Masters of SaaS
Masters of SaaS
How to Lead Happier Teams with 3 Simple Rules - Lorena Morales @ Go Nimbly
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode we're talking to Lorena Morales, VP of marketing at Go Nimbly.
Get ready for a wild ride through the lessons of becoming a marketing leader: from moving to the US as an immigrant student to the often-overlooked importance of self-awareness and its impact on building a happy team.
Other topics we dive into:
- the role of speed and adaptability in marketing
- how to measure branding ( if you think you can't, give this episode a listen!)
- why sleep is on her one on one meeting checklist
Upraw media: https://uprawmedia.com/
Episode highlights: https://uprawmedia.com/blog/lead-go-nimbly
If you are keen to know more about Upraw Media or be a Masters of SaaS guest speaker, visit uprawmedia.com or DM us on LinkedIn. We are also on Youtube if you'd like to put a face to the names and voices of the best in SaaS. Thanks for tuning in!
Hey guys, welcome to the Masters of SaaS podcast brought to you by Upraw Media, a growth marketing agency for SaaS specialising in paid media content and conversion rate optimisation. I'll be your host, Todd Chambers. I have the absolute pleasure of chatting with really smart people from the SaaS industry. The goal is to extract as much value as possible. What are their strategies, the tactics, the failures, funny stories, key learnings? All of this can then be used to help you grow and scale your own SaaS business. In this episode, I speak with Lorena Morales, the VP of Marketing at Go Nimbly, a San Francisco based revenue operations company with approximately 15 million ARR and 50 plus headcount. As always, we cover a lot of ground. Firstly, we discuss Lorena's struggle as a Mexican immigrant to make a successful life and career in the US. in her own words; she had pretty much zero chance of making it Silicon Valley. But her stubbornness and persistence, among other things, made the difference. I wanted to lean into Laura's marketing experience, so we touch on the role of speed and adaptability in marketing, being self-aware and how your personality type influences leadership and management, justifying spend on brand and the unmeasurable, and how to ensure as a manager, you don't lose that execution sharpness. We wrap things up nicely on a personal note, with the importance of sleep, protecting your own time, and Lorena's weird obsession with watches. It was a fun episode, and I hope you guys enjoy it. Lorena, welcome to the show!
Lorena Morales:Thank you, Todd. It's such a pleasure to be with you and let's see what you can get out of me! Not a lot of people get a lot of information from this Mexican but let's say let's see how it goes.
Todd Chambers:I will definitely do my best. Well, if you don't mind, we can start off with your kind of background and your heritage. I believe you're currently based in the Bay Area, but that wasn't always the case. How did you kind of end up pursuing the American dream and ending up in the US if that's the right way to put it?
Lorena Morales:Oh, the famous American dream. As I said, I am Mexican. I was born and raised in Mexico City, my Mexico lindo querido. That wasn't always the case As you said, I also lived in Argentina and a couple of other places in Latin America before I actually came to the US. The reason why I pursued coming here for graduate education was I call it life. You know, it was never in my plans. Actually, I was accepted to the University of Carnegie Mellon in Australia. I am the youngest of three siblings, and I come from a very traditional family, so when my mother got the news, of course, she was super excited. But she, you know, like this kind of mental game that your parents do. And like, I'm so happy for you, which is crying at the same time, because Australia, she knew she wouldn't be able to see me that often and I am very, very close to my mother. So that's a moment when I started to see other options. And soon enough, we came as a family to San Francisco in a trip in a Christmas. Actually, I remember it very well. When I was here, we were staying in one of the hotels at the top of the heels in downtown. And I remember saying to my father, like "I'm gonna live here". I don't know when I don't know why, I don't know how, but I am gonna live in this city. I couldn't help it, and San Francisco was love at first sight. I don't even believe in those type of things, but that was a moment, that was a year probably it was 2009 around those years. And my father told me like, yeah, of course, let's go and have breakfast because I'm starving. And then when I came back to Mexico, there was this international business school that reached out to me after they knew I had other opportunities. Also, my other plan was to move to Paris to th HEC. I just realised that it wa n't downtown Paris, so my dr am school schooling ex erience was not going to be as dreamable, so I was like, "y u know what? No, I don't kn w". And this international sc ool, Hult, they had a very in ernational programme as well, me ning that you could rotate ev ry couple of months to cities li e Rio de Janeiro to Dubai, to li e very exotic places. And I' e always had a very exotic pe sonality. So, I said, "You kno what, this is the place" and one of their locations was pre isely San Francisco. So gue s what? I ended up applying; I had already my Jima and JRI, all the fun stuff that all every single immigrant has to go through. And I applied, they gave me a scholarship, and I came here in 2012. After being here, I realised that I didn't even want to rotate in the programme, because I understood that I needed to build a network. And that was very hard for me as an introvert. So I sacrificed one thing for another, right? Like you can't have everything in this life. I stayed my entire programme here in San Francisco to start to understand the companies, how to apply to a job in the US, how to even understand how to talk to people in the US. You don't have to meet the same applications here in the in the US. And in Mexico, for God's sake, in Mexico, you can have your picture in your resume, which is kind of f*cked up if you ask me. But understanding all those processes was was super hard for me. And that's how I ended up pursuing the American dream, by education. It's the only the only way that I know how to thrive in life.
Todd Chambers:Yeah, and what did your chances look like? An immigrant coming from Mexico to Silicon Valley, what kind of, realistically, your chances of making it and getting a VP of Marketing type job in a company like Go Nimbly, which we'll get to soon?
Lorena Morales:Oh, my God, I would say zero to none. Here's
the reality:back in the 80s, and 90s, Mexicans, we are very agile. We're an agile culture, we're going to find a way, and I can promise you that. The bad part of that is that all the immigrants that came to the US back in those years, they found a way, and it wasn't the right way of doing things. And with that, they put a stigma. And they created these, what I thought was a cliche of like, the US things. This concept of Mexicans that every single Mexican that comes to the US is not educated, they are coming for the wrong reasons, and they are coming to steal something to the US citizens. When in reality, the new generations of Mexicans are very well educated people. I'm very capable. And just in general, Mexico City right now, for example, is a hub for tech, which not a lot of people know. So that's when I say, my chances were zero because back in 2012, I heard people telling me like, you know, Lorena, the system in the US is one of the most penalised, and you're going to have to spend probably 15 years of your life just getting to know potentially, and you're going to have to be depending on companies and on processes that are hurtful and that are going to be a challenge. And they were not lying, Todd. Day one that I came here, there was not a pair of open arms waiting for me and saying like "Hey, welcome Mexican", it was the opposite. The good thing is that with this school that I was mentioning, where I did my first master's degree, we were all in the same boat. We were all immigrants, we were all very international people, and that made me feel that I could have a chance if I worked hard enough. And that's what I did. I started to understand people the best way that I could. And people believed in me, so I never, I don't think I never disappointed anyone that gave me an opportunity. And I worked my tail three to five times more than the usual American if you have to say like that. Yeah.
Todd Chambers:Though, that leads nicely on to my next
question, which is:were there any special characteristics or traits that you think you have? Either from your Mexican upbringing, something from your family or just something intrinsically new? What was it about you that kind of managed to break out and actually make it and be the person you are today?
Lorena Morales:I think this is gonna sound weird, but, out of the three of us, my siblings and I, I am the one that has been very solitary since I'm very, very little. My family is like you have to know them. They like to spend a lot of time together, and now I have two beautiful nephews that I talk about in every single podcast just because I have to and they love to stick together. I was always very solitary. It was easy for me to kind of be attached to a certain level and use visualisation tools or psychology, psychology tools of like, picturing what I want in my life and going after that. The second thing, I'm stubborn as hell, like I haven't known anyone as stubborn as I am, which is a good thing, but it's also a bad thing. But on the good side of it, I always knew the path to staying in the US not only as an immigrant but as a Mexican immigrant. And I literally, I cried a lot, so I always live with notebooks like, here is the proof of that. All my life I've been doing journaling and like stuff like that. So I literally visualised things, and I wrote down the things that I needed to do in order to succeed. And I didn't check off the bullet point until I achieved that thing and I kept a journal of my successes because you know what Todd, the reality is that after 13 years of uncertainty; and not only uncertainty but ambiguity. It's very tough for the brain to believe that it's time to give up because you have better chances, even in your home country or even in Europe or because that's true. I do have other opportunities in other places in the world but I just I can't let go of San Francisco, I can't.
Todd Chambers:That's almost like the stubbornness within you is. Stubborn that you will see this go through and you will persist no matter what. So it's kind of stubbornness backed persistence.
Lorena Morales:Yes. And like that curiosity, it's a combination of things, right? You're never a one quality thing. You're always like pieces of characteristics or pieces of people or pieces of moments. My father, for example, is also these. I come from a successful family. Both my mother, my father, my grandparents, were successful people, are successful peopleboth in the business and in their personal lives. I grew up understanding success, and that might sound a little arrogant, but that's all I knew when I was little and expectations were freaking high on me. Also, that developed a chip in my mind that I put myself that nobody else put it. Of expectations of myself as well that went way, way, way high to the roof. And I've always seen that as a good thing.
Todd Chambers:Yeah, that's nice. And we can talk more about that as we go on with the interview. But just to even get some context of your current position and your current role. Maybe you can just explain, Go Nimbly, your position within it and then any kind of context into the company size, revenue, anything you're kind of comfortable sharing.
Lorena Morales:Sure, um, Go Nimbly is not only the first one in the field, but it's the only company doing executional work on revenue operations. What that means is that we see it on the operations teams of companies like Zendesk, Twilio, Pager duty, we have helped some of them go to all the way through IPO. And it's been a really fun roller coaster. Before the pandemic, our forecasting was to hit 20 million ARR. That didn't happen, of course, but we are very close to 15, which is something that you don't see that often in a consultancy space. We have grown year over year of 100%. We even opened our third office back in 2019the ends of 2019, where Chicago. Today, we still have that office, we have the New York office, our secondary home, let's say, and we have San Francisco the headquarters.
Todd Chambers:Yeah, okay. So I personally am not hugely experienced in revenue operations, and I was just doing my research for this podcast. I'm just gonna read this paragraph and then maybe you can stress test and kind of expand
upon it:revenue operations is the alignment of sales, marketing and customer success, operations across the full customer lifecycle to drive growth, through operational efficiency and keep all teams accountable to revenue. This holistic approach is designed to break down silos between departments." Do you think that's like an accurate depiction of in your mind of Rev ops?
Lorena Morales:That's kind of our fancy definition because probably you found that in one of our fancy sites. It is very accurate. Important keywords here: breaking down silos, success and operations, and the most important thing here is the customer lifecycle. So in fewer words, it's what revenue operations do, like when you put it to practice, and you become an organisation in the actual transformation to revenue operations, instead of legacy operations. What happens is, you align your entire GTM team and operations team to always look at revenue. And the thing is you have to be customer-obsessed. There is no other way to succeed in revenue operations. I have said this before the days where there were companies product-based are gone, and they are gone for good. Today, it's either customer-based companies or what I like to call relationship-based companies. Because that's the way that through the methodology of revenue operations, you can start to identify revenue leakages through your funnel, and that's pretty much what it means. And then let's say the consequence of doing this effectively is that you are going to break silos in each of the departments that I have mentioned already.
Todd Chambers:Yeah. So you're not actually a software company. You're actually more of a I'm not sure if you have an agency is a right way to depict it, but you're more of a human-driven, giving strict strategy and execution support led by humans as opposed to software would that be a fair thing?
Lorena Morales:I love the word human; it's my favourite word in English. Yes, we're very human-led. Actually, humans are our product, because we deploy, we have the capacity to deploy entire teams or just single people in these companies to, it can be as tactical as it's needed, or as strategic as a company needs or wants. It can go both ways. Ideally, we have a mix of tactical work and strategic work, which has been a very interesting journey. As of today, we are not a product company. I can't tell you more about that. But there's a very interesting 2021 for Go Nimbly.
Todd Chambers:Yeah, interesting. Why did you choose Go Nimbly? Was there something that stood up about the company or?
Lorena Morales:Oh boy, Todd, that's a funny one. It's actually the first company that I get to choose in my career here in the US because before that, I was tied to a VISA, and Go Nimbly is the first one that's not the case. I chose the industry first, so SaaS. Our primary customers are SaaS. And even though I had friends here and there that worked, like at Twilio or like LinkedIn; If you live in in the Bay Area, you are gonna know an engineer in one of these companies. And even though I knew them, and I heard of them, I never really got to see these companies inside. What I mean by inside is how they function operationally. And like the things that made them or qualified them as being a hyper-growth company. When I saw what Go Nimbly was doing, of course, I had zero ideas about what was revenue operations. It's like someone told me to eat entirely new food and I didn't even have the silverware to eat it, you know. But that has never been the problem for me because if I believe in something is in learning and on learning things, so I was not worried. But when I interviewed with them their CEO is this very particular character. He happens to be my boss and my friend today, Jason Ryko. And when he interviewed me, he saw something on me with my background in branding and design thinking and all these things that not only I applied to my job, but I am genuinely passionate about. He has a little bit of background in advertising as well as design. He's also a very kind of in the art type of type-of-guy. So I think we connected automatically and then, of course, I knew our CSO, our CRO, our Director of Operations. And all of them are incredible people. Like let alone the talent. The talent I knew it was there because this was new. It was a company that has been profitable since day one. The CEO was not after funding. So that for me was a relief. I've been working with CEOs all my life and the difference between being with a CEO that is after funding and a CEO that number one believes in marketing and second, that is involved in marketing, it's heaven on earth. So that was Jason. And when I saw that, and it was a new thing, I'm telling you, when I'm curious about something, I can't, I need to let it consume me; otherwise, I won't sleep. Well, I don't sleep that much anyway, but it's something that I need to pursue. So that's why I ended up with a crazy Jason Reichl. It's been a little more than two years and a half running their, their marketing department as their VP of Marketing.
Todd Chambers:Okay, and you were initially hired a VP of marketing. Do you mind give me some context to kind of the size of the team currently and what the scope of your role covers?
Lorena Morales:We are about 54 employees. I don't know the exact number because with the pandemic, like numbers kind of fluctuated a little bit. But I think that would be accurate to say. And, and the other question was, what was the other question?
Todd Chambers:Goodness me, I can't even remember. But I will ask you another question, though, funding. A common thread I always hear from people actually on this show and actually speaking some of our customers is when you have a company that's chasing funding, as you put it, the kind of the mindset is very different. Can you just touch on, you just
Lorena Morales:I actually meant like heaven and hell, but sure. It can be heaven on earth if you are not pursuing funding. Here's
the difference:I've been working the last decade for almost exclusively for startups. And when you have the head of the entire management team, or leadership team, however you want to call it just focusing on like how to get more money and touch ,and he said it was heaven and earth? Can you just talk on how to make the businesses stay afloat, it's really hard for ma keting, or the marketing le der to execute on the vision of that CEO, let's call him or he because they are not ava that a little bit? lable to you. It's not their job They're almost out of the cou That can be a positive thing if you are little in later stages. t. I believe that if you're in series, for example, C, V all the way to IPO or after IPO, it shouldn't be the CEO job to be right there with marketing. But in their early stages, I think you do need someone that is focused in, "okay, how are we going to sell this?" and someone that understands the clients in the most human way so they can ork together with marketing an the CEO or marketing and s les. Because otherwise, you e d up with the silos that we were talking about in a little hile ago, where you say, "you know what? I'm marketing, I'm gonna have my own KPIs and sale, you can and do whatever you want, and be loud and like, be there in your corner, and tha's how we're going to Ideally, that's not how you want to do things from the very beginning because the truth is what we've seen with companies that we have helped from very early stages like Lattice is that at the end, that pain that you're feeling internally on like, "Oh, sales are complaining to me about leads or marketing is bickering about, Hey, why are you not doing anything with the leads that are coming in?" That bickering that you're feeling internally guess who is feeling it as well? Your customer. When your customer feels that friction, it's something that is really hard to change when you are in late stages. It's not impossible. Revenue operations is a solution, of course. But that's what I am telling you about the difference between when you have a CEO that it's involved in the day to day GTM strategy or that it's involved in what we call that going in with a revenue team. Whereas a CEO that is always talking or like seeing venture capitalists or like working in PowerPoint point presentations, which by the way, I've also been with that CEO and my job has changed dramatically over these last decade where I've done everything from content to paid acquisition to like talking to VCs, I think I became a very well rounded marketer, kind of the Jane of all trades. But yeah, it's huge, like the feeling for the marketing leader is tremendously huge, because that's what, it's not a coincidence that the tenure of the CMO is the lowest in the C level suite. And I think that has something to do with it.
Todd Chambers:No, that's really interesting. I actually didn't know that. It sounds like you've done many different roles, and you've worn different hats over the years. And it ties quite nicely into this, and if you don't mind, I just wanted to read you just this quote, which is the I'm sure you're familiar with, which is the only constant in life is change. So on that note, how important do you think speed and adaptability are in marketing?
Lorena Morales:I would even remove the word important. It is crucial. It is crucial if you want to be in the marketing world. Because if you compare the functions in an organisation, and if you look historically, this doesn't come from me as these come from real experts in the field. Even from Forester Research, where marketing has been the department that has experienced the most change in the last let's say, two decades, than any other instance of the revenue team. That needs a specific type of mentality or individual to run those things. You can only be effective or have an impact to revenue if you understand that, for example, you start asking the right questions of like, "okay, how many leads of our pipeline were actually close to our ICP?". Those questions you couldn't even ask them yourself, what, like 10 years ago. And now because of the automation that happened, we have more information than ever. And that's on the internal side On the external side, now you have a customer, that it's not only super high maintenance, which they should have. We should have been those customers from day one. Advertising was a lie. Back in the 60s in the 70s, it was all about manipulating. And that for me, felt wrong. Today, you need to do marketing that. I mean, it's a great time to be a marketer if you ask me because now not only we have the trust of the customer because they can see everything, it's like they have these laser vision where they can see through the entire company, but especially marketing, your customer is going to know if you're selling something that is not good for them or that is not a fit. And with that, what it happened is that marketing has to be like once you have your qualified leads, and once you have that alignment with your sales team, and once you understand your CFO, and once you understand the stretch of your land and expand, that's the moment that you can kind of be a more strategic leader. But what if you don't have those things, and if your systems, for example, are not connected, you are going to be the person that it's 60% of your time very tactical, very kind of making sure that those things happen. And the other 40% you're going to be talking about like brand and like, like awareness in general and things that are more high level and that our people would call them more fun, for me is not about what is fun and what is not fun. For me is"what is more what what what gives more impact to the to the business". And that might be a different thing in seed funding than in series C or D.
Todd Chambers:Yeah, yeah, for sure. Maybe we can just take a bit of a left turn and talk about managing a team.I'm sure you've built your own team, and your core function now is managing and getting the best out of your team. Do you have any kind of key learnings or observations or advice that you would give to someone that was specifically looking to set up a marketing team?
Lorena Morales:Oh, wow, this is one of my favourites, and I'm gonna tell you why - because I ended up managing things by coincidence. I'm sorry people, but yes, it was a coincidence. I perfect coincidence that someone up there put in front of me and I decided to take the opportunity. But honestly, this is gonna sound weird. The Lorena of 10 years ago, didn't like people at all. Like I had really, really big trust issues. I mean a lot of Mexicans do, honestly. But especially me, I been I'm telling you all my life I've been very extremely introverted I find my energy in, in being by myself in reading books in learning. I'm an IMTJ personality. Not that it matters, but there are some certain traits that apply to those people. And so when my first opportunity of managing a team arose not only I needed a job, but I needed to say yes because an immigrant can't afford to lose a job. That's it; I can't be more transparent. The first thing that happened nd that taught me a huge lesson s when you start managing, it eans that automatically you top being the do-er. You don't o things anymore. Your job hanges dramatically to being he person that is more coaching omeone else, or that it's aking sure that your people are eeling good emotionally, or hat your people are in the ight positions, or that your eople like the things that are ay more people-oriented than nything else. And at the very eginning, I said like, Oh my od, "am I gonna be good at his?" because I don't, I don't ike to be the psychiatrist or y friends. I really don't, and they know that. Even though I end up being that person, I don't ask for it. It's not, it's not like a comment on me yo r entire life, because that s something that I enjoy. But hat I do enjoy are mean ngful conversations. And then I realised that I was very good at connecting with people on a deeper level. So today, eight, nine years after So my recommendation for someone is: making sure that you want to that first experience, my team at Go Nimbly, it's one of the things that I am most proud of, because not only they didn't have the experience in re enue operations. Nobody had th same thing when they hired me because revenue potential re enue operations wasn't a th ng back in 2018. Today, not on y they are crazy effective at th ir job, but they are happy hu ans at their jobs. And they ha e told me that to my face, li e, "Hey, you know what, this ha been the best job that I've ha. And I think you have so ething to do with that". So ev n though I have trouble ca ling myself a leader, I think I m very good at understanding my people. And that's a full-ti e job. be around people, that you want to be the person that makes s re that your team has as a lea for at least eight hours; tha you want to be the person th t is not doing things anymore. Y u're not gonna receive a pat i the back. Recognition is out o the door at that moment, bec use, again, you're not going o be fixing things or at leas not the tactical things that have a bigger impression in the company. You're going to be kind of the back-end person of the organisation. But if you do it right, and if you like that sensation of "I have to do with he potential of this perso, and I get to see these perso bloom to their entire, full, full potential". For me, there is no better feeling. So just ake sure that you under tand what it takes to deal wit people on the on a daily basi.
Todd Chambers:Yeah, it's interesting. You were speaking, and correct me if I'm wrong, that maybe you're more of an introvert. How important is it to have self-awareness around the kind of who you are as a person your own personality traits? And then using that to lean into being a manager or leader? Can you speak on that?
Lorena Morales:That's what I talk about every single day. The introspective work that it's needed and this is not only in marketing people, it's especially important also in sales, also in product. I think in every instance if you are going to be managing a team or managing a department even if you don't don't manage a team. I think that the self-awareness, homework that you need to do every single day on yourself, it's primarily gonna be impacting how you present yourself at work. If you don't know, the first thing that you need to understand is the areas where you need to improve. And believing in the honesty and believing in humility and believing just seeing the truth, in general, is gonna set you apart from the other leaders. If you come to the table saying"hey, you know what? I am fantastic at doing these million things". The reality, at least in marketing, is that you're not gonna find that unicorn that everyone wants. The Super CMO that has taken a company to the 100 and $50 million ARR and they scaled in one year and a half. Well, yeah, but that was not only marketing. That was, that was your entire team, and at least, I don't know, a single market that is very effective in all the areas and all the tools in the toolbox of a marketer. That's a myth. That person doesn't exist. If you want to be in a leadership position in marketing, you need to understand three things and own them, or take responsibility of them, because ownership tends to have this meaning of like, nobody touches these that I own. And that shouldn't be the case. It's more around what are you responsible for. I think there are two main things: insights on how their business is going, so you have to bring your analytical mind. Understand if that's your weakness, for example, it's been a weakness of mine for a very long time, and my team at Go Nimbly is fantastic, helping me become a better marketer, in that sense. Product you need to understand what the hell you're selling, and you need to talk to your product team often, even as often as, as with your customer, if you can, and you need to, to breathe and live branding. Understand what is the brand and make it effective. With those three things, I think you're in an in a good path to become the head of marketing at x or y company. And so I think, yeah, that self-awareness of, hey, these are my areas where I'm gonna need help, and I'm honest. And you know, what? I am an immigrant and are like. I like English is not my first language. Don't expect from me to create the content. But I'm gonna freaking make sure that I bring a superstar. And for example, that's what I did at Go Nimbly. Even though I write on both, and I love to write, and I and I do a lot of thought leadership content out there. Because it's in me to be a writer, I understood, and I knew that I couldn't put creating that content on my hand at the very beginning when I started as a single marketer. So having that intuition and recognition of these are my highs, and these are my lows, and my lows can impact the business, but I'm gonna work on those. That's hyper important.
Todd Chambers:Yeah, that's a really, really good device. I have a couple of follow up questions. One of them was on branding. And I think we live in a world now, certainly, in my world, where everybody wants to, you know, spend x and get y returns. And you spoke about the importance of branding there. How do you kind of balance, or how do you justify marketing spend in areas that are kind of less easy to measure and an attribute to your specific marketing initiatives?
Lorena Morales:The golden question for every marketer. Okay, so here's the thing, Todd. It's not a coincidence that there's new kind of metrics that the very sophisticated marketers in very sophisticated companies are looking at, that eventually become ROI. So, for example, the cost per outcome. That's a metric that not everyone is talking about. What it means is, in your head, the cost of not only one strategy or one tactic, but the cost of, let's say, a campaign, that it's gonna impact one of the areas of marketing. If you set a level on that, and then you match it, that's when and you attach an amount of dollars to that. That's when it becomes ROI. How do you measure branding? I think that's what you're also asking. A lot of people will tell you, you can't, because it's one of those things that it's qualitative metric instead of a quantitative metric. You can't measure feelings. But I have an answer. I am the type of marketer that believes that it can be measured. It absolutely can because you see it. If in a conference, you see that people are coming to you after, I don't know, six months(because the speaker happened to be someone from your company) and you see people going to them. And you see people asking about like, hey, well, what is this? Or like I had a question about X or Y, or you start seeing people recognising your name more and more, you're not going to be able to pinpoint exactly what's the value of that. At Go Nimbly, what I made sure to do was that one of the KPIs that I bring, or that I brought a long time ago, was the number of conversations happening. Because I do believe, as I was telling you that the business should be relationship-based, probably they are not going to convert in the timeline that you are expecting. You shouldn't tie your ROI to the, to the fiscal year, ever. especially not in branding. But if you do know the cost per outcome, and then you can tie that to a value, that's when you be you measure branding. The other very easy way is measuring organic against paid. Why people try to complicate things that are not complicated? Like if you're getting traffic, is the same or less than, than than your paid acquisition. Sweetie, you have a problem if your organic traffic has been increasing over the last quarter or the last year or over the campaign that you didn't insist on why, that gives you a pretty good starting point to start to measure branding, or how people understand brand awareness.
Todd Chambers:Yeah, for sure. I couldn't agree more. And my other follow up question, which is also kind of tied into some of the things you said, is around being a leader. Your main position, of course, is looking after the people in your team. I always joke that I feel like a full-time therapy therapist sometimes, but how do you how you keep that kind of executional sharpness because things are changing so fast. How do you, as a VP of Marketing stay kind of low enough in the trenches to know what's going on to taste things to see where you should be allocating spend, but then also having that kind of top view where you're just kind of getting the best out of people? How do you balance those two things?
Lorena Morales:You're gonna make me think here. Actually no, it's a fairly easy question to answer for me. I have understood that delegating is one of the toughest parts for people that are escalating in the corporate ladder. They don't want to let go of things. And I've never been that kind of person. Actually, for me, I guess it's because again, my personality, it's very, very nice to see the other person shine. And when that person is shining, it means that I'm not going to have access to every single thing that is happening every single day. What I asked my team is, if movement happens in some of the areas that you are working on, I need to know. But if you are in X or Y meeting or if you need to talk to X or Y people in the organisation, please go for it and like they don't need my authorisation to execute. There's a difference between being kind of the the eagle flying above everyone and making sure that that everyone is I'm telling you first of all happy humans or, as close as they can be to that, and secondly, that they are in the right positions to grow not only their their path, but you need people that can expand to other areas and their own specialisation. So you ultimately become an eagle and you're just flying happily. I mean, I hope most of the time is just making sure that that your team is doing things the way they should. And what that means is trust. But people tend to think that trust comes in your contract or in your benefits packages. It's not. It's something that it needs to be gained every single day and how you gain trust by being accountable. If I tell my team "hey guys, I am travelling for a conference, but you can absolutely count on me". Let's say, recording that video that you need from me. And then I deliver right on time, right when I said that I would that I would do that thing. And I am consistent with being that person that they expect me to be. They're slowly gonna start to trust me as a professional. And then if I start peeling the onion and then letting them know like, "Hey, you know what, guys, today I had a really tough conversation with my sister I'm not going to be available for the next two hours". It was hard for me I'm telling you because I don't think people that have known mean they like the past 15 years ago describe me as a people person. Today probably people good but uh, that was a hard transition for me to to open up my life like that. But if you expect people to come with their true honest personalities to work and do the best work that they can, because I believe that you can do your best work and actually enjoy it. When you when you trust your leader and when you feel safe around that person. But it's a two way street, I can't expect my people to tell me if they are sleeping eight hours or if they are being they are overworking if I don't do the same. So on my one on ones, the two questions that I always always ask is how many hours of sleep you got this week? And how many hours of work you got. At the pandemic, for example, some of my team, the answer was like, "you know what? I work like around 30 hours". Todd, my answer was, "congratulations". Does that relate to it to your sleep? If your sleep is higher, than I am super happy, keep doing that! It's okay to expect less from you. And I am expecting less from you because we are trying to survive, everyone. But if you're telling me that you work less, and then you slept less, and those metrics... because they are metrics at the end and those metrics keep decreasing, then we have a problem, and we need to talk about it. So I think it's an entire way of doing things. Again, it's not one ingredient to the pie, right?
Todd Chambers:Yeah, absolutely. And actually, the sleep thing you mentioned a few times that you when I think when we started, you said that you don't get much sleep and then you've mentioned sleep with people in your team a few times it's a nice segue into maybe more personal questions. How much sleep do you get?
Lorena Morales:Okay, there's a difference between going to bed and sleeping. I am actually under medication because my brain at night, it's almost impossible to stop. So I am very protective of my sleep but when things happen, or you end up becoming kind of the caregiver if you are a good head of X or Y and when people worry you. Then you have your own worries, and then you have your family, and then you have all these things going in your mind it's tough actually to sleep, but if you find a way to force it and then protect it, the same thing with your time, you can get to amazing levels of everything. So my answer to you is I do sleep my eight hours, but only because of the help of my therapist for transparency, yes.
Todd Chambers:Yeah but I really really appreciate the honesty. Sleep is it to me, it seems like the one that people speak about you know, stress and eating and exercising but I'm not sure sleep really gets the attention that it needs, and for me personally, I'm twice as productive if I get I get good sleep. I'm also a huge protector of my sleep. I have this sleep tracking ring and what you said. There's a difference between being in bed or and actually getting good quality sleep. So for me, if I get good quality sleep, I think all my good decisions and good work kind of stemmed from that, but it's really interesting to have that in the one to ones as well as the first question you asked..
Lorena Morales:I want to try the ring. Honestly, Todd we're gonna have our conversation after this about that but uh, I just I hate to feel things on my body when I am sleeping so I can't sleep with masks I can't sleep with rings or with my water with I can't. So that was kind of the thing that made me not buy into the ring, but I've heard fantastic things about it.
Todd Chambers:Yeah, it's a maybe as well. How have you tried I would assume to help with sleep you've tried meditation or forms of meditation to help with that?
Lorena Morales:Yeah, the very beginning back in March I think I underestimated it because I've always been sceptical of things that seem not, that seem not very active for me. And the idea of calming my mind, through going inside of your mind and through breathing, honestly felt kind of stupid, because I was like, "wait a minute, breathing is something that your body does naturally, like what is this? I need to run like, I don't know, 10 miles". I used to be a professional swimmer; I still swim. And those things seem to be way more effective. But thanks to my therapist was like, "why are you so hard on trying things if you've been that person all your life?" like every single thing that life has put in my way, I have tried. And I didn't want to do it with meditation, because I thought it was dumb. It was the dumbest thing ever. Like, sit there and do nothing and just breathe. That was my first impression. Then a company that now they should be paying me for like talking about them everything, every time that I can. It's called Core. It's a little gadget that when you meditate, it vibrates, it matches your breathing. And you feel the thing vibrating. So I realised that a person like me that that it's very physical, very, very, very aware of my body, I needed to connect my physical body with my emotions and with my breathing. So that connection that happened between my hands, and literally focusing on my hands feeling something actually worked. And now it's been more than six months. I'm not gonna say I'm successful. Every single day, sometimes I am the type of person that I can throw things at the wall, and I can get very frustrated with myself. But I've learned to be more compassionate towards my practice. And I usually do it when I can't move anymore when I have swum, and I have run, and I have to the bike, and I have to do something that tires my physical body so that my mind is a little more welcoming to the meditation practice. So for someone that that has that problem, please give it a try. For me it has done fantastic things. And I don't think I'm going to stop doing it anytime soon.
Todd Chambers:Yeah. Is there anything else aside from the sleep? And I'm not sure if that's exactly what you meant, if it's it really helps your sleep. But has there been anything profound that you've noticed a difference in yourself since you've done meditation?
Lorena Morales:Yes, I think, for me, when I was not sleeping, I was trying to, like I now I understand from the experts in this, that I was doing the exact wrong thing. So when I was not sleeping, like, let's say at 4 am, and I would wake up with a problem, or they say, you know, you got older because now you don't need an alarm because your own problems wake you up at night. And it's absolutely true people, as you get older, you don't need a frickin alarm because it's your own problems waking you up. So if I would wake up at four, oh my God Todd, instead of just recognising, like, hey, my brain doesn't want to sleep right now. Okay, I'm gonna get out of my bed, I'm gonna go to the couch. And I'm going to start reading, let's see, I could force myself and punish myself seeing the clock and saying like, Oh my god, I have only like three hours until I have to start my day or like, "Oh my God, if I don't sleep in 12 minutes or 12.5, then this means that that and that". And then you create this cycle where you just become like, yeah, that you're losing some type of like, like thing, which is true. The most valuable things that the human has, in this life or any other that exists is precisely your time and how you spend it. So your sleeping time should be as precious as your time with your significant other, with your dog with your coworkers. So for me, when I was not sleeping when I was supposed to be sleeping was like I am wasting my time, and I don't waste my time. That's something that I everyone knows about me. I don't waste a single second of my time. But now I'm telling you, thanks to meditation; I'm more compassionate. It still happens even if you are in medication or whatever. Nothing is perfect, right? It still happens sometimes, so when it happens, I just wake up, pull myself out, even if it's cold, whatever it is, I stay away from my bed. And I do something that doesn't include any technological gadget. And I even
done Yoga, like at 3:30 am. And it helps, yeah..
Todd Chambers:You spoke about time, and this will be my final question. I really appreciate your time. You said that you don't waste time and time is the most precious resource we have. How do you protect your own time from things that are not really opportunities, but they're disguised as opportunities?
Lorena Morales:Yeah, I needed I'm telling you, I'm a very worried human being. I've been obsessed about time since I recall. And my father is someone that really likes watches, like a fiscal watch. And I am the same. So I kind of developed this obsession for having a watches collection. And even though some of them like you need to change the battery, or like they are sold at X or Y, and they don't tell you that the right time at that moment. I always have a watch on my wrist, simply because it's very a constant reminder of like, these minutes won't ever come back. So be careful who you're giving it to. And so from very early stages of my life, even when I was a teenager, my friends used to hate me because it was like, why couldn't you go out on a Friday? And I'm like "because I don't want to because I have more important things to do. And there's only this Friday". And they were like, "no, but then there's next Friday if you don't" and I was like, "No, no, no. Next Friday, I don't know". Today, this Friday, I don't want to do it. And it was very easy for me to say no. Now, as an adult, I just crossed very recently, the third decade, I am exactly the same, and that hasn't changed. Like if I don't want to go to, and the people that I work with, they know that. When we go to conferences or something, and I don't want to do like a happy hour or something, I simply say "you know what, I'm not gonna be there". And if I say no, they know there's no way they can convince me like not even with mezcal, not even with food, like, there is no way. So I made up protector in my mind. So it's a little creature. Please don't laugh.
Todd Chambers:Sorry, too late.
Lorena Morales:I knew you were gonna laugh, but it has a name, and it has a shape and everything, and that's the one protecting my time since I was very, very young. And I started to see before the pandemic, and people could be out every single weekend. And I was like, and they would ask me like, "why do you like to stay in your house so much?" And I would ask the opposite like what's so growing your house that you want to leave all the freakin time? So yes, I created a protector. That's a short answer. Yep.
Todd Chambers:How many? How many watches do you have? I'm really intrigued now.
Lorena Morales:Here in the US, I have around 25.
Todd Chambers:25 watches. Wow. And they're all like, analogue? Are they old school? Watches or are they, is it like a mix of digital as well?
Lorena Morales:It's a mix. Like, I mean, it's things because some of them are like, Yeah, quite like very special pieces. Some of them they are just like, I mean, I love the design and when I need to have it and so it's a lot about design. And if I like it, I'm gonna have it. Then some others have more emotional connections on like my grandfather gave it to me or like my father giving it to me on my birthday. So like some stuff like that, or I bought it to myself when I accomplish x or y or so it's kind of a mix, but uh, but yeah, it's a collection that it's yeah, it's my obsession. It's me. I don't care about clothes. I don't care about bags. I don't care about shoes. I am not a normal woman. What I care about are watches.
Todd Chambers:Very cool. Well, thank you so much for doing this was a really great interview. I appreciate you taking the time. And yeah, is there a place where people can reach you? Twitter, LinkedIn, email?
Lorena Morales:All of the above! My Twitter handles: Morales Lorena SF, My LinkedIn handle Morales Lorena and my email you can reach out to me at Lorena.Morales@gonimbly.com and thought it had been a fantastic time with you today. Thank you.
Todd Chambers:Yeah, thank you so much for this, speak soon. See ya! Thanks for listening to the podcast, guys. If you want to get links to any of the resources we discussed in the interview, head over to uprawmedia.com/slash podcast. Until next time, take it easy.