I have been working with B2B SaaS companies since 2008. I can honestly say that few of them have struck as truly innovative. Many of them were cool but they didn't blow me away.
Lately is an exception to the rule. When I learned what it can do, it resonated as a game-changer.
The company turns content (blog posts, eBooks, video) into social media posts. It takes the painful, time-consuming work out of creating updates for multiple social media networks.
Imagine the ROI from being able to create social media content at scale effortlessly.
In this episode of Marketing Spark, I spoke with Lately co-founder and CEO Kate Chernis about her journey from popular DJ to marketing to SaaS entrepreneur.
We explored the personal struggles that Kate endured in the music industry, why she backed away from raising money because she believed the VCs weren't treating her in the same way as male entrepreneurs, and how to operate a business remotely.
Auto-generated transcript. Speaker names, spelling, and punctuation may be slightly off.
Mark Evans: It's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Marketing Spark, the podcast that delivers insight from marketers and entrepreneurs in the trenches in twenty five minutes or less. When I started my consulting business in 2008, one of my first clients was Sysmos. When I went to see its software, I was blown away by how it could monitor social media activity on Facebook and Twitter. It was, at the time, mind blowing. When I heard about Lately, it was deja vu all over again. Its technology which turns content into social media updates is impressive, and its customer growth has been astounding. I'm excited to have Kate Charnas, Lately's cofounder and CEO on the podcast. Welcome to Marketing Spark.
Guest: Thank you so much, Mark. I actually got some goosebumps there for a second because I know what it feels like to see something and be like, you know, oh my gosh. And it's a fun feeling because you wanna you wanna piece of it. You know? You wanna be in the club.
Mark Evans: And all the time that I've been doing marketing for b to b SaaS companies, I can't I can't say I've been blown away that often. Once in a while, you come across a service and you go, man, this is super impressive. In fact, so impressive. I wish I was working for this company. But, and that's the thing that I got when I saw lately. It really is a pretty astounding piece of software, and that's why I was so excited to have you on the podcast to really get into the platform and your story, which is very interesting. Talk about your view of social media and content marketing and all the things that are impacting marketing these days. Why don't we start by talking about what Lately does and why a growing number of companies are enthusiastically embracing it? I mean, this is a this is a product that one a lot of companies see it and agencies for that matter. It's a must have.
Guest: Yeah. Well, thank you. First of all, thank you so much. All all of those super nice compliments. They're I'm absorbing them. They're washing all over me. So what Lately does is, essentially, you can upload a file, a video file or a podcast or any kind of long form content, whether it's writing or audio or video. And you push a button inside Lately, and Lately instantly atomizes that content into sometimes hundreds of different social posts. Now the sexier part that's happening in the background that you don't see is it's also studying all of your analytics across any social channel that you connect to its brain, and it's looking for the highest engaging posts that you have. And then it builds a writing model based on literally the DNA, the words that make up those posts, and it's applying that same writing model to the long form content you feed it. So before it atomizes, it's choosing which things to pull out. Right? And that's how it gets customers like Gary Vaynerchuk. You guys know him. Right? 12000% increase, in engagement because it's, you know, it's really smart. And the more you put in, the better you get out. Right? So and Gary has a lot of content to to feed us.
Mark Evans: One of the interesting things about Lately is there well, there's many interesting things about Lately, but there's no lack of social media tools out there. And lots of companies are applying AI to their technology. And this is a tough question for you to answer because you're obviously biased being the CEO. But why has it say made such an impact and such a splash? There's no lack of choices out there, and I'm sure there's other tools that may do something similar. Can you explain the phenomena?
Guest: Boy, I love being called a phenomena. I think it's two two things. Number one, we've been at this for a long time, Mark. It didn't happen overnight, and we've been banging our heads against the wall even to make sure we were describing how what we're selling. And you guys just heard me describe it, and it's not easy, and I'm not really that good at it. But believe me, I'm so much better than I was last year or the year before. And part of that is because we watched our customers to see which part of the platform you guys were all using to give us information. Right? And it's a very robust platform. And the thing that people kept gravitating into was this atomizing component component. Right? And so that was interesting to us, and people liked it. And we were we were only doing it with text. Right? So you could pop in a link to a blog, push a button, and you get 40 social post posts instantly. But when we added the video clip component, that really changed everything. And I think it's because it's for a couple of reason. I mean and and we had COVID at the same time here. Right? So first thing that happened was Gary v saw lately in that form. He'd seen it before, but he saw it in that form and instantly built his his Twitter channel to team Gary Vee out of that. So now I didn't have to tell people what I did anymore. I could show them. That was big. Right? Number two was, I mean, we the it's scale the unscalable. This is what Gary says, and he's right. We do everything the hard way because the hard way is what works, Mark. Right? So there's a reason when you met met met Ben, who was on our team, you got a thirty minute demo. We treat you just like we would treat an enterprise customer because I know how to make evangelists. You know, we were talking about this off air a second ago, but I used to be a rock and roll DJ. And my last gig was broadcasting to 20,000,000 listeners a day for XM. And I was really amazing at making listeners into fans. Right? Because fans, evangelists, they do the hard work for you. Right? So we figured early on as a small company, I don't have a big budget to spend on marketing. How am I gonna make the noise I need to make one by one? Right? And that's what we've done. So the community around us is really driving the ship.
Mark Evans: Well, it also helps to have Gary Vee as a as an evangelist. I mean, that's that's if you have a small community and a and a Gary Vee, then then you're you're well off. Now maybe and I've got background information, so I'm looking to you to tell the story about the way that he's using the platform and the results that he's seen. Now the guy is everywhere. I mean, he produces a ton of content. You know, he's got a lot of ammunition that he can or a lot of fuel that he can feed into the lately, you know, machine. But maybe give a little bit of a few details about how he is using it and what the difference that it's made on his marketing machine.
Guest: Yeah. I mean, you know, what's interesting is so Gary doesn't need Lately, to be honest. Right? They he has his own army, but he's clearly a poster boy for Lately because his advice to you and me and everyone else is to repurpose and take your long form content and and atomize it. Right? And so he knows that. And the it's interesting. I was just talking to their team now because we're trying to figure out, like, actually, what is the use case for team Gary Vee when he's not really my target? You know? They do see a 12000% increase in engagement, and that's so much because the more you teach the AI and the more you give it, the faster it can learn. But also because there's that pain of unlock, Mark. Right? And you have this pain. I certainly had it. Just imagine the time it takes for you to create a blog. Right? It's about three or four hours of writing time, and then you have to promote it. Most people kind of mail it in right there. They do one or two social posts, and that's it. And to me and to Gary, that's a huge waste of time. So, like, that unlock idea, like, how do we not just toss into the wind? The time is taking me and you to record this podcast right now. Right? And so I learned that it's the the after the fact marketing is infinitely more valuable than butts in seats. Right? And Gary knows that also. That's why he atomizes his content like crazy, and he's trying to milk it for every, you know, everything it's worth. I think of it as, like, of like garlic. Right? I was just chopping garlic last night, and I every little bit that is on my knife has to make it into the pan. You know, I'm kind of because it took me a long time
Mark Evans: Right.
Guest: You know, to do that. I don't wanna lose those morsels. So that's that's partially why as as well. And, you know, as we've been growing the company, we're we have to go up before we can go down like Salesforce. Right? So my job now is to sell to larger companies so that there can be a time where I can create a long tail and sell to all of Gary's fans, right, for, like, some normal price, like 20 or $40. Right? That's that's what I want. And we will get there. And the best part about working with him, by the way, is, like, knowing knowing that that that there's both a long tail of that smaller customer, and then there's the larger customer, like all of the VaynerMedia clients. Right? And we have these client both of these clients, which, I'm just hand shedding a little bit, but it's all connected. This has been part of our struggle. It's like, who is lately's customer? You know? And it does vary from small, medium, and large customers. It's not micro customers micro marketers. Right? But, yeah. So it's the learning experience as you can tell. It's ever present and slightly overwhelming.
Mark Evans: Well, that's the thing about being an entrepreneur is it's a classic line. Be careful what you wish for because it might happen. Right? And it reminds me Yes. It it does remind me of Sissimo. When So Sysmos came out of the University of Toronto, there was a a tenured professor and a super smart PhD student, and they developed this technology. And now it was we got this better mousetrap, like, do we sell it to? And in their case, they went to PR agencies who had clients and the clients wanted to buy a social media monitoring tool and they saw it as a money making opportunity. The agencies would buy once and sell it again and again and again. And then the brands came around and said, you know, we like this tool as well. So what Sysmos did is they created a a light version, like, you couldn't it wasn't everything but the sink kitchen sink. It was just a restricted version. Also, had two products. And that's the that's the curious thing about lately right now is who is your customer? I mean, than Gary Vee, is it agencies? Is it enterprise customers? Is it guys like Gary Vee who are one man bands? I mean, do you have a an ideal customer right now, or is it basically anybody who can pay the bills?
Guest: Yeah. So we just went through this, and, we did what's called a right size press pricing with one of our advisers. Right size pricing. That's it. And really started to spell out who is the personality of the customer. So we lately, again, it's a very robust platform. It's not just a one trick pony. And the reason we did that is so that we can appeal to all these customers. So we have what I call social animals. So that is that one man or one woman band who not only creates content and has, you know, it ad nauseam, but the pain and the pain of unlocking, but also as someone who's publishing on Twitter or LinkedIn, like, several times a day every day. Right? So those are one kind of customer. We work with agencies as well, because we give them a lot of ability to publish across all the places and marketing and planning and all those kinds of things and analytics, but really easy for them to have a single login. So, you know, they can access if they have, you know, 200 customers or five customers who had 20 channels each, it's really easy for them to bounce in and out. But our larger customers, Mark, are people that really want to do marketing for other employees in the company who don't know a thing about marketing. So Lately has what we call it's like a hub and spoke feature or or parent child. So one parent, like a CMO, can use the AI to create content for any employee. It could be salespeople. It could be employee advocates. It could be, executives. You know, anyone who wants to talk about the company and social but doesn't wanna make a mistake. And then the auto generation can literally publish that content on their behalf without them ever having to deal with it, or it can give them the ability to edit and and customize it as they like. So that's how we are able to sell tens, hundreds, thousands of licenses into, a single company. And we mark them all the same way, by the way.
Mark Evans: Right. Right.
Guest: So that's the that's the the lucky trick.
Mark Evans: Before we sort of dive into the the platform itself, I need to just get you to elaborate a little more on the backstory. Now there's two angles here. One is the backstory of you, the big time DJ. Like, how did that happen? Where did you start? That kind of thing. And the other thing is that from what I've heard, Lately isn't a company that was created by a couple of geeky engineers working in a basement fueled by Red Bull. This is a different type of founder story, which I find to be fascinating. Particularly on today, we were recording this this episode in International Women's Day, so this is this is the timing is pretty good. Talk about both stories. I mean, you've got two careers, both super successful. How did that happen?
Guest: Boy, thank you so much. It doesn't it doesn't feel like that when you're in it, you know, because you're just always always in the slog or I am I have that special gift of seeing the the glass, you know, half empty. But, yeah, you know, in radio, I was really lucky, Mark, because I was in a format. It's called, adult album alternative or AAA, and it's designed to play the albums that you have at home. I'm 47, so, you know, I'm old enough to have albums. And meaning, you know, everything from rock to folk to blues, reggae, you know, that kind of mix. But then also the album cuts, not just like the radio singles, which is also what what we often like. And that radio really focused on theater of the mind and, meaning the listener's obligation to fill in the blanks, right, to to participate in in that conversation. And then my job as the DJ or as the as the host, the programmer, to make you feel like you have a voice even though I'm the one with the mic. Right? And this is what we talked about making listeners into fans. You know? So as I was learning how to do that, I learned something about the neuroscience of music that tells you when you listen to a new song, Mark, your brain must instantly access every other song you've ever heard before in order to place that new song in your memory banks, into your library, in your brain. And when it does that, it immediately taps into nostalgia. Right? So this rush of emotion comes forward when you when you hear music because it's your brain is looking for the familiar touch points to know where to put that song. And your voice is a frequency. So when you hear me or when you read the text I wrote or the text someone else wrote, you hear their voice in their head, your head. Right? Same idea. And your brain is looking to put in some context to make it familiar. And this is all sales and marketing. I'm trying to sell you something new and put it into a context that you're gonna feel comfortable. Right? Trust me and then buy
Mark Evans: it. Mhmm.
Guest: And so, this all ties into our AI, right, as you can see. So from from radio so here I was at XM. I'm in this wacky format. We were not live. Actually, we were recorded, but we left in a lot of mistakes and did other things to be perceived as live to, again, create that trust factor, that human element. You know? And it wasn't the right move. I wasn't in the right place, and the universe was trying to tell me. You know? So I was I was a boys club. I was sexually harassed every day. My my one of the things my boss would always say to me was, hey, Bradley. Are your hands clean? Meaning, can you hold my dick while I pee? Yeah. Real talk here. Right? Mhmm. And even I participated in in the sexual harassment because it was part of the culture. It was normal. You know? I we didn't know. This is, you know, 2004 or 05/06. So the language, me too, wasn't around. And there was a hostile work environment, which I didn't even know what that was. And I just remember telling, like, family and friends, like, you know, this is so stressful. You know, my my boss would, like, be yelling at me in a little sound booth and, like, I would just absorb it. You know? And not yelling at me, but yelling about whatever going on. It was just so tense. And my body was starting to shout at me and have I had all these ailments. I was incapacitated. Eventually, I couldn't type at all without any pain without extreme pain, like debilitating pain. And this is a long story, but so I I, was scared, Mark, because suddenly I couldn't work. You know? Everything was on computer. Everything was email and, you know, mixing songs like the sound files we're seeing right now go by us. Like, I had to touch those every day, and I couldn't anymore. So I got, I learned about Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which is the voice activated software I use today. I I don't type today. I use my voice. Isn't that ironic? I'm still talking
Mark Evans: In
Guest: for a
Mark Evans: little interesting.
Guest: So I learned how to use it. And DexM didn't believe me because my hands looked fine. It didn't look like there was something wrong, and people didn't know about epicondylitis and tendonitis really. And so I moved to another music company, and it was the same thing, another boys club, and nobody believed me that something was wrong with me. And I cried a lot. I was really angry and scared and frustrated, and I didn't know what to do. And, my dad had enough. And one day, he I was just crying uncontrollably. I used to smoke a lot of cigarettes too, so I was, you know, I was like pig pen but full of anger. You know what I mean? Yeah. And my dad just lovingly shook me by the shoulders and said, you can't work for other people. There's no shame in that. And so, a light went on, obviously. And I thought, oh, oh, there's another way. Did not know that. And, my husband was so thoughtful of my boyfriend at the time. He went out to the bookstore and bought me Guy Kawasaki's art of the start. Do know that book?
Mark Evans: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is really interesting to to see how people fall into entrepreneurship. Some people are natural entrepreneurs right from the get go. You know? They've got lemonade stands. They're buying 10 packs of gum for a dollar and sending them for 25¢ each. Mean and people like you and I do it by accident. It's different. It's it's not by design. I never thought I'd be an entrepreneur. I was a journalist. I love being a journalist and something and then I wasn't a journalist anymore. I was an entrepreneur.
Guest: Do you find, like, I that I need this catalyst all the time. Like, Nate, I as I look so my dad was one. There's been a number of people who see something I don't see, and I I need them to point it out to me. You know? So that Yeah. And that's what changes the channel is that awareness that I didn't have for some reason. You know?
Mark Evans: Yeah. Well, I was a I was a longtime employee. I like being an employee. I like getting a paycheck. It was all good. And then I got laid off, and I got a severance package. And I said to my wife, you know, if I had gotten six months rather than three months, I'd do my own thing. I would hang up my own shingle and I would become a consultant. And she said and the word she said to me, always remember that. She said, well, why don't you make three months severance last for six months and do your own thing? And that's what I did.
Guest: That amazing. That idea is, like, working for people I'm not sure if the people you're working for were assholes or not, but, like, that was a a light bulb to me is, like, the the literally, pain of working for for in an environment where that was happening versus the, quote, pain of not knowing where your next paycheck was coming from. The first one was was way worse. Right? Whereas for some people, that's not the case. It's terrifying to not know where your paycheck's gonna if you're gonna get one or not. Right?
Mark Evans: Well, that's why not everybody's an entrepreneur because it's a twenty four seven, always on, great highs and great lows. And if you can't handle it, then do something else. Get a paycheck. You went from from that and your boyfriend's soon to be husband said, do something else. Happened? Because I eventually, you ended up doing marketing. How did you go from DJ to marketing? Was it by design, or did you just kinda fall into it?
Guest: More falling. Yeah. So so that week so my dad said, work for someone else. Work for yourself. And David got me the book. And the next day, I met a couple of angel investors by accident. I didn't know who that they were angel investors. And they essentially said, we love you. Let's start a company. Here's $50,000. We were off. And we started a music taste making company. It was like a miniature radio online. And as I was marketing that, my aunt, said, you know, you're really good at marketing that. Would you come and consult this project I'm working on? We'll pay you a lot of money, more money than you're making, and, you know, you can say goodbye to the music industry. And that sounded really good to me, Mark. So, she put me on the Walmart account.
Mark Evans: Nice. Nice way to start.
Guest: Yeah. That was pretty lucky. And and, you know, I came at that. This is, again, 2007 now. So this was okay. So marketers, we're gonna nerd out for a second here. This was Walmart and all of their franchises and IRS and, United Way Worldwide and all of their franchises, plus Bank of America and theirs and AT and T and theirs. So there was almost 20,000 people involved, by the end of the the project who all wanted to help promote there was a good cause. It was to help lift the poor out of poverty through, financial education. And Walmart owned some software that was helping with this. So I came in and thought, okay. I've I worked at IBM before and I just when Lotus Notes had come through. And I had worked at XM, and I there was no cloud. There were servers, and then there was a mirror of the servers over in another state. Right? But I saw how hard and important it was to have all these naming conventions of all the songs tagged in the metadata and how people all over, not just in the building, but all over the country, were collaborating in our cloud, right, and what that needed to look like. And so I built a spreadsheet that became the cloud for the Walmart project, and my spreadsheet system ended up getting us a 130% ROI year over year for three years. Amazing. So thanks. Yeah.
Mark Evans: So you stumbled into Walmart Yep. Figured out this system, became massively successful. And then where did lately come from? Because it it was your idea. I mean, you had this thing going. You had a you you you kinda had this germination of an idea. Tell me the story of that because it's you work for IBM, but I take it you're not a techie. You're more of on the you know? Then, I mean, how do you go from that then to this AI driven machine?
Guest: I mean, my big mouth, you know, again, like, I the reason that those angel investors invested in me is because I was yammering on about I was taking to task a a pretty famous music industry critic loudly with, you know, all the cursing that I do, and they were, I think I think they thought I had some balls, basically. And the same thing when I walked into the Walmart project, I basically not even basically, but I I don't polish is not my gift, Mark. And so I was like, this is a freaking mess, you know, is what I kinda said. And then, I was at a dinner one night, and I, you know, I was doing the same thing, just having my big mouth. And somebody said, you know, you should really meet my friend Steve. And so, okay, who's this Steve? And I didn't have time for a Steve. Right. But he was harassing
Mark Evans: Steve. You know?
Guest: There's always a Steve. Right?
Mark Evans: There is.
Guest: My Steve doesn't wear turtlenecks. So in fact, he's in Puerto Rico right now probably wearing a T shirt. So he was in this world. He was a serial entrepreneur. He was a former CTO, chief technical officer, and then also an angel investor. I didn't know any of this world at all. And he kept asking to see my spreadsheets because now I had an agency, and I was using this system for all my clients. And I found him very annoying. And but he he was nice, though, and he would, like, stop he was driving by my house. He would drive from New York to Vermont, and he would just, you know, say, hey. Can I come by for a beer? And we would have him for dinner. So he was kinda, like, making himself around. And he started to say, you know, we just need $25,000. We can automate your spreadsheets and build some wireframes. And I was like, okay. First of all, don't touch my spreadsheets. Are you crazy? You're bananas. Because I I like it it took me so long to imagine the world I was in. You know? I was a consulting I was a consultant now. And and the timing was so good, by the way, Mark, because, I was really I I had I I had to fire a client, and I didn't have the balls to because they owed me so much money. And, I needed to get out of the situation. So here I have Steve giving me this nudge. Right?
Mark Evans: Mhmm.
Guest: And he also was like, we I didn't know what automation meant, and I didn't know what wireframes were. Oh, and the $25,000, like, you know, I was a line cook for a bunch of years before radio. Like, making money wasn't, you know, my gift. And, I just thought he was crazy, totally crazy. We we'd saved both both me and my husband, both music industry people, had saved like crazy to buy our first house, which is what we were doing. And Steve ended up taking the $25,000 out of his own pocket and bringing in Jason, my other cofounder, to my house one night on you'll relate to this. Like, I was a consultant, and so I got vacation when my clients got vacation. So it was Christmas, and I was on vacation. And it was Sunday at 08:00 at night, and they wanted to come by. And I had two glasses of wine and me already, and I was pissed.
Mark Evans: That's the best time to to negotiate the launch of a new company.
Guest: I know. Right? And then I saw what they built, and I was like, oh, Steve says I was much nicer to him after that.
Mark Evans: I guess we talked about being becoming an accidental entrepreneur and then becoming an accidental b to b SaaS entrepreneur. It's a great story. Yeah. You know? And it's been amazing to see how lately has evolved. From your perspective as somebody who's had a very varied background, what are the big what are some of the biggest challenges of running a fast growing company personally and professionally?
Guest: That's the best question, really. I mean, the so the the biggest job is I've got 50 houses on fire at any time, and my job is to figure out which ones gets the water. Right?
Mark Evans: Mhmm.
Guest: And oftentimes, I don't get to put out the whole fire. I just get to, like, dribble a little bit. Right? And so that's the that's the most difficult day day to day task, which I'm sure you can relate to. And those the those fires get to be more what's the word? The the the the weight of the decision is harder, you know, with the more investors you have and and team and all the all the thing that's weighing down on you. You know? I think the professionally, like, the the failure, you know, I I'm we were talking about this in the beginning. There's a manic addiction to being an entrepreneur, which is the highs are high and the lows are low. Right?
Mark Evans: Mhmm.
Guest: And I I clearly love it. I mean, I love all the lawlessness of being a line cook and being in radio and being in in this world. Right? That's the thing I like. I thought I found the end of my rope two or three times, and it keeps getting farther. You know? And I'm always sort of amazed. I'll tell you a I'll tell you a story, if you don't mind. So a couple years ago, I had two we'd raised $2,700,000, all from angels, And I was going for my first venture round. Right? So a little bit different of a round. Mhmm. And I was trying to learn how to walk this talk and do all the pitching and everything, and, that's when all that data came out that said that female founders only get 2% of all the venture capital funding and all of the shenanigans and how the goalposts move and gaslighting. And, one of my investors said, this is this is what's happening to you right now. This is why, know, it's not working. And I was stunned, and and then it all became clear that that's what was happening, and it was sucked. And so I had no choice but to pull the burn of the company back from $100,000 a month to $10,000 a month. Wow. It's a lot of people who didn't pay take a paycheck. Right? Yeah. And I spent the year doubling sales, and I landed SAP in Anheuser Busch and Bev. And I got us into, we got Gary Vee, and then we got into a very well known respected accelerator, in in San Francisco with Jason Kallikanis. So now I'm flying out to San Francisco once a week, every week to do a live demo day for four months. I do this. This is crazy breakneck shenanigans. Right? I come out of that mark. I win the final demo day. That's the one to win because you brag about your growth. Right? I'm in the top three of the class, and I have that term sheet I've been chasing for two years. I got one, and the world exploded. And I boy, did I cry. I cried. I'm simplifying it really, but, like, I cried for a while because the feeling to me was, oh, good. I feel twice. You know? And it it feels bad right now. It feels really bad. But then I grew the company 256% over eleven months. So
Mark Evans: It's like that's the the boom boom. Right? You know? Well, you know, it's been an interesting year for a lot of companies. I mean, maybe I'll tell you a story back.
Guest: Please. Yeah.
Mark Evans: We'll you feel better. So I have a friend of mine who's been a a lifelong friend of mine, and he's a SaaS entrepreneur. He's been trying for twenty years to be successful. And he's tried all kinds of things, and some of them have been successful and some not so much. Last year, he's about to sell his company, and he's at the finish line. It's the final papers and he and his wife are not gonna be super rich, but they'll be rich enough. COVID hits and deal falls apart and he is crushed emotionally, physically, you know. He's like you. He's a hardworking entrepreneur. He's built the company up. So he says, I gotta go back to the table. So he goes back to the table and he built sales this year and he does really well. And he's just sold the company for double with the Visa. The private equity person offered him last year. So there
Guest: That's great. Thank you. That's that's what I need to hear. Thank you.
Mark Evans: Yeah. Well, you've had a tremendous year, obviously. And I think in some respects, the rising tide lifts all digital ships, and some companies have done better than others. And some are going to growth won't be as spectacular, but it'll be good. And for other companies, maybe like lately, it will be good. What I'm curious about, this is it's probably not a fair question. When you look at the landscape, the marketing landscape right now, it doesn't look like there's gonna be in person conferences for most of 2021, if not early twenty twenty two. I mean, things are a bit different here up here in Canada because we're we're locked down a little more. A lot of companies are gonna spend a lot of money on content marketing and social media. How do you see that evolving this year, those two pillars, and what does that mean for lately?
Guest: Yeah. So, I mean, the thing I've been pushing for a long time is after the fact marketing. Right? Getting butts in seats is really hard, and it's I mean, not because of COVID even. It was harder before. Right? Even at, you know, any marketing conference that I've been to, it's the same conference every year. I mean, that gets pretty boring in itself. And but but if you want to get the eyeballs, exponentially, you take apart all of those workshops and panels, find the ten, twenty, thirty, sixty second mini movie trailers, and use them to drive traffic either back to the long form or back to the next event. Right? And this what's interesting to me, Mark, is like so what COVID did for us is created a mind shift. It was already there, but people were forced to figure out how to try new things. Right? That's been part of it. And the after the fact marketing has been big. I mean, so think about how you digest radio now. You don't do it live, probably. You hear it on Spotify, and you digest it at will whenever you want. Mhmm. Same with TV. Right? Not live. And so we, as a company, for the last six years, we stopped promoting our own live events except for the twenty four hours beforehand. We do one the day before and one the hour before because anything else we found fell on flat ears because people are just too busy. Right. But if I take it apart afterwards and then use that all these little itemized bits, right, to to drive traffic, I end up getting six, seven times more leads than I would get than than butts in seats. Right? So this is the effect we're already seeing them having, you know, as far as the conference landscape goes. I think the other thing that's changing is this, the control. Right? So, like, at big companies, marketers and CMOs especially, the control that they've been wanting to have and maybe having to have, you can see it you can literally see it slipping through their fingers. It's not working anymore because people respond to people. And believe me, I get my friend Brian Kramer is the one who said h two h. There's no more b two c and b two b. It's all human to human, and that's true. Although, of course, when you're talking to a larger company, they don't care how nice you are. Yes. But the talking heads at the company, what if they say hour outwardly, the sanitized stuff isn't working anymore, and they're quickly not even not quickly, but they're more, what's the word I'm looking for? They're it's it's more accepted that that style is not only antiquated, but, like, actively killing you. It's actively killing you and the brand. Because of the controls that lately does allow the collaboration to let more voices be part of that conversation in the microphone, that's the other thing we're seeing acceptance on as well. It's like to give how do I say this? To I don't need to be the only one on the magazine, the cover of the magazine. You can be, and Lauren can be, and Chris can be. And that's what Mhmm. That's what I'm seeing other companies do as well is, like, give more voices that microphone.
Mark Evans: If I understand it correctly, Lately has always been a remote company. Is that true?
Guest: Yeah. Always. Had a conversation Don't worry, buddy.
Mark Evans: So I had a conversation with an entrepreneur last week. The first question he asked me was, what are you hearing from your clients about returning to the office? Because he's been working remotely for a year and my answer was nothing. My clients aren't talking about it. They're not thinking about it. I mean, they can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it's so it's not terribly tangible right now. So I'm wondering if you're an entrepreneur and you're not quite sure and your employees are happy and productive working from home and you but you've got this office space that may expire in a little bit. What's your advice to them in terms of how you manage your people effectively when you can't see them other than on a Zoom call?
Guest: Yeah. So it's a good question. Because every people do have different needs, and we've hired people that don't have that need on purpose. Right? So people who very much are wild horses can run autonomously. I mean, this was this is a huge part of our our culture fit, you might say. But also, Mark, like, we've trained people to be able to give you that hug over Zoom, right, you know, from the beginning, because we know that that's part of the evangelism kind of thing. Right? I personally am the kind of person that eats lunch standing up at the fridge if I eat lunch. You know? It's a waste of my time. I save my that's that's how I am. So I hate the water cooler and because I feel like it is a waste of time. I'm always trying to think about how I can get something done if I'm sitting somewhere or or, you know, focused. And so I think, like, first understanding who on your there are always broadcasters and fans in the world. Right? And there's sometimes you're both. There's nothing wrong with being either one, but you have to understand who your employees are and where they fall fall there. I think equipping them with there's there's things to equip people with. Like, for example, if you're gonna be doing Zoom calls all day long, it's not enough to look for women, let's just say. Everybody wants to look pretty, and people are buying more cover up and self tanner. I mean, this is a known fact. Right? But, also, how can you look at the camera differently? This is what we do. Like, Lauren is actually always slacking me. She's like, you have bitch face on. Smile. Right? Because this is about sales and, you know, all that kind of stuff. If you're doing the Loom Loom videos for your customers, are you looking at the camera here? Is it over here? This is the kind of stuff that that we've learned to translate from before. And to force people, by the way, on the other side to have their camera on, like, we don't this is being from the beginning. We don't take a meeting if you're gonna be on your phone driving.
Mark Evans: Right. Right.
Guest: That's that's just the deal. And it doesn't matter if there's a demo or not, but, like, if you if you can't take the time to look me in the eyeballs, then, you know, you're not gonna be our customer. So for those companies, I think, like, there's some cost stuff involved. Right, Mark? You know, you have to think about, like, what that value is, but some people really need the change of scenery and the change of pace to get something done. They can't they they can't be distracted by all the things at home, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm really curious to see who's gonna make it and who's not. You know, who's gonna be able to what people are saying, they have Zoom fatigue. That's because they're having cocktails with their family on Zoom and friends.
Mark Evans: Right.
Guest: Stop that. But I'm I'm curious, and I guess you'd have to really start start to listen to people and find out, you know, what their what their social needs are too. People we are I'm kind of I'm not an introvert by any means, but, like, I don't like I'm not in retail for a reason. I hate I hate people. Don't tell anybody. So I'm glad, you know, when I shut this thing off at the end of the day I mean, my husband, we watch TV at night and eat dinner like that because I already talked all day. You know? I don't wanna talk anymore.
Mark Evans: You know, it's gonna be interesting because there are some people who, like me, probably like you, who like working Yeah. At home, doing what you want, and there's some people who need that social interaction. And I and I think I think particularly younger people who that social networking is really important to them and that interconnectivity and, you know, the opportunities to rise in the ranks. They feel that they gotta be close to the boss. That may be more important to them than older people, but I think it's gonna be a really fascinating year. I think it's gonna obviously be a very exciting year for lately.
Guest: Sorry, really, to interrupt you. So so we do have an off-site every year. That's our one, like, gathering time, and it's here at my house. And everybody comes, they spend the night on the floor downstairs with their sleeping bags. And we're, like, between 17 and 62, so we're not all young. Right. And we do a crazy thing together. Like, we went skeet shooting or zip lining, and we cook a meal, and there's there's no work talk. But it's it's the most fun of time of the year.
Mark Evans: Enjoy it while you can because at some point in time, you may have to buy either buy a bigger house
Guest: I know.
Mark Evans: Move to another location.
Guest: That would be crazy. Oh, and you just reminded me of one more thing I wanted to say, which is so I connect with all my team on social, which might be weird if your CEO is your friend on Facebook, but I am in Instagram and everywhere else. And the reason I do that is because because I'm not there in that water cooler. I can't see people, what they're dealing with. Now online, I can. So I know when, you know, it's the it's the anniversary of somebody's father's death. You know? And I know not to bust that guy's balls this week.
Mark Evans: We're all gonna use different tools and different ways to connect with people, but, yeah, the future is whatever you wanna make it to be, and we'll see what happens in 2021. Listen. This has been a great conversation. At the top of the show, I told people that this would be a podcast that happens in twenty five minutes or less, but you have broken my I know. I know. You you now have the distinct honor of being the longest talking person on my podcast in the last year, but I'll let
Guest: you off this time. Job hazard.
Mark Evans: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Well, yeah, you you've gotta hey. This has been great. We had a few bumps along the road trying to get this interview arranged. There's another Mark Evans apparently out there who's stalking your email. I don't know what's going on. One final question. Where can people learn about Lately and yourself?
Guest: You're you're a doll, Mark. They can learn about us at www.lately.ai, and and me and and lately, we're in all the places at lately ai. And we're very friendly, as you know. We're also a little wacky.
Mark Evans: Thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review and subscribe via iTunes or your favorite podcast app. For show notes of today's conversation and information about Kate, visit marketingspark.co/blog. If you'd like to suggest a guest or learn more about how I help b to b companies as a fractional CMO, strategic adviser, and coach, send an email to Mark@MarketingSpark.co. I'll talk to you next time.