Bulletproofing Your CMO Career

 

Drew Neisser: Hey, it’s Drew. And I’m guessing that as a podcast listener, you will also enjoy audiobooks. Well in that case, did you know the audio version of Renegade Marketing: 12 Steps to Building Unbeatable B2B Brands, was recently ranked the number one new B2B audio book by Book Authority. Kind of cool, right? Anyway, you can find my book on Audible or your favorite audio book platform.

And speaking of audio before we get into today’s show, I do want to do a shout out to the professionals that Share Your Genius. We started working with them several months ago to make this show even better, and have been blown away by their strategic and executional prowess. If you’re thinking about starting a podcast or want to turbocharge your current show, be sure to talk to Rachel Downey at shareyourgenius.com and tell her Drew sent you.

Okay, let’s get on with today’s episode.

Narrator: Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite, possibly the best weekly podcast for CMOs and everyone else looking for innovative ways to transform their brand, drive demand, and just plain cut through. Proving that B2B does not mean boring to business. Here’s your host and Chief Marketing Renegade Drew Neisser.

Drew Neisser: Hello, Renegade Marketers! Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite the top rated podcast for B2B CMOs and other marketing-obsessed individuals.

You’re about to listen to a recording of CMO Huddle Studio, our live show featuring the CMOS of CMO Huddles, a community that sharing caring and daring each other to greatness every day of the week. The expert at this particular huddle was Career Coach Pat Romboletti. She joined us to share how B2B CMOs can bulletproof their careers. Okay, let’s get to it.

Hello, and welcome to our first bonus huddle of 2023. Our special guest today is Patricia Romboletti—who I will be calling Pat in a second—an accomplished author, career coach, and marketing expert with over 20 years of experience in the industry. Her latest book, Bulletproof Your Career: Navigating the Changing Landscape of Marketing Leadership is a comprehensive guide for marketing professionals looking to build a strong resilient career despite the ever evolving business environment. We’re going to split the conversation between steps you can take while you have a job to bulletproof your career and items to be thinking about if you happen to be in transition. But I really want the focus to be on the careers right now. So with that let’s welcome Pat Romboletti. Hello, Pat! How are you?

Pat Romboletti: I’m great. How are you?

Drew Neisser: I am awesome. Now just to ground the conversation in zoom land, where are you?

Pat Romboletti: I’m in Atlanta, Georgia, one of 7 cities that I’ve lived in. But that’s where I am now.

Drew Neisser: Awesome. All right. Well, let’s get into it. In the second chapter of your book, which is clarity is power, can you talk about what that means in the context of being a CMO right now?

Pat Romboletti: Just on that context, being a CMO, this is my experience in my coaching and etcetera, is that it’s very clear when you’re a CMO that you need to know the voice of the customer, who’s the outside customer, who you’re marketing to, etc. I want to be sure that the same clarity of voice of internal customer is as well listen to because I think that’s where people more trip up. They know exactly what their own customers want. But there’s a disconnect with the CMO or other stakeholders, right? So my mantra always is figure out whoever you’re talking to, figure out what matters to them, and communicate in a way that they can hear that you know, what matters.

So for me, you have to have clarity about every stakeholder and what matters to them today. And you were talking earlier about those changing landscapes, constant disruption, constant disruption. So what mattered to them today, let’s just take 3rd quarter versus 4th quarter of 2022. There were a lot of different things mattering to people and leadership in 4th quarter than 3rd quarter. And as a CMO, you need to be that nimble, inside and outside of the company if that makes sense. And that’s just in that role. There’s a lot of clarity you need your career, and we’ll get into that later.

Drew Neisser: It’s interesting. And it’s tricky, because with a brand—when we talk about brands, we talk about the incredible importance of consistency, right? And I don’t think you’re saying you got a flip flop and you’ve got to be somebody different to each of these people. But you just have to understand how you’re communicating to these individuals and reflects what’s important to the business in the moment.

Pat Romboletti: And you don’t flip flop and your style is the same. But what you have to be communicating is, “I understand what’s important to you. And this is how I’m going to deliver what’s important to you.” Right? And making sure that they feel understood and it’s very clear. And also, because of the disruption, the comment to some of the stakeholders, somebody in sales, somebody in revenue, I understand how things have shifted for you and we’re going to be a partner and shift along with you as best we can. But we do have a brand to uphold, we have this. So making sure it’s a two way street. But I just think there’s no mistake, when you take the time before you go into a meeting, before you present, etc, to say, “What matters to that person on January 2023.”

Drew Neisser: Right, it’s leading with empathy. And it’s funny, we had a lot of conversations in huddles, we talk a lot about taking the time with your direct reports to listen and be empathetic and say, “How’s everything in the world?” But we haven’t really necessarily talked—and we haven’t spent much time but we’re going to do that later in the year—about managing sideways and managing up. And also thinking about, “What are there problems?” Other than its, you know, sales always had sales issues, but really thinking in the context of today.

So okay, that’s helpful. So empathy everywhere in preparing, or trying to anticipate that will help. So let’s take this idea of clarity a step further, how important in your mind is it for CMOS to establish themselves as thought leaders, either in their industry or in the sort of world of marketing?

Pat Romboletti: Critical. I mean just, critical, critical, critical. And you all have a free platform, which is LinkedIn. But I think this is—and many on this call will probably relate to this. When I coach people, they tell me so much is this true? You’re sort of like the shoemaker and the children have no shoes, right? You’re knee deep in branding, but you’re not thinking about your own brand. Or you’ve defined your brand, but you haven’t amplified your brand, right? So you haven’t taken it anywhere.

So LinkedIn is the first place to start because it’s free. It’s your own little webpage. And there’s so much you can do in terms of posting. And yes, you may be in a position where you have to post things that are very tied to the brand that you’re managing, that you’re leading. But you can still do that in a way that you shine, right?

But I think thought leadership is one of the miss-leveraged or underleveraged, fairly reasonably inexpensive tool that everybody has. Everybody has. And if you’re not following thought leaders, if you’re not thinking yourself as a thought leader, I would love to change your mind on that. Because I think it’s so important for positioning. And by the way, it’s important for positioning in the industry, or in the lane that you’re in now. But if you have aspirations to a different lane, then you need to be following thought leaders there, connecting with thought leaders there, and thinking about how you segue. So if you say, “Well, there’s a natural segue from here to here.” Then demonstrate that by attending trade shows and things in that industry. And then saying, “What’s the buzz here? And how can I volunteer to be on that panel next year, and be sharing my thoughts?” So it’s really important for positioning.

I have an onboarding program that I do with clients. It’s a 12 month program. And the last 6 months are really all on brand amplification.

Drew Neisser: And this is an interesting one. Because over the years—and I think if I were to poll the CMOs in the audience, many of them would know, there are some CMOs who’ve done an AMAZING job building their own brand, frankly, ahead of their company brand. And they’re kind of legendary for it. I wonder how that balance is done. And you talked a little bit about you saying, “You can promote the company, while you’re sort of getting a little bit of yourself in there.” I wonder if you can be more specific, because that’s a fine line.

Pat Romboletti: Totally. And I would say you actually put a little smudge on yourself when you’re the star and it’s clear that the company isn’t. That’s much more negative than positive, right? You’re only defeating yourself.

So for example, when I’m working with someone in the data analytics automotive industry, so she’s gonna post a lot of things about the automotive industry that coincide with her customers and how her customers use data. Well, she’s in a data company, and she’s demonstrating very nicely that she’s on top of this. This is something you need to be on top of daily, weekly, monthly, right?

So she’s demonstrating that and what she gets from the company is great job posting things that are educating our customer, etc. As she and I and a couple others we have sort of a sequence where companies—commercial real estate is great for this. They’ll give their people in marketing 1000 pieces to post all the time. And then it’s just like, Well, now you’re just the mouthpiece of the company on your own brand. That’s bad, right?

But what we do is sprinkle those in. Sprinkle in the broader pieces and non company PR, with industry PR and thought leader PR inside of that. And it creates a much better balance. Because you don’t want to be the loud piece or the speaker for just yourself or just the company. Because you’re part of an industry and a movement.

And by the way, articles about leadership, because you’re a CMO. Your company that is recruiting. And if the company says, “Why are we posting leadership articles?” We want new recruits to know that we have good leaders here. And we know what a good leader looks like. Okay, they’ll buy that most of the time.

Drew Neisser: So clearly you need to understand what your personal brand is. And you need to have a point of view in the marketplace. And you use that point of view to share content from the company. For the members of the audience, can you give a ratio of company versus self? Is there a balance there?

Pat Romboletti: Is it a strict 50/50 split? No. I think that depends upon the point of view of your company, right? So some companies pay more attention, some companies are more like, “Why are we posting anything that’s not all about us?” And be prepared to say, “Well, then we just looked like a commercial for them. And it’s like that’s not going to work. That’s not what social media does.” People now are more savvy than that. That’s not going to work. So you have to educate them. And is it a 50/50? No. Is it, you know, you have a new product release, you have a new acquisition, then you’re going to heavily slate it a little bit more to the company. So I wouldn’t worry about trying to get a split even. It might be 60/40 one time, 40/60 another, right? It’s actually planning out.

So with my clients, we have their content planned out. Company, industry leadership, and then their own point of view on topics, etc, right?

So for example, in an organization that is very high on hybrid. Like they talk about it, I should be posting things about the benefit of hybrid and how great it is to work in a hybrid. That’s going to help because everybody needs help with recruiting and retention. And that’s consistent with the brand of the company. Because now when you’re all in office, hybrid, or virtual, that’s part of your brand as a company now. It’s certainly part of your employer brand, right? So that’s a good idea. That might be a topic that you think, “What does that got to do with the brand?” Everything.

Drew Neisser: I heard a couple things I’m just going to restate. One is you’re not a shill for your company.

Pat Romboletti: Right.

Drew Neisser: You are a value added thinker in your industry. So when you’re sharing stuff, you’re sharing stuff that’s important to you as an individual and important to the company. One thing I have noticed is that many CMOs, particularly in the huddles, are very effective at being cheerleaders for other departments and other employees that either have arrived or got an award. And they’re really good in doing that. That feels like really safe territory.

Pat Romboletti: I think that’s good. It’s relationship building, right? Because what matters to them? You’re marketing the other people inside the company. So yeah, I think that’s good. And it’s also good to, you know, you maybe somebody in your company didn’t get the nice award that’s gonna go on some mantelpiece or desk. But somebody else did, so showcasing the achievement in the space is another safe place to go, right? But you’re right, you don’t want to look like a shill for yourself or the company.

Drew Neisser: So and I’m sort of going back to something that you said earlier, but I just again, I wanted to put a punctuation point on it. So if you have aspirations, for example, to change industries then I appreciate how you’re saying that reaching out and engaging with those folks. But it also could be that you want to be on board, right? And so there’s an opportunity there to think about your thought leadership and how the role of the CMO in that capacity.

Pat Romboletti: So just on that point, just for a quick second. I’ve worked with folks, for example, posting what does the Board want from the CEO? What does the Board want from marketing? Like, those are really good articles to post if you have aspirations to a board level position, saying “I’m following the buzz out there about what’s important to boards today.”

Drew Neisser: Right, okay, at the risk of generalizing. Like you I engage with a lot of CMOs and they tend to be an optimistic bunch, which can be really hard when their budgets are being cut. Which is about I’m gonna guess 75% of the huddler community, but their goals aren’t being cut. I mean, it’s like you lost 20% of your budget, but keep growing that business 20%. Knock yourself out!

You have a topic called master your mindset. And I’m just wondering if you can sort of help that because they’re in an even more impossible place right now than they were a year ago.

Pat Romboletti: Yeah, listen again, I coach people from all disciplines, right? So CIOs and finance, you name it. And every one of them, especially 3rd quarter, when everybody was trying to stack their bonus out and make sure that the numbers worked out so they’d get it. Lots and lots of cuts. I have a person in pharmaceutical and having to send half of their work overseas now because of the cuts. So it’s very common.

One of my biggest soapboxes is about mindset. And the most important thing is realize that—I borrowed this from somebody so many years ago, I can’t remember who it is. So I’ll say it’s not my original thought. But I don’t know who it is—which is, when you’re inside your head, you’re behind enemy lines. That’s where all the bad talk goes, that’s where you’re beating yourself up. And that’s what mindset is about. And when I talked about mindset in my Zoom calls and all the workshops that I do, it’s about, you have to master your mindset every single day. It’s not like, “Oh, everything’s good. So I don’t worry about my mindset.” In my coaching program, people have to rate their mindset on a scale of 1 to 10. And then they have to decide where they are. They’re coached to try to stay between a 7 and an 8 minimum, right? Which means, “Well, if I’m not a 7 or 8, then I need to listen to a podcast that was meant to be.” You have to feed yourself as if you’re trying to indoctrinate yourself. Because you are, right?

So you’re not going to—and then the biggest thing about what you just described, which is cutting the budget, is if you think of a solid circle, red circle—my favorite color—red circle, with a little sliver, like maybe like a 1% sliver, the red circle represents things out of your control. The 1% sliver is what’s in your control. And most mindset issues come from trying to change what’s out of your control. So yeah, with my client who I have to outsource? Yep, I said, “Now what you have to worry about is managing the people who are left behind who are afraid that they’re next.” So there’s all kinds of other things that you have to go through.

But it really is saying I am responsible for brainwashing myself, every single day. Brene Brown is one of my favorite people to tell people to listen to. And, you know, male and female clients alike seems to just love her. She’s just blazons and emboldened you. But I think the biggest mistake about mindset is, is thinking it’s a one and done. It’s not like you check your oil every 5000 miles, it’s every day.

Drew Neisser: Yeah, I feel like we need to do the power pose now.

Pat Romboletti: Always!

Drew Neisser: Totally. What this reminds me of is—because I’ve patiently will fall into the I really need to get pumped up. And one of the things they talk about in those is how you start your day. Like a lot of folks get up in the morning, and I know I’m in this habit right now and it’s really a rut, first thing you do is check your email. That’s a negative moment. Because all you’ve said is, “Oh my God, look at all the emails I got overnight.” Whereas certain folks that really manage their mindset are listening to something inspirational the first thing, right? And so how you use that first half an hour can even be a way of mastering the mindset.

Pat Romboletti: Just a half hour, hour, 15 minutes, just have a sacred moment for whatever you want to do. Every single day since I discovered it, whenever it came out, which was years ago, a 6 minute and 12 second video and it’s gorgeous. It’s called “Gratitude Video”. But there’s one line in it that gets me started every single day and it says, “Live today as if it’s your first day and as if it’s your last day.” And I’m going to tell you that when somebody steps on your toes or beat you up or whatever you go, “This is my last day, I don’t really give a damn what you just did,” right? And if it’s my first day, I got my whole life ahead of me! Get out of my way! So that is simple. 6 minutes and 12 seconds and then you’re off to the races. So if I don’t have an hour, I always have that.

Drew Neisser: Amazing. Amazing. Okay, now this other chapter Create a Network That Works, obviously brought a lot of joy to my heart. Let’s talk about the timing of building your network because we get a lot of inquiries in CMO Huddles from folks when they’re in transition. As opposed to while they’re working. Can we talk about why it’s so important to do this while you have a job?

Pat Romboletti: We can talk about it until about midnight 3 weeks from now. I have enough content for that. But to give you the clif notes version, it is essential. So listen, anybody in my onboarding program in their role, we make sure that they’re safe and sound and assimilated. But guess what we’re doing? We’ve got a target list of where do I want to go next. And when you’re already employed, and you reach out to people in that company or people who know people want a company, they will accept your invitation. It’s like, “Oh, they’re not going to send me the resume now or hit me up for a job.” And you reach out and say, “You know, we have a lot in common.”

I use affinity points, like, reach out to somebody in a target company that went your college, that’s in your industry, right? So all of that, but the entree is much easier when you’re not in transition.

When you’re in transition, a lot of people are afraid that—they’re not afraid to help you. And I want to make this distinction. People think they don’t want to help me. No, they’re afraid they can’t help you. And when somebody’s afraid they can’t help you… Do you ever have somebody come up, and they’re begging for money, and you don’t have even a nickel in your pocket and you don’t even want to look at them, you want to walk away? That’s the same sensation. They don’t know if they can make an introduction, they don’t know how to help you. So they would rather avoid you, right?

So it’s a matter of curating your network continuously, and you cultivate the network continuously. And especially curating if you’re in a job. So the most painful for me is when somebody comes, they’re in transition, and they say, “I’ve always wanted to change industries and this is the year.” And I have to tell them, that when you are in transition, you have so much less power. You’re 10x less powerful—20x less powerful the day after, than the day before.

And so changing industries, why is that so bad? Not that you couldn’t bring a fresh eye in for sure. As a recruiter, I loved that people could do that. But my clients didn’t, because they see it as a risk. And we are in probably one of the biggest risk averse times that we’ve ever been in. So they look and go, “Really great background, but what if you can’t adjust to our industry?” Right? But if you have a network in that industry. So you say, “Next industry, I want to be there.” And you build that network while you’re already in a role. Now you’ve got what I call the tip of the spear already established and somebody to speak up for you and say, “I know, you know, she doesn’t have our industry experience, but I’ve gotten to know her, you should talk to her.” And that goes a long, long way. I definitely have had clients or people from my Zoom calls who have been able to change industries, but only because they built the conduit into that industry before they lost their role.

Drew Neisser: Amazing. Okay, so there used to be this things called physical events and trade shows. And they’re coming back. And I used to meet a lot of CMOs at these events. And like many folks that go to the events, even though I am an extrovert, you get to those events and it’s intimidating. You look around you see if you know anybody or you don’t know anybody and you sort of go to the bar, get a drink, and figure out what to do.

I loved in the book, you had a couple of ideas, quick thoughts on when you do go to an event, again, how you can make the most of those situations.

Pat Romboletti: It’s predicated on the fact that I know for sure and coaching from this perspective is more than 70%. At least 70% minimum are either full on introverts or ambiverts, right? So there’s only about 20-30% in that room. And even myself as an extrovert, which you might figure out that I am, I don’t love going in schmoozing around at events, right? Schmoozing is what everybody avoids. So one of the things is, get there early. Because if you walk into a buzzing, noisy room, you think that that doesn’t really have cover for you, it actually is intimidating. Like you’re missing out on something, that’s what your brain goes to. “Oh, look, everybody’s talking to somebody except me.” So that’s not a good way. So get there early is really important.

Second thing is make sure that when you register at the desk, get your badge, that person who’s handing out that badge, most of the time is more than just the badge maker, they usually have something registered people they know something and you can say, “Look, I’m here from XYZ.” Or, “I’m a CMO and I’m looking to meet ABC. Is there somebody who’s already checked in that I should be on the lookout for? Can you direct me to that person?” Now, guess what? You walk up to them and you say, “John, I was talking to Susan at the registration desk. And I told her a little bit about my background, and she thought that it would be great if you and I meet.” Guess what, you have total credibility, right? Then it’s like, “Oh, you’re not a stranger. Susan sent you over here,” right? It breaks the ice for you.

And then the last thing is, leave when you need to leave. If you are an introvert, you’re exhausted by the time they sit down and say, “Now we’re ready to begin our program.” And you’re going, “Good lord, I just want to be out of here.” Leave. It’s okay. You want to get your money’s worth. You got it. You came in, you networked. I’m not saying you don’t listen to the program if you have the stamina for that. But if you—and the other alternative, and I coach my clients like this, if you have the stamina to listen to the program because you really wanted to hear it and you want to take your notes. That’s great, but you don’t have to stay and network afterwards. Take care of yourself and leave at the point at which you’re effective, not ineffective.

Drew Neisser: A couple of side notes, one for all the huddlers who do come to the Forester conference in June, I promise to be there to introduce you to anybody else on the list. So I’ll be the role of hosts there to help you through that.

Secondly, one of the things that I love, because this is my habit is, the notion that you don’t have to meet everybody. You can go deep. It’s funny I’m thinking one of the individuals on the call, I think I met at another event a couple of years ago. We spent like 30 minutes talking, right? There were other people going, but we’ll get there.

Pat Romboletti: It’s the rule of 250, Drew. It’s really 250. It’s an old rule. If you Google it, you’ll see it has nothing to do with LinkedIn. It was decided a long time ago from other just anecdotal research, but it basically says everybody you meet can introduce you to 250 people. So I always coach my introverts to say, Look at this way, you’re gonna get tired out. The introvert isn’t somebody who doesn’t like people, you just tire easily, and you don’t like chitchat. You like to go deep, you like to network in a very different way. And it’s not about schmoozing. So you’d rather have 2 deep conversations. But if you believe in the rule of 250, which I do, and especially now with LinkedIn, you actually know how to find those 250, you have 2 conversations, and you have the doors open to you for 500 people. Think about it that way. So you had a really productive evening, you met 2 people.

I have some clients that I say, If you’re going to be at a 10 seat tabletop, get to the meeting in time to sit down at the tabletop, and really get to know the people at your table. Really focus on that. It’s easier, it’s a much easier conversation. I just really believe in networking in a way that works for you is going to make it work every time.

Drew Neisser: Okay, we share a common perspective on marketing. And whether it’s your personal brand, or your company’s products that you always sort of need to be making deposits in the goodwill bank. And in my book, I call that selling through service, in yours that plays a big role in the art of the outreach. Can you talk about and maybe give an example of a successful deposit in the goodwill bank versus a failed one. And this is probably more relevant to the folks in transition, but still talk a little bit about the mistakes that you’ve seen when people are doing this outreach, and not really making a deposit.

Pat Romboletti: Right, right. And just so everyone understands the deposit is you pay it forward, then it pays you back, right? That’s the Adam Grant theory, and I believe in it. It has certainly worked for me. I’ll give you an example. I have a story of two people. I had somebody call me and he said, “I don’t understand. I reached out to the CEO and I sent them an invitation to connect and I heard nothing from them. And I sent this message. And then my colleague, somebody else that he knew had reached out to the same CEO and he answered right away. What did I do wrong?” And I said, “Tell me about your message and tell me what her message was?” And his message was, basically, I’ll paraphrase it. “Hi, I’m Mike, I need a job. That’s why I’m reaching out to you.” In a nice way. But that was the essence of the message. Her message was, “I’ve been following your company, and I’m reaching out to the CEO, let’s see what matters to the CEO.” When we send the message that’s the mindset, right? I’m reaching out to you, I’ve been following your company, you have a tremendous results that you’re achieving, I want to congratulate you. And if there’s any way that myself or my network can help you with your continued success, please let me know. No request. No, “I’d like  10 minutes of your time.” How many 24 hour 10 minutes do we have? Let’s think about this, right? It was nothing and she got an immediate connection request back from that person, “Thank you for your interest and attention, and for following my company,” right. That’s what matters to the CEO. I’m on somebody’s radar about something.

And by the way, she has a very good network and all. So it takes patience and it takes—you know, if anybody has ever, maybe you sold a house and you’ve got a big cheque and you deposit it in the bank, and it’s over a certain amount. The bank says, “We’ll be happy to take the check. And it’ll take 7 to 10 days to clear and then your money will be available. In the meantime, we’ll give you a few pennies.” You have to wait for the check to clear. The same thing is true. Not only do you make a deposit in the relationship, but you have to give it a chance to clear and that takes ongoing nurturing and relationship. However, it works.

Drew Neisser: Okay, and we’ve all gotten those LinkedIn requests that were exactly as you’ve described. And then we’ve also know the good ones and the bad ones.

So on the flip side, CMOs are under a lot of pressure. their inboxes are full with an amazing number of requests for their time, their help. Just on a company level. Then you get all the folks that are in transition that are using terms like, “I’d love to pick your brain.” Or, “I’d love to talk to you or buy you coffee.” And it can be overwhelming.

How would you suggest that CMOs manage this? I mean, let’s face it, there are a lot of folks in transition that need a lot of help right now.

Pat Romboletti: The most important thing to know is as much as you might say, “I just don’t have the time for that.” That’s the beginning of a relationship that could be the person that could make the introduction for you 2 or 3 years from now. And that’s what people don’t think about, right? So in other words, you see it as a bother, or, you know, again, I don’t know how I can help you. You have to be very prescriptive when you respond.

And I’ll tell you one of the things I do, you might imagine, I get a lot of messages. I can’t answer every one for sure. But I try to answer as many as I can. And sometimes what I do is I pop on to zoom, I record a quick message back, “Hey, I got your message. I would love to talk with you.”

So somebody will say, “Can you introduce me to anybody at Citibank?”

“Yes, I have 47 connections there. Let’s get a little bit more specific.” So I get instructional, as a coach, I do, right? So I send him a quick message and say, “I need to know who you want to be introduced to, I need to know why you want to be introduced, I need some help from you, and then I’ll be happy to help you.” And as soon as you get back to me, I’ll take care of it.”

So that’s boom, it’s off my table. I have Inbox Zero method, it’s gone right. Now, in general, the most important thing though, is what I started this discussion with, you’re gonna get a message and think, “This is so annoying, I just don’t have time. Oh, wait a minute, this person 2 years from now, a year from now, 6 months from now could be someplace, believe me that I need the introduction into and now you’ve made that deposit.”

So it can be a hard decision to make. But when you’re making that decision, you’re choosing your career over something else in your inbox. And I’m not saying if you have a deadline to deliver a presentation and the board wants numbers, you have to be used the discretion, but don’t think of it as an annoyance. Think of it as an investment in your future.

Drew Neisser: Right. So I’m gonna add a couple of things onto that. So if it’s an email, I have about 25 different standard signatures. And the signatures actually include responses that are pre written. And by the way, I can take that same signature and put it into a Google Doc. So if someone does request the time, you can say, “I’d love to talk to you.”—and you already have it written—”Can you be more specific on how I can help you?” Or have a request, specifically, and then that puts the onus back on them to take an action to try to do something. If you have these standardized responses it saves so much time. And signatures are a godsend. And I don’t think folks employ those enough. Or just a long Google Doc.

Pat Romboletti: Okay. I’ve got just one thing on that if anybody hasn’t used or heard of text expander. You can put anything in it. You can put a 3 page document into text expander, and you stroke, 3 keys or 2 keys or however many, you decide how many you set it up. But it’s somewhere between 1 and 3 keys. And it will spit out anything and everything. So anything that I type more than twice becomes a Text Expander. And I now have hundreds of them in there. And you can use it inside of LinkedIn. Any place where you write a message is they have it from Microsoft and Mac. And it’s it’s it’s a godsend. I mean, you can put addresses everything!

Drew Neisser: I can’t wait to try it. Love that. So I’ve noticed—and it’s funny, a lot of CMOs who’ve been in their roles a long time, don’t tend to update their LinkedIn profiles. And so I’m just wondering, is this something that they should be doing? And if they do, what kinds of things should they be included?

Pat Romboletti: Yeah, great. So I’ve been teaching LinkedIn since 2005. And I started teaching it to lawyers and accountants out in LA,. So that was a tough road to hoe let me tell you. But let me explain to you, as a recruiter, I did recruiting for 2 decades. As a recruiter, I was harshest in judging marketing people’s LinkedIn profiles versus—if a CFO didn’t have a great profile. No big deal, right? If a marketing person didn’t have a presence on Twitter—not so much these days. I don’t care about that. I don’t recruit now, but I wouldn’t care about that so much these days—but didn’t have a presence on Twitter and didn’t have an updated LinkedIn profile. I would be judgmental about that in many ways.

The things that you want to know is do not have stale recommendations. I look at profiles and people haven’t had recommendations since 2014, 2016, 2008, right? You should have recently received some recommendation from ’22, And not just recommendations received, but given.

I remember somebody referred me to somebody when I was recruited and they said, “She’s really talented. But I will tell you, she seems a little narcissistic. But you know, you have a talk with her. And I don’t know what kind of a leadership would be.” I look at her profile, she’s got 40 received recomendations, she hasn’t given one recommendation. And then her thing says, that she’s a great leader and builder of her team. It’s like, give them a recommendation, why don’t you, right? So recommendations are important.

Your about section, I have a particular way of viewing that. It does not and should not and you will be penalized by Linkedin if it is full of keywords. You put your keywords down under your experience section, but your about section should be your story. We are in the era of storytelling, you tell stories about your brand, you tell stories about your product, you tell stories about your company, you should be telling stories about yourself. And so all of my clients about sections are taken from the assignment that they do and we create a story about how can we prove that this background and this story makes you so good at who you are and what you do today. So that’s really important.

And just keeping it fresh, I mean, posting at least once a week on your own. Especially if you’re in transition. The algorithms don’t care about you—All the keywords in the world don’t give you greater visibility on LinkedIn, period, end of story. They don’t run their algorithms like Google. What gives you key gives you visibility on LinkedIn are two things: activity and connectivity. And why is that? You follow the money. The more activity you have and the more connections you have with other people who are connectors, the more they can go to their advertisers and say, “We have a very active community. 40% of our people sign on every day. 60% do this. And therefore, we’re going to charge you this outrageous price to advertise on our platform.” And everybody who’s posting and getting engagement on the platform. And connecting regularly is helping drive that algorithm and drive those statistics that they present to their advertisers. So I think people focus so much on keywords and not on—It’s like an age of social media, the age of digital is you got to have engagement and activity in order for that thing to pay off, right? Those are the most important thing.

Other than that, it’s another subset of a whole science but belonging to the right groups. Groups, from your industry, groups from your area of specialty, leadership groups, alumni groups, etc. And having that connectivity and actually engaging in them. Not every day. My clients, I say pick 3 a week that you might go visit, you might not even have activity, but just look at 3 of them a week. And if you have 12 in 4 weeks, you’ve been through all of your groups, you’re done. So make it very systemized.

Drew Neisser: We have to dwell on LinkedIn a little bit more. We covered a lot of things. You talked about having your about story be a story, literally, that sort of tells the story of your career. And we talked about recommendations, both giving and getting them and having those updated. A little bit of key words stuff, but being careful not to sort of get the Microsoft police or some of those others annoyed at you. I’m just wondering if there’s anything—and posting with regularity and groups—is there anything else that you see are common mistakes in LinkedIn profiles. And this could be for current CMOs or or ones that are transitioned?

Pat Romboletti: The biggest mistakes I see. egregious is the constant loading, Because everybody tells you to load your keywords into your about. And again, there are—I can send you, Drew, when I send you that link, I’ll send you some slides that I use that it’s LinkedIn saying, “If you put too many keywords in, we’re going to suppress your profile.” How about that, right? That is one of the biggest neglecting the there really isn’t. When I think it through, if you’re posting things, making sure that the rule of thumb is if you could take it off of LinkedIn and easily apply it to Facebook, don’t post it. Right. That’s a big rule of thumb. So when I see people like, “Look at this!” It’s like, no, no, no, no, you you signed into the wrong platform, go over there, right? So realizing that it is a business platform, right?

The other missed opportunity is what I teach is when you post and people engage. So they say I like it, or leave a comment. So most people go on and they see that somebody commented and they’ll thank them or they’ll make a comment back so there’s some engagement there. But most people don’t even do that they post and go. But the real missed opportunity is even if I just liked it, I want you to go back to your likes. Give it about a week maybe 10 days go back to your likes, see who liked it, gold mines there! Some are gonna be your friends who are helping you and then you’re gonna see, “Oh, here’s this first level connection that I’ve lost touch with.” People always say how do I reconnect with people? Wait till they reach out is part of it, right? So now you can reconnect with them. What I do when I go and look at mine is I scroll immediately down to the end, which is where my second and third level likers are going to be. So now somebody has a second level connection or third level connection. And they liked that, I will use that as the opportunity, with discretion, like, well, that’s somebody that would be good to get in dialogue with that somebody to connect with. And I reach out to them say, “Thank you for liking my posts. I’m glad you enjoyed my content. I’d love to connect with you, because I post content like that all the time.” And once we’re connected, you’ll have more visibility to it. And that’s partly how I started building my network up and up and up by Re engaging with those likes.

All of you in marketing will certainly appreciate this. When I was in retained search, most of my career I specialized in family owned closely held businesses. So I posted an article about a family owned business issue. And this person responded and he was a consultant for family owned businesses. I thought, great. So I reached out gave him that thank you for liking that. And I said, “Do you want to jump out in 10 minute call? I’d like to find out more about your practice.” We jumped on 10 minute call an hour and a half later, he had asked me to please write articles for 3 newsletters that he had going out. This is a long time ago so when I tell you this number—gosh, this could have been in 2009. I don’t know it’s a long time ago—he had 100,000 subscribers on his newsletters. And he asked me to write 3 articles for the 3 different newsletters. And in advance before I appeared as the writer, he sent out a pre notice to his list of 100,000 saying, “She’s going to be on this, pay attention.” And it’s all family businesses. It was like, all I did was say, “Hey, thanks for liking my posts, let’s have a 10 minute call.” And that was the exposure I got.

Drew Neisser: Wow, you never know who is on the other end of these things. But there was one little subtle thing. And I love the language that you used when you do the LinkedIn request because there was a give there, there was a deposit, “We could help each other and next time you have a thing and I comment because we’re connected, I’ll be more valuable for you.” That was a key little insight. And I can’t tell you how many connection requests I get where there’s no notice at all.

Pat Romboletti: Or the ones I get that say, “I noticed you, I’d like to connect.”

Drew Neisser: Or that, “LinkedIn said we should be connected.” Really? That’s the best you can do. Okay, yeah.

Now, here’s a question from the audience, going back to your topic, finding a set of topics to share on LinkedIn and Twitter that support a consistent personal brand. What’s the right ratio of sharing other people’s posts or creating your own original posts?

Pat Romboletti: Yeah. So let me explain. One of the things that’s most important understanding is consistency. Posting once a week consistently is better than posting 2 or 3 times a week randomly, right? So given how busy everybody is, I shoot for consistency over originality. Because a long time ago, there was a wonderful quote that said—people no longer care who wrote it, they just care that it’s valuable to them, right? So I don’t worry about whether I’m not writing original posts, I’m creating 10-12 hours of content every week for my Zoom calls. I’m not doing that. But I will tell you, if you have a real talent for writing, or once a quarter, you want to put out something original, that’s great. Don’t aim for original at the cost of consistent once a week, right? But if you could mix it in and you want to be known for a topic, and you’re a good writer. And when I say good writer that it comes easily to you. So you don’t agonize over it. That’s great. What is the right ratio sharing other people’s posts? I don’t share. I’ll comment on others, and I’ll share it in my private LinkedIn group and sometimes I’ll share posts in there. You can tell I don’t have a system or point of view about that being of great value. And it’s very interesting, because my brand is bulletproof your career, I don’t comment or share my own clients posts, because I don’t want their CEO going, “Who’s this Bulletproof your Career lady that’s telling you all this advice about how to get the hell out of here?” So I don’t do that, which is probably why I stumble because most of my things that are up are my own clients. I do have some people that I asked to share my clients things that expose that I’m behind them coaching, right? It’s reall`y understanding having consistency in the point of view, consistency in the brand messaging that you’re sending, and just once a week and not worrying quite as much about the ratio of the myths and more about the consistency because that’s what’s King.

Drew Neisser: Love that. I agree with that. Your recommendations for job hunters made me think of all the ABM conversations that we have, you know, that B2B marketers are deploying you call it a career blueprint. Can you talk about how the folks in between opportunities can put this career blueprint to use?

Pat Romboletti: So there’s a couple things about that. When I think of a blueprint, I think most people, especially when you start your career out, you think of your blueprint is I’m gonna graduate, I’m gonna go from here to here, here to here here to here. That worked until Jack Welch and the man who broke capitalism—if you haven’t read that book, please do—sort of changed the rules. And now when I think of a career blueprint, it has to be a combination, because we all know, if you’ve heard my TED Talk, there’s a story I tell in there, that gentleman who created something in the innovation group that brought billion dollars worth of revenue to the company. And then they said, “We’re shutting down your department.” So what we now know is that the blueprint that says, “Oh, the blueprint used to be, I’ll just do a really great job, and I’ll be good.” The idea is now you want to have a blueprint for bulletproofing your career, which says, “I’m going to do the best job I can. I’m gonna do a great job where I am and I’m going to recognize that that doesn’t guarantee anything.” And so my blueprint is always having a plan A & plan B, and always knowing where would I go next? What connections do I have there? Making sure that in your blueprint, you’re tracking? Where’s the industry going? What are the changes going on? Who are the up and comers? Who’s the competition that is eating my lunch? Oh, wait a minute, maybe I ought to have dinner with the CEO. It’s really, really, really paying attention both inside and outside the company. And it’s difficult. I’m not saying it isn’t. But you have to have an A/B mentality in your blueprint for sure.

My methodology is you start with clarity, you move to eliminate—so you eliminate anything around you, that distracts you from doing great in your job and taking care of career, then you prioritize yourself, and then you accelerate your activity. So the blueprint is a little bit different. And it needs that A/B pack.

Drew Neisser: Interesting. And as you’re talking, I’m just thinking about, you know, there are over 100 B2B CMOs in CMO Huddles, and I’m wondering, how can we help our community bulletproof their careers collectively? Just, for example, we do help with the personal brand with our Tuesday Tips, with the shows, and there’s other things but I’m wondering if we need to accelerate some areas to help the whole community bulletproof themselves.

Pat Romboletti: A couple of ways. First of all, I do a free zoom call every Thursday. I’ve been doing it for 4 years. That’s what you take. That’s consistency, right? I started August 2, 2018, I’m still doing them. We have 400-500 people on that call, right. And of that we’ve had 2,995 people from that community land since we started. And all but 11 of them landed through networking.

So the most important thing is to really cultivate and curate within the community and not feel them as competition, etc. Make those introductions. But the other piece that we’ve been talking about a little bit here is the changing of industries and understanding what’s going on and making sure that there’s some sort of a conduit to be sharing. So if you’re interested in getting into the pharmaceutical industry, but you’re in a technology industry or vice versa, that you’re really understanding that you each have such valuable information to share. So there’s so much about knowing where’s the puck going, and helping each other with those pieces of information. It’s Just so critical. And introductions, introductions, introductions, introductions are so important. So really rotates around a more strategic and systemized networking process.

Drew Neisser: I really appreciate that. Because I’m thinking about we have a contingent of, say, EdTech people who might want to get in HealthTech. We have a contingent of HealthTech and their employers probably don’t see the connection at all. But if we were to bring those two together, and let them talk about if they had aspirations to go from one to the other. Okay, do you recommend you have “Open to Work” on your LinkedIn profile when you are in fact open to work?

Pat Romboletti: Full disclaimer, personal opinion, but I’m going to give you the reason behind it. As a recruiter, when I was recruiting, there wasn’t that collar that they have now. But there was always some way that you could say, “I’m looking,” right? When I would present a candidate, especially at the executive level—but that’s all I did was retained search—but when I would present a candidate to a client, if they saw too much like “Hey, look at me, I’m looking for a job, I’m looking for a job!” Their immediate response to me was, “They don’t want this job. They want any job.” It took it down a peg. And I had to say, “No, no, no, no, no.” You know, I had to go on and on and on. So I got to the point I learned quick that I would say, “Take all that down because they’re gonna push back on me. I’m just letting you know.” And here’s what I want you to understand. It doesn’t buy you anything. I will tell you what it does because you’re all marketers. What do you think it does for LinkedIn? It tags you. So you put that on, it creates a tag, they go to their advertisers and say, “We can present to you, everybody who has self selected and said, ‘I’m looking’ and now you can sell them resumes, and you can sell them coaching, you can sell them all this stuff.” That’s why they do it. They’re not doing it for you. Follow the money.

So it’s not for you, it’s for them. And it’s kind of not that attractive. But the most important principle is to understand recruiters actually don’t care if you’re looking, their job is to find the right person for the company and for the requirements. So their job is to call up and say, “Whether you’re looking or not, you need to listen to me, I’ve got a great opportunity for you.” Now at the lower levels, if I’m a phone jockey in a staffing company trying to find programmers or engineers for this or that, it helps me if I know that they’re looking. But at the executive level, it doesn’t help at all.

Drew Neisser: I’m taking that as a full ‘No’. And it builds on an idea that I was talking to a good friend who is in fact in transition. And I’m wondering if you have thoughts on it. One of the reasons that it’s so much easier to get a job, when you have a job is that you’re not available because you got a job. So how does someone who doesn’t have a job create the notion of scarcity? At one point in my career, I actually lost 4 jobs in a 2 year period. It was a really bad period in the marketing business. And one of the things I discovered was that every interview was a near job, every offer would be get another offer. So I could create scarcity by saying, “Well, I’m very close over here, but you’re my preferred choice.” These days it’s very hard. You can’t fake that anymore. How do you create scarcity?

Pat Romboletti: This is the scarcity that’s giving the employed person the advantage. So I wouldn’t go with that. What’s giving the employed person the advance—so let’s start there. What’s giving them the advantage is that they perceive at anytime somebody is unemployed. The fear goes in to say, “Well, I can understand…”—I mean, I have somebody who the company shut down and the CEO says, “I don’t know, I think they must have done something wrong.” I go, “You want me to go take a picture of the padlock? The company doesn’t even exist anymore.” But there’s that niggling of maybe—because everybody’s afraid to hire. So maybe I’m missing something, maybe they really did mess up and I can’t see that. So it’s the fear factor that’s the problem. But I can tell you that as a recruiter, there’s nothing more aggravating than just to try to pit that your opportunity isn’t—now being straightforward and saying, “I’m very close in calls with somebody else.”—and it has to be legit and it has to be an authentic. And you say, “I can tell you.” Not just, “I would rather yours than that. But I have always been leaning towards your role and here’s why.” And give them specific reasons. You have this going on, your next product launch is right now, I have a playbook for your company, you have this, you have that. So tell them what the contrast is. But give them that advice. But I want you understand that saying, “Well, I’m so busy, and everybody wants me and you should try to buy me faster.” It doesn’t really play well in the executive level.

Drew Neisser: Right. I do think if it’s been a while between opportunities, it may be time to hang up the towel or put the shingle up and have a lot of shared CMO part time jobs so that, again, you’re not just sitting out there invulnerable. So I don’t know I we don’t have to hurry on this individual, right?

Pat Romboletti: But don’t do it—so here’s the thing, when I coach folks who have done some consulting, don’t do it from the perspective of I hung out a shingle and I’ve become Pat Romboletti Incorporated, because then let me tell you—again, this is an insider recruiter—my clients would say, “Oh, they don’t really want a job, but they just don’t have any active clients. Their cash flow is low and their track of clientele is low. But once somebody comes to them for another gig, they’ll go back, right?” So they were skeptical. Again, they’re looking for a reason not to hire you and not a reason to hire you.

However, what we do is just put up, you know, not a name, just like CMO consulting for retail or something like that. And then in the description we say, “Sought out based on expertise in XYZ area to consult on this.” So now it’s like, I wasn’t looking, but I’m so well known. They came to me and asked me to help them and that’s what I’m doing. And that’s the real nuance, but it makes a huge difference.

Drew Neisser: Oh no, I can totally see that. And I get it. Okay, that’s awesome.

All right. So there are so many wonderful little tips in your book. And one of them that really struck me because I noticed in one CMO is looking at their CV and the dates didn’t quite perfectly match the LinkedIn profile. And a lot of folks are trying to get depressed by their digital submissions, which you just say that’s a black hole. Avoid those.

Pat Romboletti: Yeah, so don’t don’t play that game.

Drew Neisser: Don’t play that game. You also have thoughts on building connections with recruiters which were great. So I’m wondering if, again, for the CMOs who are looking for a new role whether they’re employed now or they’re in between opportunities, Two do’s an a don’t on a big picture level.

Pat Romboletti: When you’re employed, by the way, and you’re connecting to outside recruiters and dropping—happy to share my two documents on that with you as well. And I have a specific way to outreach to recruiters and strategy. And give, based on let me tell you how that strategy works. So obviously, recruiters are important, that’s one. But this strategy works because you connect with recruiters and that gives you huge visibility across the network and my document explains that. But especially if you’re employed, you just get a higher rate of acceptance with recruiters. That’s number one.

But you should still want to connect with recruiters as a first step for anybody even in transition. And using my strategy it explains exactly why. So that’s really important.

The second thing is, have a target list of companies. Know where you want to go to. Have a list that says, “I’m not just waiting for somebody to come.” I always say if you don’t have a target list, you don’t have a search, what you have is I’ll wait and see. It’s like the difference between somebody knocking on doors selling something and somebody putting in in a retail store. So I need you to have a target list. And you don’t have to know a lot about the company other than it’s the right size, it’s the right industry, it’s got the right product. So just generically, once you start to learn more about the company, you can decide whether it’s going to be a good fit, but don’t worry about that yet. It’s sort of like if you’re dating what’s the right age range, where do they live? What’s that situation, right? So have that.

And then the last thing that everbody does, which is start reconnecting, start connecting, you gotta start making deposits in your network. Either way, right away, it has to happen. And when you’ve landed, you have to maintain those connections. Not daily. Not like you are when you’re in transition. You can’t let that bank account drift below and have an overdraft. That’s all there is to it.

Drew Neisser: Right, again, we’re going back to ABM. You have 25 companies that you want to work for next just in case. You could use the navigator, make that list as a prospect list, if you will, LinkedIn will automatically give you updates when they’ve posted something about it. And you can just engage there. So, again, if you’re looking that’s solves two things for you. How do I engage on LinkedIn? And so add to that, or tell me where I went wrong on that?

Pat Romboletti: No, it’s perfect. But I’ll add, and I just want to give an example. Because one of the biggest things when you have that target list, the way I teach my folks is you don’t create a list of targets first, actually. You’re gonna have a target list. But the way we compile it—and I have a case study, because my client is flying back from Poland today. And he starts his new job on Monday using this—the first thing we do is find an affinity point. An affinity point can be a company that you worked for prior. So in his case, he had worked 18 years at a company and they had a lot of allumn. So we looked at that company first. And the second point is college.

So in other words, here’s—how am I going to have a target of companies. This is exactly how we compiled his. He worked at this company, he lived in Dallas, and he wanted to stay there. And we did a search on people in Dallas, in his industry, (in the software computer software industry) who used to work at his prior company. And we compile the list of CROs, we also look for just CEOs, we compile the list of CEOs in that in that criteria. And I think there were 27 or maybe even 50, I can’t remember. He starts on Monday with a complete stranger, who he reached out to, who was a CEO, who worked at a company that he worked at, and he sent a connection request and a message and said, “I see that we share alumni from this company. And based on your organization, I just thought it would be good for us to meet. No pressure.” Why does that work? Because when companies hire somebody from another company, they know that oh, that company’s culture fits, the background fit, so they like that. So now you use that to reach out just as we did casually, and it turned out that at 8 o’clock one Friday night he got a call because they had a huge problem in their chief revenue officer. And that’s what he’s starting at. And that whole thing took less than 60 days. Right? So that’s number one.

And if you do if you do your college, so when you’re going to reach out you graduated from let’s say the Bulldogs since we’ve got this great Bulldog team down here. So you graduated from Georgia, you’re in my industry and you’re in marketing. We have 3 things in common, right? So now you’re reaching out with 3 affinity points and  you may think that doesn’t matter? It does. You think about yourself. I reached out to you ELMS College. What’s that now? Atlanta don’t anybody, they’re no big deal. But now I say, “Hey, we’re both Bulldog graduates.” And maybe you say, “I see we have some common connections.” But the other affinity points—I had a client here. And I was doing some research on something else. And I sent her a note and I said, “Bullseye, I found somebody for you 5 affinity points based on your background. Reach out to that person, here’s his link.” She reached out to him, she called back the next day. She said, “We have a conversation at the end of this week.” There was just so much in common. “Oh, look, and you wear black shoes. Wow, let’s have a call,” right?

Drew Neisser: Well, I could keep going. But we’ve gone way over time. I so appreciate the time. Where can people find you?

Pat Romboletti: In Atlanta. But more directly I have a website bulletproofyourcareer.com. Of course, I’m on LinkedIn. And if you do want to attend, every single Thursday night for free, I do a workshop. And then I opened it to Q&A. And last night, we had 578 people on the call. And we have been doing that every single week, as I said, from August 2018. And we have 570 something almost every week. And then that community is so… people are trading information and sharing. It is so robust. And we have a private LinkedIn group. So I would please reach out to me just mentioned that we were in the huddle, and I’ll make sure that I get you connected right away. And then I’ll invite you into that. But I’d love to have you in that. It’s just a really, it’s just a wonderful community. And there’s all levels and all industries in there. And then my website and LinkedIn.

Drew Neisser: Awesome, amazing! And I encourage you all to read Pat’s book. All right, Pat Romboletti, thank you so much for being with us. Amazing insights. I hope everybody got value from it.

To hear more conversations like this one and submit your own questions while we’re live. Join us on the next CMO Huddles Studio. We stream to my LinkedIn profile, that’s Drew Neisser, every other week.

Show Credits

Renegade Marketers Unite is written and directed by Drew Neisser. Hey, that’s me! This show is produced by Melissa Caffrey, Laura Parkyn, and our B2B podcast partners Share Your Genius. The music is by the amazing Burns Twins and the intro Voice Over is Linda Cornelius. To find the transcripts of all episodes, suggest future guests, or learn more about B2B branding, CMO Huddles, or my CMO coaching service, check out renegade.com. I’m your host, Drew Neisser. And until next time, keep those Renegade thinking caps on and strong!