie Shapiro00:14.832
Yeah, yeah, good. Thank you so much for joining. So lots of questions today. Thank you so much for talking to me beforehand. Before we get started, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Bolaji00:26.67
Yeah, so I'm a marketer. I've been in B2B marketing for probably about 15 years, mostly in tech. I've done some entrepreneurial work as well, and I've loved most of the ride. I got into marketing, I suppose, because at the core of it, I enjoy people. I enjoy storytelling. I do have a tech background. I have a computer science undergrad degree. So I was drawn to the tech industry and I think so much about the industry is about solving interesting problems, which appeals to me. I think it appeals a lot of people who find themselves in this space. So there's been a lot to like about tackling marketing in this industry.
Jolie Shapiro01:18.192
Yeah, I love that perspective. And I know that's a lot of what we're going to talk about today. So super cool intro. Thank you so much. So onto the questions. Here's number one. Can you talk about the different pressures and expectations facing marketer? Excuse me. I'm going to retake that. Okay. So now onto the questions. Thank you so much for answering all that. Can you talk about the different pressures and expectations facing marketers in venture backed companies versus those in larger established companies?
Bolaji01:46.478
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So Julie, I've had the opportunity to work. I started out at larger companies. IBM was my very first tech job. And then I worked at a company called Red Hat, an open source startup that they had maybe about a thousand employees when I joined. So maybe a little larger than a lot of startups I subsequently worked at, but I've since worked at companies as small as like 20 employees. And it's been interesting because I found that the venture backed nature of some of these smaller companies lent itself to some unique dynamics at these companies that I wasn't really aware of when I first joined. I found though, and talking to a lot of other marketers that my problems, I thought I was suffering alone. My problems were actually more the norm than one might think. One of the challenges with the venture -backed model, particularly over the last decade or so, is that we've seen the rise of these unicorns, companies like Salesforce and others that have just earned these outsized profits. I mean, selling software generally is a pretty profitable business because a lot of your product, the variable costs on your product are fairly low. It doesn't cost that much to make one more copy of your product. And so profit margins can be high. What this has then attracted though, has been this desire for outsized profits in a short amount of time. And there was a time, maybe a decade or so ago, maybe a decade and a half ago, when companies were, because of the economy, companies were able to achieve some of these returns, not necessarily due to their own merits, partially due to their own merits, but also partially just due to a rising tide raising all ships. As that tide has receded though, the demands on these businesses from the CEOs to the heads of sales and then to the marketing team have remained sky high. It's been the roaring twenties in the minds of a lot of these venture capitalists, but the reality on the ground has not necessarily matched those expectations. And so I'll talk about Salesforce again, Jolie. There was a book published, I think in 2011 called, Predictable Revenue. It was written by Aaron Ross. He was a VP of sales at the time. And he was chronicling Jolie, the business model that allowed Salesforce to sort of systematize their growth. Goodness, it was a sight to behold. Who didn't want to be Salesforce? Who still doesn't want to be Salesforce at this time? A lot of our companies copied this model with the SDRs, sales development representatives, the AEs, account executives. We also, that's more on the sales side, on the marketing side, we adopted the waterfall marketing funnel, which was created by Sirius Decisions, I think in about 2006. This is a lot of industry history, but it's relevant because we're still feeling the echoes of that today. Frameworks are great. when they apply to your specific scenario. Frameworks can be a vice when they don't quite fit the scenario or if they've become outdated. And unfortunately, a lot of the leaders of these startup companies became beholden to some of these frameworks, hoping for those outsized profits. And when those outsized profits didn't come, who was left holding the bucket? Often it was the revenue practitioners, heads of sales, and in particular, leaders of marketing. We've been suffering through that for a number of years right now, and I'm hoping we can unpack that some more.
Jolie Shapiro05:48.56
I completely agree with that and thank you for diving into the marketing history. I actually read predictable revenue as part of my training in the past. The masters I gave myself the past four years in B2B marketing. And I think marketing is very adaptable. We have to be so agile and we really, I completely agree. I think there really can't be, we can't be stuck in our ways. because that's when companies fail. And I've been at VC -backed companies and I went from, like you mentioned, like growth at all costs and now it's efficiency and budgets are getting cut. And that's completely just, people are scared. I think people are scared for their jobs and we already went through pretty much a tough recession. So I really appreciate all that insight that you gave. So it goes into our next question. So.
Bolaji06:35.406
Yes.
Jolie Shapiro06:47.536
What are the unique challenges marketers face in the unpredictable and dynamic environment of a startup?
Bolaji06:55.662
yes, some of the unique challenges. All right, so let's see if we can cycle through a few of them. One of them is, let's talk about this challenge of forecasting. This is one that, you know, naturally all businesses, the nature of business is to try to create profits while serving the customer in as predictable and scalable a fashion as possible. The challenge with that predictability portion is how are you coming up with these? predictions. How are you coming up with these forecasts? Folks might be familiar with the concepts of a top -down forecast versus a bottom -up forecast. So a top -down forecast essentially looks something like this. The company, whether it's the investors or the board or the C -suite, specifically working with the CFO, they decide these are the sort of numbers we need to hit for the upcoming period, whether it's a fiscal year or a quarter. And after they come up with those targets, then they start to work their way down. Okay, if we need to hit this much in revenue, for example, we're gonna need this many customers. To get that many customers, we need this much in pipeline. To get this much in pipeline, we need this much in leads and we need this much marketing and so on and so forth. That's the predictable portion. So all of that is pretty logical to follow. The only challenge is if that doesn't actually match the reality in the marketplace, that even though the story is coherent and it's rational and everybody understands it, the story actually is more of a fairy tale. The opposite of a top -down forecast is a bottoms -up forecast. And a bottoms -up forecast starts from the front lines. It says, let's actually go out there, talk to customers, talk to salespeople, look at what our conversions are looking at from the bottom, look at what demand is looking like. That way, if demand is starting to soften, whether it's because we're not performing as well operationally or the product isn't satisfying customers, or there are macro issues like a recession, we're baking that into the forecast ahead of time. But now we go back to the expectations of the VCs. If you were to do a bottoms up, Jolie, forecast and your ultimate revenue number came, it fell short of what the VCs, what the investors would like to see as their return. What tends to happen is they say, yeah, let's go back and do that forecast again. And so as a head of marketing, I found myself, you know, I'll share for transparency. One job that I was brought into as a fairly young director of marketing, I was asked or tasked with, for X -ing the pipeline, increasing pipeline from year to year by four times. Now I'll share this acronym with you. I learned all this stuff like retroactively after, you know, like suffering through this stuff and, you know, feeling my way through the dark and not knowing what was going on. There's an acronym called T2D3. twice, double, three times. If it sounds like a Terminator, some people might think it is, but here's the idea. There was a really, really brilliant investor. I forget his name right now, but I'll look it up after this call. We can maybe put it in the show notes, Julie. This really brilliant investor, he sort of studied a lot of companies that had reached unicorn status. They had reached, I think it's a hundred million dollars ARR and their valuation. was a billion dollars, which is known as a unicorn. And so he came up with this simple formula for how to get your company to a hundred million dollars ARR and therefore be valued at a billion dollars, 10 years worth of revenue. And it was basically, you know, you start, I forget maybe the first year is you're making a million dollars ARR. Don't quote me on that detail, but you basically triple your revenue three, twice, and then you double it three times and you get to a hundred million. So it's probably not starting at. 1 million, but we can figure out the specific numbers later. The idea at this company then that I worked at Jolie, think about that. The very best companies in the world, best performing companies in the world, these unicorns had been able to triple their revenue twice and then double three times. What was I tasked with? No, they didn't just want a triple pipeline. They wanted to quadruple. They were like, this will really blow the socks off the investors. If we 4X, And so I remember being asked in the final interview a couple of times by the CMO. All right. Now you're sure now you're sure you can Forex this pipeline. That should have been a red flag for me. but I was excited about the company. I was excited about, the leadership. They were doing some pretty cool things. And I figured consider I wasn't at the company when they came up with the forecast, but I figured they already had this forecast prior to me getting there. Surely they had followed a diligent. logical process and coming up with this forecast. So if they came up with this Forex target, that must be realistic. And I knew, Hey, I'm a very competent first principles marketer. I do what's right for the customer. I do what's right for the business. If you do that long enough, you know, you're not going to be perfect the first time necessarily, but you do that long enough. Things work out for you. I was like, yes, let's go for it. Let's go. I'm ready. You guys know how the story ends. I did not for X the pipeline because very few people, very few companies can for X the pipeline, but that's one of those traps. And this is just around this concept of four top down forecasts. And so I found, and I think a lot of marketers definitely need to make sure they're part of the forecasting process. If they don't have that luxury, they need to be able to have someone. walk them through the forecast and they really need to push back on, there's gonna be a bunch of assumptions in the forecast. You really have to push back on those because if you're not comfortable with the assumptions, those are all red flags that if things don't work out, they're all gonna be laid at your feet.
Jolie Shapiro13:26.8
I completely agree. And were there any impacts on your mental health during that time? I guess that's probably an obvious question, but I thought I'd ask.
Bolaji13:32.174
Hahaha! No, it's a really good question because it helps me to elaborate on it. The first maybe three months were sort of the honeymoon period. I came in, I was learning the business, I was meeting people, establishing relationships, great relationships with my counterparts in sales, product marketing. I mean, it was great. I was implementing all of my ideas. Now, here's the thing, those of us who practice marketing know that marketing is not magic. You don't sprinkle on a little bit of marketing at the end and then poof, you know, things, things just work out. Marketing ideally is baked in fairly close to the beginning. I don't mean necessarily burdening your marketing organization with coming up with the strategy, right? That's something else I actually found myself doing. Like retroactively trying to figure out what is the strategy here? Could we all just sit down and talk about this? marketing could have a seat at the table when coming up with the strategy, but ideally the company has come up with a coherent strategy. Now marketing is brought in to figure out what sort of marketing, marketing specific strategy to implement in order to meet the business objectives. after that three month honeymoon period, after that first quarter, right. the quarterly goals, quarterly metrics, obviously we didn't hit our first quarter metrics. And then slowly the pressure started to be applied. And Jolie, I've recently been watching the Twilight Zone. You know, there's the old school Twilight Zone and then there's a new version by Jordan Peele. I think it's on Amazon Prime. It's a great watch. It started to feel like the Twilight Zone, Jolie. It started to feel like a situation where like either I'm losing my mind or everybody around here. Like this is surreal. Like, is this really happening? Every day I was waking up with anxiety. Every day I was talking to fellow marketers who reported to me, I managed a team of 10 people. They were freaking out. They were feeling a lot of pressure. Even some of my counterparts outside of marketing thought our goals were unrealistic, but they silently sympathized because they were afraid for their jobs as well. It impacted my home life. It impacted my, yes, my mental health, my physical health. It took a toll. And it actually the toll remained probably for months after I left that job. It was completely miserable.
Jolie Shapiro16:10.0
Wow, thank you so much for sharing that. What did you, excuse me, let me retry that. Thank you so much for sharing that. Was there anything during that time period that helped you handle that super high pressure environment before you left?
Bolaji16:28.526
Yeah, you know, it's interesting, you know how they say misery loves company. And on the one hand, that can be taken in a negative way in terms of miserable people trying to pull other people down. On the other hand, it's been said that a group of people actually bond a lot better when they go through trauma together versus, you know, if they just have like a kumbaya experience. So a lot of us on that marketing team saw the writing on the wall. We saw the rearranging of the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. You know, a lot of times when you're in those situations, it's almost like a drowning person. You're floundering, just trying to do something, anything to change your state. But the more you flounder, the more you sink. And a lot of us could, we could feel the sinking sensation. A lot of us marketers, and we would talk to each other after hours. We would commiserate. A couple who'd been through this sort of situation before, they said, you know what, I think this is gonna happen, then this is gonna happen, then that's gonna happen, there's gonna be a scapegoat and so on and so forth. It was my first time going through a Jolie and I'm wired to be an optimist. So I chose not to believe that things, although bad, could get as bad as some of my colleagues were projecting. And yet we supported each other. through a lot of that trauma. But eventually things started to play out. People started to get laid off. I got laid off. When I was laid off, I was essentially blamed for all of the marketing shortcomings and as such the company not hitting its revenue targets. And you know what? I was young enough as a marketing leader that I kind of believed them. There was almost sort of a gaslighting situation. I mean, I'm being kind. It really specifically was gaslighting as unfortunately a case was built against me in order to be able to eventually let me go. And again, it felt really surreal when it was happening. People around me saw it happening and you know, they commiserated, but they took three steps back. Like, Hey, I'm sorry for you, but I'm not taking the fall with you. I saw it happening. It was like a slow motion car crash. And because it was slow motion, I thought, no, surely by doing this or by doing that, it's not going to happen. It still eventually did happen. And it was devastating, completely devastating. It did a number on my ego. It did a number on my self -esteem, on my belief. Like I started to believe them, like maybe, maybe they're right. But in retrospect, and after talking to so many, I'm talking about scores of marketers who've been through similar situations. you start to realize there's a pattern here. And it's not necessarily the fault of the people who pulled the trigger. They were in survival mode themselves. There is a systematic dynamic at some of these companies that is very difficult to change from the inside. And ultimately I determined it's better to just avoid environments like that than to go in there and say, no, this time I'm going to save them. This time I'm going to turn this ship around. Sometimes the Titanic is just going to be the Titanic. You need to decide whether you want to buy a ticket on that particular ship.
Jolie Shapiro20:02.96
I completely agree with that and some things that we've talked about on podcasts with, just gonna try again. I completely agree with that and some things that I've talked about with other people on podcasts is the power of human connection and that commiseration that you're speaking to is very powerful. But there's a fine line because people have a survival instinct where they also wanna save themselves. So I've been in also very high pressure environments.
Bolaji20:26.606
Yes. Yes.
Jolie Shapiro20:33.136
where you're thrown under the bus, you're title -tilled on, I mean it's just abusive bosses and I'm really happy you got out of there because that sounds like a very toxic environment.
Bolaji20:50.381
Yeah. You know, I've heard the term toxic environment, toxic workplace a lot. And these sorts of things can feel theoretical or academic until, until you're affected. And that is not theory anymore. Then it's very, very real. Yeah. It's, it's very real. No, you're good. And you almost start to wonder like, how did, this is the type of stuff that happens to other people. This isn't supposed to happen to me.
Jolie Shapiro21:03.856
Yeah, until it's real. That's why I'm gonna cut you out there.
Bolaji21:18.798
but sometimes it does happen to you and I wouldn't wish it on anyone at all. But it's a reality. So the funny thing about, we've talked Jolie before about things like burnout, you know, terms like mental health, burnout, they're really, really important. After we get burned out, it like, it could take you three months to get burned out and then it could take you a year to recover. I've always been a very creative marketer, always been a problem solver, a futurist. I love solving, working on interesting problems. You know, I wake up in the morning and I'm thinking of like challenging problems and I can approach it this way or that way. You know, I come to work enthusiastic. You know, I've got enthusiasm for everybody around me. And I found during that period that I would wake up and I would wake up with the sense of dread. I'd wake up with. high, high levels of anxiety that manifested themselves in me physically. I'd wake up not wanting to open my email or open my laptop and finding ways to procrastinate just because I didn't even know necessarily that something bad was waiting for me, but there was this defense mechanism that was trying to prepare me for the worst because so often I got sucker punched when I wasn't expecting the worst. And that's just no way for one to go through a career. It's not. We should not accept that as the norm. We are too talented. We're too educated. We've put too much work into being ready for these careers to simply accept being cannon fodder, to simply accept being, you know, downtrodden by the latest manager who's trying to save his or her own job. That's not a career. That's not what I got into marketing for. And so eventually I had to choose myself over the fancy job title, over the status, the prestige, the attractive salary. I had to choose my own self and my own health over those things.
Jolie Shapiro23:39.952
That makes a lot of sense. And that actually brings me to a question I wanted to ask you. There is a big trend about marketers becoming fractional CMOs, which I know is your bread and butter. Can you explain what that means and what it might mean for the industry?
Bolaji23:58.19
Yeah, so I'm not an expert on the topic and I hesitate to speak on anyone else's reason for becoming a fractional marketer or their experience for that matter. There's going to be a wide range of reasons and a wide range of experiences. I'll simply comment as an observer of the industry overall. So I think I remember seeing a coworker maybe like, five, six years ago, list themselves as a fractional CMO. And I had no idea what that was. I'd never heard of it before. Now it's much more commonplace. And I think a lot of people who are choosing that path have become disillusioned with the politics, with the, sometimes the rigidity, the unrealistic demands that are placed upon marketing professionals in a lot of these organizations. And one of the things that drove me crazy as an in -house marketer and drives a lot of marketers crazy is almost this democratization of marketing. And that sounds like a good thing, but let me, let me dissect what I'm referring to there. You rarely will have a meeting, a workplace meeting where the CFO gives a report, gives their analysis. And then the rest of the members in the meeting from different departments. start to weigh in with their opinions as if they have equal credence to the CFO on financial matters. Of course, if the CFO gives a report, everybody should ask questions. Everybody should express their opinion, recognizing if they're not, if they weren't trained as an accountant, as a financial advisor or manager, there's only a certain level to which their feedback or their opinions rather, can hold water. Marketing is different. Everybody's got an opinion on marketing because I suppose because we all consume marketing, we all watch ads, we all buy products, we all have brand experiences. And so people tend to feel very comfortable saying, yeah, I hear your opinion on that, Jolie. I think marketing should do this other thing. And it almost devalues or negates all of the education that us marketers have. put into our careers. That's one thing that might be pushing marketers out of corporate and off to become freelancers, consultants, and sort of fractional advisors. Another thing that could be pushing them out is, you know, I talked about the forecasts. I think as a fractional marketer, you can come in, you can work on very specific problems, and you maybe have a little more control over having to accept unrealistic goals, unrealistic guidelines. It's a lot easier to walk away when you're a fractional marketer, because if a particular client has been unrealistic, ideally they're not a hundred percent of your clientele. You could walk away and still have income coming in. When you're working in -house, if you have a CEO, a CFO, a head of sales or a board of directors who are making unrealistic demands, like, Hey, it doesn't look like we're a we're going to hit our pipeline number for the quarter. We need you to do X, Y, Z in the next two weeks. I mean, realistically, anyone who knows marketing knows marketing doesn't work in two weeks. Marketing works, but it needs a little bit longer to cook. So marketers end up becoming sales enablement or flat out sales. There's nothing we need sales by the way. So let's not devalue sales at all or pit marketing and sales against each other. They, have complimentary roles, but just like we would not go to sales and say, hey, we're having a marketing emergency, drop everything, I need you guys to all come do marketing. Neither should we say, hey, we're having a sales emergency, marketers, drop everything, we need you guys to come do sales. The reason we shouldn't do that is because, let's say we were to do that once in a blue moon. I mean, sales is the lifeline of every business. You do that once in a blue moon, okay, we needed to do that to survive. But when that becomes an every quarter emergency and every quarter fire drill at that point, you might as well be a salesperson. And what's most important is that the marketing work is not getting done. So these are some of the dynamics that have pushed people to become fractional. Having said that there's almost a downside to it industry -wide, because a lot of CEOs are starting to think that marketing is B it's like the fiber. of marketing where they're thinking, I could just slice and dice all of these marketing elements and tactics, piecemeal this one out to that person, piecemeal this one out to the other person. You know, I'm giving the work to the lowest bidder, but then none of it comes together in a coherent strategy. It doesn't come together in a coherent whole. You need one marketing leader architecting a vision for the brand. And that needs to be done in conjunction with sales, finance, the CEO and so on. But once everybody agrees with that vision, then you allow that marketing leader with their team to execute that single vision. It's getting harder and harder to find CMOs who have that level of trust from their superiors and their colleagues today.
Jolie Shapiro29:41.072
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much for expanding on that. I know that it might not necessarily be your forte, but you definitely have a lot of insight. So thank you. So something stuck out to me that you said. Now I'm forgetting what it was. Hold on. This is what descriptors for cuts out all my crap, cuts out all my crap. my God. Love to describe. Descript is like the shit. I love to scripts. Something you stuck out to me. What was it?
Bolaji29:58.942
The script is the best.
Jolie Shapiro30:10.544
Okay, yeah. Okay. So something stuck out that you said that brings me to a thought. No, let me say it. Okay. Something so I will get this. I promise. Okay. Give me a second. All right. Thank you so much for sharing again. Something that stuck out to me, especially you talking about you being laid off with unrealistic goals.
Bolaji30:18.094
Mm. You got it.
Jolie Shapiro30:40.048
How did that affect your mental health and confidence and how did you bounce back?
Bolaji30:45.998
the bounce back, yeah. So it's interesting because a lot of times this concept of self -confidence, it's almost like a stool that needs legs to stand on. Otherwise it's maybe just narcissism or, you know, imagination. I could be, I could have the wake up and say, have the confidence to run Apple, the company tomorrow. and hey, great, good for you. You know, probably my mom would be the only one to believe that. I wouldn't have any evidence upon which to sort of hold up that belief. So it would crumble very quickly. So a lot of us tend to have our self -confidence and the belief in ourselves based on not only our personality, our character, but things that our personality and our character and our work ethic have allowed us to do over the years. We've iteratively built... level by level, step by step, brick by brick, the things that make us us. So having self -confidence is great. Having self -esteem is wonderful. What can tend to happen though, when you find yourself in an environment that continuously tells you that the things you believe about yourself are not true, is that bricks can start to be taken out of that wall. And it doesn't happen overnight, but it happens one piece at a time surreptitiously. You almost don't notice it one piece at a time. You get second guests. the goal is unrealistic, but you strive to achieve it anyway, because you're a go getter. You miss instead of being credited for your attempt. You get torn down, you get ridiculed, you get put on a performance plan and so on and so forth. You don't get invited into the inner circles where decisions are being made. All these things start to pull bricks out of the wall, start to pull bricks out of the wall. The longer that we work in environments that, where we're merely tolerated and a lot of marketers are merely tolerated today. The longer we work in those environments, the more bricks get taken out of our wall to the point where you might eventually move on to a better situation. But then the wall that maybe was 10 stories high is now six stories high. And you have to start building that up all over again to the point where things that you used to be able to accomplish, things that you confidently could stand up and say, yes, I can do this all day. Might start to feel like you claiming you could run Apple, the company. They might start to feel out of reach. They might start to feel like who are you to aspire to that? Who are you to claim that you can actually do that? Where's the proof? I mean, the proof is there. I was, I was listening to a podcast just yesterday, Julie. And it talked about a concept a lot of us probably know, but maybe don't practice. And it's almost having this, you could call it a love folder or a brag wall. It's saving every time someone gives you positive feedback. Every time you accomplish something great, taking that screenshot, saving it in a folder, because on days like this and jobs like this at times like this, you need to look back there to remind you, I still got those bricks. You need to pull those bricks. and put them back on the wall because you earned them and nobody has the right to take them from you. So after I left that toxic environment, it took me a long while, longer than I expected, Jolee, to remember that even though those bricks were not in the wall anymore, I still had those bricks. And I painstakingly installed them back onto the wall. But this time, after I built the wall back up, I made sure I wasn't angling. to find myself back in those types of places that would simply just tear me down all over again.
Jolie Shapiro34:45.04
Yeah, that's a really good point. I think that the confidence piece and believing in yourself is really important. And that's a great advice. I might actually start doing that saving positive feedback because on your days where you feel like you're downtrodden, you can't do it, you look at that and you get lit up, actually have... Something I probably should do is look at my LinkedIn recommendations. And I feel like that's something a lot of people should probably do is that you just sparked that thought. So thank you. cause we all get such positive feedback and we forget how valuable we are on our down days. So I think just screenshotting, screenshotting, positive feedback or looking at LinkedIn or just kind of reflecting on how far we've come, I think is all really imperative for mental health.
Bolaji35:18.99
Mmm. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Jolie Shapiro35:43.824
So thank you. So pivoting a little bit, there's something we talked about in our previous call about needles in the straw. So how does this pressure affect mental well -being?
Bolaji35:52.91
Mmm. Yeah, yeah, this is a funny one. So back in the day, I've got I've got two kids who are teenagers right now. When they were younger, I used to write children's books. So I've always enjoyed fairy tales, allegory, you know, just the value of being able to tell stories, but find lessons in them, fables and whatnot. And it's sort of a tradition from the culture that I come from Nigerian culture, a lot of life lessons were passed along from generation to generation through stories. And so when I was going through one of these dark periods, I thought about the story of Rumpelstiltskin and how he could turn straw to gold. And it sort of struck me that that's not that different from what marketing at times is being asked to do. So consider the very nature of marketing, Jolie. Consider that at any given time, Given our target market, people for whom they're qualified to buy our product, our products that help them, only maybe 3 % of them are actively in market, in a buying cycle, looking for something. And the number will vary, but the idea is that the number is pretty darn low, maybe 1 to 3%. Okay. And so revenue teams, marketers and sales, we're asked to go find that needle in a haystack, go find that one to 3 % of people who are actually able and ready to buy a product. And then, you know, let's convince them that our product is the best solution for them. But that's not the only challenge. We're not only looking for a needle in a haystack, we're being asked to turn the hay in the haystack into needles in that marketers are being asked to turn that 97 % of people who are not in a buying cycle today. They may not have the budget, they may not have the authority, they may not have a need or a timeline. our execs don't care. They're like, sell to everyone, market to everyone, convince them through your golden tongue, convince them through copywriting and beautiful images and sending them, you know, ABM gifts and whatnot, change their mind, convince them that they should be in market right now. It almost never works that way. And yet we're sitting there every day trying to convert straw into gold. We're trying to create these golden needles in the haystack and it just doesn't work. That's not how marketing works. That's not how human psychology works. That's not how business buying works. Instead, we should be trying to sell to the one to 3%, yes, working with our sales counterparts, but for the remaining 97%, we should still maintain a relationship with them, educate them on the problem, evangelize the problem. This is something that I really... stick it on a soapbox for. Why don't you evangelize the problem, talk to the customer to the point where you understand their pain so well, you're describing it back to them in ways that feel like mind reading. Become the champion of giving their problem words, bringing their problem to life. Because when people can name something, they can sort of wrap their arms around it a little bit better. They can feel more control over it. You know, when you think about Nike, just do it. Rarely are we obsessing about the actual sneakers. We're obsessing about this idea of everything being against you. And despite that, still you rise. Despite that, still you go out and run. Despite that, still you take on the challenge. That's what the Nike brand is. It's not shoes. It's not a swoosh. That's what marketing is to me, evangelizing the problem. But too many B2B marketers are not given the... the permission to do marketing instead were asked to be Rumpelstiltskin.
Jolie Shapiro40:06.96
That was an amazing analogy. I was just nodding the entire time. Yeah, I think that we're tasked a lot of times to do the impossible, but I love your perspective. So, let me try this again. Hold on. I'm trying to think of the angle to pivot. Let's see. So.
Bolaji40:32.494
Mmm.
Jolie Shapiro40:38.736
Okay, so pivoting a little bit before we find out where to find you. Could you discuss your experiences with product market fit and how it has influenced your job satisfaction and mental well -being?
Bolaji40:55.662
Product market fit, PMF. Let me tell you, PMF is a four -letter word. Yes, I know it has three letters, but it's a four -letter word. Bear with me here. All right, so what is this idea of product market fit? This is something that I sort of learned on the job as well. And I think I learned it specifically when I found myself at companies that did not have product market fit. There are a couple of really good articles out on the internet. I'll share the links with you, Jolie. Maybe you could include them in the show notes. One is by Mark Andreessen. The other one is written by somebody else, but it's also on A16Z, which is his venture capital firm. So they talk a lot about product market fit. So here's some of the things that they talk about. So Mark Andreessen says, when you're before product market fit, if you don't have it yet, everything you do at the company should focus obsessively on getting to product market fit. And they go on. to say that the number one problem that they see for startups is that they don't actually have product market fit when they think they do. That's the key part, when they think they do. So what might it look like, first of all? Let's paint the picture. What might it look like if a company actually does have product market fit? So if a company has product market fit, customers are actually getting value from the product, word of mouth is spreading, press reviews are great, sales cycles are short, deals are closing. You almost could, you'll actually see some companies like this where they're doing a really good amount of business without even having a marketing department. All right, there's some startups that do that. That's what product market fit looks like. That's when customers are telling you, shut up and take my money. that product market fit. A lot of companies, I remember after that really toxic experience that I described, I moved on to the next company. And one of the questions, and that company, by the way, I think it might've had product market fit at one point, but then COVID happened and it no longer had product market fit. So when you find yourself, I'll tell you what happened at the next chapter. after that company in second. But when you find yourself at a company with no product market fit, there is no amount of great marketing that you can do that will allow you to sell that product. Right? If you have a great team, you have great marketing and a lousy product, you're not going to be able to succeed. If you have lousy marketing and a great product, there's a very good chance you're still going to succeed anyway. That's just historically what's happened. And so having product market fit is way more important than any marketing strategy, any marketing tactic. I moved on to another company after that last experience. And one of my big questions was to the CEO, do you think this company, your company has product market fit? Well, what do you think a CEO, especially in an interview is going to say? How is he going to answer that question? Why yes, of course. We do have product market fit. And I was like, all right, sounds good to me. You know, where do I sign? Let's go. They didn't have product market fit. They were nowhere close to having product market fit. And so what does that mean for a marketer? It means that your best laid plans are probably not going to work. You could build awareness. You could create a brand that people even have affinity for. But if that product is not solving an urgent problem for a large group of people, who have the abilities to pay for it. you're left with not much of anything. And so I think product market fit needs to be one of those flags that marketers look for. And that honestly, as an industry, we need a better way of objectively assessing when a company has product market fit and when it doesn't. Simply claiming it isn't enough.
Jolie Shapiro45:17.744
I completely agree. And I think that when you don't have product market fit, it can really impact how you feel about yourself because you're being set up to fail, essentially.
Bolaji45:27.79
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jolie Shapiro45:30.512
Well, this was great. Where can we find you? Also put in the show notes too, but we'll have to hear from you.
Bolaji45:34.606
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you, Jolie. This has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate the tenor and the focus of the conversations that you're driving. We need more of this, Jolie, in the industry. I do think there's probably a silent mental health crisis that's been going on over these past few years for revenue professionals and specifically for marketers, because I'm a marketer and I can speak to that. You're creating a safe space for people to learn, to listen, and just to empathize. So thank you for that. Probably the best place to find me is on LinkedIn, Jolie. You can sort of see all the projects that I'm doing on there. I'm working on a couple of cool projects. One is called Demand Wars, which is sort of a survivor meets hunger games for B2B marketing. It's a lot of fun, but there's a lot of marketers who are trying to figure out what's next. in B2B marketing, a lot of what we've been doing doesn't work as well as it used to. What does the next chapter look like? And so a lot of the work that I'm passionate about is helping marketers explore those types of questions. I might not have the answers. I probably don't have the answers, but I'm getting to ask really interesting people the right questions and maybe together we can figure it out.
Jolie Shapiro47:01.552
That's awesome. And I've seen Demand Wars. It's so cool. I love what you're building there. Well, thank you so much, Balaji. This has been great. And we'll connect on LinkedIn.
Bolaji47:12.686
Thanks, Jolie. I had a lot of fun. See you later.
Jolie Shapiro47:14.672
Thanks. Yeah, you too.