The Entrepreneurial Challenges of Running a B2B Saas Startup

Auto-generated transcript. Speaker names, spelling, and punctuation may be slightly off.

Mark Evans: If you're a b to

Kate Bradley Charris: b entrepreneur, a lot has probably changed over the past eighteen months. Last year, business was booming. The rising tide lifted all ships.

Mark Evans: Times were good. Today, it's a different landscape. The global economy is volatile, and many b to b SaaS companies are focused on running a tight ship rather than driving To provide some perspective on what it's like to be in the eye of the hurricane, I'm happy to be talking with Kate Bradley Charris, CEO of Lately dot ai. I talked to Kate in March 2021, seems like a long, long time ago, at a time when Lately was emerging as a red hot company that had just raised a round of venture capital. Welcome back to Marketing Spark.

Kate Bradley Charris: I love RedHot. Well,

Mark Evans: it's better than the alternative.

Kate Bradley Charris: Right. It's true. Thanks so much, Mark. It's really nice to be I I feel like, you know, I makes I make so many friends, and so the best part is to reconnect with you and, you know, just to have that familiarity. So thanks for having me back.

Mark Evans: No. Welcome. Glad to do it. Before we start, let's level set by giving people a quick positioning overview of lately. What does it do? Who does it serve? What are the benefits? And how is it unique? And that is a lot of there's many questions in a short period of time. Do the best you can. I'm sure you've done this a lot. You probably got it down pat. You know, you're gonna have

Kate Bradley Charris: to compare from last year because it always it always, you know, morphs, right, as time goes on. But so lately uses artificial intelligence to write high performing sales and marketing copy on social media. That's the the short, quick one liner, but it doesn't really do us justice, as you know, because it's a bit more complicated than that, which we can get into. One of the things we are excited about is working with companies of all sizes, so small, medium, and large. And, you know, that's a big no no in SaaS world as you can address everyone all the time, but we do despite what they've said. And we can, and we can do it the same way, which has been we we we went we we wanted to prove this point this year, and we did, was that I can talk to enterprise the same way I can talk to small, medium business and reach them and convert them the same way. So that's been really kind of a fun thing to rub in and say, you know, I told you. The other thing that's sort of crucial to what we do is repurposing content. Right? So artificial intelligence, as you know, Mark, is is dumb. It's just a robot made of metal somewhere in the sky, in our case. You know? And humans have to train artificial intelligence. Just like a garden, you have to tend the garden. And for us, that means feeding long form content to the brain. So it has multiple reference points that it uses to know what to what to grab and to turn into social. Right? So that repurposing factor turns out is a huge problem for everyone. Right? What do I do once I have this amazing podcast like you have? How do you market it? Right? How many how many social posts should you post about it? Is it social only? Is there a newsletter happening? Are you posting it online? I know you have a long list of things. But that that problem is difficult for so many because we're even if we work for a large company, we feel as though we're an army of one, or we actually are an army of one, except that the army part isn't working so well.

Mark Evans: Talk a little bit about how Lately's positioning and messaging have changed over the past eighteen months. You said off the top that you're looking to reach different types of companies. And what is the trick from a positioning standpoint so that you're so what you say, the story that you tell resonates with all of them? Because they all have different needs and different challenges and different ways of of using the technology. So what's been the biggest challenge from a positioning standpoint and what has been some of the some of the keys to success?

Kate Bradley Charris: You know, on the change side, repurposing is a big one. So just that word alone, you know, it for us, it's very easy to we we do two things. One, we build a custom writing model for you, and we learn the words, phrases, and ideas that that will resonate most with your audience. That's the number one thing. The number two thing is the repurposing. So our our greatest challenge is how do you make that one? Right? Because I don't have a long time to give you both. But one without the other really kinda cuts the legs off there. You know? So we've constantly experimented with that. Sometimes when I'm talking to, especially enterprise, I've learned there's egos involved. So the positioning that we use there is is slightly more delicate. So it's so that no one feels threatened by artificial intelligence, number one. Right? And the user role is always the same, small or large. It's always the digital manager, whoever that is. Now if you're a small company, that might also be you, the owner, for example. Right? Or it the the you might have, you know, multiple hats there. For them, the idea of saving money and eliminating an agency or another team member is very appealing, and so I don't have to tiptoe around that. But I've also learned that artificial intelligence is a is a scary word for so many people. And I think you'll remember from our our previous conversations is that we talk a lot about the humans and the AI collaborating together. So we have learned in the last year to really double down on that. Like I said, the AI must be trained. It's not here to our AI is not here to replace anybody for good reason, not just because I'm saying it as a nice thing. But marketing and sales only works when you have that spark. Right? You buy from people you like or trust or, you know, you don't you're not likely to double down and pull your wallet out for something that's just as falling flat for you. You know? And so the spark always comes from the human interaction. So learning how to convey that, why that's important I mean, the the opposite of that, by the way, is that then people are like, well, what do you mean? I have to do work?

Mark Evans: Right. They want they want their cake they wanna eat their cake and have it too, basically.

Kate Bradley Charris: That's right. Yeah. They want both. You know? And they're like, okay. So, like, I one of the analogies I always say is, you know, the electric toothbrush mark. You still have to hold it to your mouth. Right.

Mark Evans: Well, for at least the next little while before some robot appears in your house, probably owned by Amazon.

Kate Bradley Charris: Right. Yeah. Alexa, brush my teeth. How weird would that be? You know, I'm just thinking about the Jetsons. Right?

Mark Evans: It's coming, and Jeff Bezos will be the mastermind behind it.

Kate Bradley Charris: Oh, boy. Yeah, Jeff.

Mark Evans: One of the of the words I I did wanna ask you about is repurposing. Mhmm. In the marketing world, there are catch phrases that marketers climb onto. And it seems like from reading a lot and looking at LinkedIn is that repurposing and distribution are like the one two punch for content marketers. It's their obsession. You know, a couple years ago, it was long form content or videos or, you know, high value content, but now it's about repurposing and distribution. So how do you capture what people are talking about, the words that they're using, and integrate it into your marketing without torquing your positioning and your messaging?

Kate Bradley Charris: You know, we do go with the flow. We're no dummies. Right? I mean, with AI even, we when we first built lately, we never talked about AI. We had no idea that was what we were building. And in fact, even when we were first aware of it, we were cautious before we even used that phrase. And but it became a hot button, and I knew that it would drive investors to us and help we had leverage the SEO off it. It's not that we're trendy, but we're paying attention. I mean, your question about how does it how do we not let it kind of interfere or poke a hole in the core of what we do? I mean, the core of what we do is we make fans. We don't make sales. That's what we do. Mhmm. Right? And that comes from my background in radio. And just to remind anybody who hasn't met me before, I used to be a rock and roll DJ. My last gig was broadcasting to 20,000,000 listeners a day for XM satellite radio. So this is in fact my Uber power. Right? And we've what I've learned to do is to emanate that from within. Right? So first, I make my employees my fans. I love them so much. Lauren, Chris, Katie, Kristen, Jason, Greg, Brian, etcetera. But they're all they also want us to win, and we've learned to take the mindset we have internally and treat our customers the same way and our targets the same way. And it's how our AI operates also. Right? So everything emanates from from radio for me. We've learned, by the way, to fold that into how we talk about the AI. If you want, I can can because I don't think I had this language when we met before.

Mark Evans: I think you were talking about AI last year. There's a lot a lot about the power of social media and and efficiencies. That was seemed to be the theme that you're talking about.

Kate Bradley Charris: We should make a spreadsheet of

Mark Evans: this. It's so funny. All all the things you talked about. Yeah. Of course.

Kate Bradley Charris: Yeah. Well, okay. So will you indulge me? I'll I'll kinda zero in on this. So when when your brain listens to a new song, Mark, it must instantly access every other song you've ever heard before in the single moment. And what it's trying to do is to find familiar touch points so it knows where to index that new song in the library of the memory of your brain. And, in this moment, in an instant, because your brain is doing all that accessing, You've got nostalgia and emotion and memory and all these things that are just coming forth to play, makes music so powerful. But, also, the those things all make up make up for the underbelly of trust. K? Now trust is why we buy. Right? Similarly, when you write me an email or a text message or a Slack message or a social media message, I read it and I hear your voice in my head because your voice, as everyone's voice, has a frequency. There's a it's a song. There's a note to your voice. All sound has a has a frequency to it. And so there's a similar thing that must happen. You as the author, if you wanna really engage me, have to figure out ways to give me familiar touch points, give me familiar access points, and trigger nostalgia, memory, emotion, trust. So this is what fuels the bedrock of our AI because Lately's AI, while it studies you and all your analytics, it then defaults to a series of other best practices. First one is me and how I write. I have a 98% sales conversion. Don't you want that? Of course, you do. So let's take the best practices of what I do and and pre train the AI so that you can benefit from the same idea. Fans, not sales. And sales, I

Mark Evans: should say.

Kate Bradley Charris: It's like an and.

Mark Evans: So AI is is integrated into the platform. Last year, it wasn't there. What has been what's in the past year been like from a business and entrepreneurship perspective? The highs, the lows, the lessons learned because obviously, as you said, you are a a radio personality who sort of stumbled into becoming an entrepreneur. And I imagine that you're like many entrepreneurs, you're still in the learning stage. What's the last you've been like? I mean, it's been certainly an interesting time to be an entrepreneur and certainly an interesting time to be running a b to b SaaS company.

Kate Bradley Charris: For sure. And that's the nice way to say it, I think. You know, like, there was AI last year, by the way, but we were learning how to describe it and talk it talk about it and to connect all the dots. And the story is everything. That's something I learned a long time ago. Story is everything. People I mean, my husband reminds me about this all the time. Our our wedding is a good example. Like, people there are events in your life that people will always ask about, and you wanna be able to describe them in a way that where they're walking away a story. You know? So so what what is that? You know, at at our wedding, by the way, he played me down the aisle to Don't Stop Believin'. Right. One of many stories.

Mark Evans: Seventies classic for sure. You're yourself, but probably dating him probably.

Kate Bradley Charris: I am. And and what was that HBO show about the mob that it was on it had just ended

Mark Evans: The Sopranos.

Kate Bradley Charris: Sopranos. Sorry. Yeah. The so The Sopranos was, like, hot and heavy then too. We were riff we were riffing off what was popular. And then surprising and delighting my family who didn't expect any of this. With lately, you know, part of the thing about being an entrepreneur is knowing what stories to tell and when to tell them, when to evolve them to your point. Right?

Mark Evans: Mhmm.

Kate Bradley Charris: This this year versus last year. Knowing when to equip others to be able to tell the same story because that's so important as well. And that includes, again, my employees as well as my customers and other evangelists. You know? I'm I'm creating exponential megaphone here. Right? The other thing in the last year I mean, for us so recently, by the way, like, when the market turned down over the spring and summer, a number of my investors were reaching out like, hey. Are you okay? Everything okay? And I was like, same shit, different day? I mean, are you kidding me? Like, I'm I in startup life, it's always awful. Everything is awful. Once in a while, there's something great. It's a blip and it's just as terrible it's a blip. It's this twinkle, you know. And and I'm the worst at celebrating that as my team likes to remind me because I'm half glass empty always, you know. But that was my reaction was like more terrible things are happening. I mean, you know, in case people don't know, as a female entrepreneur, there's only 2% of all women owned businesses hit the million dollar mark. We have not yet. We're almost there. Drives me crazy. We've been almost there for, like, two years. But then in fundraising land, only 2.7% of all venture capital goes to female entrepreneurs. So I've raised $3,700,000. None of it comes from VCs. It's all been angel money. I still I still can't get that damn badge. I can't do it. I don't know why. It's very frustrating to me. It's like a I mean, anyone else would stop trying, but just it's like this one thing that eludes me and it really makes me angry. So, you know, the last year has been exciting, but also as we touched on before we started talking, the layers of you can't you can't take out the stress of life and COVID and politics and global warming and whatever else is going on and the humans, you know, my team, we're very open. We all talk about each other's lives and share because we have to. Right? We have to know that in order for you to have a good day of work, you can't be worrying about the person in your family who just had a heart attack literally, or my mom has COVID or so and so's kid is going to college for the first time. Like, all this, you know, all the mess all the mess is part of it.

Mark Evans: Talk a little bit about Lately's marketing approach to marketing. I think, obviously, one of the company's biggest assets is you, the power of personality, and and having someone who's comfortable telling stories and talking to people and having a very public persona. How have you managed your role as the company's biggest sales and marketing asset with how the company's marketing has evolved? Because obviously, it's easy to depend on you to drive brand awareness and bring prospects in, but at the same time, you need traditional marketing or or regular marketing or non paid marketing to do its job. So how has the mix evolved over the past eighteen months?

Kate Bradley Charris: Yeah. So I'll I'll explain what we do because it's replicable. It's hard. I'm warning you all, but this is what we do. So we have a 98% sales conversion on our enterprise side. And on our SMB self-service product side, it's anywhere between 2045% because we just launched five months ago, so we're experimenting. But 98%, pretty good. Why? So what we do, Mark, is, you know, I I came at it thinking, okay. I know obviously that marketing is valuable, and you if you build it, they don't come. You have to set it up long before. Right? Because there's nothing worse than needing an audience when there's no one there to listen to you. And so I had, you know, started building social media and all that kind of stuff. But I traditionally, my my understanding was we needed to create content ourselves, but we never had time. And I'm the best content creator in the company, And I I I don't have time for that at all. I mean, I have a thousand other jobs. You know? And I couldn't afford ever to really take the time to hire someone who could write exactly like I would want them to because, of course, I'm micromanaging about that particular thing. So I had a an epiphany of sorts when in the 2020, a lot of people wanted to interview everybody because everybody had a podcast suddenly. Right? Right. It was a huge trend. Yeah.

Mark Evans: Very very trendy, of course.

Kate Bradley Charris: Very trendy. And I was getting a lot of requests because I'm a female entrepreneur, rock and roll DJ, AI. I'm interesting. The epiphany I had was, wait a second. What if I took this earned media and ran it through lately? So now I don't have to create owned media anymore, but earned media is easy for me. The I don't have to think about this interview. I you send me questions. I actually really don't read them because I can answer anything you give me, and it's better. It'll be a better show if we do it kinda spontaneously. I don't have to prepare for this, and I don't have to do anything afterwards. I just give it to my team. So we upload it to Lately. It breaks apart everything you and I say. It's looking for the words and ideas that it already knows my target audience are most likely to like, comment, and share. And we and it breaks it up into, like, 40 social posts. My intern I call her my intern, Alex. She's been working for me for five years. She's a a real human being with a full time advertising job, and she's great at it. Somehow keeps working for me. Love her to death. And she takes what's come out of the AI. She tends that garden a little bit and make sure it's not off the rails. We publish it on both our brand channels and all of our employee channels because together, we're stronger. Right? So make making the employees the advocates as well. And then we look to see online who's liking and commenting and sharing. We start conversations with them. And it's very easy because everything is visible if they qualify or they don't qualify. So by the time we move them into a demo, they're hot. Right? There's no cold, you know, happening here. Right? So that's one thing we do. The other thing in in parallel with that is we're we believe that we're all in it together, and we put our money where our our mouths are. So we look online for our targets, our customers, and each other internally. When people talk about us, when there's occasions, like, say, my customer, Jen McFarlane, let's say she wrote a book, then we would grab her social post about writing a book. We put it in our sharing is caring channel that we have in Slack. And the whole team, even my engineers, is tasked with liking and commenting on this content. Okay? So we do it for our customers. We do it for our targets. Not a day has passed in three years where someone hasn't spontaneously written about us on social media. So every time we see that, we pop that in sharing is caring and then anything I write generally as well. So there's a lot of and this is manual, by the way. This is the part nobody wants to hear. But you gotta do it, you know? Like and it's also the fun part. I mean, today, Chris Bro, whose wife is Kate Snow from NBC, he's my, teammate, and he posted a Twitter post about her writing a blog about bringing their son to college. And so, of course, we all piled on, you know, because we want to help Kate. We wanna celebrate this joy in their lives. I I know something about Chris that I might not know, which is important to know. This is a big deal for his family today. And that empathy, that sympathy, it goes a long way. I mean, people poo poo social media and think, well, why does someone wanna know what cereal I had? But that's not the point. The point is when you build that relationship, strain total strangers will do things for you. They wanna help you. People's nature is inherently good. Right? They wanna be part of a winning team. Everyone wants to be part of the winning team.

Mark Evans: Aside from you being the content engine that you run through lately to generate all this this great social content, what else is in the marketing mix? What else are you doing? Are you advertising? Are you creating content? Are you leveraging SEO? Or are you basically, you know, focused on a few small channels that you're doubling down on?

Kate Bradley Charris: So until recently, there was nothing else. Like, we don't have a budget for paid. We don't have the time. The the only content we were creating was we were doing, like, a live office hours every week where Lauren, my COO and former head of customer service, would do, like, a thirty minute kinda rundown of how Lately works or maybe interview some other expert, that kind of thing. And even that, we tanked it the last few months because it wasn't I mean, in the end, it's content for us because we would take that too and run it through lately. You know? We're about to relaunch that and and revamp it, which is another story. We just sent our first newsletter out in three years, and I didn't I didn't write it.

Mark Evans: That kills me to hear that given given that I'm a content guy, you know. Newsletter It's so embarrassing. Are supposed to be a good thing. You know, everyone says they're amazing, but okay. So that's happening.

Kate Bradley Charris: It's happening. And it's only happening because I I found a few extra dollars to have and I found someone who Jen my friend Jen, who could write exactly how I wanted to to write and knows enough about us, so there wasn't any training required there. We did start doing LinkedIn paid ads about a month ago just with a very small amount of money to do an experiment. Because like you said, I mean so so consistently, what I do is I do three of these interviews a week. Sometimes I'll do a guest blog somewhere. And we always are driving a thousand people to the website. A thousand. It's sometimes it's 900. Sometimes it's 1,200, but it's a thousand. And to your question is, like, well, how do you double that? How do you scale that? And we're doing the same thing always. So we know that we've created this replicable model. So I can make other people me's. Right? Lauren, Chris, Katie. I can put other people on the cover of the magazine. That's one way.

Mark Evans: Right.

Kate Bradley Charris: Which isn't necessarily scalable. So you have to either make more content, which we're trying to do with the I I haven't raised in three years. So, like, with the budget we have, beg, borrow, steal, or paid ads. So our idea is even with a small amount of effort or money, probably we should be able to get that get get 2,000 in, you know, very small amount, and that's what we're experimenting with now.

Mark Evans: It would be fair to say that the social media landscape has changed a lot. The players have changed a lot or at least, you know, some of them are doing well and some of them aren't. So rather than ask you to give me a nice succinct answer to what you think of the social media landscape, I'd like to do a rapid fire round. And the way it works is that I'm gonna give you a word or a couple words and I want you to riff on them and you can riff as long or as short as you like. But almost top of the mind reactions. You you you're probably very good at this because as a radio personality, you're probably used to doing things on the cuff and on the fly. But let's try this and see how it goes. You you are you game for this?

Kate Bradley Charris: Yeah. It sounds so fun. I love you're doing this. LinkedIn. Now personal stuff is traveling so well on LinkedIn. I've been experimenting quite a lot with it from pictures to videos to sense of humor. I can go way out there. I can use words that I normally would only preserve, like ballsy, for example, for for other channels. And I can talk about, you know, being on vacation. Like, I always bring it back to work, but I've been seeing my posts triple in in views when I'm just talking about life. The other thing on LinkedIn, just so interesting, if you talk about God, boom. Algorithm bumps that up. Fascinating. And negativity is nothing new. LinkedIn always drives negativity. So negative stories, I'm I'm failed or whatever. So I I've been drip feeding those in to see what's the algorithm kinda really thinking about, which is, you know, curious to me. So TikTok. Stevie Nicks.

Mark Evans: Stevie Nicks? Yeah.

Kate Bradley Charris: That so that viral video of the guy in the skateboard, and he was skating to, was it Dreams? I think it was Dreams. And just that one thirty second lick. And so then who was her teammate? And, my brain is like so not a who are the guys in the band with her? Help me. Help me, Mark.

Mark Evans: Lindsay.

Kate Bradley Charris: Thank you. I think it was Lindsay Buckingham. Yeah. So Lindsay Buckingham did a did a skateboard thing during during the during the same song, and then she sang over, you know, the piece. So that I loved that. I thought it was amazing because so much so much of the music on TikTok are these, like, annoying songs. I don't know where they come from. And so it was a great break in the, you know, the thing. I mean, for me, what I what I like there is I love watching guys skate to Michael Jackson. You know? I'm into the rolling the roller skating. I don't know why. But I've I can see now everybody janking the system. It's just about dancing and pointing. Right? Like, that's that's the thing. So I wonder when that will change. You know, Hootsuite integrated with them recently.

Mark Evans: TikTok for b to b SaaS companies.

Kate Bradley Charris: Yeah. I mean, we're not doing a good job of it because we don't have the resources, frankly, to do it. And so I I just dabble over there. I I just poke around so that someone doesn't call me old lady. Twitter? It's the beast. I love the Twitter. I don't understand what the hell Elon Elon Musk is doing.

Mark Evans: No. I don't think anybody does for that matter, so you're not alone.

Kate Bradley Charris: That guy is crazy, but it's our bread and butter. I mean, I don't it's funny. I don't I LinkedIn is where I personally live, but and but Twitter is I more live there because the SEO seems to be so strong for us. And the it can it can withstand a huge amount of quantity, which is where Lately thrives. I hate Twitter chats. Sorry. Friends who've recently invited me to do one, which I've said yes to, because they're always so they're seated. Everybody's prepared beforehand, including me. Everything you write is already prewritten. You know? And so when I do them, I try to write things that people don't expect me to write. You know, my I I joked, but somebody once called me insouciant as an insult. And I I looked it I looked it up, and I thought best compliment ever.

Mark Evans: Yeah. Yeah. Facebook, the evil empire.

Kate Bradley Charris: Exactly. You said it. I mean, it's I I almost never post there. I look because there's people I know that do, and I otherwise would never keep in touch with them. But it does feel like, you know, when you walk into an old camp and it smells like mold. Like, that's what Facebook feels like to me. You know? Sounds terrible. And meta. What the hell is meta? They're ruining a perfectly good good word there. Thanks.

Mark Evans: Oh, what about, Facebook's, evil twin sister Instagram?

Kate Bradley Charris: That's the other place I personally live. I don't post a lot, but I find out a lot about my community there, and I really like that. Kinda gossipy person. You know? I hate to say that about myself, but I am. I'm interested in what's happening around me locally. And that's where I find out there's a new taco stand they finally opened down the street. Thank god. You know, there was a there was a there was a forest fire up at Mohawk Mountain in the well, Minnewaska State Park, which is, like, blows my mind for around here. So that's where I get my news. I also one thing on Instagram is, like, what is up with all the posing? There's so many people I know who work who I know professionally. And then on Instagram, there are these sex pots. It's a little embarrassing.

Mark Evans: Social commerce.

Kate Bradley Charris: Social commerce. Like, do you mean, like, NFTs like that?

Mark Evans: No. But selling stuff via social. You know, when you your Instagram feed is just teeming with offers to buy shit and, you crappy stuff that you probably wouldn't wanna buy otherwise.

Kate Bradley Charris: I totally have gotten sucked in it. I've totally bought weird things. I I have frownies are right over there. You know what they are? They're it's tape that you paste you paint or you you put over your wrinkles and go to bed and hope they disappear.

Mark Evans: Does it work?

Kate Bradley Charris: I don't know. I still haven't done it yet. I've had them for, like, four weeks. Alright.

Mark Evans: Oh, you're in one of these impulse buyers. What about what about social audio? It's interesting. You know, Clubhouse apparently, it split itself apart. And and remember, I think when we talked last year, Clubhouse was still popular. Do have any any thoughts about social audio?

Kate Bradley Charris: For me, turn off because I've been there. Right? I did that already, and it didn't you know, I had a personal bad experience that skyrocketed me out of of radio. But I love the theater of the mind, Mark. I love that clubhouse exists. I feel like I'm not interested in playing telephone and just hearing how much people have a conversation and over overhearing that. That sounds inanely boring to me, and what a fucking time waste, to be honest with you. Like, if you haven't been enchanted by that before, I get I mean, I get it. I haven't been in for a while, and people keep trying I mean, for me, there's no value there. Like, if I can't I guess you can you record now? I don't know. But previously, you couldn't record. And so then if I can't record, it doesn't become content for me to use to promote. And, like, this is how I think. I mean, I don't there's almost nothing I do that isn't specifically for something lately, much to my husband's great, you know, chagrin.

Mark Evans: Well, that was the inherent flaw of a clubhouse is you couldn't record anything. It kind of went into the Right? So there was no there's nothing you could extract. Yeah. What about something close to, well, your heart or lately's heart is social listening?

Kate Bradley Charris: You know, you and I both know buzzword because the the hard way is the way. I mean, you if you go to Instagram and you go to Twitter and go to LinkedIn, you are social listening. You are paying attention. Right? You don't need a platform to do it for you. That sounds like the lazy way to me. Right? I mean, we're always very quick to know who's talking about us and what they're saying because we're just paying attention. I think it sounds like that's becoming more obvious, you know, but every once in a while, I meet a customer who, like, doesn't you know, wants to know if lately is doing social listening specifically, and I just think, well, when's the last time you logged into Twitter? And they're like, I don't know. Months ago. And I'm like, well, I mean, you're an idiot. There you

Mark Evans: go. There you go. Final one, and this is one that that I love because I I I don't really understand it is is influencer marketing.

Kate Bradley Charris: I get I get what you're saying. Because, of course, everything I do is influencer marketing. Right? I mean, at some level that you do naturally. I mean, the word of the there's nothing more powerful than word of word-of-mouth except for rewards, which the airlines all figured out. You know?

Mark Evans: I don't know. When it when it comes to influencer marketing, it's like people try so hard. Right? And it really I don't know. I think they try hard to be influencers, and it should come it should be organic rather than forced.

Kate Bradley Charris: It should be. I mean, you know, because we're we all wanna monetize everything. Of course, we're all the problem is that you're pointing out is everyone sciences everything to death. So they want to break down the perfect algorithm for influencer marketing. You know? Whereas just sometimes just you guys just gotta let it happen. There's unpredictable, an unknown. I mean, marketing is unknown. There are unknowns that happen. You have to include that in your in your plan or in your process and leave room for it to happen. The influencer stuff, by the way, the reason I have frownies is totally that reason. Like, I saw a friend of mine was using them. I I think that everyone cottons on eventually, and that's why trends are trends, and that's why tried and trues are tried and trues. Just because you put a name on it like influencer marketing doesn't really change what it really is.

Mark Evans: Right. Which

Kate Bradley Charris: is trust. We talked about trust.

Mark Evans: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. True. This was not the most rapid of rapid fire rounds, but that's okay. Sorry. About. But but people seem

Kate Bradley Charris: to like it.

Mark Evans: They seem to like the fact that this is the way that we sort of we we talk off the cuff these days, and so it's a great way to cover a lot of ground in a short period of time. You know, again, insight into lots and lots of different things, and it's great to hear that that you're doing well and that lately is continuing to thrive. Good luck on getting over to that 1,000,000 revenue figure and see if we can see and get the people over in Silicon Valley or other valleys to give you some money. That would be nice to see in in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three.

Kate Bradley Charris: Thanks. From your lips to God's ears, Mark.

Mark Evans: K. One last question. If people can't find you on social media or LinkedIn or any other platform, where can they learn more about you and Lately?

Kate Bradley Charris: Well, try hard, people. It's not that hard.

Mark Evans: Try harder, I think. Yeah. Try harder. Yeah.

Kate Bradley Charris: W w w dot lately dot a I is us. And I'm Kate@lately.ai. You can always just email me and say, I heard you with Mark. You sound, like, totally crazy, and you'll be right. Then I'll respond.

Mark Evans: Well, thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, and, of course, share via social media. To learn more about how I help k b SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic adviser, and coach, email Mark@MarkEvans.ca or connect with me on text and a populator.