You Should Talk To

Kacie Jenkins, SVP of Marketing at Sendoso -- Who Doesn't Love a Thoughtful Gift?

February 16, 2024 YouShouldTalkTo // Sendoso Season 1 Episode 37
Kacie Jenkins, SVP of Marketing at Sendoso -- Who Doesn't Love a Thoughtful Gift?
You Should Talk To
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You Should Talk To
Kacie Jenkins, SVP of Marketing at Sendoso -- Who Doesn't Love a Thoughtful Gift?
Feb 16, 2024 Season 1 Episode 37
YouShouldTalkTo // Sendoso

In this episode of YouShouldTalkTo, Daniel Weiner sits down with Kacie Jenkins, the SVP of Marketing at Sendoso. Jenkins shares her unique insights on marketing for an AI-based company and how to manage all the different moving parts. She shares a particularly traumatic story of working with an agency that was way in over their heads and resulted in the company’s website crashing right in the middle of a product launch. 

While it was a traumatizing experience, Jenkins says that the event pointed out specific red flags within the agency that she can look for in the future. Because of the previous agency’s failure, she was recommended a much better fit for the project. The newer agency had much better communication skills and she was able to connect with the team on a human level, rather than the cold, reserved communication she was getting from the previous agency. Jenkins says that the more human approach translates well in start-up spaces while making the client jump through hoops to communicate their needs does not. 

Kacie also recognizes how much pressure can be put on herself and her team. Working in the marketing industry can feel like a bunch of adrenaline rushes, which is very exciting. But it’s also important that everyone on the team has a chance to recharge their batteries. She talks about how she monitors her team to ensure no one burns out. Which can include spa days and gifting! 

Kacie is looking forward to the marketing industry as a whole focusing on a more personal connection with their customers. She wants to see more creativity and risk-taking, rather than focusing on meeting short-term goals as fast as possible. Jenkins believes that AI will help companies make more personal connections and that Sendoso is working in the right direction.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the more human side of being an SVP in Marketing, and what it takes to be a leader in the startup world.  


Guest-at-a-Glance
💡 Name: Kacie Jenkins, SVP Marketing at Sendoso

💡Noteworthy: Kacie emphasized the importance of self-care within your leadership strategy and making sure no one on your team burns out. 

💡 Where to find them: LinkedIn


Key Insights

MIA: Hired Agency Goes Missing When Website Crashes

Kacie Jenkins, SVP of Marketing at Sendoso, tells us how everything went wrong during a product launch as she recounts a negative agency experience. In hindsight, she could recall some red flags that she thought could be a problem down the line. However, she never expected the agency’s entire team to go missing when they caused a website crash in the middle of a launch. It took hours for Kacie to communicate with someone on the team, and even then it was clear they were way in over their heads.

Embracing the Shift Toward Human-Centric Marketing

Kacie says she’s excited for the resurgence of personalized marketing. She mentioned that marketers want to shift towards more personal, thoughtful, and useful approaches. The two emphasize the shifting focus toward creating meaningful connections with their audiences. She’s also looking forward to seeing brands embracing creativity and experimentation, and moving away from a strict focus on short-term goals. 

Show Notes Transcript

In this episode of YouShouldTalkTo, Daniel Weiner sits down with Kacie Jenkins, the SVP of Marketing at Sendoso. Jenkins shares her unique insights on marketing for an AI-based company and how to manage all the different moving parts. She shares a particularly traumatic story of working with an agency that was way in over their heads and resulted in the company’s website crashing right in the middle of a product launch. 

While it was a traumatizing experience, Jenkins says that the event pointed out specific red flags within the agency that she can look for in the future. Because of the previous agency’s failure, she was recommended a much better fit for the project. The newer agency had much better communication skills and she was able to connect with the team on a human level, rather than the cold, reserved communication she was getting from the previous agency. Jenkins says that the more human approach translates well in start-up spaces while making the client jump through hoops to communicate their needs does not. 

Kacie also recognizes how much pressure can be put on herself and her team. Working in the marketing industry can feel like a bunch of adrenaline rushes, which is very exciting. But it’s also important that everyone on the team has a chance to recharge their batteries. She talks about how she monitors her team to ensure no one burns out. Which can include spa days and gifting! 

Kacie is looking forward to the marketing industry as a whole focusing on a more personal connection with their customers. She wants to see more creativity and risk-taking, rather than focusing on meeting short-term goals as fast as possible. Jenkins believes that AI will help companies make more personal connections and that Sendoso is working in the right direction.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the more human side of being an SVP in Marketing, and what it takes to be a leader in the startup world.  


Guest-at-a-Glance
💡 Name: Kacie Jenkins, SVP Marketing at Sendoso

💡Noteworthy: Kacie emphasized the importance of self-care within your leadership strategy and making sure no one on your team burns out. 

💡 Where to find them: LinkedIn


Key Insights

MIA: Hired Agency Goes Missing When Website Crashes

Kacie Jenkins, SVP of Marketing at Sendoso, tells us how everything went wrong during a product launch as she recounts a negative agency experience. In hindsight, she could recall some red flags that she thought could be a problem down the line. However, she never expected the agency’s entire team to go missing when they caused a website crash in the middle of a launch. It took hours for Kacie to communicate with someone on the team, and even then it was clear they were way in over their heads.

Embracing the Shift Toward Human-Centric Marketing

Kacie says she’s excited for the resurgence of personalized marketing. She mentioned that marketers want to shift towards more personal, thoughtful, and useful approaches. The two emphasize the shifting focus toward creating meaningful connections with their audiences. She’s also looking forward to seeing brands embracing creativity and experimentation, and moving away from a strict focus on short-term goals. 

 Kacie Jenkins, SVP Marketing at Sendoso on Who Doesn't Love a Thoughtful Gift?

Daniel: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the, You Should Talk To Podcast. Our first one of 2024, this podcast is currently brought to you by myself and you should talk to, you should talk to pairs, brands, and marketers for free with vetted agencies and or freelancers because finding great agencies is a pain.

It takes a lot of time as well. I am super excited today to be joined by Casey Jenkins, who is SVP of marketing at Sendoso. Casey, how are we? 

Kacie: Doing very well, 

Daniel: Daniel. Thanks for having me. You told me before we started recording that you're dealing with quite the weather issues. So if, if that takes over and this is your final podcast, this will be your farewell to, to the world.

So hopefully that doesn't happen. I'll try not to blow 

Kacie: away while we're talking. 

Daniel: That is good. Well, let's jump right in. What is an unpopular opinion or a hot take of sorts that you have in the marketing world in general? 

Kacie: I think my current beliefs around AI may be a hot take, not sure, what we do at Sendozo is, help folks create authentic moments of connection between each other.

And I am currently, of the belief that that can be done in a nonmanual, fully handcrafted way, I think. That there are great AI-enhanced ways to forge authentic connections between humans. a lot of people on LinkedIn I've seen, you know, talking about how AI erodes the connection between people. And I think there are certainly ways that you can use.

that actually do degrade, human connection. But I, I think, if you're strategic and thoughtful about how you're interacting with other folks, there are a lot of ways that you can use AI and automation that actually improve the way that you connect with, with another person. 

Daniel: What's, what's like one great example of that.

If you can think of one off the top of your head. 

Kacie: Um, so what we're doing right now is, using every tool at our disposal to kind of test this and, also building it into our product. and I don't want to get too sendo so we here, but, one of the, one of the ways we are doing this is 

Daniel: you can get, you can sendo so we.

You can get a little bit of SEO here. 

Kacie: All right. All right. Um, so we are, building this into our product so that if I wanted to send something to, you, Daniel, I would be able to, instead of doing all of the work myself manually and going around and hunting and, you're trying to figure out what you like and comments you've left.

We've actually built it in so that I can kind of partner with the AI so that you know, I know I wanna send to you and I may know why it's your birthday, it's your anniversary, it's something. and it will actually do some of that hunting for me. Pull together all of the information it can find based on anything you've done on the internet.

Internet, and anything that's available. And it will actually suggest things that might make sense for you based on. You know, you like tennis, you like bicycles, you like whatever. you have nine cats, I don't know. I need to do my homework 

Daniel: better. You've got my entire background behind you, so. Nailed it.

I'm like, oh my god, this is amazing, how did you know that? How did you know? 

Kacie: yeah, so we'll do that and it'll actually craft a message for you, based on the gift and the situation. That you can then edit, right? if you want and tweak. So it'll just save you some of that time without fully replacing the human.

and then you can do that at massive scale. So we're doing this with Programmatic Outbound where we're looking at thousands and thousands of target accounts. And we're trying to figure out how to automatically personalize the outreach to each of those people based on where they are in the world. How many cats they have and, you know, what's important to them.

And, it's actually working better than I ever expected. I bet against this, thinking that it would not work well in the beginning of our experiment. And we're getting fan mail, in a lot of cases saying this is the best outbound I've ever received. 

Daniel: It's interesting. I can make it even easier for you.

You don't even need AI, like really bougie travel and food. So, high end. Yeah. So, you don't even need AI to, to buy me a gift, but no, it's, it is truly amazing. I, am big into gifting that does not scale, I would say. As a solopreneur, it is hard to scale anything as one person. But no, that's super interesting.

It kind of leads into the next thing. I was going to ask you about Sendoso here, but you've been B2C. You've been both and B2B as well, I would say. can you tell us a little bit about that journey and what I'm really interested in for folks who've been on B2C and B2B? One of my hot takes is it's all kind of the same.

I don't think B2B and B2C is like the world's most different types of marketing. So I'm interested to hear about your experience with. Both, and if you have any insight into, if there are crazy differences in consumer behavior on both sides. 

Kacie: That's a really good question. I, I'd say I agree with you.

I don't think we're all people, just humans, right? I think B2B has suffered from trying to treat people, in a less personal and human way for a long time. we sort of got into these grooves of like crappy white papers and, you know, very heavily product focused. It's formal, language and boring, generic, and often cases like, you know, we're looking at, big swaths of people and trying to treat them all as the same, because we have the same title or, you know, the, they're the same type of buyer, or, you know, we're just reducing everyone to an, an ICP, or ideal customer profile.

I have worked across, Consumer tech. So I worked at Roku. I worked in hospitality for a really large hospitality group where we ran hotels and restaurants and bars. and I've also worked in sort of deep tech, marketing to developers who are building the entire and supporting the entire Internet.

and. There's not that much difference, honestly, there's difference in the way that people want to be, interacted with online. Developers who are building the internet are very busy. They don't like to feel marketed to, but Do you like to feel marketed to Daniel? Like, I don't, I don't like to feel like someone's trying to manipulate or sell me on something.

so I think, you know, my take on that would be B2B is sort of catching up, to consumer marketing and we're learning from. the idea that it can be entertaining, as well as informative and valuable and educational. It doesn't have to be bland and boring. and we're, we're seeing this sort of rise of influencer and content creator marketing where, you know, we're collaborating with folks who are operators who are.

Leaders who are practitioners who understand this stuff to create templates and actionable content that you could take and actually apply. that's not dry and boring and is not gated behind some form. And, you know, it's like, it's like this whole B2B version of the Internet has sort of become outdated and we're taking it and tossing it and going.

Tear down the gates, you know, like just be useful and helpful and kind and thoughtful and you know People want to buy from people and they don't want to buy from your brand so your brand page is never gonna on LinkedIn get as much traction as Your people do, this is consumer marketing, right? Like you're just trying to find what resonates with, with 

Daniel: people.

Yeah. I also don't want to get marketed to the only thing I do enjoy, which some people I think still hate is I'm a walking Instagram ad at the moment. The pants I have on are from an Instagram ad, the shoes I have on are from an Instagram ad and they're real. And I found new brands that have become my brands because presumably some marketer.

Did some targeting that said Danny will buy this and they were 100 percent correct. So I think nobody wants to be marketed to when they don't like the product. Or if they're not interested in the product potentially and it seems like out of place. Or truthfully to your point, nobody wants to be like sold to.

They want to be, yeah, informed more than sold. Like it doesn't need to feel transactional. You can still eventually make a sale. I guess in my world I find it, agencies, just don't think of the long game. You know, they wanna Get in with a brand and make a sale in 20 minutes versus like hanging around for a little bit and everybody's impatient.

So I think that's the plight of a lot of marketers because they're given here are your goals and they're oftentimes short term goals versus long term goals. Yes. 

Kacie: yes, it's a difference between. so when I joined, so we were doing the sort of near term heavy lead, Jen heavy. emphasis on volume of leads, who were not ready to buy and in many cases, you know, had just been scanned at a booth, and didn't even know why someone was reaching out to them.

it's the difference between that, and like, trying to send everyone to a straight to a demo request or a sales call and knowing right time, right place, right way to interact, so that someone feels like. They're not being sold to, they're actually just experiencing something that's useful to them in the moment.

and I buy from Instagram too. I buy from Instagram. I shop, for agencies and for tools out of my dark social groups, you know, and, and look for peers who have been through similar challenges. Same way I look at, you know, is there someone sort of similar to me wearing something that seems like it might look good on me, you know, and, and they're not selling it to me, but I see it and I realize that maybe that would work for me.

It's not the hard sell, right? It's the, right thing, right time. There's, there's some element of, I think trust also that gets built, gets built over time. If you're seeing stuff on Instagram or you're following someone, let you, you know, like stuff about them and resonate with them. Yeah, it's just a different way of selling.

Daniel: Yeah. You brought up, shopping for agencies via your, you know, your, circles and dark social and stuff like that. Most of the folks that I chat with are CMOs and VPs are getting hit up, you know, a hundred times a day. By, agencies who want to, of course, do business with them and pitch their services and stuff like that, which in my world is not the way to get in with, most companies.

I'm curious if you could give a, a PSA of sorts to, to agencies out there. mine is usually just chill out. or chill the fuck out, if I'm being honest. I'm curious what, what yours is, to folks like that. Cause I'm getting, I'm guessing you were getting hit up, a bunch because of your title.

I get 

Kacie: hit up a bunch. Um, please, please 

Daniel: stop pitch, pitch Cause we just, they just assume you've got millions of dollars to spend, you know? 

Kacie: They do. Please stop pitch slapping people. Um, is my number one. Please stop saying, you know, like, hey, I'd love to connect with you. And then instantly hitting us with like Please buy this thing that I sell, or please, you know, please go check out blah, blah, blah thing about my agency.

I could help you. Let's get on a call. I don't want to get on a call with you. I don't know you. I don't trust you. I don't even maybe have budget for the thing you're selling. If you just connected with me and were useful or helpful or kind, that would go so much further. and that is the near term versus long term thinking that we're talking about here.

the other thing I would say is. If someone I trust tells me that you're great, that goes so much infinitely further than you trying to hard sell me cold. and so look at your existing clients and customers and how powerful word of mouth is for, for this type of selling, and do everything you possibly can to make sure that they love you enough to advocate for you down the line or to become a reference customer.

That's the best. way to spread like good, positive marketing words about your business. 

Daniel: No, I agree. What's your advice to CMOs and VPs of marketing, you know, other marketing leaders in your world and beyond how to, I would say survive this year a little bit, I think. 2024 hasn't started off as as rosy as some were hoping.

There's still layoffs and things of that nature. The world, at least that I deal in, seems a little wonkier than usual. what's your advice to other marketing leaders? 

Kacie: I think, it's been a really tough year, and, we're only, 

Daniel: we're only a month in. That's not good. 

Kacie: It's, yeah, well, my fiscal year started started on the 1st of February, so I'm just kicking off here to a new one.

but welcome. Oh, thank you. Yes. I think we're stronger together. I am learning that the more I open up and talk to my peers and folks like me, the more I learn and the stronger I get, I think the biggest struggle we face really is what you touched on earlier, which is we're being really, really pushed hard to deliver short term results.

and you know, in every position I've ever been in leading marketing, The question has already always been, how do you make these big leaps, from where you are to where we need you to be? and how do you generate, you know, significantly more pipeline in the near term and marketing doesn't necessarily work like that.

And so I guess my counsel to both myself and to all of my peers is set very clear, realistic expectations. Don't stack risks. so don't, and I, I read this, recently, someone posted about this on LinkedIn, if you're experimenting with new things and you don't necessarily know exactly how they're going to play out, don't stack on top of each other, a bunch of new experiments or channels, and then bet your quarter on it, because that's a real, risky thing for you to do.

and also just Be comfortable setting the boundary and holding it about what's realistic. Don't over promise and over commit and, you know, oversell what your team and you can deliver because that puts you in the desperate position where you're gonna feel compelled to do things you don't believe in.

near term to try and make miracles happen. And that's when we get in trouble, as marketers, when we, we get in that struggle position of, we got to close the gap, you know, and we think maybe if we just did this, or if we just skated that, or if we just bought this list, or if we just did this other horrible behavior, we would hit the goal.

 It's just a slippery slope. , 

Daniel: I feel, I wanna keep it feel like I, I feel like buying the list is never the answer. Things have gone awry. If, if that's the, the end of the conversation, yeah, let's just buy the list. I feel like that's never a good, thing in 

Kacie: 20, it's just know you get to a point. You know, leadership is like, well, what if you did this?

Well, what if you tried that? What if you did this? Have you done that? 

Daniel: I think that's why I feel for marketers a lot, because with the amount of conversations I have, oftentimes I get, you know, I have to talk through budget and needs and all that stuff to do what I do. And oftentimes the expectations or goals are like, you know, I get to be very honest because again, before I set my partners up for success, I need to know all these things.

And my answer or my question is usually like, where did these come from? Like those don't seem. Rooted in like math, or like realistic reality. Yeah. A lot of times the answer is like, yeah, they were, they were given to us by the CEO or like, that's just what they are. Like we all came up with them. I'm like, right.

But like, where'd they come from? Like you just picked arbitrary things. So I think there's a lot of stuff, I think. It, it comes from the top and you have to have a good relationship with your CEO and your peers. it's also probably, I think I see now more than ever, people are, are scared to experiment a little bit to your point, like if you can't tie it a hundred percent back to attribution or I.

easily attributable, I guess I should say people are scared to experiment with like new things, you know, cause you're also, you, you want your company to be successful. You also want to keep a job. So it is, it is not easy. I 

Kacie: think the best thing I've done recently is create the tightest relationship I've ever had with finance.

I have a really strong finance partner. Who actually is very curious and has learned a lot with me, together, and that has helped me to feel very comfortable setting realistic expectations and being very, very blunt and honest about what is, what I think is possible and what would be definitely a stretch.

if you can't do that with your team and your, your CEO and your finance. Partners, you may not be in the right place in my opinion, because marketers continually get set up for failure, when they don't have partners within the organization that listen. and part of that is educating, you know, your job to educate and partner and be a good partner to your sales team and your CX team, your finance team, your leadership team.

And part of that is, you know, finding folks that you can work with who are going to listen and learn with you. and I've been in most situations and, having partners who actually listen and aren't going to back you into a number that's impossible is so important for the success of, of any marketing leader.

Daniel: Yeah, it is always good to make friends with the people with the money, I find, as well. So, not, not, not, not bad advice. you want to do your positive agency experience or your negative agency experience first? I always give the, give the option here. End positive or start positive? Let's end positive.

Okay, well, tell me about a shitty agency experience you've had in the past. Okay, 

Kacie: So I had a really, really bad agency experience recently. Um, 

Daniel: so bad. Recently, even, even 

Kacie: better. Yes, I am still semi traumatized from this experience. You get the fresh trauma. Um, so let me just gather myself here because I don't want to get too dramatic.

I was going to say, 

Daniel: this is a, this is a safe space at the moment. I didn't realize we were rehashing such a, such a terrible one. This is a good one to kick off the year. This is even better. Now I'm eager to hear. 

Kacie: Okay. So I think most marketers will understand when I say that anything relating to site migration, migration in general is just.

Tough, right? and it's hard to find an agency partner. That's actually very good at this. And by that, I mean, you know, super organized, highly communicative, very thoughtful, you know, and, and also has really strong experienced folks. and I brought in an agency to migrate. us from, WordPress to Webflow.

We have got a really big site, super complicated. It's got a lot of SEO content on it. and, I was looking for an agency that had a lot of experience with this because I did not have internal expertise. to help with it, and I think pretty much everything that could go wrong did, but the worst part was that, we ended up with inexperienced folks, on the technical side who are way in over their head, really poor communication, lack of project management, in fact, our project manager went completely crazy.

Um, and what ended up happening is this agency cut our website over during a product launch without telling us. unplanned and then broke the entire website for an entire day. like broke my demo requests, like flow, broke everything. Site went 

Daniel: black. This is a, this is a good one. 

Kacie: Yeah. So, and I could not reach the people, on my team or the leadership at this agency for many hours while this was transpiring.

so I guess, you know, this is kind of a horror story in terms of. I've never experienced anything. Like this before, but my website is, is basically my livelihood. It's how people get in the door to talk to my company and, you know, to interact with us and to, it's how all of my pipeline flows in.

And so I think, you know, it's, it's pretty traumatizing to, to have something this. catastrophic happened for this long length of time, and it just completely or destroyed and eroded trust. Um, instantly. 

Daniel: That's not good at all. I'm curious. in retrospect, looking back, is it shocking? Like it was a completely different story before you hired them and you were super comfortable and confident or like, is there anything now looking back red flag that you're like, Oh, So, you know, I shouldn't have trusted them or like, I didn't seem as confident as I should be that sort of stuff or yeah, like, how did that, I think 

Kacie: this was an interesting case because it was actually an agency that someone on my team had used before and had a good experience with, and so that's why we brought them in and, I think in hindsight, I should have caught that the project manager was not project managing.

Much earlier than I did, and. Called it out and tried to make sure that we got back on track, because it derailed from there, with the, you know, folks who were trying to do the technical work, trying to also leave the project when they didn't know how to do that. and. I think, you know, my general take on this is that they overextended themselves.

They had a, you know, very junior team working on something that was very important for us and, and the leadership was probably also overextended. So they weren't keeping an eye and then they weren't responsive when, when something really went bad. but I don't know, this is a tough one. I, I, I'm not sure there was no really big red flag that would have told me something.

Could go this 

Daniel: wrong. Sorry to hear that. This is a case for a company you should talk to next, you know. It's impossible for it to go No, I'm kidding. But also, if it makes you feel any better, I, site migrations make everybody sick to their stomach. And I actually am mapping two brands in the B2B space with site migrations now.

And I feel like after this, I need to make like a couple phone calls. Be like, is everybody sure they know what they're doing on this? 

Kacie: Yeah, I do think you've got to keep a close tabs 

Daniel: on. I'm like, I need to go real quick. I'm going to throw up. Thank you very much. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Those, no, there are very few things that, stuff like that.

Truthfully, I joke like with, with content, for example, like anybody can create content, right? So when you're hiring a content agency, like you, I think you think of it differently, right? You can, you might not create great content, but like I can write. I could draw, it's going to be a shitty picture, but I'm going to come up with something.

With stuff like that, it is 99. 9 percent trust because it's a foreign language. Like I couldn't even tell you the intricacies of WordPress and Wordflow to, and Webflow to know what needs to be looked at to do the migration itself, right? So it is so trust driven of, yeah, we know exactly what we were, we are doing and you can put your mind at ease.

So for stuff like that, trust erodes even faster. Anything in the world, because it is like a foreign language, essentially, you know 

Kacie: that, yeah, it's hard. It's hard for,you know, someone in my role also to figure out how to troubleshoot or problem solve when something goes wrong because we don't know how to get in there.

Always.

Daniel: let's talk about a positive agency experience. And since we've gotten your trauma out of the way, has there been any positive positive ones of late? 

Kacie: So there's actually so far a happy ending to this story. went back through a bunch of my trusted, Peers and friends and resources and, found, found an agency that had been recommended by quite a few people who had gone through the exact site migration that we were trying to pull off.

and I talked to probably three or four different folks and realized that what was most important to me was like straight shooter, someone who was cool. If I was going to, you know, just. Real talk, with them. there wasn't a lot of like formal sort of old school agency talk and,Structure that was going to make it different difficult for us to move very quickly once we agreed on the scope and found someone who is like small shop, but very flexible very real like, And talk through all of my fears and, and was willing to, really meet me where I was.

but also had a lot of really, really excellent recommendations from folks who had done just exactly what I was trying to do. and so far that has been night and day experience in terms of. they are communicative. They are, you know, it's like, I'm working with a friend, or group of friends. They are in Slack with us.

They're highly responsive. They're very thoughtful. They're catching things before I do, and they work very, very quickly and, it's like a perfect extension of the team. So I think. You know, I am, you know, subjectively a case where I don't want to work with an agency. I don't want to feel like that. I want to work with people who are an extension of my team who I can have a conversation with and pick up the phone and call and, you know, just have a normal dynamic with.

I find that a lot of agencies put these weird frameworks and structures where it's like You know, you have to jump through hoops to even have a conversation with someone to get something done. Uh, and for most startups, which is where I spend most of my time, that does not work. it just doesn't, doesn't translate.

But yeah, this has been a very, very good experience. And all of the agencies I found that work well with our team work this way. They can hop in Slack, they can go back and forth. they're responsive, communicative. Yeah, like there's a. They're just part of the team, and they're optimizing for speed, but carefully.

Daniel: That's great. A happy ending. Usually there's not a happy ending. So yeah. What, what are you, what are you most excited about in the marketing world at the moment? 

Kacie: I'm excited for this, what seems like sort of this resurgence of, uh, focus on Personalized marketing, and I think this collective desire to do better as marketers, we're seeing a lot of shifts in the way that that attribution happens and the way we track and the way that we use AI and the way that we automate things and.

I'm really excited about this general sort of feels like tilt toward the more personal, the, more thoughtful, the more useful, side of marketing. I think there's also in that this potential for, brand or creative marketing to, to sort of start coming back. I feel like over the last year in this weird market with these really tight, goals and, and pressure on marketing.

Like you said earlier, people have have started to fear experimentation and brand budgets got cut and marketers have been asked to do sort of demand capture without any of the other pieces that holistically make that work. so I'm starting to see brands. Do some really cool stuff, that is just purely based on would this resonate and be useful or interesting to the customer or the buyer, instead of, you know, trying to architect something near term to, to capture a certain number of demo requests.

And that's what makes me excited is like people focused customer and human focused marketing. And I'm also seeing marketers focus more on the full funnel. So thinking through not just new business, but also how do we better serve our customers and expand them and retain them and keep them happy. And, that's the kind of marketer I am.

I'm thinking about the whole buyer journey and I think all of us should be. so that's, that's also happiness making. for me. 

Daniel: Yeah, when everybody else is scared, it's probably an awesome time to take some risks. if you can stomach it or get buy in from your CFO or CEO, I am with you. on the other side, what keeps you up at night from a marketing standpoint besides site migrations?

Kacie: Oh, gosh. what keeps me up, I think, is really that, that, tension between the near and the long term. how do I balance my time to make sure that I'm taking care of what we need as a business to keep, keep, keep our, machines running, and taking care of my team, in the near term as well, while being able to dedicate time and thought to the long term and more strategic thinking.

 that's probably, I think, what keeps most marketers up at night is, you know, balance, um, and then just, you know, figuring out how to balance the sprints that we have to run, as marketers where we're, oftentimes really building towards something that has to be done fairly quickly, And then making sure that my team gets a breath and a, and a reset, often enough so that we're not burning, burning people out long term because it is, um, it is a marathon, right?

We're all, we're all trying to get, get to, a long term goal at some point, but marketing is very like run the race, you know, kick out the product or kick out the announcement or, you know, launch the campaign or launch the event series. and then you got to take a breath. and I think about this constantly, making sure that my team is.

Is, you know, getting that adrenaline rush of like celebrating kicking something out and then getting the rest of the recharge energy battery fill up that they need and that I am too. 

Daniel: You should gift them all like a spa day or spa treatment with Sindoso, you know? 

Kacie: We do a lot of gifting. That's good.

Surprise, 

Daniel: surprise. I was gonna say. Now, now that makes sense. I hear that often. Most marketers I know don't sleep well. so I hope everybody gets some sleep, but we will wrap up here with a couple of fun ones that I like to ask everybody. What was your very first job? 

Kacie: Very first job was babysitting two little boys.

I was not a good babysitter and one of them would always climb a really tall tree and not come down. And so we had to end up swapping me for my sister as their babysitter because they liked 

Daniel: her better. That is fair. I was going to say, I always ask, did you, did you take anything from that experience to your current role?

you're, you're babysitting the team and taking risks. Climbing a tree, I, I assume, you 

Kacie: know, the reason they didn't like me, I'm just going to admit this is that, I didn't let them win all the time when we played games. And you 

Daniel: challenge people. That's great. I felt like it's 

Kacie: important that not to not let them win every single game.

And that made them upset. And, my sister decided that they should win every single game cause that made life easier. I think, there's lessons on both sides. 

Daniel: Right. I totally agree. what would your final meal be? 

Kacie: My final meal has not changed over time. it would be a, Dungeness crab roll, really crispy fries, nice glass of champagne, uh, and then probably some sort of chocolate dessert of some kind.

Daniel: Who is somebody who inspires you personally or professionally? 

Kacie: I'm inspired by so many of the marketers and leaders that I am lucky enough to come into contact with and have in my community. I've really been loving what Alina is doing at Chili Piper, co founder over there, and her whole team, honestly.

Um, I love how, raw she is and unfiltered she is, and, that she, not only shares her successes and builds in public, but also talks about the stuff that they've messed up or that she's learned from failing at. I think we could use a lot more of failing in public. I'm trying to practice it, as well, but, you know, there's a lot of People just talking about how well they've done at something, or how many millions they've made, or how kick ass their team is, and that's awesome, but, a lot of us fail every day, and we can help each other avoid pitfalls by just talking about it.

 So I love that, I love that she does that openly and, and I'm also really inspired by, the women, Leslie Greenwood and Melissa Moody who founded Wednesday Women, which I just got to be a part of their, their first dinner. just brought a bunch of hugely inspiring women together in one room for no purpose other than to help each other.

And I think we could do a lot more of that, too, uh, as a, as a community. 

Daniel: That's great. Yeah, I think, my shtick on is around consistency and even with failing and stuff. I think people underestimate, like, even the people who are doing incredibly well, how long. It takes and like how much stuff they went through over time, like I talk about it all the time stuff that's coming to fruition for me in present day.

24 is from like 10 years ago that I unknowingly did or like people I've met that I've been nice to and have been nice to me along along the way. So, no, I am. I'm with you. I prefer seeing the real or more real stuff on linked in as well. 

Kacie: Yeah, it's helpful to just. Learn from people as people. I'm, I'm less a fan of the, you know, classic, like, attention grabber LinkedIn posts that Doesn't actually mean anything.

Daniel: I'm with you. Less of that in 2024, I hope. But, no, we appreciate you joining us today. For anybody who wants to find you and not pitch slap you, you can check out Casey on LinkedIn. And I assume Sendoso. com is not a bad place for people to check out if they are interested in learning more. But thank you very much for joining.

And, um, yeah, we will chat with you soon. 

Kacie: Pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.