Stephen Banbury
ClearlyRated
Steven Bambery, VP of Marketing at ClearlyRated, has spent 20 years building marketing teams across cybersecurity (McAfee, Symantec), data infrastructure (LiveRamp), and customer experience software. His hiring philosophy is deliberate: he has no fixed profile. Instead, he looks for people smarter than him, self-starters who need minimal supervision, and those with craft in their discipline—whether demand generation, product marketing, or brand. He treats hiring agencies like hiring people: find partners who own the work.
Bambery was recently asked what profile of person he hires. His answer surprised the questioner: they’re all different. After managing teams across large enterprises and now a lean startup, he’s learned that hiring the same profile repeatedly limits what a team can do. The variable isn’t the person’s background or prior industry. It’s whether they know their craft and can execute independently.
This philosophy came from necessity. Early in his career, he tried to own every function himself. As teams grew and the complexity of marketing expanded—demand gen, product marketing, brand, operations, analytics—he realized no single person could master all of it. The shift wasn’t painful. It was liberating. Hiring people stronger in their niche than he was in his meant the work got better, the team moved faster, and he spent less time managing and more time orchestrating.
Marketing is the practice, not necessarily the industry you’re serving. The craft itself is most important.
Steven Bambery, ClearlyRated
Bambery noted that a former VP of Sales once told him his biggest mistake as a first-time leader was being afraid to hire people smarter than him. Bambery didn’t fall into that trap, but it wasn’t handed to him either. It was learned through expansion and role change. When you start in performance marketing, you can own the numbers and the levers. When you move into leading a function, you’re orchestrating specialists. The math changes.
His solution was practical. When he knew product marketing was critical but not his core strength, he brought in people like Curti, Piero, and Todd—all deeply skilled in that discipline. He then got out of the way. The advice sounds simple. In practice, many new leaders skip it. They hire people they can manage or mentor rather than people who will force them to level up their thinking.
The shift from large companies like Symantec and McAfee to a smaller, fully remote team at ClearlyRated didn’t change this instinct. Self-starters matter everywhere. Micromanagement works nowhere. The scale and structure differ, but the hiring signal remains the same.
When asked if AI replaced anyone on his team, Bambery was clear: no. But it changed what his team doesn’t have to do. Content research, campaign briefs, email frameworks, forecasting, analytics—these are now AI-assisted rather than purely manual. The effect is that a smaller team outputs more without growing.
The nuance matters. AI generated the interactive CX Maturity Model from a PowerPoint slide into a self-assessment tool on the ClearlyRated website in a fraction of the time a manual build would have taken. His web development team then refined it. That cycle compression saved months, not headcount.
But Bambery is skeptical of the hype around AI as a replacement for creative judgment. AI has no taste. It can’t make a buyer feel something. It can’t generate the emotional resonance that separates forgettable marketing from memorable marketing. When you read AI-generated content, you spot it. Not because of an em dash or a grammatical tell, but because it lands flat.
Marketers that can use AI will replace those that don’t. But AI doesn’t create emotional resonance or feeling that resonates with a buyer.
Steven Bambery, ClearlyRated
His hiring bar now reflects this. New marketers at ClearlyRated aren’t just skilled—they’re AI-fluent and curious about use cases. That was rarer eight months ago when he was actively hiring. Now it’s table stakes. The best people on his team are comfortable with these tools and use them to reclaim time for creative and strategic work.
Working at ClearlyRated, a platform that helps B2B service firms measure client satisfaction, Bambery spent ten months also running customer success. That wasn’t in his title before. It was necessary. The experience shifted how he thought about hiring, though not in the way you’d expect.
Customer focus and customer experience are not the same thing. You can be hyper-focused on one client—knowing their favorite band, sending them tickets—while missing the operational reality of their experience. You might be a great salesperson to that individual but a poor architect of their overall journey. At ClearlyRated, his job was to think about end-to-end: website, support, buying experience, invoicing, ongoing usage, help channels. Every touchpoint affects renewal and expansion.
This matters for hiring because it changes what you ask for in interviews. Candidates who’ve worked in professional services—where trust is the actual currency—often get it faster. But you can teach it. What you’re screening for is whether someone naturally thinks outside-in, whether they ask about customer context, whether they push back on an idea because it won’t serve the customer. That orientation is harder to retrofit than a skill.
Every organization needs to be more outside-in, thinking about the customer in the decisions they make.
Steven Bambery, ClearlyRated
ClearlyRated’s marketing function is lean. A head of growth, social marketers, and Bambery. But he operates a much larger effective team through agencies. He hired Tripledot to handle SEO, paid search, paid social, and HubSpot. Another partner handles web development. The model works because he treats agency selection like hiring: identify what you need, vet three candidates thoroughly, and pick the one that gets your business and owns it like their own.
Consolidating multiple functions under one agency partner had a direct benefit. Fewer meetings. Fewer handoffs. One partner who could pull resources across disciplines. That’s the same logic he applies to building internal teams—reduce friction, increase autonomy, hire partners who think like founders.
When asked how he selected agencies, the process was straightforward. Research, identify five, narrow to three, choose one. Cost matters, but it’s not the only variable. He was looking for partners who understood his strategy, could execute across multiple channels, and wouldn’t need constant supervision. The result is a marketing function that scales by adjusting partner capacity rather than headcount—a model that works when you have global teams or fluctuating demand.
When recruiting internationally for the first time, many CMOs assume time zones or geography introduce hidden risk. Bambery’s advice is simpler: hire the best person for the role, wherever they are. He brought on Freddy as head of growth while he was based in Portugal. Now Freddy is back home in Brazil. The time zone overlap is minimal—maybe two to three hours—from where Bambery sits on the East Coast. It’s not material.
What matters is that Freddy is smart, gets work done, generates ideas, and is creative. Those qualities don’t change based on airport codes. The common mistake, Bambery observed, is assuming the best ideas come from headquarters. They don’t. Global teams bring different perspectives and sometimes better solutions to the problems you face. Being curious is a minimum bar now; hiring in Latin America or elsewhere requires understanding how to work across time zones intentionally—but that’s a communication and process problem, not a hiring problem.
Bambery also emphasized the importance of candidates asking questions during interviews. If they’re not interviewing you, they’re not genuinely interested. That’s a red flag. The best hires view the role as a mutual fit conversation, not a one-way audition.
Bambery spent four years at the BBC before moving into sales and eventually marketing. He wasn’t chasing the title. He was drawn to the combination of art and science—strategy paired with creativity, data paired with intuition. Twenty-plus years later, he still wakes up thinking about brand, customer experience, and how to differentiate in a crowded market.
The craft has changed. The discipline hasn’t. There’s always something to learn. That’s part of why he hosts the CX Catalyst podcast now—continuing to evolve his thinking through conversation with practitioners who’ve figured out how to build customer-centric organizations. For someone hiring a marketing team, working with someone who still finds the work compelling is its own hiring signal. People want to build with leaders who actually care.
Someone was asking me about what type of person you hire and she said I didn't know really what to say cuz they're all different.
One of our guests, our VP of sales three times around, said that was one of his biggest mistakes was when he was a first-time sales leader, he was scared to hire people smarter than him and you know, he had to learn the hard way.
I've always appreciated people that are self-starters and get stuff done. I'm not a micromanager. It's not what I spend my time doing and generally people don't want to be micromanaged. Just chemistry with that person where you're like, is this someone that I want to spend time with and work with? It doesn't mean that they're same as you.
The common mistake you'll see either CEOs make when hiring marketing or maybe one that you've done before.
Well, when I
I'm Louis Sen. This is Who We Hire, the show about how the best tech companies build their teams. Today I'm joined by Steven Bambery, VP of marketing at ClearlyRated, a platform that helps thousands of B2B service firms measure their client satisfaction. Before this, Steven ran marketing at LiveRamp, Symantec, McAfee. Steven, thank you so much for being here.
Yeah, it's a pleasure being here. Thank you for having me on. It's uh been looking forward to this.
Likewise. So, Steven, you've hired marketers across cybersecurity, data infrastructure, now CX software. Is there a profile that would work across all of them or are you looking for a new person every time and and you know, in your years of working with these different industries?
It's a good question. It really depends. The I mean, what I found is hiring smarter, different people is always a good thing to do and I use smarter than me.
And subject matter experts, you know, it's very difficult to be the master of every single subject and when you look at marketing today, there's so many disciplines within marketing, right? Whether that's like, you know, demand gen or marketing operations, product marketing, brand communications, marketing up just it runs the gamut. So, I've always tried to get smart people that are different to each other. So, it's not vanilla. And depending what the role is and the function, then because having vertical expertise is good in terms of like an industry, yeah. But actually, I see marketing as the practice, not necessarily the industry that you're serving. Now, you can shortcut and accelerate when someone sort of knows cybersecurity back to front or CX or or or data collaboration. But the kind of the craft itself is most important. And then picking the right person for the right role, so they're set up for success. And you know, a smaller company with a team of, you know, six or four is different to a team of 135 or 50 or whatever it so you you always trying to get the right person.
I love that you emphasize like hiring people that are smarter than you and one of our guests, he's a a VP of sales three times around. Now, he runs, you know, sales coaching more. He said that was one of his biggest mistakes was when he was a first-time sales leader, he was scared to hire people smarter than him and you know, he had to learn the hard way. Was that just natural to you or did you get coached on this? How did you come to this conclusion where like, I I need to build a team that's smarter than me?
I think it's something that I learned especially as sort of my function changed and the role grew because you can't be the master of everything. And so, you know, there's certain things that I I think, you know, hopefully as a marketer, you excel at because maybe that's where you start, but you may end up as more of an orchestrator of a of a function. But for me, you know, I started in what was performance marketing and then became demand generation, then became growth marketing. Seems to be a new, you know, phrase for the same thing pretty much. And I've done a a lot of work in, you know, brand and PR and comms, but you know, I knew that something like product marketing was something that I understood well enough, but not well enough to lead that function. So, for that one specifically, I made sure that had very smart people that I could bring into that organization to lead them and let them lead. Whether, you know, that was Curti or Piero or Yeah. Team members that I brought in like Todd, for example. So, you know, these are all very smart leaders that get product marketing. And so, and I then I looked at across everything, especially as you have, you know, when you have a bigger team. You know, marketing operations is very specific, very specialized. Um So, so yeah, I some something that I learned. Also, it's it's, you know, you want those people to to excel and you don't want to be like swooping in every time. You have to let them run with it. So, yeah, I defer to the experts.
And what was all this in office at Symantec and McAfee? You you spoke about swooping in, so were you you know, could you literally swoop in on that?
No, no, it's meta metaphorically swoop in. So, no, I mean, when I when I started it was definitely, you know, not hybrid, you know.
Yeah.
Uh I was commuting from sort of Oakland, Alameda down to Santa Clara, Sunnyvale every day. Obviously, that that changed in what, 2021? One. Seems like it was yesterday, but it was a little ways away. So, you know, remote certainly the hybrid certainly the new norm, but then it was very very much in person.
Yeah.
And clearly right at now it's all remote, but you're traveling a lot for conferences and meeting with teams and retreats and and things like that, right?
Yeah, it's all it's 100% remote, but you know we we don't have too many meetings, although people may argue about that. But, you know, it communication is key. You know, you can be in the same office and not be communicating. So, you know, making sure that you're like intentional, you know, that when you have a meeting, you've got clearly defined goals and objectives, you know, at I always say never never accept an invitation to a meeting if it doesn't have an agenda in it.
I love that strategy, D. So, like was that just a huge shift from you from going, you know, to from 25,000 in in, you know, person employee companies to now working, you know, at a company less than 100 nimble marketing teams fully remote versus in-office or a hybrid culture? How has that changed the profile you hire for?
It hasn't changed a great deal in as much as you know, you want people that really know their craft, right? I've always appreciated people that are self-starters and just get stuff done. You know, I'm I'm not a micro-manager. That's not what I want want to spend my time doing and generally people don't want to be micro-managed. So, but certainly like being a self-starter and be able to like be a self-disciplined and to get the work done.
So, even in corporate settings, you felt like that even in, you know, those you have processes, procedures to follow, you know, your weekly one-on-ones that maybe you have to do and performance review evaluate all that, like how, you know, do you feel like the the bureaucracy has lightened and you're able to to get somebody different or it's really like no, you've always, you know, even then you were looking for these self-starters and and you know folks that you didn't need to necessarily hold their hand.
I I think that's remained true across all our organizations that I've had the pleasure to be at. But you know the differences are more around you know how those companies operate and the scale of those. And so you know in a larger company where there's more people I I don't want to necessarily say there's more bureaucracy but certainly there is more time to spend around like collaboration and being you know making sure that you're doing that. But
you know you can be siloed at small companies too. So but you know when you're making decisions you may necessarily bring in more people as part of that because the ramifications may be greater or more people are going to be impacted or more people have to be involved to roll out that particular campaign project or you know if there's a product launch for example.
Love it. So speaking of going from big companies to small like the new the new trend that you want to see right or that's all over X or LinkedIn it's the first solo founder billion-dollar company or you know the what's your MRR per employee or head count and looking at a marketing team now you know there there there is folks like Jason Lemkin that have an AI CMO that says he replaced about 10 people right? Are you using AI to replace anybody you know or is it at least replacing processes that could have been half a role? How how are you looking at AI marketing now?
Yeah I mean we're certainly pretty lean and mean as a marketing organization. I wouldn't say that we certainly have replaced anyone with AI. But you know where we may have thought about adding head count, for example, we've been able not to do that, right? So, we can look at sort of cost efficiencies and those sort of things. So,
For example,
if I think about sort of like content creation, about campaigns, about email briefs, forecasting analytics, I mean, we're using it every day across every part of marketing. And that allows us to take back time so that we don't have to do the repetitive type work, but we can use AI to like give us the data that we need to make smarter decisions, sometimes faster decisions. And for content, it's definitely been helpful cuz it in terms of like the research and putting together a straw man, it's good, but you know, one thing AI does not have is taste.
Doesn't have taste.
And what I mean by taste, I don't mean
So, it's not a glass of wine whether it tastes good, but it's like, you know, you there's a creative people, designers, writers, whatever I'd be, like they they're not they need to be able to use the tools, but, you know, there's something about, you know, if you're creating something, that taste is very important and the craft that you have Now, I don't, you know, we all have our own tastes, right? But I don't think that's replaced. I think that the creative spark comes from humans. You know, being able to use the tools are important and I think that marketers that can use AI will replace those that don't.
Yeah.
But, you know, that's true for many functions, too. So, yeah, we try and use it to be good, but you know, it doesn't create emotional resonance. It doesn't create a feeling that will really resonate with a buyer or a customer or an employee. And I think the same way, you know, when I I think you can spot AI-generated content pretty quickly. And that And that's And that's not just, you know, oh, because there's an M dash, right? You can get rid of an M dash, but you know, it's I think you have to
Even the M dash, it keeps putting it back in there.
Right. And an M dash existed before and was used, and now it's seen as like a tell. But, you know, the tell is when you look at the output. You know, you have You need I think you I believe, at least for us, you know, when I think about our prospects and our customers, you want to do your due diligence to make sure that what you're giving them has value, has benefit. And you need to look at the output and make sure it's a value. And sometimes when you read through something that's, you know, just been generated by AI, you spot it and it doesn't land. And you need someone with skills to to really bring it to life. So,
100%.
Yeah. It's a It's a It's a shortcut, but you know, we've saved a a lot of time, effort, and uh and and some money. But, yeah, I wouldn't think of it as replacing anyone. But, certainly, there's some chores that I don't need to do now, which is great.
I I like the way to look at that. And I think a lot of the folks that are saying it's replacing people, they're they're usually selling something that has to do with, you know, AI bots replacing people. So, uh it's a good story to have. We had a guest on, Rand Fishkin, and he talked about how AI in gaming is a death nail. It If you use AI in the gaming space to generate images, to generate voices, anything, you have to label it, and it actually devalues the brand and everything. And And gamers do do, you know, they they don't want that. They They want that authenticity. They So, I think we're going to see that more and more. Uh you know, "Hey, this is human-generated content." No, it's a This is a real a real human, and that's going to be more more value to it where it it is pretty insane how many things that it's doing that before where, you know, we would have needed a full-time editor to produce the amount of content that we're doing, but it's they would have really go and help take a draft to go from the draft into a polished piece and then do a final check. Following skills that our marketer got what went and developed. So, it's uh I hear you about keeping head count low, but not replacing people for sure. That's that's the same thing that we've experienced.
Yeah, we've, you know, we produced It's called a CX Maturity Model. And, you know, it's it's pretty much Yeah, so essentially as a as a firm, as a company, you can see where you rank across these different five dimensions. So, are you just starting on the journey or you very mature CX forward and cultured company? And the short answer is most aren't, right? Uh but it started off as a worksheet, as a PowerPoint slide. But, because we able to use tools, we could turn it into something that was interactive that you could fill in and there would be an output that showed you where you would be at the end of it. And then, having done that, we took that to our web development team who built that out. And now today, you can go to our website under resources and do a CX self-assessment to see where you stack rank. And that would have been it would have taken so long to do, but we literally took, you know, the code and said, "Do this, right?" And then we finessed it, obviously, and, you know, it looks better, and we'll continue to improve it, but that the cycle from like concept idea to like interactive, I mean, just saved us months.
I love that example. I can't wait to to check that out. Everybody should go to clearly rated resources and and interact with that
Yeah. Model.
I mean
Yeah, I mean we we're in you know, not to talk about the company too much, but you know, we we're in the space of like client customer experience. And we use AI not to replace human connection, but to enhance it and build more trust. So, our customers
We're in professional services where, you know, trust is I don't want to say it's the currency, but you know, it's a human-to-human relationship type business whether in, you know, staffing or recruiting, accounting, legal, architecture engineering construction. So, it's important that you know knowing who our audience are that we are doing the right thing and using AI in a responsible way that's going to benefit them and actually give them even more value out of what they're getting. So. You talked about agents. And I spoke to a customer and she had a their firm had some challenging feedback. And so, they email the customer, they email the client. They had an interaction and then they actually got on a Zoom call and the customer said, "Oh, you're real. You're a human. I thought I was interacting with with a AI agent. So, you know, it's it's it's it's changer. Like connection, being present, having a human, I think is very important.
I agree. You just mentioned you're in the business of customer experience. Does that raise the bar in who you bring on to your team? Do they have to to have this type of, you know, customer-centric attitude? Is that is that something you're filtering for?
I think that every organization needs to be more outside in. Right? And be thinking about the customer, the client in the decisions that they make. And I was fortunate to meet a couple of great CX practitioners, like Eamon Heger and and others who really like showed me the value of being more customer-centric and being more outside in. You've probably heard the phrase, you know, walking in your customer's shoes, or, you know, riding the trains. So, really putting yourself there and understanding what your your client, their perspective. So, that's I think that's important in every organization, every business. Obviously, it's in what we do, it's more important than ever to have that mindset. And I would say that's partner first, that's client first, that's customer first. So, you get judged on every interaction. So, you know, you got to be thinking about, you know, is my website, does it get people where they need to be quickly? What is support like? What is a buying the product experience like? The installation, the usage of it, if you do install it nowadays, if at all. What does getting help look like? What's the invoicing? You think about the whole end-to-end journey as a customer experience. So, it's important to be very holistic in that way.
Do So, it doesn't show on your LinkedIn, but I I I know this from working where you do. Do you think that your time in managing the customer success department helped you form the marketing team and and shape the strategy even better than you than you would have if you weren't?
Well, I I was just leading the marketing function, and then I spent about 10 months, maybe a little more, also leading the customer success, the client success team, which I hadn't done for the first time and I was fortunate to have like amazing people in that team, but I was really shepherding it and stewarding it until we had an expert come in and run that. But it's incredibly insightful. You know, I think everyone should spend time with their customers regardless of what function they're in, right? I just happen to be at the coal face of that interacting with customers and it was it was a privilege and a joy, right? Not every conversation is a positive one. You know, there's challenging aspects to it, too, but you're looking to solve in the best way you can for the customer. So, it was certainly eye-opening and gave me a deeper appreciation of the customer success as a function, but you know, being customer focused isn't the same as customer experience. They are different. But certainly it was very insightful for me.
Talk to me a little bit about those differences.
Well, I can be very focused on a customer, right? So, customer focus is I know Luis and I am going to send you you know, I'm going to focus on making sure you're successful. There's, you know, I know that you're a supporter of I don't even know the team that you support, but you know, whatever team you support, you might, you know, be a huge Bad Bunny fan, right?
Yeah, I'm in Puerto Rico right now.
Right? So, uh you know, maybe I'm like I'm really focused I'm going to send you, you know, the hoodie or, you know, tickets to the Super Bowl because I know you're a fan. You know, I'm focused on you.
Yeah.
But that doesn't mean that I'm thinking about all the experiences that you're having. That, you know, how invoice might be affecting you, how you're being successful more broadly and more operationally. So, I can be focused on you, but you might be happy, but you may not be the most profitable customer for me. I may not be thinking about how do I upsell and cross-sell. I'm not thinking about your overall experiences and how you as a representative of your firm are being as successful as they could be because I'm just focused on you. It's a more operational way of thinking about a client and a customer.
Yeah, if I'm, you know, leading a a CX team and and purchasing a a software, the Bad Bunny tickets is not going to be the good ROI case to send to the CFO to to renew the software, so right? The So so you've hired uh a head of growth, some social marketers, and you have a lot of, you know, agencies that are that are doing, you know, campaigns and running experiments. Why not stack that into a bigger internal team? Like how do you look at, you know, when do I have an agency versus when do I hire somebody for it versus when is AI going to, you know, be running this role and we're going to load up our current team with with, you know, more so they can do more with less? Well, I mean, when I look at you know, if there's opportunities to bring someone in, then I'm definitely looking at like what AI skills do they have, right? So, when I think about, you know, our head of growth, our head of social, they're very adept and comfortable using AI. So, which means they're like incredibly productive and doing great work. But, when I look at what I would need to, you know, for SEO for example, and now more recently, you know, GEO and AEO, like when we look at those strategies, having someone in-house to do that sometimes doesn't make a lot of sense, at least for us being a smaller company, and I think for most, uh they probably have someone outside focused on that helping them do that. So, we have an agency that is helping us with GEO, more GEO than AEO, uh SEO, you know, how we're incorporating that in the content that we're doing, the website, the way that we show up, you you we're showing up in LLMs where, you know, we have leads that are coming through those channels, which is uh you know, what we're trying to do. And they also manage our HubSpot instance, as well. So, they help us with that. And and content, so like blogs and things. So, we're laying out the plans and the strategy, but they're able to implement that and execute on that. And you know, I can't afford to bring, you know, five, six people in.
Yeah.
So, it's much more cost-effective to utilize their expertise, because they know that they're narrow, deeply functional expertise. So, it makes much more sense to do that. And same with our web development. So, you know, we use a company called Thunderclap for that. We moved everything from WordPress over to Webflow. Very fast. Their work is great. Same with Drupal Dev, you know, when it comes to like paid social, organic SEO, and the HubSpot. So, I I I think you just need to be thoughtful about where you're placing your dollars. So, I'm not into I'm I'm trying to think about what is the activity that I'm trying to get done and that where that sits versus I need head count to get that done. So, sometimes that may be the case, but not for those things right now.
And for all these agencies, are these agencies that you inherited or you went and found? Cuz this is also hiring, right? You're hiring agencies that I think um you know, I'll mention Rand again, a guest that shared your same philosophy here, where he is you know, he he barely has any full-time people. It's all about scaling with contractors, scaling with agencies, because the the demand for work goes up and down, and then he just has a core team, you know, that's that's heavily bought in on on the product. So, how how did you go about finding these agencies and how do you do that?
Well, we did research.
So,
Did you use the LLM?
Uh not not for that actually. I mean it is is an interesting world we live in because you know most of the research you that you're doing is either through you know an LLM or it's through Google or it's referral, right? It's people that you know.
Yeah.
And you know, if you want to get chosen, you need to be on that day one list really.
Right.
So yeah, make make sure you have you have your like SEO GEO strategy down. The uh but yeah, we identified five companies and then we kind of whittled that down to three and then pick one. Some of it was I mean you do obviously look at like the cost of that. But actually because I was looking at a number of initiatives around really bring us more digitally forward. You know, we had never done paid search, not really done paid social. I want and then on the like the SEO side, there wasn't like a lot of content so we we had to think about the structure of that and the cadence of that. And so finding one agency that can do all those things is sometimes difficult.
Yeah.
And so when we did decide to to go with Tripledot, they were able to bring those things together for me. And as a as a small team that just made a ton of sense because I didn't have to brief three different agencies. For example. I had one agency and we could lay out what our strategy it was, come up with a plan and go execute it and they could like you know, pull resources across themselves. So it it just made a lot of sense. So we didn't have to like be managing you know they they're not these are partners, right?
Yeah.
I want that I need I want them to feel like not they own my business but they own my business and they're treating it like their own business. So, they're paying attention to the outcomes, right? And so, you know, having fewer agencies is sometimes for me at least was preferable because I'm not having to spend my time managing them as much, right? It's a few less meetings, which is good.
Yeah, it sound it sounds exactly how you hire team members. You want self-starters, you want them bought in, you want them excited, and smart. So, it's a very similar process, and you know, you you may you may have a team of five internally, but you really have a team of like 100 based on, you know, all the the different agencies that you're working with. So, that that's exciting to see.
Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, so we we picked one to do, like I said, HubSpot, SEO, and paid, and then we did one for for web. So, so yeah, and that worked out great. I'd recommend them.
Amazing. We'll link them in the show notes here, and we'll we'll go and ping them for an advertisement on the podcast when we start start having advertisers.
Um so, the we didn't talk a lot about hiring mistakes. We talked about, you know, what you look for. What what's a common mistake you'll see either CEOs make when when hiring marketing or may maybe one that you've done before when hiring in in marketing.
I'm trying to think. I don't know that I've hired anyone and gone, "Oh my god, what have I done?" I don't I don't think that's happened. Uh Although, if someone's out there that feels that's the case, then you know, you know where I live, and apologies, but
I've done that, not in marketing, and I I I think it was mutually we we felt mutually, "What have we done?"
Yeah, I I mean, I I think, you know, certainly when you're interviewing or interviewing, I think there's you know, you're being hired for a specific skill and based on, you know, your resume, the conversations that you're having, you know, you can issue the check that off pretty quickly, right? And, you know, obviously if they're not don't have that skill when they show up, that shows up really, really quickly.
Yeah.
But, you know, I think there's a lot to do with more of those soft skills and cultural fit and just chemistry with that person where you're like, is this someone that I want to, you know, spend time with and work with? And it doesn't mean that they're the same as you. Far from it. But, I you know, I was talking to someone on my team the other day. Someone was asking me about what type of person you hire. And she said, I didn't know really what to say cuz they're all different. So, there isn't like one type. I mean, I think there's some commonalities, but there isn't one type. So, I think having that, you know, that cultural fit is super important. And I've certainly been, you know, had a couple of instances where, you know, I've shown up and I'm like, "Oh, this isn't this isn't what I thought it was." So, you know, that's happened a couple of times, but that was more of like try before you buy. So, you know, you part ways and it's amicable and, you know, it just didn't work out, which is fine. So, you know, you have to do your due diligence. When when I'm interviewing someone for a role, then my expectation is they're also interviewing me, right?
Yeah.
Am I the right Are we the right firm for them, the right company? Are we offering the things that they're looking for? It's not just what I want. It has to be like, you know, a win-win. So, that's always important.
Of course. And it's that's where like, you know, if a candidate isn't asking you questions, they're not really interested in the role and where we see where where where we reject many candidates before they even get to our clients and you know we still see clients go and reject based on the question that they're asking them and it's you know it it really shows like that's your chance right? It's your chance to go and understand the culture and try to avoid the situation of being hired and showing up and saying oh this is not not the culture I signed up for and uh and I think a lot of interviewees mishandle that to really go and find out cuz they they can even you know some of our best reps they go and reach out to people that aren't even in the interview process to see how it's like working there right? You want that.
That's definitely a smart thing to do. For sure. Yeah. Because you're very invested right? And you get emotionally attached and sometimes you're so single threaded around the opportunity you're maybe not seeing some of the red flags that are there. So.
So you're you're managing you know a global team if you're giving advice to achieve marketing officer today that is going to hire outside the US for the first time is is in a similar situation managing agencies but you know wants to hire a a head of growth. What what advice would you give that CMO?
Talk to Lewis.
We we we can help. I guess what what what have you learned? We've helped hire you know a a great head of growth for Clearly Rated it's been you know Freddy's is is amazing there it's great to see him you know start leading team members as well and making an impact but through you know in in the beginning you said hire people that are smarter than you you know Freddy will send you this so you you've made it you're
uh Stephen only hires people smarter than him congratulations. What what what else you know have you learned through through the process and you know I think one of the things that I'm excited about is how everybody that we've hired is is help you know it is leveling up the AI functionality there and I and I and I really like what you said where like I'm looking first at their AI, you know, skills and like was that true you know, 7 8 months ago when we were hiring it or it it it is that a new concept now that's like no, I can't bring anybody in unless they're AI fluent.
No, I I I would only bring in people that really understood it and used it and were at least curious, right? I'm actually beyond curious now. I think being curious was a while ago like you should have already worked out what your use case is and like iterated on that. Uh so, but you know, when you think about an organization it's always you know, good ideas come from everywhere and outside of your country and you know, so you're having a lot of global teams before you know, I I think sometimes you can be a bit blinkered that you know all the smart ideas are coming from headquarters, for example, wherever that might be. And that just really isn't the case. And so, you know, with Freddy, for example, he was based in Portugal when we first started and you know, he's he's back home in Brazil now, but you know, he was working the hours that we needed him to work and I don't have anything bad things to say. I mean, he is like super smart, gets work done, comes up with ideas, is creative, and you know, we wouldn't have hired him if he wasn't those things. So, because just because he's not based in Auckland or I am or on the East Coast really makes no difference. So, you know, in fact, East Coast is 3 hours difference than where he is is about 2 3 hours. So, really like it's a wash from a from a kind of like a an hourly perspective like where I am in the world.
Thank you. Solid solid advice. So, going into you know, as as we're wrapping up, can you share your why? Like why marketing? You've had a career in marketing for you know, 20 plus years. Uh you still show up, smile on your face. You're now hosting, you know, the CX Catalyst podcast, which we're going to do. So, we'll we'll we'll get to listen to you interviewing, which is going to be exciting. So, what what is your your why?
Like why marketing?
Oh.
Why marketing?
Why marketing? Well, when I started out, my why wasn't marketing. So, you know, I spent 4 years at the BBC not doing marketing. But, I ended up doing some selling. So, you know, dialing for dollars. Uh spent some time doing that with, you know, conference and conferences and exhibitions. And I really enjoyed my time there. But, it's not my it's not what I felt I was strong at and really enjoyed doing. I was more interested in maybe sort of a slightly different relationship with customers, with prospects. And I I don't want to say it was more strategic necessarily, but it kind of is. And it it, you know, it's definitely sort of the the art and science of it. So, really appealed to me. Now, it's changed a lot, obviously, but it's something that I'm really passionate about and I get to think about sort of the customer, the customer experience, think about brand, you know, what that means today. You know, uh I spent some time working at a a brand strategy and design agency called Emotive Brand. And that was super compelling. And really kind of like showed me how important that was to sort of differentiate and show value. So, there's always something to learn, which I think is also really exciting. Like it's so multi-disciplined, I just don't think you could be bored doing marketing.
Wow, and I I think I figured out your secret, like why people also love working with you is, you know, you you understand that it's a craft and you and you've said that word several times here when speaking about marketing and and everybody has an individual craft where uh you you let them get creative with it and you know, to them that's exciting and I can see a flow into into your teams.
Where where can Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, I know what I you know, I think craft is is true if you were like sales as well or product management or what you know, there's that human craft you have to I think you have to put in the hours, right? And learn your craft and and it shows in the results.
The 10,000 hours, right?
The So, Stephen, where where can folks find your work?
Well, if it's podcast,
then it's the CX Catalyst, which is on, you know, the usual platforms, whether that's YouTube or Spotify or you know, obviously on LinkedIn. So, happy for people to sort LinkedIn and tell me why you're connecting. That's always good. You know, everyone gets a lot of requests, but it's always good to know where that's coming from. So, looking forward to connecting to a few more people. And then obviously we're clearlyrated.ai. So, yeah, that's that's where they're the places you can you can find me.
Fantastic, Stephen. Thanks for being on Who We Hire. New episodes every week, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcast. See you all next time.
