Safe, Seen, & Paid: What Women in B2B Really Need | E95 with Jane Serra

Why is it still harder for women to be seen, heard, and safe in B2B marketing? 🤔 We work in female-heavy teams, but the mics, panels, and power seats still skew the other way—and it shows up in our careers, our DMs, and even at conferences.

In this episode, we’re joined by Jane Serra, host of Women in B2B Marketing, to dig into what actually moves the needle: women-only spaces, real allyship, and building the support systems that carry you further than any “hustle harder” mantra ever will.

We get into:
 ✅ Why “women-only” rooms still matter (and how they change the convo)
 ✅ How to build your Personal Board of Directors (P-BOD)—and use it for jobs, pay, and sanity
✅ Practical allyship for men (hint: share those opportunities you’re handed)
✅ Equity vs. equality: what companies get wrong and how to fix it
✅ Conference reality checks: safety, safeguarding, and setting boundaries
✅ “Do it scared”: putting your name in the hat before you feel “ready”
✅ The visibility gap—why fewer women get the mic and how to change it
✅ Surviving the “do more with less” era without burning out

If you’ve ever felt alone in a room full of marketers—or you’re ready to make B2B better for the next woman in line—this one’s for you.

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

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

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

Transcript

0:00

Hi everyone and welcome back to Blame It On Marketing with Emma and Ruta. And we are joined by the awesome Jane who will let introduce herself in just a second. But today's topic. is, I mean, it's beyond close to our hearts. It's basically our lives. We are going to be talking about being a woman in B2B marketing and obviously no better guest to talk about that than with Jane. So Jane, over to you. Tell us about yourself. Yes, if you have not listened in, I host the show very aptly named Women in B2B Marketing. I was not very creative when coming up with this and I figured the SEO would be good that way, but now SEO kind of doesn't exist, so it doesn't matter. But yeah, thank you so much for having me on the show. My background is I've been in B2B marketing for almost 20 years now. And one day I realized all of my podcasts I was listening to were men talking to other men about marketing. And I hated that. So I wanted to change it because when in day to day, all of the stats skew female for marketing until you get to the C-suite and then it balances out 50-50, unfortunately. But in my day to day, I was experiencing more women in marketing, but in my feed and on stages, I'm seeing and hearing more men talking about marketing. So I wanted to switch that. And I also appreciate that you two are doing your part to switch that as well. So thank you. We need more women on mics talking about marketing and anything else that we want to. Absolutely. We're all for that. I mean, I'm not saying we deliberately exclude men, but I would say that our episodes are definitely women heavy and we are very proud to have done that. Love that. find a lot of women and marketers, obviously, that having the same experience as us. So we just naturally have a lot of women on the podcast because it makes sense when we click and it's a good time. yeah. I love that. Do you have stats on, like have you looked at the stats and the breakdown of your listeners from a gender perspective? I'm curious what the split is. Yeah. oh God, I should have absolutely also looked up how many episodes feature women, but it is definitely more. uh 100%. We did, we, yeah, of just women, women and gays. I'm actually, really hopeful that your spread is better than mine because one, I wouldn't call it regret, but a lesson that I'm learning right now is that because the title of my show is very clearly women in B2B marketing, there's a misnomer that or a misunderstanding that it's only for women in B2B marketing to listen to. excuse, I do have some solid male listeners and thank you to those few, those three. but it's definitely more female. But I'm curious because yours isn't titled as such, but you end up having more women guests. You might be helping the cause even more because you can attract more listeners of all types and shapes and sizes and genders, but you're exposing more women on the show. We shall see. to get this information. I'm on Apple podcasts. View analytics. from a seniority perspective, our podcast tends to lean more towards senior marketers. So it'll be interesting to see then what the kind of like gender split is from that because yeah. really upsetting when I can't find any data. Is that from surveys or does that, can you get that somewhere? we have a LinkedIn page for Blame It On Marketing. So, you know, like when you go in the audience, you can see if people are senior or junior or whatever it is. Yeah. I haven't checked my LinkedIn page demographics yet. I need to do that. do it So before we dig into the topic, we have to do the classic thing we do, which is you have to share your deepest, darkest marketing confession. So something you've messed up royally. Yes. So there's one thing that always comes to mind. I'm curious how bad you think it is. I mean, I mess up all the time, right? We're human. So I make little mistakes here and there. But the one that sticks and haunts me, but now I can thankfully laugh at is from God, 10 plus years ago, where I was new to PR for a B2B company. was leading the B2B marketing, but I was new to dealing with PR people and journalists. And one of our customers at the time was Jet.com, if you remember them. They were purchased by Walmart. So was like a big online retailer coming up against Amazon. So they were one of our customers and they were blowing up and they had just had the Walmart acquisition. And we had a coverage from them about how we were their agency of record. And somehow the journalist basically said, thanks to this agency, jet.com gets acquired by Walmart and this got published and it was like, what? And yeah. So it was so bad because I just didn't, I trust people first and foremost. And when I connected this journalist, I brought in our, our customer live and I was on the call. That was never said, but they connected dots that weren't connected and put that out. So. What I had to do is just kind of, I don't know, make things right. So I brought in our CEO to speak with the customer, calm them down. Thankfully, they were all good people there. And then I spoke with the journalist and I convinced her to edit it a little bit. But everyone ended up happy in the end, which thank God, everyone was good. I didn't lose my job. But it ended up working in our favor because that title was out there for like a couple of days. and it brought us some business. it was like, like, I'm mad at you journalists, but I also like, thank you. But it had me up all night. Yes. I was like, it poignant. Yeah. They did clickbait. Like mega clickbait for you. Yes. it was in our favor and it could have gone like the complete opposite, right? But. I had a similar situation when the company we worked for got acquired and we obviously had to put out a press release and we had approved the press release and in the press release, it didn't say how much money you got acquired for and our CEO was expecting it not to say how much we got acquired for, but the investment, the VC firm that we worked with. last minute changed it and put in that acquisition number because they have to say how much it is. uh basically people were then questioning how much money the CEO made, like his family and like, you know, like random people that didn't have in contact, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, that was a bit of like, we weren't meant to say how much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They would have had to say it anyways, just we weren't anticipating it. So yeah, it was a bit of a... PR. Yeah. Yes. And the people that get upset who just left the company ruffles a lot of feathers. Gutted. Gutted to be them. So, on to our main topic. So, Jane, you've spoken to hundreds. How many women is it you've had? How many episodes? I want to say published right now we have like 115 ish episodes live. Yeah. That's incredible. So 115 ish episodes. we're always interested in this conversation because obviously, you as we started, you sort of said, you know, the amount of lists, there's a weird assumption about your podcast that it's for women only, but it's actually not. You're talking about B2B marketing. just so happens that the people that you interview are women. So I'm really interested to hear your take on whether you think, you know, women in B2B marketing, do we need, do we still need those spaces and content that's specific for us? And then also what's your feeling about, you know, the fact that there is that kind of misconception potentially with, with listeners. So I love this question because it's something I think about all the time. Like I said with your podcast, It gets in front of more people is my hypothesis because it's not gendered, right? So it opens up to a larger audience who don't just scroll by if they don't associate Jane hypothesis. But I also somebody I was speaking or having coffee with a founder, a woman founder. who I love and she said something to me, cause I wanted to get her on this other podcast about women founders. And she said, you know, I'm really hesitant to get on any like women focused things because I try to separate myself from that. And she's also, she's from Europe, like all over different areas there. So I'm curious if there's a different vibe there than here, but here in the States, but it just changed, it clicked something for me. like, wow, like I'm so, like women's groups and talk to women and pro like I put like women angles on everything probably too much. And this is how this person thinks like she she told me how she always wants to put on like a masculine voice and she wears like male power suits like they're not fitted they're very like like masculine seeming and she like doesn't wear makeup and she does all of these things to not be considered feminine. And it just blew my mind on this side. But back to your original question, I still think there's such a need for this. even though I debate this back and forth on naming things, and also I don't want people to feel excluded by gendering things, really I would love to have anybody who obviously identifies as female on the show. I also toyed with having it women with an ex. of B2B marketing, right? So I'm very open. It's more just getting people who are marginalized and don't get the attention they deserve. I want to give them that spotlight and that mic. But this year, I had my very first live event for women in B2B marketing. And A, it sold out, which I did not expect. It was really just amazing to see that. And the impact that it had, like, just walking around during the show. was like a half educational with people speaking and half just let's talk to each other and like network and connect everybody in this space. And the conversations that were being had as I walked around were so cool, just more open, right? And everyone was hugging each other. It was just a very safe space. And I heard that from people afterwards. Like, I didn't realize that I like... needed to vent this bad or that like other people were going through what I was going through. Some people were motivated after that meetup to go apply to the XYZ job. They have new networking friends and like, we're going to get into this later, but they built their personal board of directors at this show. So there's just, I definitely feel like there's a need because we have to, unfortunately still in 2025 when we go to other networking events or any kind of conference, we still have to have our guard up, especially if it's a nighttime event, there's a safety factor. But when you're all with all women, it's just pure comfort. The guard can come down, you can be yourself, you don't have to watch what you say, there's less judgment. So TLDR, yes, I do think there's a need for this kind of space. the point you made around the CEO that you know that kind of makes herself masculine on purpose is so interesting because I fight with this with myself all the time. So like, we all know what you look like, what you sound like, how you present is really important. So like, there's a fight between me wanting to be who I am and then me doing this thing, like the show. But I've never thought of someone going as far as like not wearing makeup or like wearing extra like, don't know, boxy suits or whatever it is, but. you know, like that blows my mind. I'm sure you've got a lot to say about this. Yeah. uh I, I do, I'm the same as you, Jane. I'm very much all for the fact that women need women only spaces. And I don't, cause I, my whole thing is always, I like, I like to talk about equity rather than equality because equity acknowledges that we're not all starting at the same starting point. Whereas equality says I want the same thing as you, but it doesn't actually address how you get the thing, the same thing. starting from. you're starting from, because we're starting, because we are, especially women in tech, which Ruta and I work predominantly with SaaS companies, you know, we are still the minority in the room. If we go into a boardroom, we're very often, it's maybe us and maybe the HRD is a woman. It's kind of the stereotypical setup. And also tech is just a male dominated space. So... Mm-hmm. I think we do need those things. think women, you know, our job in those spaces is to help clear the path for other women. I think that's what we're there to do. We're there to make it easier for each other, not, you know, make it more difficult. Yeah, we're not, we're not in competition, believe it or not. So I think we need those. I think we need those spaces, but I do see, and I have been involved in many Reddit thread arguments, et cetera, Twitter arguments. back in the day about why women need these spaces. And therefore, you know, is that okay if men have men only spaces or whatever, you know, it's just, and that is, yeah, and that's why I go back to the equity point because if you can explain equity to somebody that we don't all have the same starting point, then people do start to click that, okay, you didn't. you didn't have the same leg up that I had. You know, it's the same as if, like, Ruta and I always joke about the nepo babies, you know, the people who've got the leg up because they've got the financial standing, you know, it's like, we didn't, we didn't, exactly, we didn't, we don't, we got to acknowledge they don't start in the same position that state school educated, you know, girls have, you know, for example. So, um, yeah, so I think it's, I think it's important, but I can see and I have experienced it as I'm sure you two have as well, the discrimination, whether it's overt or covertly, when you are in a room of men. And so we've got to be able to talk about it. no, I'm women. Yeah, of course. you two are like too much, you know? And we're like, fair enough. We're not your cup of tea, but there's no need for this kind of like facial reaction. But anyway, yeah. I think also one of the things that is the older I get, the more I realize is the relationships women have with other women. unless you experience what that is like and the way we communicate and the way we can get each other. Like I don't want to exclude anyone from that. But if you're not a woman, I feel like it's hard to experience that and you kind of don't understand what it is. So it's very hard to conceptualize like why women to women relationships work and why we love them so much. Yes, it's so true. There's just like this related, like you've gone through battles together and there's just something that people just won't understand. Like the simple fact, this is something that came up at my live Women in B2B Marketing event in Atlanta. Brandy Starr, I'm not sure if you've had her on the show, but you should if you haven't yet, she's great. But she was at this event and she was wearing this awesome bright colored outfit. And I was like, I love, like, this is, you look so good. This is beautiful. I love the color. And she was like, yeah, girl, we always have to wear bright colors because this is not like a fun thing. It's so that you're less likely to be attacked at night. Isn't that crazy? And I was like, my God, yeah, yeah, yeah. I went from being like, I love this to be like, my God, I hate this. Why do we have to wear that? No, but now I also want to wear bright colors all the time when I'm out. It's like. so I did this years ago because I was, this is a very boring story, but a safeguarding officer for a conference. Go me. One in four women get sexually harassed at conferences, just at conferences. we can make the whole episode about this or we can cut it out later, but the, was in a bubble thinking that B2B marketing and B2B like tech was like a safe space. Cause we're all nerds, right? Like we, it's like, I feel like this is a safe little bubble. It's so not. And I, that was, I heard a couple of stories this past year that made me realize that how Like these conferences that I thought were so safe, because it was amongst my friends of B2B, are not actually safe at all. That blows my mind. We even have to have a, what was it, safeguard of an event? That's crazy. I love that that exists, but I hate that it has to. I mean, it's, it's, it is, it's an awful thing. And then to have a conversation, it was the bizarre thing as well to have a conversation with a male CEO where you say, we need to have safeguarding at our conferences. We need to have a go-to person that someone can come to if they are harassed. the male CEO is like, that doesn't happen. And I'm like, dude. got harassed and then got told not to wear such slutty outfits? Yeah, that was great. Yeah. yes yes yes i'm laughing but it's awful it's it is awful and then my god that is literally that's literally that's literally it was just yeah it was awful that and unfortunately that was by a woman so that was even more upsetting that the woman said to me don't dress like that otherwise you're going to attract negative attention and and that is i mean look i you can say what you want about her but the truth, you know, this is something that is formed because we have a patriarchal society. Our institutions are set up in a patriarchal way. Our organizations are still hierarchical and generally there's a man at the top of that hierarchy. Some of them are good. when you have a younger team, I think everything is exasperated. like when I, one of my first jobs I worked in, everyone was like 20, 21, like huge sales teams and like, my God, what they used to get up to at like company kickoffs, not kosher. So yeah, I think that exasperates it because it does draw those kinds of people like young and energetic and ambitious, you know, and that can sometimes lead to. Yes. I remember the first conference I went to and I was, I think, 21, 22, my first job after college, first full time. I went to a conference. It was like the woodworking space and packaging. And it was in probably Vegas or somewhere like that or Anaheim, California. There's like a bunch of trade shows there. But my boss told me like, just heads up, be careful because There's a lot of men here, like married men that come to these shows and like cheat on their wives and look for like one night stands. So just like be aware of that, be careful. He said it super well and I loved him for giving me this heads up because later that night I was eating solo at the bar as you do when you're by yourself. And I was eating at the bar. I'm a friendly person. The person next to me started talking to me about the baseball game. I think the Mets were on TV. And he, I went to leave, I was going to go to sleep, normal time of night, like signed out, I wasn't drunk or anything. He apparently watched me sign out and put my room number, because it was the hotel bar that I was staying in, and he called my room afterwards. Like he called it from the phone in the room, like to see if I wanted to hang out or get a nightcap. And I was like, what? And he was married. It was so creepy. Like that was my first foray into conferences. then you realize you're like oh i used to get that as well because i used to travel overseas a lot for conferences and things and i had i had the door knocks in the middle of the night and i remember and in the end i used to oh it's awful it's awful because you also you don't know who's there you don't know if it's your boss waking you up because there's an emergency oh second locks and peep holes man yeah. I'm pretty sure they're only there for women's safety, right? But yeah, in the end, like we'd go to some conferences and I would request to share a room next to one of my male colleagues. Cause I'd be like, I really don't like the door knocking in the middle of the night. Like it's freaking creepy, So yeah, I guess, so you see everyone, we do need these things. do need these spaces. All the stories we could tell. Yeah. This isn't like, my God, I can't believe that happened. Obviously it is, can't believe that happened, but like, yeah, I could totally see that. Yeah. woman has a version of these stories. And like we say, this is us talking about it in a professional context because we were at work. Not to mention the stuff that goes on outside of work. But this is work. This is the reality of being a woman in the corporate world, right? This is some of the bullshit you have to tolerate. like these side things that take up, they have to occupy space in your brain, which sets us at a disadvantage, right? Cause other people don't have to think about this. But I also thought naively that I turned 40 this year. So I thought it's like, okay, one silver lining of 40 is that I don't have to think about that stuff anymore. Low and behold, do you still do? Like this stuff still happens in your forties. So it's, yeah. It's frustrating. an age- it's definitely not an age thing. A creep is a creep, Jane. I I learned that, unfortunately. So what are some of the other key themes minus creeps being creeps that you come across on your conversations? So ironically, don't so again, even though the show my show is called women and B2B marketing, we don't talk about being women all that much. Maybe 5 % of my shows ends up talking about that and definitely not every episode. So it's interesting, like the themes are not creeps being creeps. I don't think I've even had this kind of conversation yet. Although apparently it needs to be like a round table opportunity. OK, going into themes from all of these leaders, 100 plus leaders I've talked to, the number one thing that has come across multiple times is having, like I mentioned earlier, a personal board of directors. So a P-BOD, if you will. getting basically everyone, big companies, right, have a board of directors that are supposed to advise the company on what to do. And when things go wrong, help get it right. So if we do the same and build our own, so we surround ourselves, I like to have mostly women, but that's my thing. It doesn't have to be all women. But creating your personal board of directors, people who have been where you've been or are where you want to be, and you surround yourself with them and they become your go-to. So when you're changing careers, changing jobs, you're just struggling with something at work or a channel isn't working and you don't know what's going on. You go to this team, this group that you've built and created and you can talk through it. And then vice versa, when they're going through something, you just have this group that you can WhatsApp and chat with or meet for drinks or dinner, right? And get together. And that, when somebody first mentioned that on my show, I think is one of the first couple of episodes. And then it's been repeated many times since. I built mine straight away. And so I have a very marketing specific personal board of directors and a non marketing specific. And they're just people that I go to left and right. And I swear they have helped me the past couple of years just with imposter syndrome. They've helped me feel more comfortable in my skin. They've helped me make good decisions. it just, they help you get to, they fill in gaps and things you don't know. You can also talk salaries, right? like what, so you know what you should be making if you're making less than you should, because you never know, the online stuff is never all that accurate. So it just helps you close some gaps and jump some chasms and get further in life. That's a big one. definitely. think, Ruta, we're probably each others and then there we probably have a few other people, but Ruta, yeah, that's, that's how this podcast started. Yeah. Yes. of directors coming together. Yeah, I can see it is so valuable, right? And also it's that thing, especially when you're trying to manage difficult relationships with C-suite or whoever it is. I feel like having that group of people who just get what your job is, get what the pressures are, it's just so invaluable, isn't it? Yeah. And it's not just like, it's fine. Just get on with it. You know, like, say, no, no, there's something going on here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have this WhatsApp group that I'm into and this is a mix of all kinds of people, but they're all in go to market. I don't even know how this came about this WhatsApp group, think, because we were all going to the same event and it just stuck. And now whenever we have a question or we're like gonna try something new or like, have you have you vibe coded? Are you vibe coding? What are you creating? Have you tried this? Like checking out a lot of it is AI related lately, but we're able to ask each other these questions and it. the things that come up that I never even knew about before. Like this is how I found out what vibe coding was because of this group. So this, the exposure to new things also is just so good. I mean, everyone knows you are who you surround yourself with, right? Like the 10 people you spend the most time with, everyone's heard that. A personal board of directors is kind of curating that. It's a chance to curate that for yourself. Yeah, choose the group wisely. Very good. oh other theme is kind of something a personal board of directors can help you do better, but is doing it scared, right? So if something scares you, this sounds so corny, because I'm over this phrase, but lean into it. And you want to do it. You want to do things scared. For instance, I bet you two for this podcast went through something similar. but I wanted to start my podcast many years before I actually started it. But I got in my head and I was like, but who am I to start a show? Who would want to hear me? Like, why would I be the person who should do this? There's way better people to do this. And you get in your own head. And I was nervous. Like, what are people going to think? What are people going to say? Because people can be mean or trolls online, right? So I was nervous about all of that. But then one day I said, sorry, fuck it. And I just. hit publish. I was like, what's the worst that can happen? People hate it and I have to stop. Okay, at least I tried and I learned something. So that's a theme that I kept seeing coming up on a lot of my episodes too, that a lot of women, it's kind of two part, but they were scared of doing something, but they just said yes anyway, and they tested it out. And at worst case scenario, if you don't like it, you can stop and switch directions again. So making sure that you do that. And the second part to this is a lot of women on the show mentioned putting their name in the hat, right? So making sure that you put yourself out there, you say what you want, you make it very clear where you want to go next, or if you want this position, like what can you get toward to actually get yourself there? What do you need to do to get there? So making sure that that's very visible and asking for what you want is a big part of that. Yep. big, scary things for women. know like this is, you you speak to female leaders in the marketing space, so people who are pushing boundaries and doing those things. But yeah, if anyone's listening and they're going, but I just, that's just too much for me. think we've talked about this before. It's that like taking, even taking calculated risks is fine to like ease you in. You you don't have to go all in and be like, I'm going to quit my job and I don't know, whatever. Sell beads or whatever you're going you know, you don't have to do, I don't know, I can think of something ridiculous. uh On Etsy, yeah, like you can do that if you want, but yeah, it doesn't have to be all, it doesn't have to be all in. It could just be like, I would actually really like to specialize in some particular part of marketing, but I've always been too frightened because I'm worried I won't get the job and you could. know, start edging yourself towards learning that craft or that niche or whatever it is. And I think that's for women, I get it. It's hard because, you know, there's all the economic shit that goes with being a woman, you know, on top of, you know, childcare and looking after the rest of the family and all of that. And I think that is why those things are so scary for women because there's so much more on our plates, often. Yeah. It's also the same thing of like, you know, like the very known stat, which is when women apply for jobs, they will only apply for jobs that hit every single requirement that they know how to do. Whilst men will apply for stuff that's like 60 % fit. It's the exact same thing. You tend to kind of undervalue yourself in terms of like, okay, if I don't know everything, then I can't be this. Which is like, if you already knew everything. why you taking that job like and also yeah it doesn't make any sense yeah Yeah. So that's my hypothesis too for why there's few, well, it's a part of the reason, because there's many other systemic issues behind it too. But I think a part of why there's fewer women on Mike's Stages podcast is the same exact reason there, right? Like we want to be perfect before we put ourselves out there. It's why I delayed the show, I'm sure. Tell me if there was a delay in you guys starting or if you just jumped in it because you had each other. uh I think we just reached a point where we didn't give a shit anymore. Like literally, we, I don't think it was so weird because for us it wasn't on the cards. Like we weren't thinking let's start a podcast. And then it had kind of, it did just happen. Like we were like, you know, moaning about stuff to each other. Yeah. comments that are not nice and we've had friends say not nice things and things like that. So yeah, it's not been free. Yeah, we're very unprofessional. So yeah, it's not been free by any means. we, yeah. you and you do have to be. No, I think it's interesting, isn't it? Because it's like, you know, and I wonder, I wonder again, if it is because, you know, I think there was a lot in the name, you know, blame it on marketing is a bit is kind of has this provocative thing about it that. um And because we haven't gone out and said, we're female marketers. you know, like I'm not saying that that never enters the chat. Obviously it does. Like we talk about it a lot because I feel like that's important. That's part of the learning bit of what we're doing here. we have had the conversation of like, okay, where would Blame It on Marketing be if we were two dudes? Yeah. Yeah. And also like Ruta and I have both launched tech companies in our own right as well. So we work as marketing consultants, but we have our baby day one dot marketing, our tech companies that we run. I equally, I, you know, I'm literally like, I'm two weeks into launching my tech company and I'm like, Oh, I, but I do, I do often think like how different the experience would be. if it was my male co-founder putting himself out front and centre versus myself, you know, like, yeah. you don't even need to like wonder about it. So like I have a male co-founder as well. It's the same one as Emma. Spoilers. um He's our tech dude. He's our tech dude. I sometimes manage his LinkedIn inbox and he gets continuously message on LinkedIn about going to incubators, being part of like investment groups. We don't get that. meetings. I haven't had a single one of these messages and we have the same like job title on LinkedIn continuously. Yep. haven't had and considering especially the the space that you know i've we've worked in HR tech similarly jane like for quite a long time i've launched a HR tech product we know quite a lot of people in that space i can count on one hand the number of HR tech guys that have been in touch lots of and they know me and i'm like okay all right you know i mean maybe by the time this episode's airs i'll regret saying this but Disclaimer in the show notes. Bob gave me this opportunity. Yeah. We love Bob. Yeah, so I do, I do want, I can't help but wonder that and I don't like that because I also think then that distracts from like, no, I'm here, I'm doing a very good job. You know, I'm gonna keep on going and if that means I have to elbow my way in a little bit harder because we are women, then that is one of the things that we will do. And we will do things. Like you say, when we're scared, we'll keep pushing. I think we also struggle. I feel so therapeutic and cathartic to talk about this with you guys, but I feel like it's, we also never want to come off as complaining or we feel like we're complaining all the time. It's like, it's not complaining. It's like, this is our reality and you need to see it. Like, I can't, I'm still, and I understand all of this, right? Like I create a woman's community. for this reason, but I'm still shocked, Ruda, when you said that there's, he's getting all these DMs and you're not, like that blows my mind. not only that, but he's not active on LinkedIn at all. He's just, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I have a task for any male listener on this show. When you have an opportunity coming your way in your DMs, if it's not limited to just you or if you are passing up on it, share it with a woman in your network. Done. Done. Pay it forward. That's how you can be an ally and put good juju out into the world. Yes. Better way to say it. Yeah. it's exactly the same point. It's just, you are acknowledging that you started ahead of us, which, you know, if you're a decent ally, then you acknowledge that. So if you pay it forward, you are basically helping, you're helping progress. So, hmm. See, okay, I like this. There's an action that listeners can take to do that. So crazy. actions, we kind of started talking about how women at your live event, excuse me, were supporting each other, of networking, doing stuff together. So how can we as women in marketing show up for each other and make sure that we're supporting each other as much as we can? Okay. My number one thing is for us to this again, sounds really corny, but if we pause and take the time to look inside ourselves, especially I feel like millennial millennials and generations before, it's getting better in each generation, which gives me hope. But millennials, like still when I was growing up in marketing, my the beginning of my career, it was very like competitive. we didn't see each other as friends and supportive of one another women. It was, okay, there's one seat at the table and that's my competition, this woman. So we need to battle it out to try to get to that. And it's, I was never, I don't think I need to really do some therapy and see if I ever did this. I hope I did it. But I don't think I was someone that kicked others down to rise up, but I've seen that happen between women. And there's still like a... layer of cattiness that I see out there of women just stepping on each other to get that one seat. Again, corny, but there's not the one seat at the table. You can pull up extra seats. Step one is realizing if you have any of those lingering feelings from when you were treated that way, because I sure did, get rid of that baggage, shake it off. If you feel like you're... This helped me personally, competition and comparison issues, If you feel yourself comparing yourself to another woman, talk to that person, invite them to like a digital virtual coffee, invite them on your podcast, right? Like it immediately eliminates the feeling of competition or comparison and you become friends. And that's the first step to supporting. So shake off your, your PTSD and your, your past drama from being a woman growing up in business and start embracing other women and seeing how you can support each other. So. lift them up, have them on shows, speak really well of them behind doors, right? Because that's what matters most. Men can do this too, but make sure you are other women's advocates behind closed doors. Say how great they are at XYZ. Give specifics and share opportunities with them. Because again, we're not competing with each other any more than anyone else is for like a job or something like that. But there's room for everyone. is the men because of the statistics. Like if we're gonna, yeah, exactly. tear them down. Focus your energy on the actual enemy. I'm to get so much hate in my inbox now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't mean it. Obviously, I don't mean it. because I think ultimately as well, like... If you, even if you struggle with this and you're a man and you listen, you go, Oh, I find this really hard because, you know, I want to be an ally, but I still believe that the best person for the job, the right person for the job is the best person for the job, which, but, but you have to get to know us, but you have to get to know us to know who the right person for the job is. Do you know what I mean? It's like, if you shut that door, and you say yeah yeah yeah but just because you're a woman doesn't mean you're the right person. Okay that's great but actually do you know that for sure? And have you spent enough time? yes, I'm with you so much and probably this comes up because we all worked in HR tech, but I have such an aversion when somebody says to me, especially a male, especially a white male, if he says to me like, I just wanna hire the best person for the job, I don't care who they are, like I'm not discriminating, that the fact that say that sentence tells me that you are discriminating because you can find, it just takes a little extra effort. You can find somebody who brings more diversity in every way, form to the team, which, statistics show, helps everybody on the team, helps the company make more money at the end of the day, if you just spent a little more time and weren't lazy just hiring the first best person for the job that you came across, which, because of all the boundaries and the blockers we talked about, is going to be most likely a white male. Work harder. it's friends and people you know, and it's like, yeah, how is it that the best, yeah, how is it that the first person for the job is always a 30 year old white dude? Like, how is that possible? Like, yeah, yeah. still, I don't know what it is, but every time I see photos on LinkedIn, like team outings, I'm always like, ugh, it's still so same-sies. Yep. talked about this before, but I used to really enjoy when people used to take those pictures and stick David Hasselhoff on them. And it was like a sign on Twitter that you had been busted for not having any women. And I, it was a lot of this. This was a long time ago. I've talked about it many times. I might start an anonymous Reddit thread where I just do this. This is my vigilante justice that I can finally do without being arrested. you remember when we got acquired in that board slide, senior leadership slide? It was just like 20 ginger dudes, literally. I'm not even joking. You had to search for anyone else in there. so crazy. Again, everyone, we say this with a smile and a laugh because it's like the only way to survive. Yeah, but something's going on right? this isn't normal. Like given the distribution of human beings on the planet, something's going on here. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah.% of the population. Mm-hmm. Yes. Slowly but surely, one podcast at a time. one podcast at a time or each other's podcaster time or whatever. So before we let you go, Jane, we love to finish on a bit of marketing gossip. So if you've got anything at the moment that you either love or hate that's happening right now that you want to share that we can all have a rant or show some love to. I'm thinking, because I feel like there's so many things I love and hate. AI, of course, is the love and hate. It's both at the same time. um But I don't want to give that lame one. I would say something like a trend that I'm hating. A, like the result of this I'll get into, but B, like we're still saying. like do more with less. And I really thought that was a fad, like post pandemic that was going to go away. And it's just something that I think founders and, and investors have stuck to, to like cut teams, make more money, get that EBITDA high and like just squeeze everybody. And we are all exhausted. I'm over that. I would say that is the trend that I'm seeing every single… even when I talk to you guys, you're like, how are you? I'm like, I'm good, but I'm tired. Every time I talk to someone, that is what they say. Verbatim, the word tired or exhausted is in every conversation when I have that with a marketing leader. We would like to pronounce this the era of you need to speculate to accumulate. Spend some bloody money. You are forcing us all into recession. Stop it. Let us have the resources we need. Let's market everything. Let's enjoy this late stage capitalism to the max. Let's all buy some shit we don't need. Experimentation. love, so I'm picturing right now a sticker for you Emma, that's David Hasselhoff and it says, speculate to accumulate. Right? you don't see this on Reddit, like... I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Let's do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got actually some like podcast stickers, but they're not like about the podcast. It's like scape corn, like unicorns, scapegoat, that kind of thing. Yeah, so I feel like this is a good addition to the set. Yeah, yeah. Well, hopefully I get to see you two in person one day and you can give me one of those stickers. definitely, definitely, definitely. postal services exist. gay. For now. Well, Jane, thank you so much for joining us. This has been such a great chat to have on a Tuesday afternoon. I feel thoroughly energized and cathartic. Yeah. through a rollercoaster of emotions. I was like angry. I wanted to cry. I was shocked. The faces that we've had could be a whole nother sticker compilation. But thank you both. This has been amazing. I love your show. Big fan. So thank you for having me on.