How can marketers add value and lead with confidence? In this episode of The Unicorny Marketing Show, Rachel Fairley returns as host and is joined by Leo McCloskey, VP of Marketing at Echodyne.

Together, they discuss the evolving role of marketing in B2B, government sectors, and strategic marketing. With years of experience, Leo shares his approach to building trust, fostering team collaboration, and addressing complex challenges in long sales cycles.

What you’ll learn:

• Why emotional intelligence matters in marketing leadership.
• The unique challenges of marketing in the government sector.
• How consistency builds trust and credibility over time.
• The role of technical expertise in creating effective teams.

Whether you're a marketing leader or just starting out, this episode offers practical takeaways to strengthen your skills and understanding.

About Leo McCloskey

Leo is engaged in the design, build, delivery, iterative development, and messaging of technology-related brands, products, and services. His experience stretches across consumer, enterprise, and government sectors for mature companies with dominant positions in established markets and startups with innovative technologies and products entering new markets.

Underling all the movement and effort is an ongoing study of human factors amidst the ambitions of teams, managers, businesses, and brands. Leo’s studies in languages, histories, and cultures complement his experience living, traveling, and working across Asia, USA, and Europe. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, believes everyone needs a Local, and is otherwise consumed by family, friends, and fun.

Links

Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk

Watch the episode: https://youtu.be/FvmvUPGVtfg

LinkedIn: Leo McCloskey | Rachel Fairley

Website: Echodyne

Sponsor: Selbey Anderson

Other items referenced in this episode:

Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore

Knowing when to step away. I have a few simple rules in my world, and rule number two is when and hold. Do not dig.

As a marketer in the modern world, you're the only one that's going to look after yourself. And so you have to understand what you do well and what you don't do well and try and figure out how to navigate that path forward.

I think marketing in many ways from a business perspective has been pretty pictures and words sort of thing.

Coloring in department.

Yeah, exactly.

Felt tips in my pencil case.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Unicorn and Marketing Show. Your host for the show today is the amazing Rachel Fairley, who is meeting marketing veteran Leo McCloskey.

Now, Leo, he's going to tell you all about himself, but he spent decades mastering the craft of marketing. He's worked across B2B, he's worked in B2C, and at the moment he's engaged in working with government.

This is a man who sees marketing's role with enormous clarity. He speaks with authority. And I can't think of a better person quiz him than our very own Rachel Fairley.

This, by the way, is an excellent, excellent conversation. It's a very strong add to the unicorn embodied knowledge and I heartily recommend it to you. So let's get right to it and go to the studio now.

Today we welcome Leo McCloskey, who is VP Marketing at EchoDyne. Leo, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well, hello, Rachel. It's very nice to see you. I'm a marketer, been doing marketing my entire life, it feels like of sales at the same time.

But it really is about rounding out your career so that you understand the customer. So I would say my career has been a pockmark of different activities that allow me to understand markets really well.

So, Leo, how does marketing create value?

That's a big question in a few words, isn't it?

So sorry.

Yeah. Marketing has to understand the business exceedingly well, I think is sort of the problem.

Sort of think of it in the context of some of the things I've studied trying to come up in the business. And you know, you think about things that David Packard said, which is marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.

And so when I think about, you know, things that Peter Drucker would have said, which is the business has two purposes, innovation and marketing.

And so when you put those things together, the marketing department has to be sort of a glue that holds the rest of it together that makes sure that the sales is geared towards the customer, and the customer is geared towards the sale and that the customer service is geared towards the customer, and that the proposition of value holds from front to back, because that's the brand promise and you've got to live up to that every time.

And so, you know, in terms of adding value, you just have to come back to understanding that particular business, where it is in that particular market and its particular competitive hunt, and then figure out how to bring that up from there.

Yeah. So it's like a sort of marriage between the market and the buyer and then the company and what it's capable of.

You sort of need to have a PhD, don't you, really?

It's really more like marriage counseling in some ways, isn't it?

Oh, my God, it's the rest. Yeah, it's actually, we should all take.

Coaching courses and we may need it at some point.

So at the moment, you're working in an industry that's really geared towards government. Right. How do you add value in that context?

Yeah, the government sale or the government customer is really multifaceted. There's really no single buyer because you've got requirements and then you've got procurement and you've got the buyer on the other side of that.

So there's a whole number of people within the framework of the value proposition that you have to touch.

And your value proposition doesn't really matter as much because the process they go through, it really brings it down to the least common denominator. And so the brand value is hard. It's difficult to shine brand value through that proposition.

Does it manifest as relationships, then?

Well, for government particular, you can't. The pathways of digital marketing are fairly closed, and by attempting them, you sort of shut the customer out.

And so our experience has been that the government customer is very much a physical customer. So you've got to be in front of them, you've got to go to where they are.

Events are a big thing for the government crowd because they're able to be at events, they're able to speak with the market, understand what industry is talking about and give some feedback in a way where they couldn't inside their office. And so from a government perspective, it's a lot more blocking and tackling, I would say. You really have to stick the brand value matters.

They'll see consistency from a long ways away, because your sale process is so long too. And so you have to make sure consistency matters in that approach and in how they see you.

So the brand gets you through the door in a trust respect and Kind of keeps you there. But it's not, it's not what makes the difference.

It's not what makes the difference. At the end of the day, the product has to make the difference, right? There has to be value in the relationship.

And so that's why the role of the marketer is not just to make sure the proposition works, but you've got to really dig into how the product works and understand that really well. Understand its weaknesses, understand its strengths and position it properly.

And understand that when you're in say, an environment where your weaknesses are more important than your strengths, you have to know when to back out. You can't just go through in all.

Cases, oh my God, that's such an authenticity. I think quite a lot of businesses are allergic to, right. Knowing when to step away.

Knowing when to step away. I have a few simple rules in my world and rule number two is when and hold, do not dig.

And I think that's a really hard thing for the business as well as for the individual to do so.

True. I have an image. I totally have an image. So the sales cycle must be very long, like even longer than B2B kind of typically is.

So I would say it's a two part answer. Yes is the first part. It's always going to be longer. But then the question is, what are you selling into? What are you marketing into?

The government space. And this is where you had mentioned it upfront, sort of B to odd.

And the odd part is when you have a product or a service that doesn't neatly fit into the procurement envel. Maybe it's something that hadn't existed before and therefore can't be compared to an ordinary product.

Or maybe it's something that extends a capability they hadn't really thought about before.

That sort of uncommon approach where it's not buying a red widget or a blue widget creates even more challenges because not only do you have to get in front of them for a very long sales cycle, but you've got to take a conservative buyer through a journey of progress to get them onto the other side. And it's not just the one buyer, right?

You've got to go through the procurement organization, you've got to understand the requirements, people who write the requirements.

Then you've got to understand the users at the end of the day who are going to operate the equipment, in our case, operate the equipment and making sure that they're well trained. Because if they can't use the equipment, all of the rest of it doesn't matter.

No.

Well, that's the thing, because the regret post purchase, if actually you can't get out of what you bought what you thought you would, is one where it doesn't really matter what you do in the next bid. They all they remember is they misspent their money because they thought they were buying something that they didn't.

The consistency in the government market is so important and realizing that brand value on the other side, to your point, yeah.

We had a competitive framework six years ago which doesn't exist today because our brand, and it shouldn't really be a thing, but our brand is built on the product does exactly what we say it does. And why that should be unusual is a different subject. But it is.

And so we've come into a number of competitive situations where another product was bought six years ago. And when a government buys a product that doesn't work, it sits on a shelf, you don't get any more money for a couple years.

You know, your budgets are reduced and so you're really taking. It's not that you haven't taken a step forward, you've actually taken a step backward.

And so how do you engage with that customer who's going to have regret? They're going to feel as though they were duped.

And so you've got to take them to a point where they have to trust you in order to go on the progress of technology. Yeah. So it's really challenging the government space, but that's what makes it a lot of fun.

It sort of sounds like B2B made harder.

There's a lot of similarities with B2B. One of the key paths to the government buyer is through big prime contractors and integrators.

And so that's sort of a B2B motion, but it's not your typical B2B motion.

And so understanding what that B2B motion looks like relative to the B2G motion and being able to distinguish what those are and be able to put the right assets and messaging and comms around those so that we're communicating properly to the right audience. That's the trick.

You like complexity and simplifying it, don't you?

I think that's been my niche across my career actually, is I find some things that people don't quite know how to wrap their head around and I try to bring it into something that's a digestible biscuit.

One of the reasons I like you, I think, is that you don't really care whether you're doing B2C, B2B, B to G, like, it just doesn't matter because it's all about that marriage, as you said, and also about trying to make sure that people get what they actually want and need in a way that works. Because then it works for everybody.

It does.

And I think, you know, extension of that would be when we talk about what the role of marketing is and sort of the glue that sort of brings it all together. It's really the team that makes it all work.

Yeah.

And so how does marketing be that sort of player on the team that helps raise everybody's level of contribution, participation, and, you know, back to the marriage counseling role? You've got to understand people really well.

We talk about our primary four Ps, but the fifth P of people is really big deal and how we understand not only our internal customers, but our external customers and all the mediators in between.

Yeah, it's a huge eq, isn't it?

It's a lot of eq.

So for you, beta, odd is the new. It's the new stuff where people don't know which box to put it in yet.

Correct.

So that's actually a problem that a lot of startups and innovators face, isn't it, that you, you're basically bringing, I mean, that whole crossing the chasm, but you're bringing something to market and people don't know what to compare it to.

Or even how to think about it. The first startup I did was a company that did wireless optical, so shooting lasers through free space with a collector on the other side.

And the idea was that you could wire the downtown core very quickly by just shooting lasers across buildings instead of putting actual cables in the ground. And, you know, people thought you were. They were going to burn, they would die if they got hit with the lasers, those sorts of things.

None of which was true. But how do you get people around the corner?

And so one of the things I did was I invited the mayor and, you know, the city authorities in to do a big demonstration so they could see how safe it was. Um, and you have to figure out what your obstacles are and then what some strategies are to overcome those obstacles.

And the obstacles won't be clear. Uh, you're gonna have to figure out what they are as they come onto you and figure out how to get around them.

And I sold the human reaction.

It is, you know, but it's. For me, it's also been about teasing your way through a problem.

So do you worry about the size of the budget that you have for marketing to operate? Do you worry about how many channels you're in. Do you worry? I mean, how do you judge whether or not you've got what you need to do that job?

That is the million dollar question, right? How do you measure the performance of marketing in that sort of environment? And I find that to be really difficult.

We sort of look at budget as sort of growth year on year or subtraction year on year, as opposed to, say, where do I put particular dollars in particular areas? Because I really only have one channel, right? Of two, maybe, right.

The individual sales representative who's in front of people and taking those meetings. And then there are sort of events and demonstrations where we show up with our kit or one way or another explain what we do.

And, you know, those are the tactics you have to get through to get to the other side.

How does a marketer create value? If that's how marketing creates value, how does, how does the human marketer create value?

Well, you have to understand what's valuable on the other side of the equation, right? I think that's one of the first things. How can you contribute in such a way that you're raising the level of all boats and how to plug in?

And so I think from a marketer's perspective, in order to add value, you've got to be multifaceted.

You've got to lean into areas that might feel uncomfortable at first but have to become comfortable for you because you're really not unless you have a particular sort of bent where, you know, I'm just, I love the data. I can really pull apart data better than anyone else on the planet. This is what I do. Well, then you're sort of in a track.

But a marketer who doesn't have a niche maybe or a specialty like that, they have to understand where the business is at moment in time, where the people are and you know how to find the seat and row as hard as they can alongside everybody else. It's not really a good answer, I'm.

Afraid, because I think you're right. Because I think part of the problem is, I mean, it's great to have a specialism.

I also sort of think that marketing is enough of a specialism without becoming a specialist within a special. But the thing that really strikes me is that there's always more to know.

There's always more to understand about the, about the buyer, about how the market works, about what you've got in pipeline, about what the roadmap shows about, you know, what's coming to market. And the problem is that if you don't have a sort of insatiable curiosity for those things. I think you can get.

You can sort of get a bit trapped, can't you?

That's a great way to put it. The velocity of change is going to be really high in the markets. You have to have change on your side, too.

And from a marketer's perspective, given the changing role of marketing within the business, you know, in some business it's quite large, some business quite small. And so wherever you are, you've. For me, it's just find a shovel, figure out where you can step in and start helping and learn along the way.

Lean into anything you can along the way.

It takes some confidence that you don't know everything and you're not expected.

You have to learn how to fail. Yeah.

And you have to learn how to ask questions when you don't actually understand things and not pretend.

I think it's like men trying to ask for directions. Yes, indeed.

No, there's no sexism there.

But I remember when I started in telecoms, I was given a copy, was it Newton's Telecoms Dictionary or something like that, and used to take it to meetings and it'd have a broken spine because everyone was talking gobbledygook. I mean, it was like business gobbledygook meets telecoms gobbledygook.

And I remember just asking questions all the time because I realized that it would take me too long to look things up, so I should go. What do you mean? How is that. Why is that, Is that important, you know, all the time? And I think that.

That it was quite disarming early career moments, because I couldn't fake it because it was just so over my head.

The language, as you get involved in tech, the more. The deeper you get, the weirder it gets.

Yeah.

And so you've got to be able to go that journey.

I mean, when I'm at events, you know, engaging with the market, talking to people, people come to me said, I'm not expecting marketer to be so technical. You really can answer pretty much any question. Well, you've got. You've got to be there does. Right. That's what a marketer does.

You have to understand the breadth of the business. You have to be able to stand there and answer for the business in just about all aspects.

Okay, but is that why there's a whole thing about B2B versus B2C? This is. Is it that in B2C you can sort of empathize with the buyer most of the time? Right.

You can imagine yourself wanting to buy that holiday or that you know that product or go to that show or have that experience. But in B2B, actually, often what you're marketing is something that's quite technical and quite intellectual and quite clever and complicated.

So you have to be willing to do. To do that work, to understand it and not just be a marketer.

The first book I bought when I got into telecoms with Darren Spawn's textbook on telecommunications. And I read that front to back, you know, and that enabled me in my career to develop expertise in data networking that set me apart.

And that's just an investment one has to make in order to get ahead. And I think if we think about B2B and B2C, I think. I don't know that one is any easier than the other. They're just very different.

No, totally. Not one easier than the other. Just very different.

Very different. The propositions in B2C can feel more fleeting because they're momentary. A lot of impulse buying goes on.

And so you're leaning into impulses in many cases, or you're leaving into a savings. One of my first experiences, the B2C market, was at MCI, the original MCI, back in the mid-90s.

And that was when MCI was at the top of its game in the consumer space. It was breaking all the rules and winning all the games. It was just a. It was a dynamite organization to work for.

And the people I worked around in that place were so talented. I mean, there were some really talented marketers and product people in that organization.

Predominantly female for a lot of reasons, but they were just fantastic. I learned so much from them being a part of that team.

But it was totally different than the other side of the same company which was selling in the B2B space and what was required for that marketing role. And you just have to lean into where you are and adapt or move on.

So thinking about working in B2B and B2C and B2G and B2 odd, and I mean, I love all that. Do you find the relationship with the other functions is different depending on which type of business you're in?

Like, does finance appreciate marketing more in any of those?

I would say that marketing relationships in the B2B world versus the B2C world are totally different. In the B2C world, I don't think you get as in depth with the product necessarily. You know, would the marketer really understand?

Well, they might, you know, all the materials in the fabric of the coat and why that's Such a great coat and why we should market that coat really well. They probably would. But on the B2B side, I think what's required is more detailed product knowledge.

I mean, I don't think you can get away with just the high level.

You've got to be able to go deeper and you've got to be able to communicate that in a way that doesn't feel like you're spelunking at the same time, which is the challenge on comms. Yeah. The role of finance is definitely different across the board.

I would say that really more maybe size of company than it is the market you're after.

The smaller the company, the easier the relationships and surely the less confrontational they are, less contentious, the bigger they get, the bigger the company gets.

You know, the dreaded P of politics starts moving its way into it and you know, that then creates all sorts of anomalies that you have to navigate around. And so I think, you know, the relationships change with the dynamics of the organization, especially as it scales.

I think that's probably the better way I'd look at it.

I was thinking the same. I don't think it's really to do with what market you're in and what you're selling. It's actually to do with the company size. I don't know.

I mean, I've. I've always felt that something dramatic happens when you get to about a thousand people and then again when you get to about 5,000.

Because there's suddenly a realization that you really don't know everybody. But there's a point at which you have to almost man mark in the organization.

The same way if you're in B2B or B2G, you have to human mark the customer on the other side. Right.

That there's multiple buyers and buying group and there are multiple, you know, agree as of whether or not you're doing a good job on the other side. And it. That's what gets more complicated. So it becomes a lot. Yeah, negotiation and influence, Soft influence and power.

Soft influence is the key. You know, one of the primary Ps of marketing is product. And product is now its own sort of entity in many cases.

And so that relationship is really key as the business scales. You know, I've been in business of 120 plus thousand and businesses of 8. And so the scale matters, but the people also matter.

Sometimes large businesses with the right team feel small and agile and small businesses with sort of the wrong team feel clunky and slow.

And how you adapt to Those as a marketer is really important because the value you're bringing is the understanding of the market, how to prosecute that market given the business value that you're trying to relate or communicate. And you know, you just got to figure out how to pitch in and do that every time you get the opportunity.

It's quite hard work, actually.

What makes it harder is marketing. The shine of marketing maybe has been, you know, the blooms off the rose a bit in many ways.

I don't know how to put it exactly, but I think marketing in many ways from a business perspective has been pretty pictures and words sort of thing.

Coloring in department. Yeah, exactly. Felt tips in my pencil case.

That to me, and this would be sort of a bold statement, sort of speaks to the ignorance of people in business. Right. I mean, marketing has got to have a high EQ to understand the role of every other organization in the business and how to relate to them.

But that doesn't always, does not always reciprocate it. Right. And so how do you work through those relationships too? Is, can, can be a challenge.

Do you think marketers or do you think you as a marketer, do you think you assess whether or not you're doing a good job in the same way that your CEO does?

Probably not. You know, imposter syndrome.

So I read Alison's book Likable Badass last week and I am feeling great about imposter syndrome because essentially what she explains is that if you, if you really are kind of reaching for the stars, then you're very aware of how much you don't know and haven't done before. And so you feel a sense of imposter syndrome. But if you don't do that, then you won't.

So I actually, I feel good about, I think it's like nerves before a performance or something. Like if you don't feel it, it's not really happening. So I'm good with that.

But I often wonder what CEOs really, really would feel good about marketing doing for them.

I think every CEO would have a different answer to that.

That's sort of the challenge with marketing because it's, it comes down to the peculiarities and personalities that you find inside an organization and how you navigate those in a way that furthers your career self interest, but also furthers the business interest. Right. That's your professional interest.

And you've got to understand both of those because you know, as a, as a marketer in the modern world, you're the only one that's going to look after yourself. And so you have to understand what you do well and what you don't do well and try and figure out how to navigate that path forward.

Find mentors, you know, find people you can lean into that can help guide you. But it's up to you to get through those things. And that's where the imposter syndrome comes in.

I think for many people, which is, you know, I, until you had said that, I wouldn't have really thought about. The reason that you feel imposter syndrome is because you're reaching beyond where you've been before.

That's a nice way to think about it, but it's still a natural human reaction for a great many people. And you've just got to fight through that, you know, whatever, however many layers of deodorant it takes, you've got to get through it.

Yeah. And the trick is not to take it out on other people, but instead to ask for their help.

Like I think kindness and that reciprocity of, you know, I can teach you how to do this and maybe you could help me understand how to do this better. I've never really understood why people feel it is so dog eat dog.

I mean, I understand that not everybody gets promoted and not everybody gets, you know, particular job, but when you work with people that are all at the top of their game and able to help each other be brilliant, it's amazing. I mean, if those memories last and you're, you think back on those times in your career where actually you were like, my God, we were so good.

And that almost never has come out of people elbowing each other out the way because they feel unsettled that they're going to be found out or whatever. Always long for that desire for people to come together when change is making things difficult rather than sort of pushing each other away.

I've never really understood that kind of individualism.

Well, I think that's management. We're talking about management now.

And how do the, you know, the leaders of the business understand the psychology of the, of the business itself and all of its peculiarities and departments and manage that appropriately.

And in many ways I think we've lost sight of that in some way because it's so, it's on top line growth, it's on how do I reach my numbers, it's on how do I get to there. But maybe sometimes we lack the understanding that we're gonna get a much better push if we're all rowing at the same time.

Yeah. And that's why I think this Whole.

I mean, it's been noisy about the return to work and the return to the office for the, you know, since COVID kind of started to be ignored. I shall say, put it that way, I just think that's a dead cat.

You know, it's not about presenteeism to better manage and be more efficient with your people. It's about managing them better. And I just. It's like a kind of look over here, look over here.

And you're going, no, manage the person in front of you. Help them be brilliant at what they do. And I. It's a distraction.

I think it's a real distraction too.

I've worked in so many different time zones across my career that, you know, being in front of someone is something I forgot about a long time ago, long before COVID as being sort of requirement for advancing things, making progress. And what I think we're seeing right now is sort of a, you know, reactionary conservatism to something they didn't like. You know, it's sort of human.

Human nature in many ways.

Thinking back on your career, are there skills you wish you had got better at earlier? Are there skills that you wish you'd realized you needed, that you.

Or the skills you've developed and you sort of feel like, oh, my goodness, I can't believe I've managed that. I didn't even consciously do it because I think negotiation and influence and reading people. I mean, I remember my partner saying that to me.

He's brilliant at reading people. And I was like, I didn't even realize that was a thing. Right. I must, I must, like, learn to read people.

So skills that you don't get told that you're going to need.

Well, you've got hard skills and soft skills, right? I would say your hard skills are sort of the marketing. Like, do you really know your game? And you have to know your game.

And whether you're in finance or in product or marketing, knowing your game, being someone others can turn to, rely on and get a sort of straight answer that allows other people to move on. That is sort of. I'll call that a hard skill. Like, you've got to understand how to do all of those things as a marketer.

But then the soft skills are all that, like the human stuff, you know, how do I relate to the person next to me, how to relate to the person above me? How do I.

How do I not think of the managers who's the same age as my father or my mother, sort of not being a peer, you know, Those challenges, I think, are really interesting on the soft side. I think in my own case, you know, I would say being comfortable, my own skin, sort of been the biggest thing.

There have been personal challenges along the way where I've kind of worked with others that didn't really work out as much as I might have wanted it to. But you've got to be true to yourself, and when those things happen, you just got to move on.

And so I think for me it's been, you know, lean in on what.

On what you know, discover the things you don't know and then lean in on those some more and then just really just don't get distracted by the things that happen you can't control. I wish I could have learned that a long time ago. I think I've learned things along the way when I needed to learn them.

I think I had some brilliant people along the way who. Who made me look better because they were part of the team. You know, I always think of the team as I should be the weakest link on the team.

I should have a team of just startling performers who are all on their way to something greater, not something I can bottle up and keep in a jar and keep for myself. How do you understand that? As you move into managing roles in marketing, how do you promote others?

And I don't mean like into higher order, higher roles in the company, but help them move on in their career, you know, help them develop.

And whether it's inside the organization or outside the organization, you've got to help them from a people perspective, not just as a marketer in the company.

Yeah, I think that's it.

I get pure pleasure out of figuring out what somebody's good at or could be brilliant at and then what the business needs and finding that coming together and then, you know, coaching, supporting, finding the right people for them, that they just fly.

But I know that on the flip side, my Achilles heel and I have got better at managing it, but on a bad day, it's still bad, is I really don't suffer fools. I find it. I find it intolerable when somebody has status and power who is an umpty. I like meritocracy.

I like people being supported and encouraged and. But at the same time, what I also hate is people being beaten up for being in the wrong job at the wrong time.

And you're like, well, but that's not their thing. Of course they're not doing brilliant at it. They shouldn't be doing that work. They should be doing this work.

You Know, but I get a lot of pleasure out of that, out of seeing people blossom and shine. And that's what I crave working with. I crave working with people who, you know, have a sort of fizz and an energy about.

Because they know they're in the right place at the right time, they're doing the right work, and they're getting better and better at it. There's just a pure joy, I think, that comes from that.

There's a. There's a funny line between sort of imperial management and prima Center Paris, first among equals management.

Yeah.

And you can quickly trip over that line.

Yeah, you can.

Once your ego starts building up. That's just human nature, though.

A lot of egos and tech, though, a lot of egos.

Every now and again you come across them.

Oh, I know. So what's next for you? Are you.

You know, when you look out the next sort of few years, what other things you want to learn are the things you want to try are things you want to experiment with? Like, what are you still curious about?

That's a really interesting question.

It's an annoying question, actually. I'm not sure how I would answer it.

But I think for me, the next few years are about, you know, delivering on the promise of where I am and, you know, really taking that to a level that. That is out of this world. And then I would really like to get in the. Be in the position of being able to help multiple businesses, I think.

You know, I don't like the word consulting because it feels like you're going to take my watch and tell me what time it is. And so, you know, for me, it's. It's about. And I just want to add value. Right. I mean, to me, that's the end of the day is how can I help in some way?

Because, you know, as I start looking at the far side of my career and you think about, you know, what keeps people energized across life. And the word I come back to is contribution. Like, unless you're contributing somehow, you're just going to start withering away.

And so, you know, for me, I never think about, like, people ask me, like, when are you going to retire? I'm like, I don't know what the word means. I mean.

Yeah, my dad doesn't either. If you're listening to this, I know, I know you haven't actually retired yet.

I just. I can't think of what that is. To be honest, for me, I would be. I'd be bored. I would feel as Though I was missing out on something.

You know, not being able to get in the, in the trenches with people, help, you know, tease apart a problem, really figure it out, identify what the customer needs or wants, how does that feed into the product?

How do we, how do we build that in such a way that's cost effective, that we can compete in the market and actually win and all that good stuff, you know, and how do you do that in such a way? And how do you. You know, for me, I did a bit of teaching back in the day. I lived in Japan, taught English, you know, back in my early years.

I really enjoyed that.

And I don't know that I'd ever get in classroom style teaching, but, you know, just being amongst people, contributing, learning what they're thinking. And then here's the things I would have thought about. How does it tease out today? Because you're going to learn along the way too.

Um, and that's the sort of return on contribution.

I mean, I'm just learning how to edit my own book. I mean, wow. Nothing like self censorship.

Well, part of it is, I think, you know, I feel like I'm still learning how to tie my own shoes sometimes, you know, humility is a good thing now. Grownups are for other people. I'm going to live in Neverland forever if I could.

But I guess I couldn't emphasize enough the people aspect of it, you know, who you work amongst. And as a marketer and as a human, you should really try to be amongst the good, not the bad, and, and identify like, I'm in a.

This is a bad situation. These are not good people. These are. This is mean. Right?

You got to get yourself out of there because perseverance in that situation will teach you things you don't want to be taught. And you're going to learn them whether you like it or not, because you'll see it repetitively time and time again and it's just going to stick.

And so, you know, extricating yourself from the bad situations before they become terribly bad. Boy, I wish I'd have learned that a long time ago. But yeah, those are, those are some important lessons you learn along the way.

They are. I mean, always have enough money that you can walk out, walk out the door, you know, three months rent or whatever.

Understand your situation. Yes, indeed. Yeah, yeah. If you're in a bad situation or even if you don't leave, but just be looking around actively, you know, be in the market.

And I think that gets back to imposter syndrome for people oh, maybe I'm not so good. No one's going to want me. That's why it's so bad here. And you know, the doom spiral you can put yourself into is a human.

A fellow marketer will go, it's toxic. You're better than this. Leave.

Exactly.

Yeah. Ping us on LinkedIn. We can offer that.

Exactly right.

I think also at the beginning of our, certainly beginning of my career, the businesses I work for, it was Pac Man. They sort of bought and sold and bought and sold so fast and they, you know, put brands in place, killed them seven weeks later, that kind of thing.

That I realized that it's. There's no permanence. But some people join jobs straight out of uni and 20 years later they're still in the same job.

And I, I think that's much harder than if you've worked in different places because I think you get, you get better at recognizing when something will work itself out or when something is just. It's not for you anymore.

But I think that's why you have to build your allies across, you know, your networks of people, because there will always be someone you can call to say, I just need to know, when you hear this, what do you think you know, to.

And I think that it's that friendship, friendship across, across the boundaries and not thinking like an individual, but like thinking like you've got a cohort and you're part of it and you can call on people and get their help.

Being part of a team, I think is one of the most heartening things you can have as an. When you're in a company, right. You just feel as though you're not alone. That's the best.

It's the best.

And again, now we're back to management. Right. Is how do you know as a marketer, how do you, how do you manage an organization to build that, to build that esprit de corps. Right.

And then to infect the rest of the company, if you can, but at least have it on your team. Yeah, that's when you hit all the numbers. That's when you're really on your game.

Leo, you don't do lots of self promotion. I know, but where can people find you on LinkedIn?

Yeah, it can be found on LinkedIn there. Probably the best place to do it. I really don't do the other social, so that would be the only one.

No, I don't do them either. Closed everything.

Exactly.

Well, thank you so much, honestly, for sitting down today.

I think it's interesting thinking about the business of marketing and what mark how marketing adds value, but then as an individual, what your role is in that.

Because often we pull these things apart as if somehow we're not really involved or we make it all about us and don't realize that there's something bigger.

It's that really weird space between personal and impersonal. Yeah, you have to aim for it because you're not going to get it accidentally.

Hey folks, that wraps up today's episode of the Unicorny Marketing Show.

I really hope you enjoyed Leo and Rachel's conversation as much as I did, and they talked about all sorts of things, from simplifying complex ideas to aligning teams through emotional intelligence. I think Leo and Rachel shared some really cool ideas that we can all use to create real value in our day to day.

Now, if you found today's episode interesting or helpful, please be sure to subscribe. That way you never miss an episode in future. And if you did really like it, well, why not leave us a review?

By the way, if you've got a burning question that you'd like us to answer on the Unicorny Marketing show, why not send it to us through our website at unicorny.co.uk or you can send it direct to me via LinkedIn and you can message me there directly. You'll find my details again on the episode notes for this podcast. That's it though. Thank you for tuning in.

We're going to catch you next time on the Unicorny Marketing Show. Till then, be good.