Transcript
WEBVTT
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Conversations from the front lines and marketing. This is be to be growth.
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Welcome in to be to be growth. I'm your host, Benjie Block.
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Today I am joined by Melissa Rosenthal. She is the chief creative officer at
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Click up. Were thrilled to have
her here. Melissa, welcome to the
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show. Thanks so much for having
you. Then, Gee, excited to
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be here. Yes, so I
got to say right up top, congratulations.
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Click up was on Forbes list of
America's best start up employers. I
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think that came out yesterday, so
congratulations there. Thank you. Yeah,
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it's awesome. Just kind of a
testament to to our culture and what we've
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been able to grow over the past
year. So yeah, pretty exciting for
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us. So you have quite the
resume. A summer going to be familiar,
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but I'll list probably two key points, split time between B Toc and
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be to be. Two notable stops
would be where you are now, click
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up, and then buzzfeed is on
the list as well. Give me one
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thing about your current role, Melissa, that is maybe most exciting to you
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right now. It's been exciting from
day one. I would say the most
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exciting thing when I started was the
fact that I felt that the grass was
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so green for be to be and
being able to bring like brand and personality
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to that. And the most exciting
thing about my role right now is just
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the team that we have in place, the way that we've been able to
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kind of grow that flex our muscles
and where we are right now and what's
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ahead of us in the future.
So because of that too, obviously comes
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with like unique challenges and things like
problem solving, which as creatives we love
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that stuff. I know you love
that. So what's like one thing that
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you're actively problem solving, working to
try to make better within your your purview
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right now? Yeah, I mean
I'd say like we're always optimize and kind
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of everything we do across the board
and you know, part of our roles
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is building the beast. You know, both performance ads and also brand ads,
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and performance changes based on the platform
and the day and kind of what
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they want. A favor brand is
a little bit easier because once you've kind
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of nailed that, you can build
upon it, but performance is really this
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you know, constant machine of testing
and learning. So really being able to
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scale that to be best in class, still being able to stand out and,
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you know, building that kind of
repeatable growth machine is is definitely something
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that we're working towards like that always
interesting to hear and what people are focused
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on. So here's the deal.
So word choice matters. It matters to
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me as a podcast host, it
matters to marketers, it matters to those
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listening. I know it matters to
you and when we were talking before we
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actually hit record, there was one
word that sort of sparked where I wanted
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to take this conversation. The word
was personality, and you said it multiple
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times. I could tell it matter
to you. Let's start with what does
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Melissa rose and all think when the
word personality, specifically in the context of
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B Tob Brands, comes up?
Yeah, I mean I think it's it's
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really kind of that that ecosystem of
how the brand exists. And and what
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do I mean by that? I
kind of mean every single touch point that
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you could ever have or engage with
when it comes to a product or a
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brand. So that goes from,
you know, an in in product in
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APP experience to a billboard you'll see, to a design on our site,
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to our social voice. It's kind
of every single touch point that that you
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might have really needs to kind of
encompass the same unified personality, and I'll
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say personality because that's the way that
I feel it. It should kind of
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be, it should feel like a
personality, but it's so much more than
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just, like you know, when
you think personality, you think about like
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well, it's more that interaction that
like, you know, wonder one and
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and it's a lot more than that. So I think it's yeah, it's
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definitely been something that I've thought about
here since day one. How do we
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build that? What does it mean? What does that mean across the company?
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How do you get people aligned on
that? And then how do you
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make sure that it's unified so that
every touch point, that person, that
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customer, that user has, feels
that way? Think specifically on the be
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tob side, even the word like
brand were behind. So when you start
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bringing the word like personality and it's
like even a further step in thinking,
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in process. So I want to
do this real quick. Let's run a
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little bit of like a side side
compared contrast when it comes like personality versus
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brand. What are the differences there
the nuances and thinking? Yeah, I
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mean I would say brand is kind
of that high, highest level, like
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you know, overarching view of the
company and way that you convey yourself and
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market and personality is more distilled down
to every single touch point. So it's
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a sum of all of its parts. I mean brand is to but her
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the personality kind of is much more
nuanced than I would say and much more
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grindular when you're talking about the daytoday
and the choice that you're making. And
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then also, I think what the
other word that would come to mind,
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that I would want to throw in
here would be tone, like what's the
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niche that the personality of the brand
really satisfieses? That makes sense, like
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what is the personality verse the tone? Yeah, I mean I think the
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personality aligns with the tone right,
and I think there's few things kind of
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go hand in hand and by establishing
and it is kind of a hierarchy,
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right, like it depends on how
you're thinking about brand, which affects how
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you're going to think about personality,
which is how you think about tone.
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So, if you want to think
about it kind of in that linear fashion,
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it certainly they they certainly like touch
each other pretty closely. They're just
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at different levels of that engagement and
that kind of like, you know,
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user touch point life cycle, I
would say. And from your vantage point,
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you're coming in and personality was the
word that like really kind of sparked
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something in you. You would say
yeah, because I think it's easy to
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talk about brand and it's easy to
talk about, you know tone, but
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like personality is such this this way
of thinking about humanizing it, and I
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think people start to take it seriously. Your question it, which is great,
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when you start to say a word
like personality, just to your point,
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like it's not really a common,
you know descriptor, I would say,
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mentioned in Beta be so when you
start talking about that, people are
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it's often confusing. It's like well, what, how do you apply a
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personality to a product? And I
you know, that's what we all should
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start thinking about, because when you
when you're into such a hyper competitive space
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and you need to figure out what
your differentiators are outside of product and features,
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you have to start thinking at that
brand level and then distilling that down
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to the the things that you can
actually have a huge impact with, and
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I think that notion of a personality
really is one of those big things,
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one of those key factors for sure. Okay, so let's go here.
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Let's go personal for a second.
As a chief creative officer, what part
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do you play in ensuring that that
personality is surfacing in in the right ways?
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Like how does it inform the things
that you're pushing people to create and
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in the vision you're giving? Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's
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sometimes it's easy to get caught up
in like the day to day of what
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you have to produce, and you
have to do so. Whenever I'm working
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with my team on whether it's like
a design asset or it's a piece of
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social copy, I always have that
gut check of like is this Aligne to
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you kind of the personality of the
of the brand of our of our tone
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of our company, and making sure
that we're kind of double checking on that.
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Ever, every time, because it
is it becomes like, you know,
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it's so easy to just not do
that and all of a sudden,
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like its kind of sound like every
other company out there. So I would
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say there's a huge impact there.
And then, you know, creating things
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that feel so unique and differentiated in
terms of that like that hyper like we're
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fun, we have a sense of
humor, we're not too selfaware, we
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help you. So we empower right, and you know, that's sort of
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the the like the personality we like
to give. It's a humanization of the
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products. He's basically your productivity best
friend who's cool and witty and smart and
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funny and selfaware. And I like
to take all of those, those kind
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of descriptors and and try to think
about every single thing that we create,
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like whether it's a static asset or
emotion graphic. If and you know,
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one good example of that is we
we were thinking about, you know,
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as we just kind of thinking about
our personality and and our motion graphics language.
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I was working with the motion team
on on kind of like can we
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create languages in motion graphics that are
like nuanced to the personality that we that
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we are right, that we stand
for something that is very uniquely up and
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the team came up with this kind
of liquefied radiant motion wipe the end of
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our ads. Every ad will have
that. We loved it, like this
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is this is super creative and we
circulated across the company in the product team
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loved it so much that they were
like, well, this is really great.
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We should incorporate break this into the
loading mechanism where everyone interacts with this
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when they're loading, and you know, that's sort of the way that I
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think like a like click up is
just great because the visibility allows us to
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do that. So the notion of
having a personality from the brand level easily
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can kind of manifest itself in ways
that you see it in the product and
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in other parts of the company.
So there's there's a definitely like a benefit
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of like you know, we're not
working in silos, working very closely across
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the entire organization. So something like
that can happen and it should happen like
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that should inspire product, that should
inspire tone, that should inspire kind of
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all the other all the other things
that we do here. Hey, everybody,
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Benjie here as a member of the
sweet fish team. I wanted to
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take a second and share something that
makes us insanely more efficient. Our team
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uses lead Iq. For those that
are in sales, or you're in sales
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offs, let me give you context. What once took us four hours to
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gather contact data now just takes one. That's seventy five percent more efficient.
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We are so much quicker withoutbound prospecting
and organizing our campaigns is so much easier
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than before. A highly suggest that
you check out lead Iq as well.
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You can find them at lead iqcom. That's L ADIQCOM. All right,
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let's jump back into the show.
That should inspire product that should inspire tone
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that should inspire kind of all the
other all the other things that we do
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here. Yep, I think of
a couple linked and buzz words that naturally
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just come up in this conversation.
One would be humanizing be to be.
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The other would be emotional marketing,
because I think personality ends up playing into
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both of those. But I think
they're cliches for a reason. Right there
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are things that we're thinking about,
their things that we need to be talking
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about, and so much of the
industry is kind of at this place where
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it's yet to fully adopt those things. Any kind of examples where you see
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that playing out where you're going?
Then we we really do it, and
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maybe from your experience that click up. You're like, we need to see
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a shift in the way be to
be thinks about humanizing be to be and
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this idea of emotional marketing. Yeah, I mean listen, like I've been
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doing emotional marketing for for my whole
career, so I've seen the impact of
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that and it works and in you
taking that application and not necessarily copying and
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pasting it, but understanding like what
drives, you know, what drives intent
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and and what resonates in a world
where, like your attention span is probably
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a couple of seconds, like you're
scrolling through your feed, your you know,
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like something has to kind of catch
you and resonate with you enough where
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you're either going to share it or
talk about it or it stays with you.
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And I think going into it with
that perspective, like how do you
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do that? Well, it's creating, you know, a voice that stands
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out, it's creating a brand that
stands out, it's creating something more than
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just like a product to use.
And then, you know, what that
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creates is that creates ambassadors who feel
like they are championing like something that's real
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to them. First, just a
piece of software, you know, like
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I think the end of the day, it just becomes you're able to,
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you know, capitalize on a larger
market when you're able to do that.
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So I think it was kind of
a bet we took. I mean,
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I hadn't really seen it much in
the space. I mean, of course
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you know, there's there's good brand
design out there and people have very like
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clear visions of what that looks like. But in terms of personality, I
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hadn't really like come across any any
beab companies where I was like wow,
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actually, you know, huffpot had
done a really great job with their content
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and also web flows has a great
personality and some of their their video content.
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So you know, there are instances
of it, but it was I
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think it was far from felt.
It was far from feeling unified across everything
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that I had come in contact with
with that company, that product. So
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that was kind of my goal,
Min North Star of being able to do
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that. What's been most helpful for
you in creating that, that cohesive personality?
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It's been most helpful, I think, the the buying from from leadership,
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you know, across the board that
like and and the company that like.
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You know, everyone is excited to
to you know, excited to share
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out the stuff that is being created, is excited about our brand voice,
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is excited about this. I think
that by and gives us the confidence to
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want to create more, be able
to iterate on that and keep it going.
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So I think that's been a huge
driver of it, seeing the growth
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and market over the past year and
and knowing that we stand out, that
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you know, this is this is
how we come across. We're bright,
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we're vibrant, we're selfaware. Where
we're witty, we will be bold,
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and I think, you know,
allowing that to kind of really shine through
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and seeing it resonate with our users
and community has definitely been like a really
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nice thing, because there isn't a
ton of examples in be tob that were
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like just really, really crushing it. Where do you start with personality design,
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like what was some of your first
steps to lock in? Okay,
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we're going to be witty, we're
going to go down the humor out,
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we're going to have bright colors.
Yeah, I mean like when I started,
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you know, it was still a
company of like seventy people, so
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they had had certainly thought about you
know, Zeb Zeb coming in with a
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CEO like that is really kind of
a blessing because all of a sudden you
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have a CEO who is, you
know, young, who gets it,
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who is wearing very vibrant shirts,
who is very, you know, has
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his own really strong personality, and
you're able to then capitalize off of his
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brand a bit and you know,
also the company that he's built looks different
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than everyone every other company. It's
part of the reason I joined right like
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I didn't join a Betab company that
where the the coloring and the design esthetic
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was dark blue and gray and you
out like prison. Yeah, like there
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was a reason why I felt like
this could work. So I think coming
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in and seeing the copy that had
been written in some of the really clever
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tactics that that had already worked,
I was like, well, this is
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great, this is a fantastic jumping
off point. You know, I had
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a little bit of a runway,
given like everything that had been done before,
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and it was just like that perfect
runway, perfect amount of runway.
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I would say to then say,
all right, this is great. You
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know there there's already buy in here. It echoes the you know, the
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feel and vibe of our CEO and
our company as a whole, and you
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know, there's a lot to build
off of if you're teaching personality to a
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new employee that's coming in. What
are you just summing it up in the
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words that you've said here? Are
there some specific things that you're going we
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want to make sure people understand this
or is it just is it more cought
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than taught at this point? Yeah, it's more COT and taught. I
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think there's so much now, like
you know, across everything that we're doing
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that you get the feeling of who
we are. It's also at throughout the
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culture, like very much. So
like I feel like our our mission,
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you know, our mission and our
vision and our core values certainly echo the
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personality of the company a lot.
So when you have that tied back to
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the feel, the tone, the
brand, it all feels very unified.
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There's not it's not very it's not
out of place. You kind of feel
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it from day one. Went that
you step in the door and the more
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that you you know, are on
boarded and you interact with the product and
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the brand and you know it comes
across very clearly. So right now,
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because you guys are in a great
place around personality, do you see you
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know, people will say vision drifts. People will talk about as you you
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know, company expands, there's so
much opportunity for something to leak and it
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just kind of fade. I wonder
how you think about that as you guys
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are scaling. Is that something that's
on your radar. Are you just feel
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like, like how do you keep
that forward momentum? Yeah, I mean
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that's a great question. I think
like, first of all, you constantly
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need to be experimenting and iterating and
like trying new things, and we do
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that every day. HMM. And
some will be seen and some won't be
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seen, and I think that's the
beauty of it. Like there's a lot
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behind the scenes that no one sees
and and you know, people imagine that
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like wow, how did they just
do that? And it's like well,
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we tried a lot of different things. But yeah, I mean, of
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course there's always like the conversation.
It's like, as you go up market,
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as you go enterprise, do you
have to become serious? Do you
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have to lose that? You have
to drop it? Please don't become serious.
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The answer is the answers. No, like, I mean, you
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know, there are certain things that
we tried, I would say day one
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when I came in, that were
briskier, you know, a little bit
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more on the air of like I
was trying to figure out what that personality
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was and maybe that wasn't it.
So things I wouldn't do back then that
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I you know, that things I
did back that I wouldn't do today in
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terms of our marketing and our personality
and our voice, but that was more
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in the process of establishing it and
I think like going up market, you
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know, you can like I even
look at like sales force, right.
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I mean I would say, like, if you want to point to anything
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and say, like, you know, Benny off, obviously no one's going
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to say that that guy hasn't nailed
business and enterprise and been able to move
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up market with his set of woodland
creatures. So you know, if you
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want to talk about like someone that
has a person that you know brand that
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has personality, who's established like a
set of stuff, you know, living
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basically stuffed animals that come to the
office and also our front and center and
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every advertisement they have, I said, I would say that's a pretty good
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example of a two hundred billion dollar, you know, market cap company that
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is done personality and brand pretty well. Yeah, definitely the top. You're
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seeing so much personality from be to
be. That's what is so interesting in
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the space is the discrepancy between the
ones that are getting it and then,
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I think, those that are hopefully
next to adopt it. That's obviously our
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biggest thing we want to push people
now. Yeah, and it's nice to
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have like that as a reference point
because I think you know any of the
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detractors, for someone, you know, for someone saying that you can't have
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that at that level, I would
say, well, you know, Look,
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look at this company. You know
they've done it and I think it's
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ohevery you're always going to have to
tractors until you do it or until there's
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examples to point to. But I
think that's always like, you know,
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the riskier or the the more like, you know, experimental and and forward
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thinking people in any industry. I
mean isn't isn't it the same thing?
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Isn't there always that kind of that
huge set of doubt and like the ability
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to have something like transcend and industry
before it actually happens? So Hmm,
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okay. So let's say a listeners
listening to this. They're like, I
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want to take a step in the
direction of more brand personality. They're in
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a creative role or their marketing director. What would you say, any advice
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you would give to someone that's trying
to define that personality right now? Yeah,
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I mean I would say, like
if they're coming in and there is
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something built. It's establishing, like
what does that you like from like a
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design perspective, like when you look
at at something, when you interact with
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it on the site, when you're
having that experience as a user, how
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do you feel? And doing it
on that user perspective? And then and
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then starting to think about can I
mold this? Are there things that would
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make this feel better, make it
feel you know, and it can be.
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It could be like unemotional empowerment,
feeling right like you, your software
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is changing the world and you want
to, you know, empower people to
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do certain things and that is the
entire ethos of your company. It's an
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empowerment. We have that too.
I just think we're we take a cheeker
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kind of play on it a little
bit. But yeah, I mean I
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think it's really just kind of establishing
what you have, like the assets that
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you have, the ground work that's
been laid, and then figuring out how
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can I tweak this? You know, what do I want to add?
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What elements can I sprinkle in?
Like how do you kind of dissect what
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what already exists in kind of insert
certain things into it? It's like a
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nebulous answer, but it's kind of
just like what I did here, which
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was what do I have to work
with? This is my vision for it,
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and what is the what is the
marriage of that? Okay, we're
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about to wrap up, but I
got to ask you this. Do you
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imagine that all the companies that you
would work for would end up being witty
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and humor? Like those would be
driving factors? You mean, like all
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the companies that I would see?
Yeah, like as like the personality.
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Yeah, if you were to leave
and you're like, I'm going to go
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look for another company, do those
become defining factors for Melissa, like I'm
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picking another witty, funny type of
brand, a brand that allows me to
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do that up solutely? I mean, yeah, there are a couple of
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companies I would certainly not work for, I'll tell you that. But yeah,
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absolutely. I mean it allows,
you know, it allows and breeds
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this culture and this creativity within a
company. I think when you're able to
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do that, that makes it really
special and I believe in like, you
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know, culture and community is like, you know, a huge mode around
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any company. You know, like
if you don't have that, at the
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end of the day, you know, we're working with no code products.
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At this point anyone can build anything. Something that would have taken years to
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build people can build in a in
a week, you know. So it's
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when you when you get to that
point of kind of parody with with technical
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expertise and being able to build,
like, what do you have left?
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It's differentiation through brand and through tone
and through personality. So yeah, of
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course I really believe in that.
And Yeah, I mean just my own
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personality. I don't think I could
work at a super serious company that had
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no like, no notion of being
selfaware and understanding that people, you know,
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enjoy laughing and emotion resonates. Yeah, I think it just drives home
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the point that like, personality also
attracts the type of people that you want.
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Like what a personality you allow your
brand to take on is the type
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of people that you attract to it. And so I think that says it
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pretty well, both internally and externally. Those are the types of people were
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attracting. Most of this has been
a really fun conversation. Plug Click up.
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I mean you have to live under
a rock probably not to have seen
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a billboard or a bus at this
point, but plug click up real quick,
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and then where people can connect with
you. Yeah, absolutely so.
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Click up is an all in one
productivity solution. Your tasks, your dogs,
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your goals, all your work in
one platform. So allows your entire
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team and company to have like full
visibility to everything everyone's working on and make
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you more efficient productive in the process. And you can connect with me on
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Linkedin on twitter. I'm unfortunately still
touched the last in the name of my
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last company because I'm verified so I
can't change it, but I'm a molissa
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on Cheddar on twitter and Melissa Rosenthal
on Linkedin. But yeah, feel free
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to connect. I'm always happy to
chat with anyone. Thanks so much for
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jumping on be to be gross today, Molissa. That's been an honor to
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have you. Thanks, Benji.
Really enjoyed it. Appreciate you.