#17 :: Asking Hard Questions, with Priscilla McKinney - Little Bird Marketing

As a survivor of multiple tragic events (including the only EF-5 rated tornado in the United States), Priscilla McKinney was better prepared than most for the COVID pandemic. Here she shares multiple strategies for getting through tough times as a CEO including practicing asking for help, self-reflection and how to be un-ignorable.

Little Bird Marketing https://littlebirdmarketing.com/

Recorded on 03.05.21

TRANSCRIPT

Andrea Spirov: Hello, dear listeners. We're here today for another episode of the 100 CEO Project podcast. Today with our guest, Priscilla McKinney, the CEO and “Mama Bird” of Little Bird marketing, an agency based in Joplin, Missouri that has developed its own SOAR system to guide client activity. In addition to being an awarded marketer and business leader, Priscilla is also an international speaker. And as we learned, a traveling singer with her four sisters. I do hope we are going to get to hear that story sometime during the show today. She's a teacher of digital transformation and social influence and her podcast “Ponderings from the Perch” covers a wide variety of marketing topics. So definitely check that out as well. Priscilla, thank you so much for being here. 

Priscilla McKinney: Okay, this is gonna be really fun. And I really liked that intro. So I feel like I have a lot to live up to.

AS: So in spite of everything that happened last year, you managed to be acknowledged as a top 50 influencer in your industry. Can you tell us about these silver linings and your response to the crisis? And then where you're sitting with everything going on right now. 

PM: Wow. Yeah. So the COVID crisis was not the first crisis I've been through in my business. And I'm sure for many people, that's true. A lot of people have gone through, you know, the recession, 2009, a lot of people who have experience, you know, they've been through hard things, it's it, you know, in their personal lives and their professional lives. But for me, it was a little bit more poignant, back in 2011, after we went through the 2009 recession, we went through the only F5 tornado on record here in the US here in Joplin, and in about 22 minutes, we lost about 35% of our town. And so that crisis was obviously very difficult. And on the other hand, we were in it together, right. And so we had a really beautiful outpouring of the business community, everyone was helping everybody we learned at that point, do what you can for who you can for as long as you can, you know, it just, it was this mentality for quite a while. But three weeks into that, and I've been very, you know, neck deep in helping all of the clients that I had really come back online...We couldn't even get - there were no roads. I mean, we couldn't get computers, you know, because it was just major, major infrastructure stuff. And three weeks later, I was standing on the sidewalk, watching my creative studio burn to the ground. And so in that moment, I think it's a very different crisis. One, you're in a community who's in crisis and pulling together. And the next one, I'm in a crisis that really only I understand. And I think the juxtaposition of those two things, really created a dichotomy, almost like a depth maybe of experience there. Now, obviously, so many people helped me and I certainly wasn't doing it alone. But you do feel that in some ways, and I think you can feel the difference between something everybody's experiencing, and something you alone are experiencing. 

And so I say that as a preface, only to say when COVID hit, I think I was a little bit more prepared than other people, it was a little bit more subtle. And I felt like, you know, I do have something to offer, I do have some consolation for people or maybe a bigger picture thinking that could, you know, just maybe assuage some of the confusion and some of the very high stress that everyone was feeling. And so I came really out and used my social influence to create some very specific messages that were Hey, everybody, it's going to be okay. You know, and I gave a couple of people pieces of guidance and not just like, Oh, it's okay. I mean, nobody wants that kind of a pat on the back. Don't worry, don't worry, no, we shouldn't worry. We should worry about certain things. But we should worry in a way where our energy is going to the right places. And we should worry about things like taking care of our clients, taking care of our employees, taking care of ourselves. And so that's a long story to say that you know, when COVID hit, I felt like I was prepared and I was able to take a stage very quickly and lead with a even a hashtag I started called ‘always be helping’ and trying to get people together say, how can we help each other not someone who needs help, or someone who can help. You are both. So figure out what you need and how you can help someone with their needs. And so I used my stage in that way to really help people navigate through and that has paid back to me. I've made a lot of very deep, deep relationships with people and helped significant companies through very hard times. And those people now turned around and helped me.

5:09  

AS: So what does that look like? Can you give us some tangible examples in your, in your area of your circle of colleagues? 

PM: Yeah, that's a good question. For me, it really meant calling and checking on clients and having that heart to heart and say, What can I help you with? Let's just take money off the table. What, what's going on? How do we need to pivot? I know we had a system, I know you're paying your retainer. But let's forget about it for a minute. What do you need? Who on your team needs it? What can I do? Could we just stop and think creatively about it? Even some clients who said Oh, my gosh, I think I need to pause my contract, well, I could hold them to a contract, or I could be a decent human being and say, Okay, I get that, let's just pump brakes, let's figure out what we need to do. So you need to have those one-on-one conversations, you need to also get in touch with your employees, they're afraid, you know, they're looking to you for answers. And you don't have to have all the answers. But you have to tell them that you understand that they need some and that you're, you know, your mind is focused on them and their well being and their family and the bills that they have to come up. So giving them as much information as you can upfront is how it helps. How it helped my industry is that I like what I said, I used my social influence. And what that looked like is that I did videos on LinkedIn, and I just said, Hey, guys, this is this, you know, more of a personal, you know, connection, I also got involved, and really highlighted other things that people were doing, I don't have to do all the good. But I can use my influence to start highlighting other people and the amazing things they were doing. They were doing amazing things, but they didn't have as wide of a network as I had. And so I amplified their message. And there was a great friend of mine, Patrick Koslowski, who did “caring connections.” He was like, hey, what can you do professionally to help someone? And what do you need? And he started matching people up. I just gave him the run of my influences, like how can I get more people on there for you? And so it's really beautiful, how people can lead with how can we just help so it looked like for me a lot of conversations. And then the last thing that happened was, I gave away a lot of digital transformation training for free. I did a lot of hour and a half's with companies, companies that I knew, even large companies, large companies, small companies, I'll give you an hour to half get all of your salespeople on the line. And I'll teach what I usually charge 30 grand for. And let's just help them pivot and quit freaking out about, you know, I used to get my sales quota by meeting people for coffee and for dinner and for lunch and breakfast and whatever. And now, I realize I'm not ahead of the game, because I don't have a digital presence. And now I don't know what to do. And so I gave a lot of training away for free to just do what I could. I can't give away my trade secrets. I can't give you know, I can't do that forever. But I could get in there and help assuage a little bit of that anxiety.

8:05

AS: So generous. I love what you said on our last call. That was you know, we’re people who need help too. Meaning CEOs. So do you think that's hard for a lot of CEOs to ask for help? 

PM: You know, I guess I'd say it, unfortunately, it is. But the reality is like the actual mechanism of asking for help, it's the same for every human, it's hard for every human. But yes, a CEO position can feel very isolating at times. And I do think that it is hard to ask for help if you're not used to it. It's one of those things that I think requires practice. And I think people don't understand that you can't just be someone who never asked for help. And the next day be someone who asked for help, you have to do them in small little increments. This has to be a way of life, it has to be a practice, it has to be a mindset that I am someone who you know, needs help. And it kind of brings me back to one of my famous quotes that I really, really love. And that's that any idiot can face a crisis. It's the day to day that will wear you out. And I have to say a lot of people kind of look back and say, Oh, my gosh, you went to this tornado you went through, you know, fire. Look, that's easy. You either- you have two decisions, when you watch your place burn to the ground. Am I going to do it? Or am I not? There's two, there's two, you know, options. But in the day to day when you're not faced with a crisis, you have 1000 options in front of you. And so I think that's a little bit harder. And for a CEO, when you have fewer options. Yeah, you're just kind of forced into it. So I guess then you're forced into asking for help. But I think it's so much richer if when you have the 1000 options that you ask for help, and you learn how to do that along the way. And that practice is very humbling, first of all, but it's also very rich. It creates very intimate relationships with other people who can help you. And I think it also gives you a much deeper appreciation for the work you have done. Because you realize that you know you do have things to offer other people. But you still need help, like, it gives you a bigger vision, I'm going to get bigger, I'm going to get better I'm gonna, there's more things for me to do. And asking for help is one of those ways that I think it expands your horizons. 

10:12

Laurie Pillow: We noticed in your some of your LinkedIn profile, for example, that you're also very passionate about asking hard questions. Clearly asking for help is a form of a hard question. So I was wondering, what's the best hardest question anybody has ever asked you? Let's just say specifically, in the context of business?

PM: Gosh, you know, that's, that's really difficult, I guess, you know, one of the questions I ask my clients all the time is they want to do this, they want to do this, oh, you know, someone else is doing this. And I always say, sounds great, we could do that for you. I'm sorry. Why are we doing this?

And I have to do that a little bit to myself, too. It's like, these things sound good. And you can get busy doing something. But I do appreciate the person who says, Yeah, why do you want to do that? Or when someone comes back and says to me, what do you want to be famous for? And I think that's a really good question. And it's something I've had to, you know, struggle with. So I think that you may be good at a lot of things, or you may have a lot of aspirations, but in the end, you know, what do you want to be famous for? Is it for who you are, or for what you do? And as a CEO, you know, especially for digital firms, of course, I want there to be some fame about what I do and the systems that I built. But really, at the end of the day, do you want to be famous for who you are or for what you do? And I think that question, I have a very good strategist who asked that of me one time. And I thought that is really interesting. And I had another strategist who said to me, what is one word that is true, that describes you? But that is not positive that someone would say about you. And I was like, wow, that that is crazy. And not that it's a negative word. But what's something that 's not positive? Right? And she made me ask five different people who were close to me, one, my husband, somebody who was a very long term friend, someone who was a newer friend, someone who was a colleague, and someone who reported to me. And I thought that was a riveting question. And just, for example, one person who's a colleague of mine said, what it was like, it was the opposite. I can't remember the word she used, but it was the opposite of organized like, it was like fly by the seat of your pants or something like that. And I thought that's so interesting, because very few people know that about me is that I am incredibly, incredibly organized until there’s stress, and then it all falls apart, like that's the first thing that goes for me under stress. And then she followed up and she goes, I don't think that that's really your natural gift. And I see, that's why you've hired who you hired around you. And like, oh, man, that was so great. And my husband said, non-habitual. And that was really helpful for me, because I realized that sometimes what I struggle with is everybody's sense of like, how you should be as a CEO, or, you know, a person who has fantastic habits. And you know, all of these, you know, all of these things we put up on crazy pedestals, those are really hard for me, because they're like, oh, we'll just do that at the same time, every day. Nothing for me, happens at the same time, every day, nothing. And so if I just keep trying to force myself into that system, but when he said that word, it's not really positive or negative, or it's true. And people would take that maybe as a slight, but it was so eye opening to me. So I think asking people a little bit deeper about how other people perceive you. Or, you know, what are your strengths and it’s not a weakness, but what are some ways that you would be described that are true, but maybe not necessarily the thing that you love to glom on to? And those have been some very good questions that I think have helped me grow a lot as a CEO and as a person.

13:59  

LP: Wow. So kind of tagging on that. Is there a “we should all be asking ourselves this question” kind of question that could benefit other leaders, other CEOs?

PM: Well, I think all learning starts from some self-reflection. And one of my very, very respected colleagues talks about the impact that you want to have. And I think when we feel out of joint with ourselves, out of step in our leadership, maybe gosh, that conversation didn't come off the way I wanted it to come off or anything. Or maybe you feel like, gosh, is the company going the wrong direction? Like where's your culture like, any of these feelings which we have many, many different times, self reflection, being awakened alive to how you're feeling in the moment can bring you back to what she would lead me into, which is, well, what is your intention? You know, and what is important to me right now? And who does that serve? Who am I trying to serve? And most importantly, am I having the kind of impact that I want to have? If I'm not, then we know that we need to go back and circle around because you could be doing the very best. And the results are not good. That's not on you. But sometimes we're actually bringing things into a room that don't need to be brought into a room, the energy, even the way that we say things, we may be getting it done, which feels like to do get it done, you know, but we may not be having the impact that we want to have. And I think that's a very good question we need to be asking ourselves, and I think that only comes if you're willing to be, you know, self reflective, because if it's going wrong, the next question you have to ask yourself is okay, well, I did that wrong. What now? How do I change that? How do I get honest about you know, I came, I came in hot to this meeting, and I said some things, you know, maybe I didn't mean to put it that way. Or, you know, just I can see that I just had I could see it, at least on your face. I just had the impact it did not want to have, you know, and being able to say, Okay, well, that's not what I was trying to do. That's not how I was trying to serve you and how I was trying to serve myself. So let's back up. And let's say, Okay, what what now? How do we change gears and, and that freedom of being able to say, I always have the ability to change the way I show up, and the energy I bring into a room so that I can have you know, the impact that I want to have.

16:29  

AS: Shifting back over to brands and marketing. Do you find that brands have trouble with this as well, figuring out what's their purpose? I see a lot of brands are kind of all over the place, you know, they jump on every latest trend. What do you think about that? 

PM: Well, absolutely. My work, if anybody who knows me knows exactly what I'm about to say. And that is that there is a journey for any brand, in which they decide who their most ideal client is. And when they say, you know, our product or service is for everybody, I will assure you it is for nobody, right? So brands have a lot of fear, they experience a lot of FOMO, right, I don’t want to miss out, I don't want to not get this demographic or this person or whatever. But your product or service is not for everybody. And you need to find out who it is for who again, just like as a CEO, who do you serve, and who do you serve best, right? And it may not be who you think it is. So I think for brands where this emerges and how this needs to be solved, is by cutting back to very, very strong persona development. Who are the people you most ideally serve. And there's also the people who love what you do and get the most out of what you do and are willing to pay for it because it's very valuable to them. And it's not a question of money. It's a question of when can you help me get this done? Right? And whether that's a pair of shoes that I really want to wear, when can you make me feel like that, like me wearing those shoes? Or whether it's a coaching service? Well, when can you get started helping me address this issue? I mean, it could be, you know, a market research project, when can you help us address the multicultural, you know, realities that our brand misses. I don't care if it's a, you know, a $15 product, a $300 product or $300,000 product, you have to be able to understand that persona, and understand what are their persistent problems and what are their newly emerging problems, so that you can speak to them directly. And that you can really start narrowing your brand story, your brand narrative and your actual marketing message down to something that really relates to them and and, and shows them; earns their respect by building that rapport and saying, I get you and I'm willing to not get all these other people so that I can really get you I'm going to focus on how we best serve you as a brand because you're what's important to us and so I see brands just all over the place and they don't want to miss out on money and that fear keeps them from actually missing out on the real money which is serving the people that they really are best at serving.

19:08  

LP: You tweeted recently, how to be un-ignorable. I absolutely love un-ignorable. I caught that. And I'm like Ah - So once you've established the persona, and now knowing that the whole world has just crowded into this virtual space, do you have like a top three, for example on how to be un-ignorable in this pandemic/post-pandemic world? 

PM: Well, first of all, I'll give a shout out to Peter Le Breton of Saatchi and Saatchi and Nike and all other kinds of fame and good friend of mine and he consults with agencies and that really came from a conversation I had with him. And so when we were talking to him, just really, you know, shooting it back and forth to each other about what does this mean to be un-ignorable as a brand? You know, it is about being bold. And it is about showing up the way you truly want to show up and about narrowing your actual message. Right. So getting very, getting very clear. On the other hand, the piece that you brought up was on the virtual stage. And I would add a very noisy stage, there's, you know, everybody's a dime a dozen, right, it's very hard to get heard, what you have to do is you have to be visible. And unfortunately, a lot of companies are not visible and a lot of professionals are not visible, right, they're doing the things that they think they should be doing checking lists off, but they're not really showing up. And they're not looking at the right things to measure to be seen by anybody. And then the other piece of it is once even if they pay, which they can pay to get seen. They're putting out such a salesy message, that there's no realization that nobody wants to be sold to. And that is just an absolute truth, you're driving to work, and you don't want to hear messages like, do this and hurry up. And now and, you know, we turn off, but then we come into the office, and somehow we think, oh, that's the message I'm going to write. And I joke around with people all the time is just like this weekend, just for kids are you going to go to a used car lot just to talk with them, just so you can, you know, use about six hours to chat and, you know, let them talk at you know, we don't, because in our society, that's kind of a joke of like the person who's going to co op your time, interrupt everything that you're doing, and shove something down your throat, and nobody likes that. But then we come out of our car, get in our seat, and then we start doing that to other people. And I’m thinking, what is going on? So either they can't get visible, but you partly because their messages and genuine wants to look at it. Or even if they do get visible. You know, again, nobody wants to see that message. And so even if you pay, you get ignored. And so I think it does kind of cycle back to the other issue that I talked about with persona development. It's about really being rock solid about who you are and who you serve. And being okay with letting other people not look at you, right, you need to get visibility on a particular stage. But that means you can't be on all the other stages at the same time, you need to know which one is going to be the most important to you. And then that makes you un-ignorable because you're not saying the exact same thing that everybody else is saying. And you're not showing up the way that everybody else is showing up.

AS: Absolutely, and customers are only getting more sensitive to this. There, there's so much out there, we're and we're sifting through a lot, a lot faster. So you just know when something jumps out and is speaking to you, right?

PM: An average consumer in America looks at 16,000 ads per day. That's the report that just came out this year. So when you think about that, at least when I say noisy, I mean a noisy market. And you know, you got to think about it you it's all over, you get up in the morning, you may not even be out of bed before you pick up your phone, you see the Apple, you see like how many how many logos did you just see on your apps, you know how many messages are competing or how many notifications are coming in, you know, everybody's notification has a brand. You know, you go to the bathroom, you're seeing them mechanistically you know, you pick up toothpaste, you're seeing a message. It's like everybody's competing for your attention. It starts from the moment you get up until you go to bed at night. And what people want is something that's refreshing and true and honest, and maybe can help people turn an idea on its head and maybe think about something a little bit differently and solve one of their problems. Not the me wanting to tell you what year I started my business in. Nobody cares, right? So how can we really focus on the thing that is going to come in and lead with the thing that is the most helpful?

LP: Well, let's be honest, we're dying to know about the fifth of five girls traveling the world, I would love to know, we've seen that you're copy the word curiosity pops up a lot. I would be interested in knowing how that experience with your sisters performing, that sense of curiosity, how that has informed how you do business, engaging people and getting to, as you say, the heart of the matter, the truth of matter is to be a good marketer, right?

24:31  

PM: Well, you know, I did have an unusual childhood. And in the end, I went to four different high schools in three different countries. And you know, I'm very good at making friends quick because you know, pretty soon we won't be friends as I'm moving. So I'm pretty good at working a room, kissing babies, shaking hands and I know how to really spot some genuine people quickly. I think I've learned a lot of really great networking skills there. And I also learn to very quickly value people, you know, don't take anybody for granted because, hey, we're going to be moving. So, um, you know, I think those are some interesting things from my childhood. Also, I'm the fifth of five girls. And as you can imagine, that was quite an experience. So there was not a lot of personal bathroom time. But other than that, you know, the fact of the matter is that when you are the fifth of five, you're really you're born into a gang. And so there's a real deep sense of belonging that you just get as a gift. So no matter what you do, and believe me, I've done some pretty stupid things. You know, your gang still loves you. And there's a lot of freedom. I think that I learned from that. The sisters were a coalition. And granted, sometimes the coalition is against you, but for the most part, they're for you. And when you grow up, they're very much for you. So that's the good news. But we had a really unusual childhood, my parents were missionaries. And, you know, we sang together, we were like, basically, the Christian von Trapp family, you know, just, you know, matching dresses, the works, I can do a flannel graph with the best of them. I can run a puppet show, I can, you know, so there's a lot of interesting skills I've got. But, you know, I think in growing up that curiosity was there, because my parents, you know, in growing up in a different country, they were not the kind of expats who were like, let's be American, my first like, Okay, well, this is where we live, this is what we do. And I think that freedom really allowed me to explore that culture. And it gave me really, at the end of the day, a sense of empathy, like my way is not always the right way. And this sense of a worldview, where you are not at the center of it. In fact, you're a tiny little microcosm, and your way is not the one that everybody in the room is, you know, willing to adopt is, I think, something that in the long run really helps, right? So eventually, I got a degree in cultural anthropology. And I think you can see why but I am interested in why humans work the way we do, why we have like tacit agreements in society, to do certain things. And even when it comes to marketing, I refer to myself as a marketing anthropologist to kind of unpack how do we agree to work with ads? How do we agree to work with marketing? How do we, cause we do all day long, we agree to work in a certain way with salespeople with companies with, you know, you know, promoting products and becoming a brand evangelist for people, all of these things are wrapped up in our culture. And so, you know, from living in several different countries, I can see that people deal with this issue very differently. Some, you know, countries have a very adverse reaction to advertising or formalized advertising. And some of them like well, it’s the norm is what it is, you know, so I think that that curiosity, you know, for me comes from the sense of, you know, I feel very secure that I belong, so I'm not worried about that. And so I can go far, far, far beyond my borders, and get curious and not be in the know, to be able to see some really beautiful things, because I'm not afraid of losing myself or my position, I feel like my position is always up for grabs, it's okay to not be right. And I think that's part of living in a third culture. When I was growing up in Spain, I'm not Spanish, but yet my American friends don't feel like I'm American. And then I go to boarding school in Germany, and I'm here with all kinds of expat kids or diplomat kids, I'm not a diplomat, you know, they're all rich, we're poor or I was like, I don't belong there. But I do belong here. And it's like all of this constant moving, you know, in that no matter where you go, that's really not your home in one sense. But actually, for a lot of people that would just throw them and say, Oh, this is disgusting. I don't belong anywhere. And I just think, you know, what, that's actually really liberating. I kind of belong everywhere. Because I belong to myself. And I belong to my original game, which is my tribe, my family. And now as colleagues, I am a firm, firm, firm believer in having that kind of a close knit tribe, with other CEOs, with, with my employees, and especially my management team. And, you know, happy in that tribe, I'm part of one very, very powerful one, which is Women in Research. And, man, we just have each other's backs, you know, and so I don't care if it's a group of colleagues, a family, you know, a club, I don't care what you call it, it's a tribe, and you need one. You need at least one. And I've been very, very fortunate in my lifetime to have many of them. And I think that's incredibly grounding. And it is that sense of constant curiosity. Oh, that's interesting. This is how this view group views things. How could I not be a different person here in the sense like, you know, you think about two sides of the coin, you know, it's so you're not being two faced, but there are multiple sides of you and you can show up different ways and belong in different ways to different groups, I think that curiosity at the very bottom of it that really keeps driving me and propelling me toward, you know, learning from other people and never thinking that, that my worldview is the only worldview.

30:18

AS: So going back to what you were saying about research and and I can tell that you're a really research-driven marketer, which I love, what are some of the tools that you use or that you think are most helpful for companies or, or just tools that you employ, to, to dig in and really understand a culture of consumers? 

PM: Well, I think there's all kinds of things that companies use from surveys, you know, to looking at their own KPIs looking at, you know, what's going on, on their, on the web, who's looking at their social channels, I, you know, we're a platinum HubSpot shop. And so I can go all day long about actual reports. But at the end of the day, I think there's a big push that I have, obviously, as a cultural anthropologist, so social scientist, right, that I want to know a little bit deeper, that why people do things. And so because of that, I personally just have a deep love of ethnography, or more like focus group, you know, very open ended types of questions, I find those to be deeply meaningful to help us move, you know, process forward, there is absolutely a time and a place for quantitative there's, it's not a vice versa at all. But I think just in me personally, I'm just like, Oh, I get, you know, certain cultural equalities, I get so excited about, you know, the focus group or the face to face, you know, type of research where people just finally kind of, they don't even realize it, they finally quit acting. And then they tell you what's really going on. And I think this is very, very important, because there is a massive discrepancy between what people say they do and what people do, right. And so market research is constantly trying to figure out the blurred lines here. It's what people report they'll do and what they actually do. And it's also the way that people explain, well, I bought this because it's a good deal. And all these love and logic three and logic four and, and they're like, Yes, because I'm such a logical person. No, you like the color orange, and they made the box orange. But you can't admit that to yourself. And so you come up with a lot of interesting, logical reasons why you did something, but that's not true. So I love that I love that. Just the whole notion there. I love unpacking that. And, you know, some of the people that I love to listen to most are people who really get very engrossed in deep ethnography is or even things in market research industry, like shop alongs, or looking at buyer behavior, like shopper insights and things like that, that just personally is stuff that really gets me going. And there's such interesting high tech around that as well, in terms of like catching eye motion, like, they can even see on an end cap, there's, you know, there's videos, and I don't mean like, you know, there's not privacy issues, not raw video of you, but more of a video of the actual things that are happening, where your eyeballs are going, did your mouth turn up? When you looked at a product? Did you get down and look at it? Did you have to put it up to your face, because it's too tiny, but all these things that the data is capturing, to understand what's happening here in the store, right? We've never been at a time in the history of you know, of this modern society, where we've had so much data about what people are going to do. And in fact, it's a little bit of a burden with the amount of data and companies are struggling right now. How do I make sense of this? I will say though, in terms of market research and data and how I work day to day in marketing, is that a lot of people come to me and say okay, well, you know, we want to measure this, measure this and this KPI and, you know, they'll start at me with all this jargon, right? But they usually say that because they think that's what people are supposed to do, who are in their position. Right. And so I like to remind people that the repeatability, which that's the R in our system. That's the last one. So when I think about our SOAR system, just you know, a given an unfair plug here, but I don't care if they work with Little Bird Marketing this is something anybody can grip. The S is strategy, you got to know your persona, you got to know the strategy, what are you trying to do? And who are you trying to do it to and with, and then the organization? No marketing plan is gonna get executing ideas all day long. But unless they get executed, they're organized, who's doing it? What day? Exactly on what platform? How many times are we going to use it like it has to get organized. Then it has to be accountable, which means that six months later, when someone goes through, I have a great idea I'm gonna do it like, sounds good. But does it match with our strategy? And can it be organized? If not, we're not doing it and it becomes a freedom for companies to begin to say no to marketing things. And that is a real powerful moment. And the R is last, it’s repeatability saying now that we finally got our act together and got all this done in the right order now we should look at these stats. Now we should look at the benchmarks now we should look at the research, because we know that we have this in order. And so now this is going to give us some freedom to be able to decide what not to do next year, maybe what to double down on. So in terms of market research, I love it all. And they're all interesting nerds out there. And I love talking with them. They're so smart. I love being in a room where I'm not the smartest person even by a longshot. So it's super, super fun. But I know there's a real struggle with their, you know, we have the data, but how are we going to use it? How are we going to implement this? And so I think that's where, where people live a lot. Like, if you can't explain it to your mom, then it's probably not something you should be doing. That's kind of my thought.

35:49  

AS: Wonderful. Love it. Well, piggybacking on that wonderful explanation, where can everybody find you? 

PM: Well, I always answer people on LinkedIn. And I'm very fortunate to have an unusual name. So Priscilla McKinney, I'm not that hard to find. I'm on Twitter at LittleBirdMomma. And that's little bird mo MMA. Also everything littlebirdmarketing.com, we have so many free resources on our website. You know, we're not for everybody, but we are for everybody. So if you want some free resources instead of working with us, we have them out there. We're not salesy, slimy people, if we can lead with helping and we can, you know, then we will. So there's a lot out there, but people can always find me on social media, and reach out and have an actual conversation with me. I do the very best I can to help with any requests out there and really make it personal.

AS: Priscilla, this has been really great. Thank you so much for joining us today. 

PM: I've had a lot of fun, and I got grilled, but I actually enjoyed the whole thing.

LP: Thank you. This was fun.

Hey guys, we hope you've enjoyed today's episode. And if you do, please share it with your friends and colleagues who also have to navigate this leadership stuff. As you can see, this project is about to be a mini masterclass in every episode, best part. It's free. So if you like it, please do us a favor and take a screenshot, share it on social with the hashtag 100 CEO, that's 100 CEO. That way we can say thanks and share it in our stories. And finally, if you've got some insights you'd like to share and you're a CEO, we'd love to hear from you. You can find us at 100 CEO project comm or on LinkedIn at the 100 CEO project. Until next time, keep leading by example.

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Hosted by: Andrea Spirov, Laurie Pillow

Writing and research: Andrea Spirov, Laurie Pillow

Edited by: Laurie Pillow

Produced by: Andrea Spirov, Laurie Pillow