
·S8 E11
S8E11 - Building a Stellar Marketing Career ft. Bill Macaitis, Founder & CEO, SaaS CMO Pro, former CMO @Slack & @Zendesk
Episode Transcript
Hey everyone, welcome to the latest episode of the SaaS Sessions podcast.
today we have Bill Poseidis on the show with us.
Bill is currently a growth and marketing advisor for many B2B startups.
plus he's running his own YouTube channel where he talks a lot about B2B SaaS, which is called the, B2B, sorry, which is called the SaaS CMO Pro.
And, you should, you can find that out on YouTube, or you can also type sascmopro.
com without the spaces, without the hyphens or anything, and it will land you to, Bill's newsletter.
hey, hey, Bill, such a pleasure to have you on the show.
BillHey Sunil, thanks so much for having me, excited to talk today.
SunilAwesome.
Awesome.
Bill, I, I gave a very short intro about you, but, there's a lot to unpack in your career.
And today the topic that we have chosen is, talking about a marketing career, right?
Like how do you build one?
and your career has been like really great, right?
you've had five exits in your career.
You've had whole, like C level positions at amazing daily use SaaS companies like Slack, Zendesk and Salesforce, right?
To name a few.
And, I couldn't think any.
day, that I have not used Slack for the past eight years.
So yeah.
yeah, unless obviously I'm like out of office, that's the whole thing.
But again, being in C level roles, Being at the helm of leadership, At such companies, a great, position to be in.
So there's a lot to learn from you, obviously built.
So thanks a lot for, taking time and coming here.
But before we get onto the episode itself, again, as I said, would love to learn more about you and please share, more about your career journey with us.
BillYeah, sure.
exciting to talk with you and with everyone listening today.
And so my background is I always, I don't know, I was a weird one.
I always loved business growing up.
I just knew really early that I loved business.
I loved marketing.
I did a, I started up a startup right out of college with a couple other friends.
there was in a gaming space cause that's what we did in college.
We played a lot of online games and we did ladders and rankings and tournaments and we grew that and sold it.
I did about, 15 more years on the B2C side.
So working for media companies like IG Entertainment.
So if you like games, you've probably been there for a review.
Rotten Tomatoes, Ask Men.
and then actually we got it acquired there and then went over to News Corp.
And so News Corp, I ran a centralized marketing function for all their sites.
And that was everything from, Fox sports to American Idol to Wall Street Journal.
and it was amazing cause they got to help build these brands up, help build the traffic to them.
and then I got like this really, out of the blue call from a company called Salesforce, which was, starting to sell SAS business software and they wanted someone with a little more B2C DNA, in their kind of in their culture to bring them in.
And.
I just, fell in love with it.
Mark was an incredible leader, an amazing philanthropist, just a really good guy.
And I loved how he was disrupting how software was built and sold and used.
Because before that, like anytime you're selling software, you had to sell it into the CTO.
you had to buy him steak dinners and you could only go through I.
T.
And now SAS comes around and anyone can just go to a website, right?
And log in and start using it.
I love those type of models, more modern disruptive models.
so it's about four years there.
Went to Zendesk, as you had mentioned, came in there as a CMO and built up that team from scratch, maybe a couple of people there, but maybe when I joined there, maybe 60 people.
And we went through.
successful IPO and then went to Slack and same thing joined maybe about 50 people, built out the entire marketing team and then went on to also lead up the sales success and support team.
So really all the customer facing teams and we had an eventual IPO there and eventual acquisition by Salesforce.
So my two companies got back together, which was fun to see.
And, and then I was like, what do I do?
And I, I just, I've always had a passion for helping other people out and helping them learn.
And so I decided, to go into the advisory type business.
So I was helping B2B SaaS and AI companies and helping them grow and scale, build their marketing teams.
but I kept getting a lot of the same questions, right?
And I was like, you know what?
What if, I could democratize this information and help, Anyone else that's especially like growing their career or something I miss like when I'm not in these full time roles is I always enjoyed managing and mentoring and helping educating people.
And so that's when I created that SASS CMO Pro.
I just launched it about a week ago.
And so it's just fresh out, but basically the idea here is I love videos.
I know some people like to read.
500 page long white papers and I was always the one that like show me the YouTube video or show me the short of it.
And so it's just a bunch of videos on everything about learning marketing and SaaS and AI.
and I talk about a lot of career stuff, like how to grow as an individual in your career.
Talk about a lot of like marketing, branding topics, multi such attribution, high velocity, PLG.
So it's been a ton of fun filming those videos and just starting to launch them now.
SunilNice, nice.
That's really.
interesting journey, right?
Like from media to, SAS that you've got there.
and again, kudos to you starting, the SAS CMO pro.
I think, we share that, trade off, giving back to the community, right?
helping people elevate from their role, even if they're learning, like one small thing from you, it can It's a good feeling at the end of the day.
congrats on that.
And I hope like everybody who's listening would go and take, subscribe to the episode and also subscribe to the, YouTube channel there.
So awesome.
as I mentioned, like a great career journey from media into SAS.
So what, when you join the B2B SaaS company, like behemoth company in B2B SaaS, which is Salesforce, right?
So what made you shift, make that career move, right?
Because we're talking about building a marketing career.
So obviously there's always this question comes up, right?
Hey, should I, take a B2B role?
Should I stick with a B2C role?
it's obviously two different, worlds altogether.
everything's is different.
Obviously that is like a lot of fundamentals, that stays the same.
But, when you have to go deep and you have to build a career, you have to pick one path.
but you obviously did.
Pick one path, in sort of media, and then you shifted or made your way into B2B SaaS, right?
and starting with Salesforce again, amazing, company there.
So what made you decide that?
And can you please talk us through, that career change?
BillYeah.
so for me personally, growing up, I always had a passion for business.
I had a passion for entrepreneurship.
I had a passion for marketing.
I had a passion for just go to market.
And I don't think I ever was like, I only have a passion for B2C.
I was like more like I have a passion for business and I want to help companies grow and scale in a modern way.
And that was something that was, really important for me was, Hey, when I work with these companies, I want to help them out to where they can grow and scale, but do it in a more modern way, right?
I want to leverage the best of more, most modern practices.
And so really when I heard about Salesforce originally, I love the fact that, Hey, they were disrupting how software was marketed, sold and used, right?
Like we'd mentioned earlier, historically, literally like the only way you could buy the software in the past was only enterprises could afford it.
SMBs couldn't, it was way too expensive, way too small, medium sized businesses.
Sorry, I'm going to drop acronyms here and in, in this, allowed a way for a small business to just go to a website and use it like Amazon.
That's where Mark got originally inspired by.
I was like, why can't, why don't I just go to Amazon and be able to buy something?
But for all the software, you have to literally buy, CDs and install it on their own servers.
And it's this massive laborious process, right?
So I was always attracted to companies that were disrupting things, doing it in a more modern way, doing it in a more customer centric way.
And so for me, that was a natural extension.
But even when I went to the B2B side, though, it was interesting because Salesforce was super modern in a lot of ways.
But in a lot of ways, too, the other B2B companies were very, dated, right?
Like even some of the marketing tactics they use, they weren't using anything that I had learned on the B2C side.
They weren't leveraging SEO.
They weren't leveraging really web analytics or conversion rate marketing or ABM targeting or just all these more advanced principles.
and so for me, that was really fun.
I got to bring in a lot of the more advanced marketing strategies from B2C into B2B.
And I will say, for those that are thinking about a career in B2C or B2B, I think doing both is really helpful.
You learn so much more, like for instance, one of the things that, I was doing a video on was like, Hey, how to measure brand.
And so if you're in B2B hist, I would say probably of all the companies I've worked with 95 percent don't track brand, don't know how to track brand, don't know any of the brand metrics.
Just because B2B historically is all about leads.
How many leads do you produce and how many leads do you hand over to your sales team?
And that's just how it was done 30 years ago.
there, when you have some experience in a different area, like B2C, I learned about brand and I, again, working for all these large media companies and learned about, Hey, how to track it.
and understanding metrics like aided recaller, unaided recaller, sentiment, sure voice.
There's a ton of good brand metrics.
And I was able to bring that with me and go, Hey guys, because historically B2B companies will just run like demand gen campaigns.
They rarely run brand campaigns.
Cause again, if it doesn't increase the leads, they're like, why would we do it?
But in a lot of ways, demand gen is just short term leads brand builds up these long term leads, right?
So I think there's like tons of great crossover that you can have.
And, and I wouldn't say just because you choose one, don't feel like you're locked in again.
there's, it's more about, keeping and developing your skills and learning.
And so that's how I looked at it.
SunilOh, nice.
Nice.
And, I think, like looking at brand and, taking that as the centerpiece for you, right?
Like you learned that in the media world, and then joining like Salesforce, obviously, I think, they were like very brand heavy, I think, right from the start, investing on building, building that Thank you.
That, that kind of an image in everybody's mind that when you think of a CRM, you have to think Salesforce, right?
Like even the ticker that they, got IPO'd on is also CRM, right?
that's how much branding, means, And that's how much in depth that you have to think, right?
So I feel like, you played a really strong, trade from your side where you were.
belonging to the world where, you knew how to measure branding, how do you scale it?
How do you implement, that aspect?
And then, it very well glued with what Salesforce, marketing vision as well, was as well, at the time when you joined, right?
So obviously you played a very strong suit, in your, as a skill, I would say, and, made a career pivot in that sense, right?
I, that considering that as a, like a key pivot in your career, can you talk us a, can you talk us like what, maybe if there were, any other career pivots that you have done, this one and be like, how can somebody, figure out like, what's that skill that they can, that they possess.
Maybe they don't, maybe they are aware of it.
Maybe they're not.
but, and find that.
company or find that industry or find that vertical where they can go and apply it.
just like how you did with respect to branding and your experience in media, and then joining a company like Salesforce where branding was like super valued and a key part of their strategic alignment.
BillYeah.
So for me, I think one of the most important things is don't fear a pivot.
Pivots are good.
Sometimes pivots are really good, right?
Like it's okay to pivot from the job you're in to a different type of job, to a different type of industry, if you believe more in where you're going.
I know like my sister, one of my sisters, she went to school for, interior architecture, and she was designing like office buildings.
And she liked it.
But, she, there wasn't as much money there.
And she was like, Hey, I want to, pivot into it.
And she took, two more years, she got her master, she pivoted into it.
And that's what she does now.
And she loves it.
And so I think there's always in a lot of ways, you have to think about the industry you're going, is it growing?
Is it scaling?
Are there more opportunities there and try to align your skill sets behind it?
probably one thing that really shaped me.
One of the best piece of advice I ever got was it was one of my first jobs out of college and we did an after, it was one person he was leaving and we'd always do a last day lunch, right?
Hey, and I would always ask people on these last day lunches, like when they would leave, Hey, what's your best piece of advice?
what would you say?
And he said, bill, it doesn't matter if you're employed or not.
What matters is if you're employable and what he meant by that was You need to be constantly building your skill set.
You need to be constantly learning, right?
And it doesn't matter if, even if you got that job, even when I was at like Salesforce, I just, I wanted to learn.
I wanted to keep improving my skill set and learning more and more.
and and that's the thing with marketing too.
Like for those that are interested in marketing, like I love marketing, but it is always changing and adapting and new technologies are constantly coming out on how to target individuals on how to nurture, educate, obviously have a massive wave of AI coming out right now, which is going to completely disrupt so many different industries that it's more about like those skill sets that you develop.
And when you develop those skills, you can make these pivots a lot easier because a lot of these companies are going to need, the newer skill sets that are coming out.
And some people won't.
Some people are like, Oh, I got my job.
I don't have to do anything.
I'm just going to sit there and, do the bare minimum or whatever.
And just, I'm employed.
That's all that matters.
that advice always stuck with me, right?
just think about how you're employable that you always have the skill sets so that you're employable and that way too.
God, we've all been in jobs that like.
I want to believe that this is blissful nirvana where everyone is happy and everyone loves their job.
But I know at some point we all get jobs that.
We just don't like for whatever reason.
And if you don't have the skills, a lot of time, you can get trapped there.
But if you have the skills and you're employable, you can always move to something else.
So I found that really liberating.
Nice.
Sunilthat's really interesting.
and, do you, can you mention any other like key decision, that you have taken in our careers and that has helped you shape it in a very nicer manner?
BillI think so for me.
another good one is when you're trying to make the move up from an individual to a manager to a director, what I found is a lot of first time directors will fail a lot and that they'll go into the role.
And they'll just go heads down and they'll keep doing what they had done before.
So in other words, like maybe they were great at demand generation, right?
Or maybe they were great at product marketing, or maybe they're great at content.
And when they get promoted up into that really first, like higher level leadership role, they will just go in all day.
They will make content or do PPC ads or do whatever, because that's what they've known.
And when you're an individual contributor or an IC, that's what you focus on.
But what I found is like, when you move up to director, like you really have to start thinking about a completely different set of daily activities.
Some of them are doing what you had done, but I would say 30, 40 percent of your day should be spent on identifying who are all these different stakeholders that you're servicing internally, right?
So who are your sales counterparts, your marketing counterparts, your finance counterparts, your, the C suite, the board, right?
how are you educating them about what your team is doing?
How are you building support for what your team is doing?
A lot of things I've done, like these big projects.
One is the Salesforce.
I had led the initiative to put in marketing automation, which at the time we actually didn't have.
And that was a hard one to get through, right?
That we were spending a good amount of money to do it.
We had to, change a lot of hearts and minds.
We had to show people what marketing automation was, the importance of it, how to implement it.
we had to tactically implement it, but we had to build support for it and you'll find in marketing a lot of times these initiatives you want to do, especially to get up to the director level.
they need a lot of resources.
You need to hire new people.
You need program spend.
You need to, sometimes get development resources to help implement it.
and a lot of your time needs to be spent on evangelizing, educating these stakeholders and really representing your team.
And it's funny, like I literally just did a video on this.
So this one's live.
If you go to the YouTube Sassimo pro channel, it's first time mistake, directors of marketing is make, but I talk about that, right?
All of these different things.
And a lot of times.
will happen to is I've seen directors of marketing that are fantastic, really know their stuff, but they spend no time identifying those stakeholders, building relationships with those stakeholders, telling those stakeholders what are happening and the perception within the organization is like, Oh, this person doesn't know what they're doing.
they're terrible, right?
And a lot of times their career ends, right?
it's very sad and sometimes scary, but that happens.
So I would just say That's a really important thing that I've learned over the years is that, when you start managing people, like you are responsible for them, the perception of them, right?
And, you need to educates all these other folks on what they're doing, because here's the thing, too.
I love marketing, right?
If you're listening to this, watching this, you probably love marketing too.
Love business.
But here's the thing.
Everyone in the company is a marketing expert.
Everyone that, watches a TV ad thinks, Oh, I know how to do advertising.
Anyone that's bought something in a grocery store.
It's I know how to do pricing and right.
So you have a lot of strong opinions in the room in the company for, what marketing should and shouldn't be doing.
And, you have to really manage those perceptions.
You have to educate these other stakeholders on what marketing is, what are the right metrics, right?
Like even the brand stuff, right?
Like I don't be like, Oh, you're just wasting money.
You just spent all this money on brand campaign.
My God, you flush it on the toilet.
it's a lot easier to go.
Actually, we've been tracking your aided recall for our company.
Our five competitors and we see where we're going.
We were actually lagging behind when we ran this brand campaign.
We went up seven points and aided recall.
And we, here's the impact that has on pipeline and leads, right?
a lot of that has to happen and, and it's a natural instinct, I think, for ICs or individual contributors to just focus on what's going on.
What they've done heads down and not really do those communications, not really build those relationships, not really identify those stakeholders.
So that would be another thing that I found is really important for those that want to make that leap from being an individual contributor to actually managing and leading these teams.
that's a really important skill set to build up.
SunilNice.
Yeah.
And I totally agree with the fact that you mentioned, right?
everybody can, has an opinion about marketing, and they would just come in and tell different teams, right?
Hey, what's happening with the ad and maybe you can do it differently or, and, in, in marketing as well, If there is one specific function where I've seen like people, give a lot more opinion than all the other functions, compared, I think it's social media, right?
everybody like, reads and, engages with like different brands on social media.
And then they're like, Hey, we should do this and we should do they see how they have done and we can, copy it and something like that.
And, one, one trick I.
I used, in, in, two years of my, one of my previous companies was, whenever they're like, I created like a form internal form when anybody has like any idea with respect to, let's say social media, just put it there and then we'll say Hey, we'll consider this idea.
We'll obviously didn't consider it, but then, every quarter when you are visiting, our strategy for the next quarter.
we would just go and keep like 10%, like of our, budget and efforts and, things for, these new ideas that are picked from the team.
And it's good to have those, lying around because you're not creative three, 65 days, right?
Like You always, there are like ups and downs.
And when you're down and you don't know what to do next in this quarter, you can always go back, I will always go back to the sheet and we'll skim through the, ideas that different people like, engineers, PMs, and everybody has put down.
And then we just pick like a few of them, and, execute them in the, in that quarter.
it's just good to hear their opinion as well.
And, and then obviously notify them like, Hey, we, took your feedback of sorts.
BillAbsolutely.
And I think that's half of it too.
It's just knowing people's perceptions about marketing, right?
Or your function, right?
If you're leading DemandGen, you just got promoted, you're leading DemandGen.
what does everyone else think about it, right?
What does finance think about how DemandGen's been doing?
What does sales think about how DemandGen's been doing?
What does, the CEO think about how demand Jen's been doing.
and I remember a story where I was a Zendesk and I was CMO and we were having a board meeting and I had proactively reached out to a couple of the board members at a time and just, same thing like, Hey, how do you think marketing is doing right?
What do you wish to be doing?
What shouldn't be doing?
And most of them are like, Oh, doing great.
And one of them was like, I really wish we had more customer stories, right?
and I had to pull it out of them, but I could tell he's like, why don't you have more customer stories, Bill?
And the cool thing was we had a project where we were actually building like 10 more customer stories out and they're almost done.
And I might not have even mentioned that in the board meeting when it, cause usually you'll do like a marketing section.
Here's what's going on.
But I had known that, Hey, he, this was top of mind for him.
And this was really important for him.
And actually good news.
We had done it.
So I was able to tell him.
And also in the board meeting, Hey, here's a process.
Here's where we interviewed him.
Here's the assets, the deliverables, the stories, here's how we're leveraging them.
But a lot of times you don't know, like if, again, if you just go heads down, And you haven't identified these stakeholders.
You haven't built relationships with them.
You haven't just even asked them.
And by the way, it's not that hard.
It's just go, Hey, what do you think?
Mark?
I'm just curious.
I want to, we want to improve, what do you think marketing is doing?
what do you think we could improve?
Just understand.
what are their.
What are they hung up on?
and then you can, slowly over time, you can start to educate them about, Hey, here's what we're doing there.
Or maybe it's something you don't think we should be doing, but you have, at least, that, and then you can start to educate them as to how to, how to improve in those areas.
I don't think like you said, For every function in a company, if you're a backend developer, I don't know if you have to do this because not a lot of people go to a backend developer and Hey, I was looking at your code and I don't know why you're doing it that way.
You shouldn't be doing it this way.
But marketing is it's so visible, right?
all our assets are so visible.
The website's so visible.
Like you said, everything you do on social media is very visible.
If you're in an ad campaign, it's super visible.
So you're just going to have a lot of strong opinions.
And I really think it makes sense to manage those.
SunilYeah, I think like sales, I think marketing marketers are also built, people built with thick skins, I would say Yes.
So you get a thick skin too.
That's a good way, Yeah.
Good advice.
yeah, just shifting gears, will, what were those, like three things?
That you can share that really helped you, climb the ladder, And, help you become a better marketing leader.
Billit's a great question.
So maybe one for me is.
And this is just my mindset.
Like I've always thought there's opportunities out there.
Think of like opportunities as like these floating bubbles, right?
And there's these opportunities in your career all around you, right?
And I've noticed there's two types of people, right?
One type of person is they'll have all these bubbles floating around them and they will never move.
They're just comfortable with what they're doing and at the level they're at and just, I'm just going to keep doing that.
And there's a risk to go after one of those bubbles, right?
Like it's risky.
And sometimes you're putting yourself out of your comfort one.
But I think one, you have to like, you have to go for it sometimes you have to take those opportunities.
I know for myself, I grew up in the Midwest.
I did my first startup, like I moved, we moved, I moved to Denver.
And then I moved all the way out to San Francisco and I didn't, know a lot of people out here, but it was like, That's where there were a lot of opportunities, right?
And I wanted to do it.
Like I always live by a motto carpe diem.
It's Latin.
It just means seize the day.
It means like always, every day is precious and seize it.
Like you can do it.
You absolutely can do it.
Those opportunities are with you, but sometimes you have to do it.
And switching from B2C to B2B, that probably was risky.
But it was like, Hey, I thought it was a great opportunity.
I wanted to go for it.
so I think one that's, excuse me, that's very helpful, right?
Is always to think about like how you can take on those opportunities.
to, we talked a little bit about before, but again, always be curious, always be learning, right?
I think that's really helped me out.
I'll give like a practical example, like when I was working for, IJ Entertainment, I, SEO was becoming really big at the time, and it was still in the very early days of it, but, there was no school or class I could go to, no one had an event at SASS CMO Pro, so I had to, I was like, but I want to learn about this stuff, right?
So I spent, Every day after work, I would get home.
I spent four hours reading every single piece of content I could in SEO.
I went to forums.
I learned about like black hat, SEO, white hat, SEO, domain authority, link popularity, anchor text.
Like I just absorbed it.
For a couple months until I really knew it then.
And I went to conferences and after speaking on it, we developed like this advanced SEO strategy.
It totally helped our traffic.
It skyrocketed, but like that wasn't, you had to do that on yourself.
and and maybe I'd say the third thing now is like, Hey, the great news is anyone listening to this, anyone watching this podcast, trust me, the entire marketing landscape is being completely rewritten right now with AI, right?
And I am a big believer, you are not going to lose your job because of AI, you're going to lose your job because of someone else that knows AI and you don't.
or knows how to use the prompts, knows how to use the tools.
So this is a great example of where the people that are listening is watching this.
And by definition, you are falling into the carpe diem camp, right?
You're trying to improve yourself by watching this.
You could be just watching Netflix or doing something else, but you're like, Hey, listen to Bill and Sunil talk about like B2B marketing and how to improve and stuff.
But AI is completely rewriting everything.
And so I would.
I would personally, I would dive into it.
That's what I've been doing, right?
what are the best tools?
How do you use it?
Practice using prompts, understand all the different players out there, whether it's Gemini where it's open AI, where's the industry going, constantly read content on that, listen to podcasts, figure out like how you can, even if you have a marketing role, maybe you're just, associate manager and you're just starting out.
or associate analyst, whatever it is, but think about your day throughout your day.
How could you use AI to simplify it, to improve it, to make it faster, even if you're under no pressure to do so right now, right?
cause you're going to be in such a better position because some people will avoid it.
Oh, this is a new tech.
I don't need to know it.
I don't want to learn it.
It's going to take time, and that person's going to, again, they're not going to be employable.
They're going to be, just employed.
And maybe at some point they're unemployed, which is scary.
But so I don't, for me, that's, that'd be my other big piece of advice is just, constantly be learning, have that hunger.
And if you do that, you're going to be in a great position.
SunilNice, nice.
that's really, solid piece of advice, right?
Like people can, start right away.
And I think this has been echo many times in like different formats by like different people and it is just easy to miss it.
and the one thing that I think you mentioned, doesn't matter if you're employed or not.
What matters if, what matters is that you are, if you are employable or not, And I think every quarter, every six months or every, whenever, now, and then you have to keep yourself elevating, to, to a newer level and, always be learning, Like sales can do like always be closing and marketers can do like always be learning.
Always be learning.
Yeah.
Yes.
Just stay ahead of the curve.
BillThe other thing too is if you again and everyone look, I respect all paths, right?
Some people want to stay in IC for their, for their career.
And it was interesting.
I remember at Slack, we built out a career ladder, right?
Where you could advance up through pay and through title as an individual contributor or you could advance as a manager, right?
Manager or people leader.
I think we were Cool.
More of an outlier though.
A lot of companies though, like the only way to move up is by managing people, manage more people.
And so that's another thing is like when you're learning, you're going to, whatever you're doing right now, you're going to be great at, if you start off with demand gen, you'll learn it, demand gen really well, or maybe you start off on the PR side, or maybe you start off on the content side or the marketing up side, whatever area you started off with.
when you want to move up by definition.
You have to start taking on more functions, and you need to know those functions too, right?
And so that's another one is for those that want to eventually, become, a director, a VP, a CMO, you have to start learning about all these other marketing disciplines, right?
And talking with people and understanding like what they did and what worked and what didn't work.
and, you're going to be a bunch better marketer people are gonna be more comfortable promoting you if Oh, you've shown interest in a lot of different areas and you know what you're talking about versus someone that if all they know is one thing, right?
And you need a leader that's going to take on four different functions.
that's, risky, right?
At least from the decision makers standpoint.
It's really important, right?
to, to just to learn, to have, try to build that curiosity, and I get it like when we're all going through school, it's we're forced to learn.
And so I'm done.
I don't have to do that anymore.
But it's for those of you thinking about your career, like that's really
Sunilimportant.
No, that's true.
And yeah, before we go on to the lightning round, which is like last section of the episode, I would love to know from your, again, your extensive experience, Bill, right?
where do you think people go wrong about, their B2B SaaS marketing career, right?
what are some of the things that, they get wrong?
BillI think in a lot of ways.
You do have to develop a VC mindset.
So what I mean by that is, VC venture capitalists, VCs spend their entire days, months, years obsessing over which company they should invest in, right?
They're going to look at this company on.
their sales efficiency, their payback.
They're going to look at their growth.
They're going to look at their, product market fit.
They're going to look at all these different lenses, right?
They're going to spend a lot of time doing due diligence on this company.
what are the leaders?
What are they ranked on Glassdoor?
What is, A hundred different things they're going to look at, right?
Because they're spending their portfolio's money and they need to make sure, Hey, this is a good investment.
What I've noticed a pattern sometimes though, is when people have their own careers and they have to choose their own companies that they're going to tie up their future career with, they spend very little time on that.
it's Oh, I just got a job offer.
Oh, it pays 10, 000 more.
I'm going to take it.
That would almost be like a VC that just had one person say, Hey, do you want to invest in us?
Yeah, sure.
Let's do it.
it's hard, but you have some mistakes sometimes in B2B marketing or for their career, and I think sometimes that's too, spend time there, really think about it.
that's a massively important decision.
Does this company, what do you think their prospects are?
hopefully you're going to go in and make an impact, but still, are, what are their current growth rates?
What are their growth rates?
What are their competitors?
What are their landscape?
Do they have a native AI solution?
Are they about to get disrupted?
what does the team think of their leader?
that's an important one, too, is find out the philosophy, the marketing philosophy, does it align with your philosophy, right?
like I'm very customer centric and not all B2B, SaaS and AI companies, the leaders feel that way, right?
I think ultimately you want to do it because you get more word of mouth that way, you grow more efficiently.
It's a great capital growth engine, but not everyone feels that way, right?
I was very intentional when I joined Slack to make sure that everyone there and Stewart was incredibly customer centric.
I felt it was just a great alignment there.
Take care.
But you have to send cycles there.
I always say when you're thinking about moving jobs, that is a full time job, right?
Exploring all the opportunities.
Don't just take the first thing that pops up.
Really look like when I before I joined Slack, I think I had five different job offers I was doing.
Deciding between, but that took a ton of time.
Every one of those, I had to research, I had to talk to, I had to do a lot of due diligence on, and that's one of the most important decisions you make is you're aligning yourself with another company and you want to make sure that.
with your values that they, you think that they're set up well, that you can help them out.
So I would just say, spend cycles on that.
I know it's tempting because we're all busy and it's Oh, I just got this offer and great.
But like really, like if you're going to look, it's the same thing with getting married, right?
You don't want just the first person you date, Oh, we're good.
Let's go.
Yeah.
I'm going to spend the next 50 years with you.
But I spent five minutes getting to know you and decided on it.
you want to.
These are really important decisions and spend the appropriate amount of cycles on it.
No,
Sunilthat, that's a good way to look at it as well.
I think it's a good perspective that, people can think and, when, and just thoughtfully decide on, what is this like a good step for me at this moment, with this company is that is, as you said, as a VC, like if it would be a VC, would you take a bet, bet on this, right?
Would you put.
Your money in this company, right?
Because you're obviously putting your time there, right?
So would you put your money as well?
that's one way to think as well.
BillAnd ask them those questions.
this is look, interviews are two way street.
You are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you.
Yeah, You're about to make one of the most important decisions of your life.
You're going to align your career to that company.
Ask them about it.
Hey, what are your growth projections?
I'm, what do you, I've been reading about this competitor that's in your space.
How are you going to address that?
How are you guys thinking about AI?
How are you going to leverage that?
are you thinking about going international?
Like I'm a little worried about, and in a weird way, like sometimes I've done this too, where the interview dynamic then all of a sudden shifts and they're trying to sell you now.
They're like, actually we're,
Sunilwe're
Billdoing really well.
We're growing here.
And it's you're like an elusive, prospect now and they want to bring you in.
So it's just, it's important.
That's a really important decision.
And I found just too many people with their B2B careers are just careers in general, right?
We just don't spend the time and I get why we're busy, we're tired.
It's a lot of work to do, but if you're, if you're.
listening to a podcast like this, and you do care about your career, then that is a super important decision that you're going to be making.
SunilTotally.
Yeah.
And I think, I think people should, normalize, asking questions in an interview or from the other side as well.
Even if you're interviewing, you can definitely ask questions, right?
So it's not that it's not allowed or anything.
You can ask questions for sure.
awesome.
Awesome.
Bill, been a great discussion, but, to top it off, let's do a lightning round.
it's not like I've not asked you too many questions already, but I'm going to ask you like three more.
Yeah.
I'm going to ask you like three more and, you have to come up with something right on the top of your mind.
So let's get started.
First one.
So what's your one tip for managing a work life balance?
BillJust spend cycles on it.
it's a delicate balance, you gotta spend cycles and it's unhealthy if you're not doing one or the other.
SunilNice.
Nice.
and the second one.
So what is the one thing that you wish you would have known when you first started?
BillI would have wished I would have known just that there's unlimited opportunities out there, and that you just have to go for it.
I think everyone is a little bit risk averse initially.
but ironically, when you're young, like this is the time to do it.
It's not like you've got a massive family or, a ton of people depending on you, you can, and should be more risk averse early in your career.
take big risks, move to places, get out of your comfort one.
sometimes you're going to take a job that you don't fully know how to do right away.
And that's okay.
Most people don't, You're going to take on some functions you've never managed before, but it's okay.
But yeah, I think just, know there's a ton of opportunities out there and know that, you have to take some risks to, to take them
Sunilon.
Nice.
Nice.
and the third and the last one, So what's one, book recommendation that you have for the audience?
I'm going to give a
Billpodcast recommendation.
first I'll say Sassimo Pro, check out the YouTube channel, TikTok, wherever you like to watch fine, fine materials.
I know TikTok's banned in India, but hey, other places it is.
And you probably have a global audience, Hey, there's people watching this from all over.
but I would give another podcast recommendation.
I love Manager Tools.
it's one that I have spent a lot of time in traffic, and I listen to a lot of podcasts.
By the way, Sassy Mo Pro has a podcast, too.
but anyway, you can, I learned a ton about just being a better manager, being a better leader.
everything from like, how to run a one on one, how do you give feedback to your, to your employees.
how to set up your calendar, how to write better emails, how to, whatever it is.
It's just I know it's weird.
Like I went to business school, but they didn't really teach like how to be a manager there.
And I found that's a really important skill set.
Cause again, like the most common use cases you're in, I see an individual contributor.
You're great at what you do.
And at some point you get put in charge of managing.
Teams and managing people and no one's ever told you how to do that before, right?
So and I think that's why in tech, especially there are some really bad like people managers out there Because maybe they were great at whatever skill they were, but they got promoted and they're just a horrible people manager So I just learned a lot there and just know that you don't know a lot walk into it like I didn't know like I didn't know Hey, I should be running weekly one on ones with all of my directs and that takes a lot of time but It's a really good practice to do right and how to structure those one on ones and how to give feedback, how to set goals.
There's this whole, all these little skill sets that I learned a ton there.
So the podcast is manager tools.
I think it's super helpful and it was something that, I learned a lot and I just get podcasts too.
Cause I know, there's a lot of great books too, but it's just for me, a lot of people are spending more of their time there, right?
Because they're in commutes or they're, while they're working out or doing whatever, it's a very accessible way to learn.
SunilNice.
Nice.
I'll definitely link this, podcast that you mentioned in the, description of the episode.
And obviously.
I think I'll link that in the description as well.
So people can subscribe to it.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Bill, again, thanks.
Thanks a lot for taking time on this, lovely Tuesday morning.
it's been like a pleasure to host you on the show.
There's ton of insights that you shared with us.
Thanks.
Thanks once again.
BillOh, no worries.
It was such a great pleasure.
maybe just one last thing I'd say to everyone out there listening to it is you are in a fantastic time to learn and grow as a marketer.
In fact, there's never been a better time.
Like in a weird way, like AI coming out is such an equalizer.
It doesn't matter if you've had 20, 30 years experience.
Like the fact that AI is coming out, it's completely rewriting all these functions.
So you have, This is a great thing for you.
This is something where if you can get ahead of it and on top of it, you're going to be way ahead of your peers and way ahead of your older peers who for whatever reason, don't want to learn about it because it's some new crazy tech or they're not worried about or whatever it is.
this is a great opportunity to start a business too.
Like the cost of entry, cost of areas have never been lower.
this is like carpe diem, go get it.
SunilAwesome.
Thanks.
Thanks, Ben.
BillAll right.
Thanks so much.