Balancing Subject Expertise with Entrepreneurial Spirit with Kara Williams

Growth isn't just about getting bigger—it's about getting better. This episode explores how blending expertise with entrepreneurial energy can lead to more meaningful business outcomes.

We cover:

• Balancing structure with flexibility
• Leveraging VIP clients to strengthen your foundation
• How culture attracts the right clients
• Why bigger isn't always better
• Building trust through authentic communication

Always growing.

Benno Duenkelsbuehler

CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN

reALIGNforResults.com

benno@realignforresults.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the Growth Officer Podcast
• 5:00 Defining Expertise vs. Entrepreneurial Energy
• 20:00 The Balance of Process and Flexibility
• 35:00 The Role of VIP Clients in Business Growth
• 50:00 Understanding the Culture of Your Client
• 1:00:00 Wrapping Up and Key Takeaways

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey, welcome to the third Growth Officer Podcast, where we talk about all things growth yes, even and especially those hard parts where you shed some skin and pick yourself up by the bootstraps. Hey, I'm Benno Dunkelspüler, growth Sherpa and OG Hashtag Growth Nerd. We're on a mission to redefine success inside and outside the business, one TGO episode at a time.

Speaker 2: 0:33

I'm Cara Williams. I'm the owner of the Marketing Collective and I am joining you today from Cincinnati Ohio.

Speaker 1: 0:40

Hey, cara, I am so happy to have you here. My name is Benno third Growth Option Podcast host. All right, got that off my chest. Welcome to our podcast. You and I have known each other for many years. We're in the same Vistage group, so we have shared each other's. You know deep professional secrets, secrets, and we're going to talk a little bit on this podcast around.

Speaker 1: 1:05

How do you balance as an entrepreneur, how do you balance sort of focusing on and your own expertise as well, as you know just how do you focus in general? That's an oxymoron. How do you focus on your own or your team members? Expertise versus entrepreneurial energy, which is sort of the opposite of focusing right? So you and I. So you have been an entrepreneur for 11 years, me for 15 years. Both of us, you know, grew up climbing the greasy ladder of success in corporate america. You have, um, you're, like you said, your owner, chief client strategist of the marketing collective, um and uh. Let's start with what? Your definition of expert focus versus entrepreneurial energy? Not definition, maybe. Just how do you think about those two?

Speaker 2: 2:02

yeah, thanks, it's a great question. So. So I think of energy and entrepreneurial focus in a couple different buckets. You mentioned me as a business owner, my team, but certainly our clients. Some of our clients are entrepreneurs, some of our clients are not. They have very different levels of energy, of focus, of how they approach things, how they do things. Some come with a very standard, rigid. This is our process and this is where you fit. Others are hiring us because they don't have process. They don't know how to create process. They need assistance with that process. So I think you have to bring a different level of expertise and talent to each of those situations and I think, first and foremost, it starts with listening and being a really good listener and making sure that you're understanding the needs of the client, the needs of the team, and then you have to balance that with the needs of the business, which that gets to the part you were talking about, benno.

Speaker 2: 2:57

The needs of the business in an entrepreneurial type environment are continued growth, continued improvement, constant. How do we get better? How are we the best at getting better? Consistently, over and over time, and sometimes you get team members that are very expert in their area. They want to stay in that lane. They're really good at it. But that doesn't jive with that entrepreneurial nature of running a small business and needing to be able to say, yes, you're fantastic in this place, but we have to continue to grow and expand and do some leaping in some other places and sometimes it's just a lot of juggling and it can get really tiring trying to figure out how much process is good process and how much of it is kind of pulling that entrepreneurial spirit into the bar.

Speaker 1: 3:44

When does it become bureaucracy, right, absolutely? I sort of look at process. You know there's cowboy culture and then there's bureaucracy. Yeah, you know those are sort of the two extremes and you know you have. If you don't have enough process, it's kind of cowboy culture. If you have too much process, it's bureaucracy.

Speaker 2: 4:05

And it's interesting, there are folks on my team that are really smart, unbelievably intelligent folks, but they want that process. Making the decision without the process is very challenging for them, and then I naturally am almost the opposite. Right, I'll build my own process. As I go, I'll look for opportunities to consistently change the process. That constant changing of the process can be very draining for them. So really trying to understand what type of leader are they, where are they coming from, and adjusting how I'm working through that is a constant. But for my business itself, for the Marketing Collective, there's no question that that entrepreneur spirit has to maintain. We're too small and we will start really falling behind if we don't constantly look for what's next. What's next and how do we improve? How do we grow? How do we learn, how do we listen? How do we do all of those things better?

Speaker 1: 5:00

So you and I both. So you run a marketing agency, I run a growth agency. Both of our companies are trying to help clients grow, maybe in slightly different ways. We sort of go into building adjacent product categories for clients or helping them access new channels of distribution, in addition to also just making the go-to-market process. I think that's a little bit of the crossover.

Speaker 1: 5:29

You guys are always about the go-to-market process, but you and I both, as the owners of our agency, we both have VIP clients. I'll call them where we are more than just you know, where you are more than just the marketing strategist for that client and I'm more than just the growth Sherpa for my VIP client. And I think the reason we have those VIP relationships just because we have somehow figured out how to balance right our expertise and focus. But then, also, being sort of a on the way to work this morning I was thinking we're sort of the consigliere's of these two companies, of our two VIP clients. Is that how you would view your VIP client? Because we wear a lot of shoes, right, I mean we wear a lot of hats, sorry, not shoes, hats.

Speaker 2: 6:32

Our yes. So our model is a little bit different than some marketing agencies in that we will take on an outsource CMO role. So if someone does not have an in-house chief marketing officer, we'll take that role and with that we can own strategy, budgeting, execution, those things and we can own the whole picture, not just the piece that the marketing collective is doing. What that allows is for us to really become very close, very intimate with our clients, understand their business incredibly well and be a member of their leadership team, and in some cases that works just fine. We do the work. We still stay in the marketing lane. We serve as that CMO or we serve as an executional partner. And then, in the case that you're talking about, benno, there have been cases where we've had clients for 10 years and when you have them for 10 years in a CMO role, boy, do those lines start to blur between are you the owner of the marketing collective or are you my chief operating officer? What does that look like? And I welcome that.

Speaker 2: 7:36

I know I'm succeeding when they think I'm an internal employee and not somebody external that they have to call and wonder is this included in my contract or not?

Speaker 1: 7:46

Right.

Speaker 2: 7:47

So for me it's always exciting I joke that COVID messed up my perfect record because I had been invited to every client's holiday party everyone, and it was an employee based party, right, and they would have their employees there. But we felt like employees, we were part of the team. But with that, just like at most businesses, there's very few marketing folks that are inside at a company that have a very clear, defined role. Many of them start taking on chief of staff operations. Many of them start taking on running the board operations, doing events that lead to strategic planning. You know, roles are inherently shrinking, getting tougher. People are putting more and more on their C-suite executives and those teams to execute around it.

Speaker 2: 8:36

It seems true if I am a chief marketing officer, even if it is part-time or if it is full-time in a company that happens to be a client, our lines start to blur more and more and more, and that's what's really happened with my VIP clients.

Speaker 2: 8:50

Is I think of myself as them so much that there really isn't a line, and that's okay. That works really well. I also think that I'm coming in from a very different perspective. I'm seeing so many different industries, so many other clients that we're still working on that's bringing in for them. But still having that entrepreneurial spirit that we talked about really relates oftentimes to those founders that founded a company 30, 40 years ago and they want that to maintain. They want that in their culture. So with us coming on and doing that, it really allows us to bring a perspective and, I think, a level of energy that you're getting the best of both worlds. You're getting that external perspective but you're getting somebody that knows you inside and out, as an internal coworker, an internal employee, and I think that really gives us an opportunity to give them a different level of expertise than we can give to other clients and so most outside service providers right agencies, you know, rely on the SOW right, the statement of work, the proposal, and on the one hand, I get it.

Speaker 1: 10:01

You have to have a clear charter with you know, to start with right. Okay, kara, you're going to be, you and your team are going to do X, y and Z right. And then, if they come, when they come up with A, B, you know, a and B and L, you're like, well, that's not X, y and Z. On the receiving end, the people that you know, the client that signs up for a statement of work in SOW, they hate it, right, because now it's like they feel like we put them into a straitjacket, that we can only help them with this.

Speaker 1: 10:33

So I always look for opportunities where we can build trust by, as you said, listening to what else do you need? Can we help with this? Can we help with that? And sometimes, if it's outside of the statement of work or it's outside, if it becomes abusive, right, where we're signing up for X, y and Z at you know, and each of those three things is worth $1. So it's a $3 thing and now we're doing $26 worth of work for every letter in the alphabet right, but we're still only getting paid $3. Of course, that's a different situation, but I think to start with, I always embrace the opportunity to do more because oftentimes it can create five times more value than either client or I had even anticipated at the beginning.

Speaker 2: 11:32

Yeah, it's such an interesting process because nine times out of 10, I'm developing a statement of work when I know the absolute least about that client, so I might understand the project but, I don't understand them, I don't it's usually at the beginning of the relationship.

Speaker 2: 11:50

Sometimes it's RFP driven right. I only know what isn't working for them typically not what is and so you're trying to determine how do I best solve their needs when you know the absolute least about it. So one thing I always do is say we're going to revisit the statement of work at the end of 30 days, because it is quite possible that I'm going to learn so much about you in that timeframe that we're just going to make different decisions about how we work together and what you think might be the challenge may not really be the challenge. The other piece on those SOWs I really wish there was a better way to do it, and sometimes we do sign up. There is, there is Sometimes we sign up for an hours engagement, a project-based engagement. That really doesn't have those detailed parameters around it, and sometimes it's a little bit scary.

Speaker 2: 12:42

But the reality is, if you ever have to go back and look at the statement of work and say, well, let me see if that was in my statement of work, you don't have a good relationship with that client and that statement of work probably isn't going to be lasting. So what's the real value? I feel like it's artificial insurance, because, whether it's in there or not, we're going to do our best to deliver, and deliver 120%. We're going to do our best to be as flexible as possible. We're going to try to lean in and give you the best recommendations as possible, but nine times out of 10, at least in the marketing world people want to start with that SOP. They want to start with. I want you to give me this pricing and that's how I'm going to judge you and that's going to be the basis of our relationship to start, and I understand that. But it just isn't the best way to really do the work and to figure out what is needed.

Speaker 1: 13:31

You have to tell us Benno.

Speaker 2: 13:34

Tell me, benno, what do you say is the growth Sherpa? Because that is a constant, I would say pervasive challenge in this industry. People will come in to me and they'll already have statements of work and I'll say that I wouldn't even do those things. Why do they know the answers right now?

Speaker 1: 13:49

Right, right, so, and you and I have talked about this in the Vistage group In the early days, you know, I started Realign in 2009, 15 years ago, almost 16 years ago. How crazy is that? And I used to be so excited when you know, I would have a prospective client and we would get to the point where they're like you know what, can you write us a proposal which is essentially a statement of work? Right, and I would say, yay, now I can write a statement of work, a proposal, and a couple years into it, I started answering differently. I said no, I cannot. Can write a statement of work, a proposal, and a couple of years into it, I started answering differently. I said no, I cannot write you a proposal, I cannot write you a statement of work until I do an evaluation.

Speaker 1: 14:29

Let me spend one week doing a growth evaluation, where I'm going to do a deep dive. Spend half of that week asking all these questions, looking at income statements, operational statements, having stakeholder interviews. All of that week asking all these questions, looking at income statements, operational statements, having stakeholder interviews, all of that. And then the second half of that week doing the evaluation. I'll tell them hey, here's the situation that I think you're in good, bad or ugly. Here's the opportunity that I think we can go after and we can solve for.

Speaker 1: 14:58

And number three here are the activities that we need to do. Those activities end up in the proposal statement of work right, but now I charge a fixed amount for that growth evaluation before I ever write a statement of work on a proposal. So I think that's something. I mean, that's something that's worked well for us. But let's talk a little bit more about you talked about helping your clients get better and in a conversation we had prior to jumping on this podcast, you had talked about bigger. Bigger is not always better, but better is always better. Talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 2: 15:37

Yeah, it's always interesting. I don't have any desire to add zeros behind the. If we were 170. And I think that is my attempt at focusing on. Better is better, but bigger is not necessarily. Same is true with clients, large clients or large client accounts if the profitability isn't there, if it's taking all of your resources, if it's pulling your team down, if they're just not a good fit for your team culturally, it doesn't matter how big they are. They're not going to help your team get better. You're going to struggle to help them get better. So we consistently evaluate up against is this going to make us a stronger agency by taking this account, and is this the right fit for us? I can point to a handful of times that it really didn't work out and if I would have been honest, I knew going into it it probably wasn't going to work out.

Speaker 1: 16:51

But you get this notion of you get excited about it, you get excited, you get pulled in, you can help everyone or this is going to be a fast track into a new area.

Speaker 2: 17:03

This is going to get us in and break us in in this place. And then you know, three months later I knew I didn't want to go that direction, I didn't even want those additional. Now they're referring people that don't make sense for us. But you know, you get pulled into all of that because I think as a society sometimes we think that bigger is better, right, and if you have this many, if you have two, four is great, but eight is really where you want to be, and I just really pull myself back and say that's not the goal.

Speaker 2: 17:29

The goal is to have the most impact we can have on the smallest number of folks, because that's where we're going to have the greater impact, and to build those relationships, to build those VIP clients, to build those people that truly live in the trust space. And that's not a commodity, that's not something that we can always just churn, churn, churn. And so that's really why the focus is we have to be the best at getting better, we have to look at ways to get better, and that doesn't necessarily equate to getting the next largest client or adding this many people. It really is focusing on what are you good at and drive your energies there. And that's again back to the balance and the energy and all those things that we started the conversation. To me, all of that comes together in terms of what do you want to accomplish and where are you going to go, and for me it is not necessarily really around size.

Speaker 1: 18:26

Seth Godin talks about. He uses the term smallest viable audience. Yes, and I love that. I love him Right. I mean that's, yeah, I need to get purple, Maybe. I need to get purple glasses like he has Now I want I have my own purple cow. I think that was the name of one of his books.

Speaker 2: 18:52

One of his books?

Speaker 1: 18:52

yes, the concept of smallest viable audience in my business, and also when we work with clients, helps us to really focus in on what, like in my business, it's what are we really good at and what are the types of clients that we really love, that really love us, and let's talk to them as prospective clients right, let's make them bigger as current clients, but that to me, is sort of the balance of expert focus. Right, I'm focusing in on my smallest viable audience, but that also creates a lot of entrepreneurial energy for us, right, because now I'm not being bogged down by, you know, that bigger audience that I thought you know, I thought I wanted to have 170 Sherpas.

Speaker 1: 19:53

I don't.

Speaker 2: 19:54

Right, right Well.

Speaker 1: 19:56

I'm perfectly happy with a dozen.

Speaker 2: 19:58

Well, I'm perfectly happy with a dozen. I'm sure, Benno, you've heard this a million times, but you're talking to a client or a new prospect, and you want to understand more of who's going to buy their service, who's going to buy their product who do?

Speaker 2: 20:11

they want to be their customers and the answer is everyone. And it makes me cringe every time. No, it's not rocket science here. No one serves everyone, and it just isn't. And it's the reverse of the way. I want my clients to think. It is the absolute reverse. And so having those conversations around what really is our sweet spot and how do we differentiate, that really makes all the difference in the world. I think when you're trying to develop some of your marketing strategy and, I would assume, your growth strategy too, but, it's an interesting conversation to have, because so many folks think they start defending we can do anything.

Speaker 2: 20:55

We can do anything. So-and-so needs it too and so-and-so might buy this. And we're not selling to this group, but they may buy it in the future and they'll start getting very defensive around that. And the reality is you don't have the resources, you don't have the energy, you don't have the expertise and you really don't want to sell to everyone.

Speaker 1: 21:12

When you're everything to everybody, you're nothing to nobody.

Speaker 2: 21:15

Correct.

Speaker 1: 21:17

Right.

Speaker 2: 21:17

I believe that Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 21:19

And I think it also and you and I had talked about this in the past too that you know you can't really effectively market to the external world unless you have a really clear idea on the internal culture and talk a little bit about how. And that plays right into this smallest viable audience idea, right, unless you have a very super focused view on who is your external market smallest viable audience. You could only develop that if you have a really clear understanding of the internal culture that can serve that external small audience. How do you get your arms around your client's culture as it relates to helping to market them?

Speaker 2: 22:02

I would say it's a fantastic question. One of the things I would say is I joked before, but I was being serious when I said we take clients or we take assignments and three months later they're not working as well as I had hoped and I knew in my heart they probably wouldn't, I find that so many business owners and so many leaders they're not being honest with themselves or they're not being honest with their teams because they are chasing different goals.

Speaker 2: 22:28

So the annual operating plan says we need X. So I'm just going to chase and get X and keep churning and bringing it in when I know that what we're really good at is this over here and I need to revise the plan to match. What we're really good at is this over here and I need to revise the plan to match what we're really good at. Most folks in marketing will talk about a customer journey. They'll talk about you know, how does your customer make decisions? Where are their pain points? What do they do?

Speaker 2: 22:49

We like to do that, oftentimes internally, and understand how people are making decisions about working there, why they're working there, what they're good at, why they were hired, what they were hired to do, why people enjoy them, why people come back to them. That oftentimes will start getting at what differentiates you from your competitors. Another one of the things that makes my eye roll is when I say how are you different? And people say it's the people and they can't give you anything else. Right, our people are better. You have to tell me how we're family, that's fine.

Speaker 2: 23:20

Right. Tell me how they're better, and sometimes they really are right. Sometimes you have these phenomenal teams that your teams make things happen. You know the process can be the same across different industries or different companies, but the team can really set you apart. But you have to prove that, you have to define that.

Speaker 1: 23:37

And you have to define it. You have to define it right. Yes, Because usually people are….

Speaker 2: 23:46

Well, all impartial people, they're kind of too lazy.

Speaker 1: 23:48

Sometimes people are too lazy to define what makes you…. So what makes you different? What makes you better? Why do you have the best people? Is it because they are the most educated, or the most entrepreneurial, or the most open-minded or the hardest working? What combination of secret sauce do you value?

Speaker 2: 24:14

Yes, absolutely true, absolutely true, and that helps you understand who you're going to pair the most with and where that attraction and that fit is going to happen.

Speaker 2: 24:24

And if you think about. Again back to that first conversation or early starter conversation we had on this call. When you're thinking about entrepreneurialism, you think of all those synergies that kind of happen as you're building a company, as you're building a culture, all the people you meet along the way who work with you and make and help you, whether they're other vendors, other partners, mentors. That's all about that fit and that's all about understanding where you're the best and where you should align your energy. That still rings true when you're trying to attract clients and who you're working with and how. So one of the things that I joke about but we have several clients in the construction space One of the reasons I think we do well with construction is because we're not really in my opinion.

Speaker 2: 25:07

We don't do a lot of BS, we don't do a lot of fluff. We don't do a lot of I've got an aha idea marketing moment for you that's going to turn things into millions. We're much more. This is the process. I'm going to talk to you straight. I'm going to give you if I can tell you in 10 words. I'm using 10, not 15, not 20.

Speaker 1: 25:27

There's no consultant speak.

Speaker 2: 25:28

That really just aligns well to that industry. It aligns to how they're used to speaking what they're used to seeing. They kind of inherently think everybody is full of BS anyway.

Speaker 1: 25:39

So when you cut through it and say I'm not giving you that, If it's not bricks and mortar and concrete and steel, right then.

Speaker 2: 25:46

Right, right, then it's probably not right, and so that just has attracted that type of individuals in that industry. Well, we saw that, so we started thinking, well, what other industries really align with that? We don't have to stay in construction. We do marketing across all different types of B2B companies and we do primarily work just in the B2B space. But we work with companies all across the country that are in different industries, in different areas. Does manufacturing fit that? Does technology fit that? Where do those other companies come? Now, I'm not writing out there in my marketing. I want to work with companies that don't like BS, but I know it about myself.

Speaker 2: 26:23

I'm honest about the industries that will look for that, the ones that are looking for a large team, a lot of pre-sculpt type creative, a lot of workshopping of the creative and all that. There is nothing wrong with any of that, it just typically isn't our approach and it isn't then our clients.

Speaker 2: 26:44

So I mean we can do that if somebody wants that, but that's not usually us. And so I think, first and foremost, being true to yourself and understanding who you are and really spending the time to think about that and be honest about it really helps. Then align with the cultures of your clients. That are going to be those fits, and that's how I've had clients stay for 10 years. I don't think the work we do for them is vastly different than the work we've done for others. We just have built this bond and this relationship and this ability to be honest, transparent and trustworthy enough to say, hey, I think this is really going to work for you, we need to do it, and it's entirely outside of any scope we've ever talked about or hey, I thought this was a good idea, we've been doing it for six months. I don't think it's not.

Speaker 2: 27:32

It's not like I've got to bite the bullet and we've got to take it and I've got to make this up and I've got to readjust, but those are those honest conversations you have with people you like.

Speaker 2: 27:42

Yes, yes, you have those conversations with people you like, you have the relationship with and you fix it right, as opposed to you know. Just, I'm not in this for transactional type work. We can get work all the time. I want to work with people I enjoy working with on my team and clients we enjoy working with, and that's one of the brilliant sides of running your own companies you get to pick that right.

Speaker 1: 28:05

That's right, that's right.

Speaker 2: 28:06

That's a brilliant part, so you get to pick that and own that, and it ends up then being a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 28:13

Kara, thank you so much for jumping on this episode together.

Speaker 2: 28:26

If folks wanted to reach out to you one-on-one, where's a good place they can find you? Oh, I'm certainly on LinkedIn and email as well. So Cara Clark Williams on LinkedIn website is marketing-collectivecom and my email is Cara with a K K A R A at marketing-collectivecom. So those would be great ways I would love to talk to folks.

Speaker 1: 28:39

Awesome. Thank you so much, cara. This was great. Thank you, we'll have to do another episode.

Speaker 2: 28:43

Absolutely. Appreciate it very much.

Speaker 1: 28:46

You bet. Thank you for listening to this episode of TGO Podcast. You can find all episodes on our podcast page at wwwrealign4resultscom. You can find me, Benno, host of TGO podcast, there as well. Just email, benno B-E-N-N-O at realign4resultscom. Let's keep growing you.