Dear FIFY Listeners

This is our final episode of Focus Is Your Friend.

Thank you for listening for the past 67 episodes! I’ve really enjoyed bringing the podcast to you and talking with so many smart marketers about how to make traction in this crazy world. I appreciate all your feedback and emails – hopefully they helped us produce an increasingly better show.

We’ve decided that we’re going to put our time into a more entertaining, storytelling format. So we’re ending Focus Is Your Friend so that we can bring you something even better soon. (There’s only so much time in a day, and, hello, focus is my friend!)

Please subscribe to the newsletter here and we’ll let you know when our new awesome listening experience is ready for prime time.

Here’s to doing fewer great things over more mediocre things!

Lee  

Erin Dwyer is a marketing guru with a passion and enthusiasm for the digital world. Erin is currently the SVP of Ecommerce, Social and Digital Marketing for a cosmetics company in Orange County, CA. Erin started her career in the advertising side of the business and has worked at prestigious agencies throughout her career including J Walter Thompson, DDB, Wong Doody and TBWA/Chiat/ Day. She's worked in gaming, software technology and entertainment categories. With digital’s impact on all industries, Erin’s aim is to help companies and brands understand how to use the space and navigate it to bring them desired results and prepare for what’s next.

“The most important thing for anyone in any category is to realize that the concept of marketing as we once knew it is basically over” – Erin Dwyer

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• What today’s marketing mix looks like and how to stay relevant
• How to find value in your marketing approach and tactics while looking outside the box
• How to realize that marketing isn’t a function, but rather the DNA of your organization
• How to think about your company’s strategy and add value in a more altruistic way
• How to show who you are and who your company wants to be
• How to lean on others and share information to achieve better results
• How to keep an active social presence for a brand
• How to prioritize 

Ways to contact Erin:

• Website: www.Digi-Darwin.com 
• LinkedIn: ErinKDwyer

Glenn Mattson is the president of Mattson Enterprises, a consulting and training firm which specializes in helping you put those plans you’ve spent so much time creating into action. Learn what it takes to connect the dots and ensure success.

“I think that's the number one challenge that business owners have is they assume that they know their audience when in reality they know very little about them.”  – Chris Dayley

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• How to implement the plans you’ve spent so much time creating 
• How to reach your goals without wasting your time
• What separates an okay sales department from a fantastic one
• Why is leadership so important when executing plans

Ways to contact Glenn:

• Website: www.Mattson.Sandler.com
• LinkedIn: GlennMattson

Drew Neisser, is the founder and CEO of Renegade, an award-winning agency that helps CMOs find innovative ways to break through. He is a true renegade thinker, and he has helped dozens and dozens of CMOs create marketing programs worth writing about, and he has told the story of over 200 of his CMO friends via his Ad Age column and his first book, The CMO’s Periodic Table: A Renegade’s Guide to Marketing  

“I think that's the number one challenge that business owners have is they assume that they know their audience when in reality they know very little about them.”  – Chris Dayley

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• How to survive by focusing
• What are the basic elements CMOS need to manage expectations
• How to continue innovating everyday
• Why CMOS fail and how t avoid the failure trap
• How to execute at scale
• Why courage always precedes vision
• How to set clear marketing expectations
• Why a CMO needs board-level support and how to secure it

Other resources:

• A/B Testing Starter Guide
• Visual Website Optimizer
• Optimizely

Ways to contact Chris:

• Twitter: @ChrisDayley
• Website: www.DisruptiveAdvertising.com 

Drew Neisser, is the founder and CEO of Renegade, an award-winning agency that helps CMOs find innovative ways to break through. He is a true renegade thinker, and he has helped dozens and dozens of CMOs create marketing programs worth writing about, and he has told the story of over 200 of his CMO friends via his Ad Age column and his first book, The CMO’s Periodic Table: A Renegade’s Guide to Marketing  

“Awareness erodes at about a 50 percent a month rate, so if you can’ t create something that is sustainable over time, don’t bother spending the money.”  – Drew Neisser

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• How to survive by focusing
• What are the basic elements CMOS need to manage expectations
• How to continue innovating everyday
• Why CMOS fail and how t avoid the failure trap
• How to execute at scale
• Why courage always precedes vision
• How to set clear marketing expectations
• Why a CMO needs board-level support and how to secure it

Other resources:

• The CMO’s Periodic Table: A Renegade’s Guide to Marketing by Drew Neisser

Ways to contact Drew:

• Twitter: @DrewNeisser
• Website: www.renegade.com  

Brandon Laws is the Director of Marketing at Xenium HR. He has helped companies go from twenty people to ninety people with just himself, a coordinator and a very small budget. Learn how to target an audience effectively with small money and big ideas that translate.  

“One of our taglines [at Xenium] is ‘developing great employers’ and I think how you do that is you educate them and you continue to provide best practice advice and provide value always.” - Brandon Laws

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• How to target an audience effectively with small money and big ideas
• The key to getting people to pay attention to your marketing efforts
• Why sustainability is sexy
• How to optimize your content
• Why marketing efforts require a hypothesis
• Why networking is so important to connect with C-level executives
• Why marketing doesn’t have to have a huge price tag to be effective

Other resources:

• Youtility by Jay Baer

Ways to contact AJ:

• Twitter: @BrandonLaws
• Website: www.xeniumhr.com 

AJ Wilcox is a digital marketing fanatic who found early success with LinkedIn Ads. He started B2Linked, a niche agency, and LinkedIn Certified Partner. He's a ginger & triathlete. He & his wife live in Utah with their 4 kids, and his company car is a go-kart.  

“The most beautiful part about LinkedIn is the targeting. It’s scalable access to professionals at a really granular level.” - AJ Wilcox

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• The right-sized approach to using LinkedIn and Facebook for B2B marketing
• Why you need to have a flexible strategy for many budgets
• A data-driven strategy for engagement to find the right people and keep them
• The best way to develop your relationship with an audience
• How to create content for smart audience development
• What it means to pay more to get more with LinkedIn
• How to find that middle-ground of content and contact to maximize ROI
• The easiest way to create content for white collar recruitment campaigns
• Why LinkedIn offers the best targeting - market directly to companies you choose

Ways to contact AJ:

• Twitter: @WilcoxAJ
• Website: b2linked.com

Building and growing businesses, from category creation to global expansion, is a passion of Mike Porcaro’s and it's a through-line in his career. He believes that there are few things more satisfying than the sense of accomplishment a team feels when they've achieved what may have seemed impossible just a few months prior.  

“A great idea wasn’t great only one time.” - Mike Porcaro

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• Boomi: the world’s leading integration platform (the software that connects all your disparate systems)
• How Mike took Boomi from credibility to credibility & awareness
• Why he quickly hired experts in different fields to help Boomi grow
• Ensuring ROI from your agency and why you must expect partner level work
• Speaking to all consumers as humans
• How to expand internationally by keeping your message hyperlocal with an appropriate amount of centralized consistency
• Measuring how many people are talking about a business and making sure they’re talking about what you want them to talk about
• Getting clear on what success looks like
• A/B testing to figure out where to spend your marketing dollars

Entrepreneur, speaker, and writer Pia Silva is a partner and brand strategist at Worstofall Design where they build "Badass Brands without the BS" for 1-3 person service businesses in 1-3 day intensives. She is a Forbes contributor and has spoken at a host of entrepreneurial organizations including Goldman Sach's 10,000 Small Businesses, Million Dollar Women’s Summit, Squarespace, and We Work. Her company was named top "10 Design Firms Lead By Young People That Are Changing the Way We Look at the World" by Complex. Her book “Badass Your Brand: Impatient Entrepreneur’s Guide to Turning Expertise into Profit” launched March 16th, 2017.  

“The one mistake everyone is making is they're not sticking forcefully to their focus and their message.” - Pia Silva

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• How Worstofall Design helps their clients build badass brands in three days or less
• Leveraging profitability by getting very few clients at a high price point
• Brandshrink (strategy session) and Brandup (execution): how Worstofall Design’s two services work
• “Badass Your Brand”: why Pia wrote the book
• Why you must stick forcefully to your message
• Choosing which marketing efforts to utilize based on their ROI
• Why clients need to buy all in on their agency’s expertise
• Managing the psychology of the client

Ways to contact Pia:

• Website: worstofalldesign.com
• Book: www.badassyourbrand.com
• Twitter: @PiaLovesYourBiz
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/pialovesyourbiz

Joe Stradinger began his career as a CPA with Arthur Andersen. His first assignment was in Budapest, Hungary, where he performed business valuations to support the privatization effort of former Iron Curtain countries.

Joe eventually transferred to Arthur Andersen Business Consulting where he supported major telecommunications clients such as GTE and MCIWorldCom. In October of 1998, he co-founded Musicforce.com, the Internet's largest retailer focused exclusively on one of the fastest growing genres of music - contemporary Christian music. At Musicforce.com, he oversaw finance and operations as CFO and COO as well as a member of the board of directors. In July 1999, Gaylord Entertainment (NYSE GET) purchased a controlling interest in Musicforce.com at a valuation of $30 Million. The site and its management team formed the cornerstone of Gaylord Entertainment's new internet division, Gaylord Digital. As Gaylord Digitals VP of Strategic Development, Joe was responsible for all business opportunity development for the company including investments, acquisitions, strategic partnerships, and new-market development.

In 2012, Joe launched EdgeTheory, a conversation media company. EdgeTheory's platform creates, publishes and analyzes content at scale through proprietary conversation mapping & creation technology. The result for our customers is a greater share of the conversation that grows their market share.  

“We don't live in a search age anymore, we live in a find age. We have to go find people that aren’t looking for us.” - Joe Stradinger

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• Content as a service: why you can’t have a conversation without content
• How EdgeTheory uses development engineers and conversation engineers to develop content
• EdgeTheory’s conversational maps that they use with clients to direct the kinds of conversations they need to have on social
• Why CMOs need to think of themselves as a publisher that builds a media company
• Why every company in every industry needs to own their conversation
• What people often misunderstand about social media
• The divide between the people who know what to say (those with experience) and those who know how to really use social media (younger employees)
• Why content creation is the new SEO

Ways to contact Joe:

• Website: edgetheory.com
• Twitter: @joeoptions
• Ted Talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5xHI4C2HwA

Ken helps B2B growth company executives in sales, marketing, and the C-Suite to breakthrough, achieve, and grow market leadership in new and existing markets. His clients not only lead, they improve key sales and marketing metrics like leads to revenue and opportunities to close.

Ken has spent 20+ years in B2B marketing roles, launching the Intel Inside broadcast co-op program in 1991 and the Internet’s first affiliate marketing program, Netscape Now, at Netscape from 1995-99; has been CMO at several start-ups; and has run network security marketing at McAfee.

In the 7 years of his consulting practice, Ken’s clients – including FireEye, Nimsoft, and others – have generated over $6B of shareholder value through IPOs and acquisitions, while several others have reached private equity valuations of $1B+.  

“What really I do is encourage my clients to do is use a framework I call AIM. And AIM stands for Approach, Innovation, and Mindset.” - Ken Rutsky

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• Ken’s book "Launching To Leading" and how his blog led to his book
• The danger of getting stuck in the launch and always looking for that next feature
• How to get people to pay attention to you by telling the right story
• AIM: approach, innovation, and mindset
• Minimal viable product vs a more robust product: what you need to pay attention to
• Why customer loyalty is the only differentiation you really have
• Putting all your resources towards your best marketing plan

Ways to contact Ken:

• Website: kenrutsky.com
• Book: LaunchingToLeading.com