Marketing Strategy ≠ Business Strategy | E68 with Jennifer Macdonald

In this episode, Emma, Ruta and Jennifer Macdonald dive into the all-too-common confusion between marketing strategy and business strategy—and why marketers shouldn’t be expected to magically fix business problems. They get into the mess that happens when there’s no clear business direction, how CEOs sometimes (okay, often) misunderstand marketing’s role, and why a solid business strategy is essential for marketing to actually do its job.

The conversation highlights the struggle marketers face in getting proper investment, battling unrealistic expectations, and setting boundaries with the C-suite. They call out fake engagement on social media and why it’s time for marketers to be real about the ups and downs of the job. Honest communication, a clear plan, and a reasonable budget? Turns out, that’s the real “secret sauce” for effective marketing.

Takeaways:

• Marketing ≠ Miracle Worker: Marketing strategy supports business strategy, but can’t fix what’s broken.
• Business Strategy First: Without a clear direction, marketing is left spinning its wheels.
• Educate the Execs: Misunderstandings about marketing’s role often lead to misplaced expectations.
• Set Boundaries: Clear communication between marketing and the C-suite can save everyone a lot of headaches.
• Demand What You Need: Marketing requires real investment; advocating for budget based on strategic priorities is essential.
  
  

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We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing. 

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Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Transcript

0:00

Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Blame it on Marketing. We are very excited today to have Jen with us to discuss a topic which I think a lot of us are going to have a lot of opinions about. And it's the fact that marketing strategy isn't business strategy. Yes, you heard that right. But before we dig in, I would love to kick it over to Jen to introduce herself. I am Jen, the marketing manager at a digital marketing agency called Evolved, and we have a sub -brand called Upshift. So at the moment, I'm actually just working on the marketing strategies for Upshift, because that's kind of our focus moving forward. yeah. So before we start talking strategy, ladies, Jen, tell us, or if you're happy to, tell us your deepest, darkest marketing fuck up. Tell us what happened. I mean, to be honest, there's been loads. Like, I'm not sure if it's worth it. But I'll probably say my biggest one, I remember, I mean, it was just when I was kind of starting out in like doing a broad marketing role. I was like, yeah, I'll be amazing at this. It was probably like in my early 20s. And basically, I just totally failed to prepare for this event that we were going to. So it was an exhibition and obviously my boss was like, can you go in? organized that, organized everything for the event. I went away and got all the equipment sorted and the merchandise and the t -shirts and all the fun stuff. I didn't actually think about what we'd be saying or what we'd be talking about on the day. So we got there and it was pretty embarrassing to be honest because there was a big tagline on all of our exhibition stands and people came up to me all day being like, Why is your agency different? Like, what can you tell me about the agency? And to be honest, I just... had no idea what to say. mean, luckily I'd come from a delivery team, so I kind of fumbled my way through that a little bit. But yeah, to be honest, it was just really embarrassing. I was just talking about my background as a job. Obviously I was literally like 22 or something. But yeah, it was probably a bit of a waste of money and time. Thank God it was a bit of a cheap event. We've all been there, definitely. The under -preparing thing for events is something that we can all relate to. I remember the first time I had to like book and pay for electric at an event, I was like, what the f... What is that? Like, surely we just, you know, we're at a venue and I get electric, right? Like it's part of the deal, you know, we're not living in the dark ages, but no, you gotta sort that out. yeah, that could have... they just don't provide you with stupid things like that you wouldn't be. there was one i went to years ago where they wouldn't take your rubbish away and so like they this was so mad they provided a bin on the stand or near the stands so people put rubbish in the bin and then we all got a fine because we didn't pay to have our rubbish collected i think that was a i think that was a piss take i know it's awful totally it's just a money making scam totally Totally. So let's talk strategy. think as Jen, you said you're in the midst of writing some strategies. Ruta and I do this quite often for our clients. Obviously, we all know that we need to have a marketing strategy. But I think it'd be good for us to kind of maybe spell out for people what the difference is between a business strategy and a marketing strategy. And also why it's so important that marketing strategies are based on business strategy. So the business strategy needs to come first rather than the marketing one. Yeah, I think this is like a huge frustration for marketers in general, but I think from my point of view, a business strategy focuses on how the business is going to achieve its goals. So where does the business want to get to? By what point? What investment do we have to make that happen? And how are we going to get there? This is where marketing comes into it. Obviously, like a business strategy will understand the need to invest in marketing and a marketing strategy will define the ways to help it get to where it needs to be for its wider business objectives. mean, the two do go hand in hand, but it's definitely not the same. I definitely think the line goes a little bit hazy when you start looking at things like proposition and productization and who your ideal client is, because ultimately the business should decide where in the market they'd like to be positioned. This focuses on things like service offering, hourly rate, the values of a company. But ultimately a marketing strategy should decide how to get the brand positioned in the market based on those factors, as opposed to setting out those factors from the marketing side. Hmm. Do we think that that confusion between the two is because at some point they are interlinked, also kind of looking back at the investment environment and how companies have been pushed into this lean methodology. It's almost like, let's just get some clients and then we'll figure out the rest, clients at any cost and then we'll figure out what we're doing. Do you think it's kind of a little bit symptomatic of that view of world? Yeah, I mean, I'd definitely say that like in terms of the past few years, especially since like after COVID and everything, I think businesses, like you say, just panicked and wanted to get clients in and kind of maybe missed and obviously retaining clients, that was a major importance and probably missed the broader picture of like, okay, well, we can get those clients in immediately now, but then in the future, like we still don't exist. in the marketplace. think, yeah, that's definitely been something that I think a lot of agencies, especially younger agencies that have maybe only started in the past few years, they obviously started, probably got hit with an absolute shit show and then have now been trying to chase their tails in terms of marketing. And also I think there's so much competition now in the agency world that it's actually a real struggle to get positioned in the marketplace unless you kind of go down some sort of niche or have a specific area that you want to target. I think it's really difficult. it's in terms of where the business strategy is and aligning it with the marketing strategy can sometimes be disconnected just because obviously the marketing team might have a very different idea of how to get positioned there. Whereas the business might think, no, no, we're just going to focus on being a paid marketing agency. Whereas there's so much competition you need to kind of differentiate yourself. So yeah, I think it has been quite hard in the past few years, definitely. I think a lot of it comes from this idea that people think, I mean, we really hate talking about total addressable market. It's one of Ruta's trigger words. But I think it is that whole idea that we can sell our product to anyone and it can help everyone. And actually, the reality is that's probably not. that's probably not the case. therefore the idea that, because we can sell to everyone and everyone will buy us. Therefore, maybe we don't need to have a business strategy. And therefore, perhaps even worse, still, we don't need to therefore have a marketing strategy. So like Ruta says, we're going to focus on using our little black books and our networks to drive our initial customers. And then after that, we'll worry about it later. And then what happens is as you start to implement these strategies, you see a natural slowdown, think, and I think that panics founders and they don't want you to spend the time doing strategy work or, you know, like sitting down as a team and working out what that business strategy should be for the year because they're like, if we do that, then we're not selling, selling, And therefore they kind of start to think maybe this is not something that they actually want to spend the time doing, but it's such a massive, such a massive mistake Tell us a bit about what you guys have seen maybe about when you've seen organizations not put these strategies in place, what's it like? Yeah, I mean, to be honest, it's just when businesses don't put it in place, it is kind of a thing of like, think higher up, like CEOs in the board level often think that referral is obviously the quickest and best way to get clients because they kind of are introducing you, they're giving you that credibility. But ultimately, referrals are gonna dry up, like your network is only so big, so you need to market to bigger networks. And I think that I've definitely spoke to agencies more recently that... obviously with the economic climate and stuff, when obviously changes have had to be made in businesses, that they've actually really struggled to kind of understand where they fit in the marketplace. And because of that, they're now thinking, shit, we do need to sit and do a strategy, but don't have time because they are panicking and thinking, my God, we need to get clients in the door. And I think that's a major flaw maybe for a lot of, even in -house marketers, they don't really think. well, this is our target audience, let's focus on how we can get in front of them. They just think, like at this point, any sale is a good sale. So it's kind of hard to think, we're gonna spend a lot of time on this strategy and go down this, whatever route it might be, because that might slow us in the interim. So yeah, I think it also causes a lot of kind of internal motivation and culture issues. So when there isn't a defined strategy from a business strategy, excuse me, people don't know what they're working towards. And if they do, oftentimes teams have different targets that don't align to each other. So it kind of is that classic sales and marketing misalignment. And I think a lot of that does come from not having a strategy higher above those teams and just being like, well, you need to make sales and you need to do marketing. And it's like, okay, how do we, like, what does that mean in terms of things? So, yeah, I feel like it, it causes under performance from a, from a very technical point of view, but it also causes underperformance because people aren't aligned. People don't know what they're working towards. And oftentimes when there isn't a business strategy for the year or for the next few years, things will just keep changing the strategy or whatever. you know, the founders want to do, we'll just keep changing over and over. And that causes so much fatigue in all of the teams and all the employees that it becomes really hard to kind of pull back out of that and, to actually achieve something that's, that's what's the word sustainable and, doable. And that's going to last. I think that's similar in a vein of like retaining clients because I think often if they're seeing a marketing message, but then I've maybe spoke to the founder of the business and then that's a different message. And then they may be speaking to account directors or delivery teams. And then they're getting another mixed message. It's quite hard to kind of keep that consistent. And then therefore you could end up losing clients because of that. And so kind of ultimately the marketing message should be the umbrella for the whole business, but that does need to kind of filter down from what the business strategy is as a whole. it's, yeah, it can be really difficult to retain clients based on that. Hmm. I was going to say one of the things that I think is, and you mentioned this Ruta but I'm sure we've all experienced it is the fact that like, let's say, for example, you work in a business where there is a business strategy, and hopefully a marketing strategy, and you will sign up for it. And you're like, yeah, this is what we're going to do. This is the direction and then some and then the CEO slash founder or board want to really quickly change things and they're constantly changing things. That's a really difficult situation to be in. And I think so many marketers work in that world and therefore is then very difficult to have a well performing marketing function because you are constantly changing what the strategy is. mean, I would argue that those are not, if you're not willing to hang your hat on something for the best part of a year, I would argue that's probably not a business strategy. Don't know how you guys feel, but I think that is as bad as not having one. I think actually more fatigue is created as a result of people shopping and changing constantly. I don't know what your guys experience has been like of that. Yeah, 100%. I also just think that sometimes if it's so misaligned, you don't really understand, even if you kind of get imposter syndrome and think, is my work even good enough for this? Because you kind of always get something to the line to finish, and then something changes. You think, I've got to start again. And it's kind of like, because your work doesn't get implemented, because it doesn't fit the wider business strategy, think, it's the marketing strategy. Just crap like I've ever done. my job bad and then it starts getting, setting in that sense. So just, yeah, it can be really like difficult to like push forward when it's kind of that misalignment all the time. So how can we as marketers effectively communicate to the CEOs, the board, to the founders, whatever kind of the senior people are that we can't just drive the business strategy with a marketing strategy. We actually need them to come up with the business strategy And I mean, to be honest, in my opinion, any market is working on the marketing strategy always need to have a direct line to the board or to the founders or whoever is setting the business strategies. And just so that nothing gets lost in translation. And because I think that can be especially for in -house marketing teams, especially If you've got quite a big organization, it can kind of become Chinese whispers. But I think it's easy for marketing teams to think. that they're doing a really good job because they're hitting their objectives that they've been set by their marketing director or whoever. But if the efforts aren't contributing to the wider business strategy or KPIs, then ultimately the time and money spent on those is gonna be wasted. mean, I know from my side, like I like try and have regular check -ins with our board just to make sure that I'm not running away with any marketing activity if the business direction or plans are going to change or have changed. I also think it's really important to speak to each board member directly about their concerns. For example, like I talked to our CEO, but then I'll also speak to our operations director because ultimately, while they both have ideas of the business direction, their daily concerns are going to be very different. So for instance, like our operations director, she works on all of the resource for the business. So when I need anything from the wider team, I can go to her and she can see where we're going to utilize those teams and I can get a clear answer from her. Whereas the CEO wouldn't really be able to direct me in that area. And I think that their objectives for the day or for the year is going to be very different. So I think having those regular check -ins is like probably one of the main important things that marketing teams can do. Yeah, I agree with that. And also I think one thing that I've found effective in, it's not me necessarily saying, hey, I need you to do a business strategy so I can do my marketing strategy. But what I do is I have a set of questions that I kind of basically need to know before I can start any marketing strategy. So it's like, how much money are we looking to make? What's the split between marketing and sales? What target markets are we going after? What's the average deal size? How long does it take to close? So what's our margin? Whatever. All of those kind of more businessy finance questions. I basically just start with that. like, let's get on a call, I've got a few questions before I can start. Let's go through that. And then if there aren't answers to those things, it's like, well, I can't really progress with my work very well. Could we please get an answer to this? And it almost like back builds up some sort of a slight strategy. I know that. that does not make up a strategy, but it at least gets people thinking about the things that they should know before they start marketing because it's very hard to do good marketing when you don't know what you're going for. Mm -hmm. Yeah, I was gonna say similarly, I think the other way, other way to do that is it's you can always do a marketing audit. And like Ruta said, like, so if you if you are struggling to have those conversations, or you have less access, let's say, than Jen and Ruta to your CEO board, you can audit your marketing. And that will reveal where there are some of these gaps, right? And you can always report back via the the medium of an audit, that there are gaps between marketing and where you think the business is the business is headed product is headed, where there are gaps where sales and marketing don't work well together or sales and or marketing and CS, for example, marketing and product or whoever. And therefore, I think that is actually quite a if you are really struggling, I think that's quite a clever mechanism. Because then what you're doing is you're basically just kind of like holding a mirror up to where there are gaps without outwardly saying, hello, can you please write a business strategy? And any good CEO or board, any good board member or CEO should look at that and look at your findings from your audit doesn't have to be super in depth and go, okay, I recognize there are some gaps here. What can we do to close these gaps? And hopefully be asking those sorts of questions. It's just another mechanism. But I would say almost like your marketing audit, your audit is kind of your maybe your plan B if you can't have some of these better conversations and you can't have that one -to -one access, which I know some people will be sitting here going, they don't want to talk to me. How do I deal with this? So outside of that, in your experience, what are some of the common misconceptions maybe that CEOs have about the role of marketing when it comes to sort of driving the business forward? I'd say that I think often CEOs understand the need for marketing. Most people who run a business will understand why marketing is so important, but maybe aren't clear on the priorities of where to invest. And obviously when you're a business owner and every penny counts, that can be a serious problem for marketers to try and communicate, we need this investment to make money from it. But I think this is where marketers come into it to share their knowledge and advise on where budgets are best spent. But again, if there's a reluctancy there to spend, then that can become a serious problem. But I think, to be honest for me, one of the major problems that I think needs to be communicated to CEOs or that maybe CEOs lack understanding of, or can be guilty of thinking that marketers know how to do everything. whether you're an individual or a team of marketers, you're, marketing is such a broad term. So And ultimately, like all round markets, I would say I'm quite all round, but my background is in digital PR. But in that case, I am not a videographer and I'm not a specialist in that. And for me, I would advise that we outsource that or hire someone in to do that specifically because everyone can't broad markets can't do everything themselves. And even when they can, it can't be to a really high quality standard. And I think Mm -hmm. can do it to high quality standard, it doesn't mean that they have the time to do it because there's everything else going on, know, so it might be way more efficient to get someone else to do that. Yeah. was just going to say, but that's where the role of your, and again, you need to have this way, you need to have your marketing strategy because this is where that stuff is outlined, is that you have a strategy and then you have a plan and the plan is quite clear on the fact who is potentially executing on what and therefore what budget do you need to resource this plan and strategy properly. And again, that's one of the break the points where it's very difficult for marketing teams to perform because If you don't have a business strategy that sits above that, how can you ever get the resource and the budget that you need? Because there is clearly a lack of understanding about what you need to drive the business forward. So for me, like, it's like the whole thing. It's like this domino effect, isn't it? It's like, they will expect you as a marketer to do everything. If they go ahead and do things like try and run a business without business strategy, I would always say red flag. Definitely an interview question more people should maybe ask. when they're looking for a job, right? It's like, is there a business strategy? think the real question is like, what is a business strategy to you? Because someone can say there's a business strategy, but if it's make five million pounds next year and that's basically, that's it. It's not a business strategy, that's a goal. Yeah. Yeah, there's got to be more to it than that. actually a really good point. Like anyone looking for a job in the marketing space, is something you should definitely ask in an interview. So if we, as marketers are finding ourselves in a place where there isn't a business strategy and we're awesome enough to be able to create one, how do we balance kind of, yes, adding value and doing that, but also not taking it upon ourselves to actually create the business strategy for the entire company? putting clear boundaries in place from the start is probably the best thing to do here, but also just setting objectives to make sure that the board and the marketing are aligned. So even if you are contributing to the wider business strategy, which is sometimes really good, depending on the size of the business, you might have more of a direct line to, you know, the delivery teams and things that might actually be really beneficial for you in those meetings. But I think it's just clear communication and putting those boundaries in place from the start. So like, if the board think that productization is part of the business strategy, the marketing team need to step aside and allow them to figure out those priorities so that the marketing team can then decide what to push And similarly, if the marketing team are waiting for the business strategy to determine, I don't know, who their target customers are for the next quarter, and the board are waiting for the same back from marketing, it needs to be clearly communicated who's responsible for that. Because I think that can be a massive wall that you come up against. You're like, well, I was waiting for you for that. And they're like, well, I was waiting for you for that. I think setting those clear objectives in the first place is going to take away all that time and effort wasted from both parties. Boundaries, feel like that's the theme of this, it? It's like setting clear boundaries and having good channels of communication between marketing and your C-suite are really important. know it's a lot easier said than done, but I think you're bang on there, Jen, with all of that. Otherwise, yeah, where do we start and finish? Because marketing, can do things like take the product and all of those things if people let us. Is that the problem with marketers? We think we can do everyone else's job better than them. We will do it all and die trying probably. So it'd be really good if we all could have a crack at this actually to share an example from our careers where a lack of business strategy from leadership has kind of impacted marketing efforts and then how have you navigated it and maybe what some of the issues you've seen as a result. Yeah, I mean, this is such a funny topic for me because I think in my last two agencies that I've been in, I would say that my role was probably created before there was actually a need for it to be created because there wasn't a clear direction for the business I mean, when I first stepped into like a rounded marketing role, it was because I... asked to be moved into that position because I was in one of the delivery teams and I thought there was a real need for it for the business and I thought it would help my progression and the business. So we kind of agreed on both parties that that would be like a really good role for me to step into. And I don't get me wrong, was plenty to do in that role. But because I was kind of new into that and they didn't really have it lined out in the business strategy, a lot of the... time and budget that I needed wasn't there. So And then when I stepped into the role that I'm doing now, I think again, the business recognized the major need for marketing, but weren't 100 % sure on the capacity for that. So for example, the business strategy hadn't been laid out or decided. So it meant the marketing was really stagnant, And again, which meant time and budget has been wasted. But I think in both cases for me, I've tried to navigate this by like trying to keep fully connected to, like I say, the board and who I'm working with to understand what the business goals are and how that can progress with that. Because I think while both businesses kind of maybe didn't recognize exactly what they needed from marketing. They still recognized that they needed it. I kind of, it's helped curb waste and a lot of budget by me coming in here and just saying like, I we need to do loads of paid marketing when really I didn't think that was a great strategy from the off. And I wouldn't have known that. And they wouldn't have known that if I hadn't have had that connection to the board and to the... and C-suite of the business. I think, yeah, trying to prepare for whatever the business strategy is going doing the marketing strategy alongside that should like has hopefully aligned the full term marketing strategy that I'm going to do moving forward. yeah, I definitely think that's been a bit of a struggle We haven't spoken about this before, I don't think. So when I worked in -house, we got acquired by a very big company. prior to that, it was me, Emma and Jabs, and that was the marketing team. And we brought in 95 % of all revenue. So it was kind of like, guys, what do you need? Let's get it done. These are the goals. How much money? Whatever. Like super collaborative, just shifts the case. And we got acquired and for a few months after the acquisition, we obviously expected it to be like, you know, a time of change. Like there's going to be some stuff in flux, whatever. But we kept asking, you know, like, what do you want us to achieve? What are the goals? Like, blah, blah, blah. And we didn't get the answer. And the expectation was that we'll just kind of keep ticking along. And I was like, but that doesn't make any sense because, you know, we're spending a certain amount of money and you might be very unhappy with that. If we keep doing that, given your future business goals for us. And that conversation kept going for a few months. And eventually we just got told what we need to do, but they hadn't actually. Like looked at our prior performance and didn't have a way to tie in everything else. So the goals were completely wild because they were measuring us on stuff that we don't even measure ourselves on. So for example, we didn't count MQLs and they were like, get 12 MQLs. we're like, well, we don't. we don't generate MQLs, we don't do that. So do you want us to make up MQLs? Like, are you cool with that? Cause we don't do that. You know, like we literally used to measure pipeline, that's it. So it was, yeah, it was this mismatch. So not only was the business strategy, obviously it was going to take some time and that's completely fine, but it wasn't even tied into how we work. And that was just like, well, I guess we'll just make shit up And then when we weren't spending as much money, kind of leading up to that, were like, well, why aren't you spending all this money? And it's like, because we don't know what you want us to achieve. So I don't want to spend money because it might be on the wrong things, on the wrong type of clients or on the wrong type of, know, channel, whatever it was. So that, I think that's, that for me comes to mind when we, when we talk about this, you're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place basically, because everything you do will probably be wrong at some point if you don't have that clarity. Yeah, mine is different company, but not exactly similar issue because it wasn't about acquisition. basically, tech company got some, you know, VC money came in, everyone was like, woohoo, got those millions in the bank. And then obviously, as a result, targets needed to double, get to the end of obviously, get to the end of March. And there's no business strategy and no marketing strategy, but the sales and marketing targets have doubled. And there's obviously been no ramp up to that. It's like April the first, you need to generate a million pounds worth of pipeline. Where the fuck is that going to come from? And then, and then let's just say chaos ensued from that. And I ended up quitting that job and doing a bit of a rock star exit and saying, I told you so. And off I went about. live that life, girl. Yeah, about four or five months into that scenario, I just went, no, I'm not doing this. This is not my problem. I tried to tell you this before you accepted all that money. And yeah, and was just, it was so, the worst part about that is actually that yes, okay, no business strategy, no marketing strategy, very, very difficult situation for everybody. But actually it's the culture and it's the impact that it has on the people involved. A lot of people who were working on that marketing team at the same time as me, walked away feeling like they were useless at their job, which was it was not real, not real, because basically, it's like you set us an impossible challenge from the outset. And everyone went, everyone went, yeah, but you've got the money to do it. So what's the problem? Like, sure, some start magicing demos from nowhere. So yeah, that is a cautionary tale of what happens when you have loads of money, but no business strategy. a better problem to have. But I think that's like a major theme here. It's set out goals, but ultimately it leads the marketing team to feel like they're not very good at their jobs. And I think that it can be quite damaging on the way people want to move forward because it's like, well God, I'm rubbish. Cause that didn't actually generate any results. So I've not brought any inbound leads because of that. Or we've not been able to actually implement that. And it kind of puts the whole team on edge because they then, and then they think, well, I can't do it moving forward, which is like disappointing. So I think that's something like all of this can help like curb that by just having a business strategy in the Yeah, and making sure that the CEO or whoever is the kind of higher seat owns that strategy and owns those goals with you. So if things aren't going well, it's not marketing, you're doing shit. Fuck, something's wrong. How can we fix it? Because when it's like that, well, I told you to hit this target and I told, I know you had money and you're not hitting it. You know, work with it. And it's like, no, this is. literally as much your responsibility as a CEO, because it's literally your fiduciary responsibility to make sure your company does well as it is mine as an employee. we're going to have to work it out together, which sometimes doesn't happen. A lot of the time it doesn't happen. no. And can I just add the final nail in the coffin for that situation was that as we accept as the the millions of pounds hit the bank account, we also didn't have any access to any of our marketing performance data. So we couldn't have written a marketing strategy if we wanted to, because we have no idea how anything was performing. So that again, that was also my like, why have we accepted all this money when we don't know what works? panic, panic, panic. a great time. was a great time. anyway that's that's that's a story another story for over a drink. so jen before we let you go have you got any marketing gossip for us? anything that has irked you or is annoying you or that you are loving at the minute that you want to share with us? I think my biggest... annoyance at the moment is that like on social media, the way that market is engaged, it's so like forced and fake. Like it's actually really refreshing to be talking on a podcast that is just, we're just speaking openly about, you know, the shit that comes alongside marketing because like actually there is, you know, peaks and troughs and sometimes there's amazing winds that we want to shout about and that's really good. But I feel like everyone always talks about the wins and their amazing achievements, which is great. You always want to hear about that. But no one ever talks about their struggles or like, you know, why they've even something minor that they've done. They might have fixed a really annoying error on a website that was really minute, but that's actually a really big achievement to them because it's been bugging them for weeks. Yeah, I feel like LinkedIn is like the peak of us all gaslighting each other about how amazing everything is and how great everything is and like, there's no problems and all these deals and obviously we don't do that because we're literally the opposite of that Yeah. let's say you're in an interview, right? And I'm interviewing a marketer and they talk about all the good stuff and then I ask them, okay, tell me about some of the bad stuff. And they have nothing to say, red flags. You've either not gone through a tough time, so you're not gonna be able to handle a tough time or you're literally lying. everyone has something. you're totally delusional and you're just actually shit. like you must.. you must be shit. that's my.. i'm like if you haven't ever done anything wrong in marketing you're shit. there's something wrong with you. you're delusional. yeah, It actually came up not even that long ago. So my CEO actually put something on LinkedIn, basically just saying that like things weren't amazing and it was kind of going through a rocky stage and things are a bit shit. And it was so funny how many people, literally came up to me that afternoon and was like, my God, so many people have DM'd me to say like, should we go for coffee? And I'm not joking, had like 20 meetings off the back of it, of other people saying like, my God, it's isn't it? Everything's so shit. And I was like, but like, I've got you on LinkedIn and you think it's amazing. And you're saying that like, you're absolutely flying in life. And I saw you on a yacht last week. Like, thought things were amazing. And it's like, just bullshit. It's linkedin versus reality We've all got we've all fallen into the trap of you know, like insta versus reality now It's linkedin versus reality and people need to be a bit more honest I think that's also a real problem for us in marketing right because if you've got people who would like really pretending that everything's absolutely fine, but the reality is it's not fine. It's painting this incorrect kind of picture for your competitors, right? So everybody's like obsessed with this idea that their competitors are doing really, really well and my God, what are we doing wrong? Something, we're doing something shit. But actually if we were all just a little bit more honest about how difficult things were, maybe we wouldn't all be then like trying to whip sales and marketing to death to try and get new customers, you know. Well, Jen, thank you so much for being on. It's been a great chat. I'm so excited you suggested this topic because we hadn't even thought of it, but we've all gone through it, right? It's so ingrained in our lives that we don't even think it's a thing. We hope to see everyone on blameitonmarketing .com, including Jen, so we can have a chat about this. And yeah, thank you so much and you will see us in the next episode.