Hello, and welcome to The Get.

I'm your host, Erica Seidel.

This season we examine the relationship between CMOs and Boards.

How can that relationship go from fraught to functional,

and maybe even to fantastic?

Today's episode is special.

I've invited a CMO and her Board member together to talk, not just

about each other, but with each other.

You'll see what a good partnership looks like in an actual CMO Board member pair.

We talk with Jen Dimas, the Chief Marketing and Experience Officer

of Telarus, and Evan DeCorte, a Board member from Columbia

Capital, which backs Telarus.

Some things to listen for, realize investors have reptile brains.

They are focusing on Big V versus Little V value, so you as a CMO will

need to do some context switching.

Jen offers a guide for that.

You'll learn what to do starting during your interview process to set

yourself up for a successful standing with the Board, and you'll learn a

simple framing that will help you as you prepare your Board meetings.

Before we get started, a quick disclaimer as requested by

Evan's friends in Compliance.

This interview should not be considered investment

advice or a solicitation to invest.

And the views and opinions expressed herein are those of the speakers and

do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent.

Let's go.

Welcome to the next session of The Get.

This season, as we know, is all about the CMO Board relationship,

and I thought, what better than to have a CMO and one of their Board

members together for this podcast?

So for this one, we welcome Jen Dimas, who is the Chief Marketing

and Experience Officer for Telarus.

And Telarus is a global technology solutions brokerage.

And I actually placed Jen in her role.

It was a really fun search.

And I worked alongside Evan DeCorte from Columbia Capital.

He is our other guest.

He is, uh, a Board member for Telarus and is representing that perspective.

They are a PE entity that backs Telarus.

So let us get started.

Um, I would love to know, the two of you just seem to get along really well,

and as we have talked about before, you have a pretty strong Board partnership

and sometimes the CMO and Board partnership can be a little fraught.

So what makes your partnership special compared to other, uh, kind of, uh,

dyads of CMO and Board members that you have seen or been a part of?

Maybe Jen, we'll start with you?

I think part of the reason our, uh, relationship is

so strong and functional is because we were just really, we, we're

both kind of transparent humans.

So when we first met, we both sort of just laid all the cards on the

table about what was going on.

Evan was really clean and clear what was necessary in the role, what he had

observed during diligence, uh, looking at Telarus as an investment opportunity and

kind of had done a ton of research and had a really strong thesis of what was

necessary for the company moving forward.

And he also knew what he didn't know.

He's like, I think I need this thing, but tell me something different.

Um, this is what I see in the market.

This is what I see as an opportunity.

There happened to be a great overlap with what was necessary and what I'm good at.

And I think we had a nice development of our relationship just because we

both say things that we're good at, things that we, uh, we, things that

we know, things that we don't know and we're, um, honest with each other.

It's really, for me, it's about transparency.

It, I think it's hard to develop a meaningful and productive relationship

if you can't be straightforward about, you know, what you need

and want and what you expect.

And, and also it's being receptive to beat back and hearing from the

company and its executives what they didn't want from us as, as investors.

And, and then there can be a temptation from the Board to treat it as a one-way

street to, to sort of dictate outcomes.

And it turns out that's actually not, not really how it works.

Um, people build businesses and, and we're part of that conversation, but

I think ultimately we're facilitators.

And so if you don't, if you don't come to that table with that approach, right,

and you think you can sort of just tell people what to do instead building a

business with them and alongside them, you're gonna set yourself up for, for

trouble and a lot of disappointment.

Jen, you mentioned Evan and you got to know each other

through the recruiting process.

And I know Evan, you and I worked together along with the CEO of

Telarus for the recruiting of Jen.

Is that, is that unusual?

It's not unusual at all.

I've always met with at least a Board member, um, during recruitment

for a marketing leadership role.

And frankly, I'd be really concerned if that wasn't part of the conversation.

If I, I would have requested it had it not happened organically.

But it's a very important relationship.

The, the executive team in general, delivering on the promise to their

investors, that's a big deal.

And so knowing what the dynamic is there and understanding that relationship

is incredibly important to, to be able to set yourself up for success.

So, no, I don't think it's unusual.

I think what was unusual here is just how well-aligned we all

were and like how quickly we established fluency with each other.

Yeah.

My take on having investors in, involved in searches is, I'd rather

have somebody who is helping be a chef at the beginning of a process

than being like the restaurant critic and at the end of a process.

So sometimes I've done searches where an investor comes in way at the end and

they're like, oh, thumbs up, thumbs down.

And it's not as helpful as if they're kind of involved early on.

There's, there's something else I just wanted to say, um,

Erica, that I think is, is special here.

Because Evan and Columbia had done such incredibly thorough work on diligence

about Telarus, like they really understood the market in which Telarus is operating.

So they had really strong opinions about what could be done and what was necessary.

And so I think it's a, it was important that they were at the table, like

they saw the market opportunity for doing things differently.

And they knew that, that doing this right was gonna be a real

lever for success of the org.

And so I'm glad they were so involved and they were really well informed.

Evan, I'm gonna actually ask you this, like what do Boards want

from a CMO and what don't they want?

I think what we don't want is hand waving.

As I sort of think about it, it's like a lot of vagueries and, and talk like

big talk about what could be or the things that are in motion and what things

maybe should look like in the future.

But it's hard to know.

I mean, I think Erica, you, you sort point out and say this all the time, but

like we have very simple reptile brains.

We are investors, right?

And our, our goal is to invest money in the company and then to sell or recap as a

business some way and get money back out.

And our goal is to have that pile of money at the end be a lot bigger

than the pile at the beginning.

And so a lot of what we are focused on is what is the result of the

actions that you're taking as a CMO?

How do they intersect with the strategy of the overall business?

And how do they correlate with value creation?

I, I think as investors we can probably, we're probably pretty thoughtful

about function and we maybe have some thoughts on sales and operation.

I think it's a rare investor that is, uh, you know, a marketing

expert that probably approaches nearly 0% of the, of the population.

And so we just need things in many ways think brought back to the basics, which is

we are doing X and here's how it aligns to the plan and here's how it creates value.

If you can sort of link all of those points in a clean way, you're gonna

have a very easy conversation with the Board and the investor syndicate.

I think where conversations break down is pointing to activity and

describing the value it will create without either data or, uh, an

obvious linkage to a strategic plan.

You know, activity doesn't create value necessarily.

Some activity does, but, but not all.

And so then confusing lots of moving pieces and lots of activity for

the process of sort of building the business like that, that's, I think,

where things get a little shaky.

I love this reptilian brain concept.

I find that so hilarious and so accurate, and I, uh, thank you

for, thank you for saying that.

So it seems like, and Evan is, I mean, I think you're, you're right, I heard the

stat the other day that fewer than 5% of Board members have marketing backgrounds.

So it's, as you say, it's kind of like approaches zero.

So it seems to me that investors are asking for CMOs to kind

of context switch for them.

It's not like the Board members are not going to context

switch for marketing leaders.

So, Jen, I'm curious, there is this kind of translation between

here's what I'm doing and, and how value gets created here.

So can you talk more about that context switching and, and also

like why is it incumbent upon you to do it if you believe that it is?

Uh, well, yes, I do think it is important for me to

be able to speak to the value that I'm driving in the business in a way

that our investors would care about.

Uh, a hundred percent I believe that's important.

And I think, um, one of the ways that Evan and I sometimes talk about this

is "Big V value" and "Little V value."

And I think the Little V value, a lot of times people are really attached to

that, like that's the, what am I doing today that helps to drive pipeline and

like the things that I'm measuring on the daily, weekly, monthly to say I

am doing these activities and they're creating value in the business.

It would be easy - it's not easy, by the way, lots of people aren't

comfortable with that kind of a conversation or that flow, but that's

not - Evan does care about that.

Believe me, he cares about pipeline and booking that are happening.

What Evan cares about is the thing he told you about five minutes ago when

he said, I put some money in and three to five years from now, I want it to

be more money that I'm getting out.

That's Big V value.

So it's a really, it has been hard in B2B marketing historically

to draw a direct line from the activities that you're making to

the outcomes that they're driving.

But now we're actually talking about Big V value, the value of

this company, not just the value of these marketing activities that I'm

driving, this, this my contribution to pipeline, whatever those things are.

This is about how am I increasing the value of this company in market?

And that is not a conversation that is necessarily one that many

are comfortable or fluent in, and that's the code switching that needs

to happen between the operational plan and how I'm executing today.

That's also important, by the way, and Evan cares a ton about that, too.

But how am I changing the program that I'm running, the team, the, um, the efforts

where I'm investing in order to increase that Big V value for the company at large.

Can you say more about that Big V value?

Like when you're at a Board meeting, what does that look like

when you are describing that?

Can you say like, oh, the, the value of the company just went up X percent?

I wish I could do that.

That would be cool, but no, that, that's why part of this is hard is this, that's

the hardest thing to measure, right?

In marketing, the, the easiest thing to measure, which honestly years ago you

couldn't even do this is I did these activities, I created this pipeline.

Right?

Those are, those are the, the kinds of things that you can

draw straight lines to now.

Even those things used to be difficult.

But in terms of value creation of a brand or a category that's

really squishy and difficult.

If you're not spend, if you're not spending tons of money on a

share of voice, share a wallet, what's going on out there?

And for a company in our stage of growth, those kinds of, um,

studies don't make any sense.

Um, and by the way, even if you spent hundreds of thousands of

dollars to do those studies in five minutes, that data would old.

So it, it's not a good investment to do those studies

to understand your Big V value.

But in our particular case, we have understandings about how we want this

company to be understood and valued and what new markets we want to open.

And we'll be able to see that we're having success there because we will

begin to create revenue in new directions.

We will open up, uh, we will see consistency in, uh, bookings

creation, in, in directions we haven't seen historically.

Maybe into a new geo, maybe a new, new product offering, maybe

in a new revenue source that we hadn't considered historically.

Those kinds of things would increase our value.

The squishy ways that this would show up, and every marketer hates this, but

one of the things that we knew was a challenge here is our own customers saying

to us, "Oh, I didn't know you did that."

That breaks every marketer's heart.

We don't want that.

So addressing those kinds of things, those are, those are the squishy

things that are hard to measure, right?

How do we make sure that where we are understood, um, where we are in

the consideration set of our future customers, that that is, that market

is expanding, and that more folks are understanding the ways that

Telarus can drive value for them.

So, Evan, let me ask you, if Jen or a different marketing leader

from a different port co brought up these kind of squishy things, which

it's, it's, I don't know if I would say squishy, but kind of like directional

things, like in a Board meeting.

So, for instance, people are, are not saying that they, um, knew that such and

such a company did X, Y, Z, like, do you think that's valid for a Board meeting?

It's very rarely the case in a complex operating business that you

have one-to-one correlations everywhere across the company where you can directly

tie specific actions to specific outcomes.

Right?

And so this idea that we're gonna have perfect knowledge, it's like,

I don't really think it makes sense.

And it seems like an impossible goal.

In many ways, I, I think the Board meeting, and this is not exactly what

you asked, but I think the Board meeting and the, and the conversation in the

Boardroom can act as like a bit of a forcing function to, to cause all of the

executives in the business to stop and reflect on this very specific operational

activities that they've been carrying out and ask how does this create value?

Right?

Why are we doing these things?

How do we know that they are successful?

And sometimes we can, all we can do is get a sense where we're directionally

correct and like, that's okay.

I think what, what doesn't work, though, and where I think really, I

don't think it should be a, a question of, of code switching where marketers

think about marketing things and investors think about investment things.

We are united in a common goal, right?

Which is creating, creating value for the employees, for the shareholders,

and creating valuable business.

If we don't look at the, all of our activities through that lens, I, I think

we've sort of failed the enterprise.

And so I, I just, I think in a really simple example, right?

Every CMO in our portfolio is a shareholder, right?

I mean, either through a management incentive plan or direct

ownership, they participate in the value that's being created.

And I don't actually think that that the worlds are too,

they're, they're too different.

It's just where you focus and where you apply your efforts.

Evan, is there something that you admit that you

don't understand about marketing that you'd be willing to share?

I don't know anything about marketing.

I mean, like, there's not like, like so many things I don't know.

I mean, I, I don't even know, I don't even know how start answering that.

I mean, at, at one point in a, in a life long, long ago, I, I, I had some

marketing experience and like, I'm not even sure I was very good at it.

And I wouldn't even pretend to give, um, relevant operational advice.

Right?

I mean, I think the world in which Jen says, like, I'm, I'm thinking

about running this campaign and here are the various ads in front of me.

What should you choose?

It's like, well, like that's very misguided to ask me because like

what of worth could I tell you?

I think this just kind of goes back to like what is the, what is the relationship

between the Board, the investor syndicate, and the executive team?

It's, hey Jen, like show me with your track record.

Right?

So you've told me that you wanted to pursue these things, that they would

be valuable in the past you did them.

What was the outcome?

I think that feedback loop is just as valuable when things are working

as it is when they're not working.

In fact, it's probably more valuable when it's not working right.

So, to the extent that we can see team hypothesis test and then

course correct, that's great too.

We don't expect everyone to be right a hundred percent of the time.

What we, what we care about is that we're measuring the activity as best

we can and knowing that it's probably imperfect at best, and then using

that data to inform our next action.

And so, I mean, I don't know, Jen, correct me if I'm wrong, but, like,

the number of times I've given any kind of meaningful, substantive advice in

the Board meeting around some specific marketing tactic, like I, I probably

could count on one hand and every time I gave it was probably wrong.

So our, our goal is not to be smart marketers.

That's why we recruit great people to work with our businesses.

So we don't, we don't have to do it.

We're getting involved it's because something's gone horribly wrong.

I do think now there was something, um, underneath what Evan

just said, that that has changed who marketers are, who CMOs are, Erica,

and that is this preponderance of data that allows us to understand now

digital buying behavior, to be able to see how people are engaging with

the brand and how they become engaged when they're in the consideration set.

What their purchase journey looks like.

What happens after.

Now that we can understand these things, it, we, we must, right?

Mm-hmm.

So what Evan didn't say is like, that's why he wants

data-driven marketers to help him because he speaks with his reptile brain.

He wants to understand, if I put in a dollar here, how many dollars

am I getting out on the other side?

And that's hard to do if you're talking about squishy, you know, arts and crafts

marketing, which that, that's why the profile of who leads marketing has

changed so much because the data exists to be able to tell more informed stories.

And so that's why folks are looking for that profile from a leader today.

So, Jen, let me ask you, we asked Evan what he wants from a CMO.

What do you want from a Board and what don't you want?

I love that they know what they know and

they know what they don't know.

Um, and they're just so that, that's super helpful because it

hasn't always been like that for me.

I'll, I'll be honest, like there are a lot of people who read something

about marketing and, and then send you a note saying, you should do this

with your SEO strategy, or you should go on Twitter and say these things.

There are a lot of people who sort of like play at operating, and that's not bad.

I mean, it's, you get good ideas from all over the place.

It's not a bad thing to have that, but it, it's really powerful to know where

you add value and where you don't.

Like Evan and I have had many conversations about me understanding

his financial perspective on things and what good looks like and what success

looks like for the company and things like that so that we remain aligned.

So I like, I like that kind of openness.

I like that we have open channels of communication.

Like that's another thing is I like ungated access to Board.

Uh, sometimes you have, uh, leadership that, that's really

protective of that relationship, and we don't have that at Telarus.

We are, we are allowed and encouraged to have direct relationships with Board

and I think that is really healthy.

So that's something that I would want is open access.

And feedback like when things are going well or when things aren't going well.

Just like Evan wants me to tell him, hey, I, I ran this play and oops,

that didn't work out well, so now I'm gonna do it this way next time.

This is what I'm gonna change and this is how, this is what I learned

and how I'm gonna do it differently.

I also want them to be like, hey, by the way, when you presented

information the following way is this did not, um, meet our expectations.

It would be better if it was like this, and this is what I really meant

when I said I wanted this thing.

Like real open, honest feedback is super helpful.

'Cause I've definitely had it where it's not that and that I've

been surprised by Board reactions.

So I think that that's sort of me as a human, um, wanting that.

I want more open communication anyway.

And having that from a Board is very important.

I, I believe I have that with Evan and with the rest of the

Columbia Capital Board, too.

So Jen, what would be your advice to another CMO who is facing that

challenge that a Board member, you know, saw something, you know, like, oh, go

do this thing on Twitter, or, you know, why don't you, why don't you do X, Y, Z?

How, how would you advise them?

Well, what I've said, I really believe.

Like good ideas come from anywhere.

So part of the guidance there is listening, uh, you know, being open-minded

to things, but the other part is to, it's an opportunity in some cases to

remind folks about what your priorities and where your areas of focus are.

So it, it would be great in, in, in the case when someone came up with

a thing and said, "Hey, why don't you go do the thing over there?"

You could say, oh, that's a really interesting idea, and remember this year

we're focused on these three priorities.

These are the things that my programs are driving toward.

And I, we could, um, we could take some of our focus away to try that experiment,

but I'm not sure it would have the same impact on the bottom line as these

things that we're doing or whatever.

Bringing information back to what are the like top line objectives

that you're trying to drive through the business is one way to do that.

Because there's always a lot of ideas and keeping focused and, uh, and trying

things is good or, or keeping a carve out for ex-experian, like, uh, experiment,

pardon me, is is also not a bad idea because there are often ideas that

come at you from lots of directions and it's not a bad idea to try things.

Right.

I actually think it's funny, like, I hadn't really thought about

it that way, but I, I do think framing things for the investor or the Board

around this idea of constrained resources.

Like we only have so many people.

We have to pick the things that we're gonna do and we wanna

be best in the world at them.

In order for us to do that, this is what we have to do.

Like that, that is, that's language that resonates, right?

So we, I always sort of ask people like, what are you best in the world at?

What is the company best in the world at?

How do we do more of that thing and do less things you're not?

I think investors and finance folks understand this idea of constrained

resources and tradeoffs really well, but somehow, like when we talk with

the companies with which we invested, we have this expectation that people

do endless amounts of work with, you know, very limited resources.

And then there's also this question about budget, right?

So we like the idea of endless work, but without endless budget.

And, and like turns out those are, like, contradictory ideas.

And so, you know, I think framing the priorities around, you know, what we can

do well and what we need to focus on, I think is also, is always a, a helpful

way to ground and frame the conversation.

Thank you.

So any tips on when things are not going well?

Evan, you brought this up earlier.

If, um, you know, say leads are down, conversion is suffering, a launch

falls flat, you know, you spend a lot of money on a campaign and it

doesn't do, doesn't go anywhere.

Like, I'm curious from, from either or both of you, how should that change

how a CMO interacts with the Board?

If you have the measurements in place, like

we were talking about, there's always something that's out.

People don't buy the way you expect them to buy.

Buying trends change, things change.

Um, and so there's never gonna be ever a time when you 100%

delivered on your promise.

So I think just being completely, first of all, managing expectations

that that's true is helpful.

Like if someone's expecting green across the Board and everything just

goes the way that they, uh, hoped it would, like, that's not rational.

It's probably not gonna go that way.

And we're probably not measuring things appropriately if everything's

always looking up and to the right.

So what we're looking for are to have the mechanisms in place that we can see when

things are out and that we can adjust.

So Evan just said, tell me early and often when things aren't going right.

I would hope, Erica, never, I mean, not never, unless Evan wants me to,

but I'm not gonna be in the business of talking to Evan about the messaging

that I have at the campaign level.

That's something, that's like too small for him.

He doesn't care about those things.

What he cares about is the outcome in a bi- much bigger sense.

So he needs to believe that I'm tracking the business in a way that I can

make adjustments, um, to my business and ma- and make those outcomes.

And that, and that I need to be out and honest with what's going

really well and also with what I'm, uh, working to correct.

And so some of that is me, um, actively managing expectations that

things will, will always be out.

And secondly, me, me showing the reds and the yellows too, not just

the greens when I'm communicating with the Board about what's going,

you know, how things are going.

I guess just what I wanna know is that, amongst the teams that

we back, there's enough willingness to reflect on what's going right and wrong.

Communicate those lessons in, in an open and honest way

that we can have a dialogue.

What I think, I think when that breaks down, I think you get a lot of, you get a

lot of commentary about, you know, Twitter tactics from Board members who don't

know what they're talking about, right?

There's like some, some interests are desired to assert control where

maybe they feel like they don't have their arms around things.

And I think similarly, if teams don't feel like they have an understanding

where their investors sit and how they're thinking about the world, then maybe they,

maybe they wanna hoard information too.

And like if, when you get to those, those are very dark places to get and

you really never, ever wanna be there.

And the only way to, to avoid it is just be open, honest, every

step, every step of the way.

Your question, um, was about what to do in these cases.

So part of my guidance would be include the Board in all of your interviews.

First of all, don't ever accept a marketing leadership position without

relationship development with that Board because you don't know what

you're walking into otherwise.

Like you're signing up for something that you don't know what that's like.

And then manage that, um, relationship actively.

I can- earlier when leadership was less comfortable to me, when it was a newer

experience of leading the functions, I don't know that I had the confidence to

push on that kind of thing as much and I didn't, um, and I didn't know that.

I don't think I developed the Board relationships as much as I

should have, like looking back.

Um, and so there was an out between expectation and, uh,

delivery and things like that.

And I think that as I've moved on, like that's an incredibly important,

uh, relationship to invest in before you even accept the job so that

you're on the same page about, um, expectations, but also certainly

to cultivate while you're in-seat.

That, that makes a ton of sense.

Jen, you were mentioning, you know, reds, yellows, and greens.

Um, which makes me wonder, what has worked and what hasn't in terms of

structuring your Board presentations?

And relatedly, is there a way that you've seen to not have Board meeting prep

take days of intensity and days of time?

Well, your Board meeting content is

always incredibly important.

And I, I'm not even a year in-seat at Telarus.

So if I am honest about how we've managed our Board conversations

to date, it's not like I have a, a rote package that I'm continuously

delivering to them every single time.

It's more complete updates to like, what are the strategic imperatives?

The first 120 days I was like sitting and looking and evaluating the business

and deciding what priorities were, and it was aligning on priorities and it

was restructuring and doing all that.

So there's been a lot of higher level updates, but my goal ultimately

when I get the business to where it is, is to have more of a regular

package, which is data driven.

I have, at this point, um, developed a dashboard, but it, it is a dashboard

that I am just now reporting on regularly to the internal business.

It's not even Board ready.

Like, I'll, Evan, I could, I I would show it to you in a private meeting right

now, but it's not consistent enough.

Um, I haven't had enough months in-seat, like measuring the same

things that I believe it's Board ready.

And so I think by partway through this year we'll be in that place,

Erica, where I'll have a more standard Board reporting package where Evan

can be like, aha, these, this is what I expect to see from Jen.

Evan, anything to add on how Board meeting prep can be less intensive?

I don't actually know if that's the right question.

Like, I mean, I think that the sort of frames Board meeting prep as like

eating, eating your vegetables, right?

Yeah.

It's like what's the least painful way to do this?

It, it's, something's that's kind of a pain and it takes a lot time,

and could we be more efficient?

Because it, I, I think it treats the, the Board reporting as

perfunctory and as reporting.

And I think if that's the where you are, well then just send out the deck.

We don't need a Board meeting, right?

I mean, send some materials.

Tell me, show me the same thing every month or every quarter, whatever.

And we don't need to get together and burn up a bunch of time.

If that's what you're doing, I, I think Board meetings, Board meetings probably

were being run pretty poorly, right?

It's not good use of everyone's time.

I think Board meeting prep takes time because it is, I think, for the business,

like a moment of self-reflection.

What have we done?

What were the outcomes?

What are we gonna do differently?

How does this impact our view on strategy or the market?

And those are not always easy questions to answer.

And if they are really easy, like I, I might, might think it's time

for a little more self-reflection.

Right?

Because it, because they're, these are like, it very rarely are the things

that we're doing, even in businesses that are just really doing well, easy.

We face tough questions that take time to grapple with, right?

We are conducting a lot of activities and hiring people and running new

strategies and evaluating them and measuring them against the alternatives.

Like those are complex questions.

Yeah.

If the answer is obvious and easy, and it's the same every

quarter, like something's not working.

So I, I encourage the companies that we work with, and I think this, you know,

extends all the way to the marketing function to look at the Board meeting as a

way to just pause and to, to kind of think about what you've been spending time on

and you know, what you wanna accomplish and, and what you have accomplished.

I think for, just given where Columbia invests, a lot of times we'll get involved

in the business that maybe has actually never even had a formal Board meeting.

And I think there's sometimes a little bit of, like, a allergic reaction idea.

We'll write all the things working down piece of paper then talk about them.

But over time, I, I, I would say the universal, in your universal

view from the executives that we partner with, the Board meeting

itself is a highly valuable exercise.

It is not just to give an update to the investor group.

It does force you to look with outside

eyes at your business, right?

'Cause you can get so in the weeds on a regular day, to say, okay,

wait a minute, now I'm looking at this from a different perspective.

Uh, what's the story?

How are things going?

And so I, I completely agree that it, and, and also you wanna use

the Board for the guidance that they're good at giving you, right?

You wanna be able to say, these are the things that are happening, and

ask them for the guidance, um, in the places where you need it or, or buy in

for the decisions that you're making.

If they, you know, like, this is my strategy.

This is something I learned, this is what I'm gonna do differently.

Is this something you're familiar with?

Is this, does this make sense?

Like, use the Board for making good decisions too.

Right.

And I think, you know, the, the more informed we are, the

better we are at providing support.

And that support is not in the form of, you know, this

marketing tactic versus that.

It's, hey Jen, like we have ten other portfolio companies

that face similar problems.

I have an idea about how they solve them.

I'm probably not the best person to describe them to you.

Why don't you talk to them?

Right?

So we, I think we can facilitate connections and conversations that

ultimately are useful, that help get to resolution, but without us being

the ones actually dictating the result.

That's a great conversation.

Thank you.

So final question for each of you is just what one piece of final

advice would you have for a new CMO or a CMO that's new to a role to

optimize their Board relationship?

I think I'll just go back to the thing that I said before.

One is ensure that the Board is included in your, in your interview process.

I wouldn't allow it otherwise.

And then cultivate that relate, actively cultivate that relationship as someone

who's their partner with you and the success of the business, and help you

see things from a different direction.

And they have skills and abilities to help you be more successful at your job.

So leverage them.

And also they can help you in some very clear ways understand

what is the Big V value?

What, why are you there?

What is the outcome that you're really trying to drive?

And, and have that perspective from, from a different, a different lens.

Evan, anything to add?

Yeah, I mean, I think without, um, I'll just say just

transparency is, is, is absolutely key.

But I think maybe this, the specific thing I would recommend and something

we try and do though, though not always successfully, is to make sure

that we are sharing our view on how value gets created in these businesses

and being very specific about it.

And that's not necessarily to like prescribe a playbook, but I think, you

know, even very early on, you know, Jen, Jen and I sat down, you know, we

went through our deck, like how do we think value gets created at Telarus?

And how do we think the market will think about value?

How do we think that intersects with mark, intersects with marketing?

And here's some example numbers.

Like it's not, it's not as if it was the crystal ball where we

outline exactly what's gonna happen for the next couple of years.

But it allows us to align, I think, but Jen will tell me if it'll work

not, on the common vocabulary, so that when we talk about value, we are

actually talking about the same thing.

I think sometimes that step can get skipped because we assume that we're

all speaking the same language, when in fact we very rarely are.

Just because we come with different sets of experiences and different

priors, look doesn't mean we're gonna agree on everything.

But I think it's important that we understand each person's worldview so

that we can iterate quickly as we develop a relationship around what does value

creation mean in a, you know, private equity backed or venture-backed business.

Well, this has been awesome.

Thank you both for sharing these fabulous perspectives.

I have this image in my mind of reptilian brains and, you know,

awesome reptiles and, um, and also just a, just such a nice, uh,

connection between the two of you.

So, thank you so much, Jen Dimas and Evan DeCorte for joining The Get.

That was Jen Dimas, Chief Marketing and Experience Officer from Telarus,

and Evan DeCorte, one of her Board members from Columbia Capital.

Maybe you have a Board member with a reptilian brain.

Think about how you can translate marketing speak for them based

on what you learned today.

Next time on The Get, we will hear from two SaaS marketing leaders from

PE-backed companies about their hard-won learnings on working with Boards,

Alison Dancy and Madeline O'Phelan.

You'll hear about the relative importance of the three Cs - context,

content, and confidence when interacting with the Board.

And we talk about how Boards have glommed onto some key marketing concepts like

ABM and ICP, but not others, like brand.

How do you leverage that in your Board interactions?

Don't miss it.

Thanks for listening to The Get.

I'm your host, Erica Seidel.

The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and

leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.

We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today's top

marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

If you liked this episode, please share it.

For more about The Get, visit thegetpodcast.com.

To learn more about my executive search practice, which focuses on recruiting the

make-money marketing leaders rather than the make-it-pretty ones, follow me on

LinkedIn or visit theconnectivegood.com.

The Get is produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Productions.