EP 13. Jack Ford, Head of Marketing at Hive HR.

Jack Ford discusses key moments and decisions in his career. He highlights the impact of his head of marketing at SalesCycle, who changed his perspective on B2B marketing.

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Head of marketing at Hive HR Jack Ford talks about his move from a corporate setting to the fast-paced startup industry in this interview. Ford is open about the difficulties he had with digital marketing, especially the difficulty in defining precise and useful KPIs. He highlights the significance of growing personally and professionally by learning from mistakes, perseverance, and never-ending inquiry. Ford emphasises the need for many career pathways and supports positions that enable people to succeed without necessarily going into people management. His story also demonstrates the profound impact that an excellent mentor can have, as he shares his experience with the head of marketing at SalesCycle, which fundamentally altered his perspective on B2B marketing.

Furthermore, Jack Ford talks about how he decided to work a four-day workweek so that he could spend more time with his family and emphasises the need of keeping a work-life balance. He talks about his noteworthy achievement of starting the Unmuted video series at Stream Go, which brought together well-known guests and inventively incorporated consumer marketing components into business-to-business material. Ford's marketing strategy centres on creating "fridge-worthy" material—that is, stuff that actually connects with the target audience and makes them grin. His thoughts, which emphasise the fusion of creativity, strategic thinking, and personal fulfilment, offer a useful window into the methods and ideologies that underpin effective marketing, particularly in the startup industry.

Takeaways

• Transitioning from a corporate background to the startup world can be a challenging but rewarding experience.
• Establishing clear KPIs is crucial for success in marketing roles.
• Learning from failure and being persistent in questioning can lead to personal and professional growth.
• Alternative career paths that focus on individual contribution rather than people management should be recognized and supported. The right mentor or leader can have a significant impact on your career path and perspective.
• Prioritizing work-life balance and spending quality time with family can lead to greater fulfillment.
• Creating content that makes people smile and resonates with them is key to successful marketing.
• Taking inspiration from consumer marketing and incorporating creative elements can make B2B content more engaging.

Chapters

Transcript: 

0:00

A failure I think in my past has been like a specific time in my first head of marketing role.

Really failed to get the clarity of what the Kpi's for my role of my team were from the CEO.

Jack Ford, welcome to the show.

Hey, Kareem, thanks.

Thanks for having me.

0:15

So funny because thanks you.

I was on a show that you guys have created with with back in your days when you were in stream go and so the roles have kind of reversed a little bit.

And I'm excited.

I get the chance to learn a little bit more about your journey overall because like even looking, I don't know if you realize this, but like looking at your LinkedIn profile, you almost make a very sort of, there's a very clear sort of turning point or or clear divide almost like down the middle where you have this super strong, super hardcore kind of like corporate background, you know, 3M, Sage, etcetera.

0:51

And then going into like almost doing like a super kind of like.

The left turn or right turn, depending on how you ought to call it and into like the startup world and kind of getting like getting into environments where like the teams are much smaller the the responsibility is a lot more sort of like intense.

1:09

So yeah, walk us through that.

Like, how did you did you even realize that you made such a transition?

Not at the time, no, But when.

Yeah, like you say when you look back at it, first kind of marketing role like you mentioned was 3M and that was, it's a kind of huge company and one as well as a university and I hadn't really heard of 3M and as a consumer I don't think you would do.

1:37

So I had a marketing placement there for a year and yeah, I kind of blowing wide open at the variety of industries and sectors and products that they've got.

But that was like that was a really good grounding in putting marketing theory that I've been learning at university into practice.

1:56

And at the time it was still there's lots of offline marketing.

So we're doing lots of events.

We did lots of educational training with I was working in in the dental and division.

So lots of educational training with dentists and things like e-mail and Google ads weren't anywhere near high upon the priority is very much getting printed fact sheets ready and delivered.

2:24

And so yeah, that was kind of something that was different, I suppose like one in my career.

So yeah, that was at uni and then straight out of uni kind of quickly became a bit of an unlucky omen, kind of a few redundancies in a row from the world of banking, media, tourism.

2:47

And so, yeah, it was a bit, a little bit concerning at the start there, but like you say move to say a massive company there like part of the Footsie 100 and that there was like another really good grounding, really great development in the more digital marketing aspects, like really good experience in e-mail at that point and.

3:11

Something like 3M where the focus is a lot more.

I haven't spent, I'm an E3M customer, I think like most of the world, but I haven't actually spent the day there obviously.

I imagine.

I mean, I wonder like especially at the time when you were there, if their focus was a lot more and kind of like, yeah, some of the more traditional marketing methodologies as opposed to like more digital like something like a Sage perhaps.

3:34

Yeah.

I think it was a matter of timing as well.

There was five years between those two, between those two roles.

Yeah, I can change.

Yeah, things kind of really blew up.

So I what 2007 was the advent of the iPhone onwards, the digital kind of really grew apace there.

3:57

And so, yeah, by the time I was working at Sage, it was very e-mail based, lots of focus on the online store and the website, but not not at that point.

A load of like content marketing wasn't mainstream, certainly not at Sage.

4:14

I mean if you go look at Sage website now it's it's all over there.

It's you know there.

Got you.

Probably one of the War Runners and that type of thing.

But even after I've made the move to Sage, just it's still.

It still was fairly new, even at the time.

Yeah, yeah, it's still went like moving the Sage wasn't a big focus.

4:33

It wasn't a big content team.

Feel like it grew a little bit during my five years there and we could see the marketing functions focus on it.

But yeah, at the time not the main focus.

It was very much e-mail based, paid digital campaigns as well.

4:50

And from there, how did you kind of make the transition over to the to the startup world overall and well as we have lots of things, it's about people that you know and contacts that you make.

So a former colleague of mine at Sage was working at sales cycle and yeah, when I saw they had a marketing role going there, was talking to him and yeah, just sounded really exciting to be working in e-commerce producing marketing for marketers.

5:19

That was always a big appeal.

And yeah, I think you know you mentioned kind of a bit of a divide in in my resume if you like between corporate and and scale up and startups and I think like working in those places it's really been a big divide between receiving training and and learning what you're doing it.

5:43

And and I certainly think at the in the scale of side of things it's kind of you know there's no long winded training session.

It's here's the goal that we want to meet.

Here's some guidelines, let's make our best of it.

And that type of thing has excited me from day one there and that's still what, you know.

6:02

Hopefully I'm just sitting that into into the teams I head up now.

Amazing.

And we're going to dive right into that with the with the five key moments.

But before that, just just for for for to set the stage for the listeners and watchers of the episode.

Do you want to say a little bit about like what what you're currently doing?

6:19

Yeah, of course.

So.

So yeah, I'm working at Hive HR and that's a kind of a HR tech, HR software company, an employee voice platform.

And it helps HR leaders get insights from employee engagement tools and features, helps them drive, you know, organizational decisions to make the, you know, make it a better place to work and help goals be achieved.

6:46

And more easily it's it's kind of digging into beyond just engagement and really try and get that insight and themes from survey feedback or kind of constant feedback channel.

So it's yeah, it's it's a great Mogavet.

Yeah.

To to think what we're doing is helping people have better days at work.

7:05

You know, that's what everyone wants.

It's a it's a lot of time you spend at work.

So if we can do things to help empower employees to to make changes at that at their organizations, then yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm all here for that.

Amazing.

And I'm curious where you're going to take us with this one.

7:21

But what's 1 failure that you wanted to talk about?

Yeah.

And I straight out of the gate with that one.

It's like there's no, there's no easy questions to soften me up first.

Yeah, I think certainly a failure.

7:38

I think in my past has been like a specific time.

It's been when I really, I think in my first head of marketing role really failed to get the clarity of what the KPIs for my role of my team were from the CEO kind of kind of moved into the role and picked up what was already there.

8:01

And from within the team that seemed good but never really got alignment with the CEO or maybe even the rest of the senior leadership team on actually what numbers are we needing to report on here?

What's important from a market insider view, marketing point of view for you, What makes you understand how we're getting on and it will measure our performance.

8:20

Felt like it was clear within the team, but yeah, that just didn't.

That didn't click as well as it should have done it and it made things more challenging.

You know the buy in it was harder to get every time you want to do a project.

It was.

And do you think this is a characteristic of like being in a sort of almost like a larger sort of corporate environment?

8:45

It was hard because it was.

So I think it was just it could have been a bit of a timing thing, could have been, yeah, personality traits as well.

But it's just something where we never seem to get the right amount of time to really understand.

9:01

And and I think it's it's an enterprise sales model and at the time so you we couldn't measure free new account signups or free trials from from kind of inbound campaigns.

There's no, the direct call action was people requesting demos, but then again and then you have to filter by company size and by location.

9:25

So there were quite a number of steps to to get to a useful metric and and it felt like there was more available upstream than that like they were by that point.

That was a, you know, that was a really solid, really close to revenue type of number that we could talk about.

But it felt like other campaigns and other channels, those metrics were never quite aligned and agreed with.

9:45

And not to say that the relationship was awful or campaigns were not measured, it just didn't quite get the same level of understanding I suppose.

And the buying was was harder to get I'd say.

Gotcha.

And I always like to ask this question, especially when when guests have done like yourself, I've done so much that at this stage the rules have almost reversed and they're obviously now in like a leadership position and they have a chance to to to influence that in that regard.

10:12

So knowing what you know now from that failure, as you call it, like how, how are you approaching things different?

How has that helped you?

Like tell us how that's helped you sort of improve the way you even do things with your own team.

Yeah, I think one of the first things it's maybe do is is be persistent on the questioning.

10:33

So I've got my line manager now the the revenue director very clear and what success looks like for marketing.

And so coming into the role of Hive HR, you know even before any of you stage I knew what the role was required and and how they measured success in that role.

10:52

So and and since we've been in that and we've been able to kind of put new campaigns live, there's always been a really solid few metrics that we can stack things up against and whether it's you know to do with branding or whether it's to do with lead generation, we we knew what success looked like.

11:09

So certainly questioning that process is has helped me and previously in terms of okay not to be, not to be shy about asking another question to clarify things.

And I think that's probably one of the mistakes that I made before was was kind of not wanting to ruffle feathers if you like and not wanting to be being as awkward when in reality it wasn't being awkward.

11:32

It was just laying great foundation for me and my team to be successful in and and that's what I've tried to do and that's why I tried to kind of be clear for the team.

So these are the metrics that we're going for and and these are, these are where they might stop with marketing, but this is where they follow through and flow through into the sales team or the custom success team.

11:54

Everything needs to be linked to you know the business goal and the business areas that are speaking to our customers.

So yes, it's kind of a couple of things there I suppose.

It's interesting because I could definitely share, I could definitely relate and share, share I share sort of that learning that that you've had as well in terms of like.

12:15

You know, like I guess for me like it was always, I can always go like into with with my work at Chopcast, for example.

Like you can always go into full on like relationship building mode where you know I'm kind of like best friends with everyone but no work necessarily gets done.

Or the flip side of that, where it's like absolutely ruthless management by numbers with no context for anything outside those specific digits, as it were, and.

12:41

And and naturally not nothing that that's the wrong approach.

But for me, I just take it to an extreme where it's just super black and white.

And I I've learned the hard way that sometimes you could lose people that way because although you could get the work done, so to speak, you're not going to get it done for a long because you've lost a person along the way.

13:00

And this was something that we've learned like early on in our journey.

Me and me and Em and my cofounder and so.

And I I have, I have no, no shame in in admitting this that we've actually sort of delegated our hand, have had him handle all of the all of like the people management related items.

13:21

Basically went to him because I realized that I could spend more time like upscaling myself in that area or I could do some other things that maybe I lean more towards.

In my case it would be things like, you know, concentration or perhaps like.

Just like overall kind of like sales and marketing whereas with him like he would handle a lot more of the operations and a lot of the people management as well.

13:45

So I don't I don't know if like everyone would have that opportunity but in my case like I just wanted to to have someone a lot more capable handle these relationships because it and I kind of like work almost like as an individual contributor because I do know that as mentioned like I'll either be like super relation I'll go into super relationship building mode and nothing gets done or super ruthless mode and and.

14:06

Accidentally not not with without meaning so lose some people on the way.

So I think you it's impressive to me how you managed to to to to achieve both really.

So that's that's pretty cool.

14:22

Yeah well yeah it's it is really tricky to get that balance and and I certainly found within within teams that I've been part of and and I've managed you have people who you have different people who prefer the different types you know people who do like to spend the time talking and and talking about social things and then other people who first question on Monday morning might be what numbers it did this month and it's you know kind of you know what to you know as a manager being able to adjust your expectations for those meetings and almost pitch the the goal of the projects to the to the right people in in the right way.

15:00

So yeah, people of that often the trickiest thing, aren't they?

Really.

Yeah, I'm curious if the if there's a way you can link that to one book.

Yeah, I mean that this was maybe one of the easiest questions.

The one book 1.

15:16

So I read Lost and Founder by by Ron Fishkin.

I used to used to love watching his whiteboard Fridays when he was at Mars.

For Fridays.

Yeah.

And and yeah legendary and I guess from the outside was like pretty surprised when when he left Mars and kind of kept in kept in the loop with what he's doing on social and when he launched a book and was talks about how he grew Mars from the start to kind of how and why he left.

15:51

And loads of the the stories and that he talks about and the things that he's really honest is really bad in terms of the mistakes he thinks he's made, the things he'd do differently next time if he was to to build something.

I mean he's made making Spark Toro very different to to Mars in terms of funding, for example, all the type of work that they're doing there.

16:12

What one of the main things that came out for me was around being able to like build a career pathway for people in a in a business that doesn't revolve around as you get more senior you have to manage someone.

16:29

They have the, you know, they had the, the management route and they also had the, I think the individual contributor.

Route you could become, you know say you are a content market and writer and you want to kind of level up through the through the organization instead of just becoming a content market and writer manager.

16:53

So you're managing a team of writers.

You could still progress and get more senior and better pay more responsibility without having to do people management.

And that to me was not something on certainly in some of the bigger companies I worked in, in Sage in particular at the time was as you moved up, you had people and you couldn't really move up unless you were management people.

17:15

So that was something which I think hindered some people, you know, oh, you don't have people management experience, so you can't get the job that is above you.

And he was like a catch 22 was like, well, without the experience.

How am I?

Going to get there.

17:31

Exactly, Yeah.

So that was one of like that's something really refreshing.

I saw the first time I'd seen that kind of model in Ron's book and it's like loads of his principles in terms of creating intrigue and interest and being, as you just talked about, being a kind of a human as opposed to just being numbers driven.

17:53

And you know he understands where his strengths are and being relatable to to people and then doesn't like chasing numbers as much.

That kind of level of self-awareness and honestly put into the book, I thought was, yeah, it made me kind of think about what I believed in the the principles that I would hold dear to when building a team or doing the work.

18:15

So yeah, that that one was, I think was an easy one for me to kind of ping off one book.

Yeah it's a it's a book that I've I've come across the book before and I've started reading it.

But just because I get distracted easily.

I I think after this conversation like you definitely encouraged me to go back and finish the book.

18:33

But I do remember that it was just, it was it was off to a really good start and.

Yeah obviously like he he's he's done so much obviously with like with with Maz and and and Spark Toro and the whiteboard was it Whiteboard Fridays or Whiteboard Wednesdays Yeah.

18:51

Fridays yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like his, he's just super prolific.

Nor he does, which is awesome.

What what you said reminded me of of my wife actually, because she works in in corporate and she didn't necessarily want to go down the typical people management for having done that in previous companies before.

19:08

And so I guess she was kind of fortunate in the fact that there was a path for her to just continue being senior as you say like in in what she was already good at and what what the company valued, which which I think is great because to your point, you know like many companies would say well hey, the next step is people management, you know and and that's pretty much the only the only career path.

19:30

So yeah, that's that's interesting and as well, like it reminds me of this one. 11 friend that I have he's an engineer at this this scale up and he was one of the typical story like he was like, you know one of the first kind of like founding engineers and they said OK well now you got you're going to go into like people management And he did that for a while but he realized you know what he like.

19:54

I actually enjoy doing the work and the sort of kind of like that Craftsman mentality a lot more than just managing other people doing it.

And so he's actually requested to.

Not not get demoted but like to take to take like a step back without having a compromise on like his his compensation or anything like that and the company was was open minded enough to to make that happen.

20:16

So I think it's it's interesting to to for companies to recognize the fact that like it's almost like a very traditional thing isn't it to to just almost like expect people to go into people management like and it's like well what if what if they don't want to You know a lot of people end up and leaving their not exclusively but a lot of people end up leaving their sort of corporate jobs to start their own thing chiefly because chief among them is like them not liking what the role entails in the fact that they just want to go back to the roots or doing the craft of whatever it is they they got their start doing.

20:50

So for example, being a marketer or a creator as opposed to someone who is no longer involved in the action but like it's kind of overseeing it some way should perform.

Have you ever thought about that?

Yeah, totally.

I think, yeah.

To your point around the expectation of of moving up and becoming a people manager, it's a it's a skill isn't like managing people.

21:15

I've learned from my managers, good and bad, that people management is a real skill and at times you you know, let's say I was the best e-mail marker around.

21:31

Just because I was going to e-mail market and does not mean that I'm going to be great at giving someone a development plan and and helping coach them.

And at times you know I had companies miss out on the fact that yeah it's a skill as as is someone working in a certain function and they you know they're hired based on those skills to work in market and or finance.

21:51

Yeah, those managers skill need to be in place to to get the most out of that manager and the people.

So yeah, that's that's always something I'm not going to think about.

Yeah, who's one person?

There's something, so I'm not going to cheat.

22:08

I was going to maybe say two people, but I'm not going to cheat.

I'm going to go for one and I'd say by the way before you before you reveal that person.

So funny because a lot.

There was at least one more guest previously who said for for the person question.

They they said they're not going to cheat because they they they also had like more than one person mind.

22:29

I think they ended up cheating though and they and they and they were they were forthcoming about it.

Go ahead.

Yeah, OK, Well, I'll intend to give it to one, but who knows?

I think I've been, you know, really thinking about the my kind of career path and and the changes I think of that I've made during during my career so far.

22:57

And the person that had probably the biggest impact was my my head of marketing.

When I, when I left Sage and joined sales cycle, my head of marketing, Christine and he really kind of changed how have I viewed B to B marketing.

23:17

And we did the same things as we've kind of always done for about 5 years at Sage.

There wasn't a load of different campaign ideas, lots of different teams.

But we're enjoying sales like it was very much looking to like consumer marketing for inspiration and ideas.

23:35

It was the concept of wanting to enjoy the campaigns that you run as well.

You know, the effectiveness of, yeah, I know, Can you imagine that?

Trying to enjoy the work that you're doing, But instead of, yeah, just thinking okay.

23:51

Well, this work last time he was really good at putting, you know, an extra.

Challenge or create a challenge in place to kind of stretch you.

It felt like it was always just at the right time.

Like when you thought maybe you had a handle on something, he'd always have something else to to kind of throw your way and and see if it was something that we could run with or or change.

24:14

And there's, yeah, I feel like I learned a lot working, working for Chris and you know.

It's still in touch with him very regularly now.

So just like whenever we see anything that we think's cool on a marketing campaign, it's always sent over on via WhatsApp and inevitably is a bit of a marketing key count goes on.

24:34

But yeah, definitely the the concept of not just looking at B to B as a corporate business to business role and taking the people involved and having fun.

It doesn't sound revolutionary.

24:49

It doesn't like.

So you're standing here now.

But it is though.

Oh, wow.

It's in a way, Yeah.

Because because right now I should say that like regarding like with marketing, obviously it's never been more sort of like metric driven than it was before, right.

I think like when marketing gardens start, I I imagine it was all about, you know, vague things like, oh, just let's sprinkle some brand awareness.

25:15

Let's just make people aware of who we are and stuff like that.

And obviously right now specifically with like your typical kind of like you know yeah like B to B sauce functions my marketing functions it's there's literally a number for every single thing There's like a number for and you can like metricify almost anything And so it's easy to just be like Oh well let's just do what the numbers tell us to do specifically if someone something has worked before.

25:41

But I I just love how like just your your your relationship even like with Chris.

Like how it seems like you guys were like gamifying a lot of a lot of the things to make sure that you are having fun while also like achieving your results as opposed to sucking the life out of the thing by just, you know, running it like an assembly line or something.

26:01

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

There was always a there's kind of two two key principles which I, which I've tried to take on into my other roles and with my my other teams has been like.

Will it make someone smile?

26:18

So if they receive this, I don't know, direct mail, e-mail, read the blog, see the ad, will it, will it make them smile?

That's always a nice, you know, pretty vague.

But it's one of those things that can kind of it can guide you in what you want to say, and it can steer you away from the negative tone of voice into something more positive.

26:42

So that definitely can be a measure there.

And something which, yeah, I still kind of talked, I talked to my team about is is the concept of like of fridge worthy content.

Fridge worthy content.

So at school, I love that.

If you did something and you're proud, like you came home and gave it to your your parents and they stuck on it.

27:03

And if, well, if they liked it or if you were excited enough, it managed to find its way on the front of the fridge.

And that's the type of thing that you know that I'm that's the type of stuff that I most enjoy doing.

Yes, I like.

That's like the ultimate theater board right there, the fridge.

Exactly, Exactly How many fridge worthy pieces of content have you got?

27:21

And I think yeah, while that doesn't necessarily rely on like almost doesn't rely on some of the metrics.

It's that sense of fun.

It's the sense of like This is why I wanted to do market and this is the type of thing we want to create and if you've got a great fit to the organization, you should resonate with the audience.

27:40

You know it's not just creating things for the sake of it, It needs to.

Yep.

To to resonate with the audience and with the company.

So and you have to you have to reach right of it at the end of the day like you can't just do it then and just say Oh well my my my boss told me or the numbers told me you know that you have to have and this is just like basics like it for for you to be just fulfilled with your job like you have to feel like you've left your mark on on whatever it is that you are creating and and really lean into that like Craftsman mentality specifically with with marketers and and people who create in general a lot of our our audience members are are are either like marketers or creators or founders who are who who are wearing that kind of like creator or marketer hat.

28:19

And so ultimately, like this is, this is, yeah, this is like one of the the biggest things that matter.

And just a dovetail with that.

Jack, I think you know to to take this a little bit, a little bit differently.

Like one of the things that we've noticed work really well, let's say when posting social media content is not necessarily creating captions where you describe or like a social status update where you describe what that thing is.

28:45

Like.

You know, it's almost like saying find attached this ebook.

You know, like I feel like a lot of people like sometimes that's how that's how they're they're speaking.

We certainly used to speak like that in the early days and we just started running experiments after seeing a lot of great people and great creators kind of do this thing where they started almost creating like story, led story, led status updates.

29:09

And not just any story, but stories that kind of follow the loosely follow like the hero's journey, sort of like art type of a story.

Which by the way we try and follow with these with these podcast episodes as well where we kind of start off with like one failure and then kind of build it up as we go.

29:25

So a lot of like status updates, sometimes the most engaging ones really are telling the story like that as well.

Where there is, you know, people call it like a hook or something at the start really.

It could be like a failure or like a some a thing that just grabs attention.

And you kind of want to like just like it's just human nature for you to just like lean into that and see like hey, well how how does the story play out and what happened at the in the end kind of thing.

29:49

It would be the equivalent of just going to A to a movie.

And as soon as you said in your cinemacy it's, you know, they've already lived happily after like within the first 5 minutes kind of thing.

And it's like, well, you know, that's that's that's a recent time.

You know, I always wanted, I wanted to hear that story and so on.

30:06

And not, not that every marketing piece would lend itself to that necessarily, but like by people actually.

Like, yeah, putting, putting their mark on things they could really.

Yeah, like really into that like, Craftsman mentality I'd say.

Yeah, it's making that connection, isn't it?

30:22

And understanding whether that connection needs to be making someone smile, as we mentioned before, whether it's making someone.

Challenge what they already think, you know, like lots of different goals for those connections.

But yeah, it's like you say if it's going to flash forward to the end of the film then or just the last page of the book, then it's there's not much point in there's no connection going to be built there.

30:47

Yes, they might have all the facts, but they're not going to have that connection.

They're not going to understand your motivation or.

Or why they should do things.

So yeah, really important and I love, I love how you figured that out with with your time with Chris and I imagine it's something you you carry forward as well this this metric of like smiles per for impression or something like that.

31:05

Yeah.

All right, cool.

So shifting gears, one decision.

One decision, so this one I mean again, coincided with when I was working, sales, cycling and with Chris, but it was to go to four days a week.

31:23

So we'd had our three time head of market and two time dad and so we'd had our first first bundle of joy.

We'll go with that.

And and yeah, I just, I really want to spend more time with them.

31:41

I didn't want it to be a weekend thing.

I wanted to have an extra day where it was just me and and her.

And yeah, like it was a good time when four day weeks were starting to get a bit of noise.

32:02

And yeah, like we were in a position where we could manage that.

And yeah, so that's been a decision that I made back in.

Well, yeah, that was maybe 2014.

No, that's forgetting my daughter's age there.

And 2018.

32:19

So 2017, 18.

Going down to four days and and and I've done that ever since.

We've bundle of Joy #2 and it's just about to come to an end like they're about to go to school.

My youngest daughter's going to school in in a couple of months and yeah, I really hope that I kind of look back and cherish the the Fridays that I've had with them going to.

32:44

Like toddler groups, we do things like cooking classes, a little gymnastics things.

We've done a load of things on Fridays, which yeah, I'm really pleased I've had the opportunity to be able to do that, both with the support of companies.

33:00

My wife, it's been, yeah, it's been amazing.

It's been really special and and tell us something so obviously that this, I think you said since 2018 if I'm not mistaken.

So this is pretty much like across several sort of companies.

33:17

Were you saying, right, I'll work with you guys but this is my condition kind of thing or did you proactively only like like bother to speak with companies that already have that somewhere in their kind of like packet like is it something you negotiated?

33:32

Because I'm sure there's so many people that are listening right now who are like, this is amazing.

How do we do that with our kids right now?

Yeah, I'm.

It's something that I put into the conversations really early on.

It's something where I mean I guess that the roles and the companies that I was talking to and I've worked since, you know, they have been really flexible they that's you know what that's bedded into their culture.

34:05

And it it was just something that was really upfront about it was, you know, this is something that I want to continue doing and This is why.

And but here's all the work that can you know, But with that you also get four days of highly motivated, high energy, really enthusiastic Jack on a Friday.

34:27

You know, the Friday that that's kind of the energy boost I need to charge that I have by, you know, having this extra day with.

Well, first my eldest and and then and then my youngest daughter.

So yeah, thankfully it's never been a a huge challenge.

34:42

But yeah, I think being upfront and honest about it at the start has been, has helped this conversation And just a tactical question around that, like does this mean you would?

And again, I'm just trying to put myself in the audience's position like do you, does that mean you increase the number of hours you work Monday to Monday to Thursday or not necessarily?

35:03

No, it didn't.

No.

So it moved.

It was a proper part time move.

So if I wouldn't say if it was a nine to five roll, I'd work 9:00 to 5:00 Monday to Thursday and yeah, and then not on Friday.

I think there were options to do those kind of condensed hours where you could work longer on the other days.

35:23

But if I did that, it would mean that, you know, it would be half an hour before bedtime, You know, it would be kind of.

Robbing Peter to people in terms of yes, I got riding off, but now I don't see them Monday to Thursday.

And yeah, it's just been super important.

35:41

You know my wife's been able to do the same thing.

She has Mondays off and so yeah, it's been a, it's been a really good balance.

And I mean hopefully the kids would say the same thing.

You never too sure.

But hopefully they can look back and think you know that was something really special that as a family we were able to able to do.

36:00

That's amazing.

Yeah.

It'd be funny if like 1516 years later they're like yeah about that we we were fine on our own.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

I really want to go to military.

More days, please, But I love that.

So it's basically.

So from their point of view, they're basically getting Friday to Monday with like, yeah, Friday to Monday, pretty much full time with yourselves, which is with one of yourselves, which is awesome.

36:24

Yeah, yeah, That's what we yeah, that's what we thought we that would.

That we want to work to.

We were able to, you know, we're able to manage to do that.

So it's been really like, you know, really unfortunate that we're in a position to do that.

And yeah, I can only hope that the kids appreciate at some point even if they don't know it, I'm sure they'll done done.

36:45

So Speaking of key moments to me the next one is the final one is is an accomplishment or or learning.

And to me this already feels like an accomplishment.

The fact that you've been able to do that and do what what you love as well that that leads into like your expertise.

But that one aside, what is 1 accomplishment or learning that really meant something to you even though it wasn't necessarily, you know what I mean?

37:09

Like the biggest kind of like flashiest thing for for people maybe on the outside.

Yeah, sure.

And this was, you know, talking about things that refrigeratory and things that, you know, that create a mentality that you've talked about.

37:24

You should really write a book, man.

Like the title should be fridge worthy and it's like how to create fridge worthy content but.

Yeah, we've got a title.

Yeah, we've got the title.

So we just need like that's like 80% of it, yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly, exactly.

37:40

Yeah.

Sorry, go ahead.

So yeah it really mean like really plays into that and actually carrying was something that that you evolved with the it's a video series that I did in my previous role extreme go so we and you go.

37:56

Yeah, exactly.

It's the Unmuted video series where we spoke with some amazing names like Ran Fishkin that I've mentioned before was on it.

Melanie Diesel, Ollie Gardner, Joe Glover from the market meet up.

Some like people that I follow on social and I kind of digest their social post and think oh, how can I do that in my role.

38:19

And it was an amazing.

Time to speak to these people and yeah, it was, it was a bit of not overwhelming, but it was you know kind of reaching out to these people that I I kind of followed and admired.

So it was amazing to see them accept and and be I spend time with them.

38:37

But I think some of the things that I enjoyed the most about that was like we create.

There's such a two person marketing team and we managed to create the brand from scratch.

Neither of us were designers at the time, but we kind of.

You used various templates and design tools and things that get maybe frowned upon.

38:58

If you go on Twitter you use certain templates you can you can get.

There can be a decent amount of snark out there but for us it really seems to work.

We're great because of the company stream go out they you know we had video producers as part of the business so that was amazing.

39:14

That could have really let into you know some of the best market is when you use your own product.

And we were absolutely exactly what we're doing.

We were running a video series in the intention of selling video series and webinars and and online events.

So that kind of thing was great.

And we like some of the, yeah, I talked, I don't know, 25 minutes or so ago, we talked about kind of taking inspiration from consumer marketing and consumer campaigns for for B to B that kind of played a part here as well like we set it out.

39:47

Concernedly we talked about being the the Netflix of of B to B video series.

So we looked at Netflix features and said okay, well what can we bring in to this because on the scheme of it is 6B to B webinars in like over a period of two or three months I think it was.

40:07

But you know we bashed it up as a video series, limited series.

We had a watch list that you could add to.

You could search by captions as well.

So there's like loads of different features that are kind of brought in, whether where is it kind of video backgrounds and the landing pages, thumbnails that auto played.

40:27

You know when you scroll into our Netflix and looking for something and you let something play and it happens, you know very much Okay, let's steal something from a pretty cool brand that you know everyone is familiar with.

And yeah, we took a lot, we took a lot of inspiration, let's say.

40:44

That's the kind word for.

I think I love doing that.

It's like something totally different I'd not done before.

You know, I enjoyed being in front of the camera, any of you people talking to them, the production side of it, working with the producers.

And yeah, it was just a really great experience.

41:01

And yeah, I'm proud of the outcome of that.

I think it's, I hopefully think it well, I think it does.

Hopefully the people think too.

It still stands up as something that, yeah, I'd stick on my fridge.

Yeah, I mean I I I would definitely, yeah I I would I can definitely like attest to that as well.

41:18

Like when like I remember when the when the series was was going like like I I was obviously like following it.

And I I thought like you guys did amazing like the the host of of guests that you guys got like Joe Glover, like around Fishkin and others.

It was it.

41:35

It was really, it was really, really like well put together.

And I don't think it's stealing from Netflix.

I think it's more like Austin Clean would put it like stealing like an artist in his book.

And so you know, it's yeah, I I think it was really, really cool.

41:50

And I think it was a much needed sort of creative pattern break, if you will, from.

Because this was at a time when people were like suffering from like webinar fatigue and you know COVID and everything was going on.

People were just sick of, like, just.

You know watching yet another you know like 4560 minutes long thing and so you guys definitely put like a creative spin on it.

42:14

So it just so happens that I know completely what you're talking about with this accomplishment.

Usually with guests I I wasn't necessarily there when it happened but but I witnessed that and yeah my my hat off to you and Emma and the team for for pulling it off.

Yeah that's that's cool.

That's still there.

42:29

It's still kind of sticks in your memory.

Now that that that's that's that's a good sign.

Yeah, 100%.

So we're coming up to the end of the episode.

Who is?

Is there anything you wanted to share with our community?

Anything you wanted to give out, of course.

Where people can find you?

Yeah, always eager to connect with people.

42:49

If you know people got any questions or anything they've they've heard today, they can find me on LinkedIn or.

On how to create fridge worthy content?

Yeah exactly.

If anyone said Co create that book with me, I'm down for that.

I've done the harm.

It's all your right.

It's all your Yeah, exactly.

43:05

So yeah, I mean, just reach out on LinkedIn and easy enough to find.

And yeah, always eager to keen.

I always eager to do a marketing geek out.

If people want to share campaigns, send things over and down for that.

Absolutely.

Love it.

43:21

Awesome.

Well, Jack, thank you so much for your time and there we'll see you soon.

Awesome.

Thanks, Kareem.