Charlie: Welcome to the Passle CMO Series Podcast, where we dive deep into all things marketing and business development in the professional services sector. I'm Charlie Knight, and in this special edition, we're taking you back to our first ever stateside CMO Series live conference, held this past summer in New York City. We had the privilege of kicking off the day with an insightful session led by Trish Lilley, who joined us during her tenure as CMO at Thompson Coburn.  Trish now serves as the Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer at Barnes & Thornburg. With over 25 years of experience in the industry, Trish delivered an inspiring masterclass on how to drive meaningful transformation within law firms. Today, we're bringing you her full session, packed with practical advice for CMOs on gaining influence within their teams and across firm leadership. Plus, she shares some great anecdotes from her remarkable career in legal marketing. Enjoy. 

Trish: So I do want to talk to you about teams and team building, ways to ensure that your teams are functioning, are united, are buffers for you, like a nice pillow to land on when you get beat up on trying to champion an initiative. So I do want to talk about that. And I think it is related to championing change and driving change.

And I know we're talking about digital change, but I also want to talk… I will talk about two specific projects that I worked on. One was a long-running initiative and one was more of a finite project. But with both of those, it involved a lot of change, you know, shifting attitudes, helping people within the firm, helping, not forcing, but helping them to see things from a different perspective. And some of it was absurd and amusing. So hopefully the examples will be entertaining, if not helpful from any practical standpoint. I did just spend two and a half days at Harvard. I was the first person in my family out on my mom's side to be born outside of Southie. So it was a real goodwill-hunting moment for me. But I was at Harvard at this program on influential leadership, and there was so much information poured at me. I'm still synthesizing it, but I've tried to like get little nuggets in and I may throw things at you. But what I'll do after this is for anybody who's interested, hit me up. I'll put together a list of resources that you guys can check out. So I did want to tell you a little bit about myself because I do know a lot of people, but sometimes it's superficial and we pass in the night or at a cocktail party, if you're lucky and you don't have to listen to me. I come from a journalism background. I went to Temple University. I was a reporter early on when I was in college. I worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer, which was not the trash it is now. It was a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper. I covered government meetings. I interned in Harrisburg for… Which is the state capital in Pennsylvania and a horrible place to spend a summer as a 19-year-old, but there's nothing going on. But as part of that, I had mentors who sent me to ask very difficult questions of very important people. So I did have training from an early age, having to get my gumption up and put on my game face and whatever else. 

I'm very much a Northeast regional person. I've learned that now I'm working at a Midwest-based firm. I've realized just how Northeast-centric I am. Lora Wegman, who is our amazing director of marketing communications is here, and I'm sure she can attest to that. So I went to Temple. I covered federal court. I used typewriters. I, in fact, took a test for an internship on a manual typewriter. I'm not actually that old. They were just that cruel. And I've worked at eight law firms. So that's who I am and how I come at things. And we're going to talk about this word salad, which lives in my brain that's in the description. And I'm going to try to stay on script. But again, if what I'm saying is not helpful, not interesting, you have questions, you have a real life problem that you want answers about, or you would like feedback on, or you'd rather have the smart people in the room help you with, bring it up, interrupt, whatever. I'm from a very large Irish family, and it's not going to daunt me in the slightest. But when I kind of went over this, you know, we're going to talk about teams and driving digital change, but change is change, right? You know, it's just getting people to deal with things that they're uncomfortable with, to see the value in something, to see your vision. Sometimes I don't even know what my own vision is. So that's a thing you need to center that, but it's bringing people along for the ride. And it very much is a political sort of thing in my mind. I don't read that a ton. I mean, yes, there's sectors of influence and there's, you can do influence mapping and all of that. 

But for me, I just, I always think of JFK and LBJ. And LBJ, for anybody who knows anything about American politics, spent years in the Senate. He knew everybody's backdoor secrets. And he, you know, he just was an insider. JFK came in, he was beautiful and he talked a good game and he did nothing. LBJ came in and the Voting Rights Act came in and the Civil Rights Act came in because he knew where the bodies were buried. He knew how to twist arms. He knew how to grease wheels. All the cliches you can think of, he was able to execute on effectively because he did his homework. So, you know, some of it is just political capital. One of the things that we talked about at this Harvard program, and I think it's, you know, it's kind of common sense for anyone, is that MIT did this study and they found that the most effective teams, the smartest teams, the most successful teams had three consistent elements, diversity, empathy, and women. So, you know, I'm all about that. I'm all about the kids who now wear mismatched socks on purpose and they're okay with that. Like life is so much easier for them than it was for me in high school in the 80s. So I think that these are really key things, and I want to touch on them a little bit. 

The diversity is, you know, DEI right now, we want to make sure that we have people from diverse backgrounds. But what does that mean? For me, I think you have to consider the broad swath of diversity. Yes, cultural, how people may identify in different ways. You want to make surethat they've got professional backgrounds that are diverse, right? And you want to know what those backgrounds are. It is amazing to me sometimes that people who lead departments or lead teams have absolutely no curiosity about the people that work for them. They don't know what they've done before. They don't know what they've got. What skills they have. And they really don't benefit from the full strength of that team because they don't ask. I mean, part of being successful is being curious and learning to rely on your team.

So I think that this is something that's really important to do. You've got introverts and extroverts, right? But you've got thinkers and you've got doers. You've got people who just fly off and do stuff, and they're wacky, whatever. And you can let that incense you and frustrate you, as my bosses are incensed and frustrated by me because I am one of those people. Or you can kind of go like, okay, how do I deploy that in the greater mix of things, right? And how do I take this person who's a thinker and who literally wants to like, consider an idea for more than a minute, whatever, you know, and come back to you three days later with a very thoughtful response, like, where would you use them? And how would you deploy them? And where do they fit into things? We did this exercise at Harvard that I'm not going to make you do, but it was like, how many people have pets and how many people have, you know, three pets and how many people have four pets, whatever. And they were like, oh, these are the farmers. I have six pets. I am never farming anything. So that was a little silly in the beginning, but then it was like, how many people are, you know, play musical instruments? One, two, three, four, same thing. But the point is, know what your strengths are, know what these people all do, right? And I think that certainly for those of us who are managing large teams, it's very easy to ignore certain sectors of your team. You know, maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but wow, it takes so much work to talk to people and to care and to take an interest. And I am not naturally empathetic, nice, compassionate, whatever. So for me to talk to you about your chihuahua for like three days about whatever bladder issues it's having, but it is an investment. If you care for no other legitimate reason, it is an investment in that relationship. It's a personal connection. That's where we kind of get into the empathy stuff. Like, why do you even want it? That was my question, right? Why do you need empathy in a team? Well, you need it because when people feel safe, hate safe space, hate that term, whatever, overused, but I'm gonna throw some cliches in here. Sorry about that. But you create an environment, you create a lab, right, where people are okay with saying, hey, I know it sounds weird, but maybe we could do X, Y, Z. I know we're talking about an event space, but wouldn't it be cool if we put a giant screen outside and put, who came up with that idea? Brilliant. Probably not that expensive. And look, people like James get suckered into using space like this and paying extra for it probably. 

So you want those innovations, you want those ideas, but people are not going to proffer them. If it doesn't feel comfortable. They're not going to say, hey, I noticed this thing where when we do client intake, X, Y, Z happens, but problem finding, problem spotting, not just problem-solving. You can bring a problem to people and work on solving it, and that's great, but you want your team force multiplier, just like cameras on the street for the police. Love that term. But you want them to be your force multipliers. So that's why empathy is important, right? It builds in resilience. And honestly, for you, when you're having a rough day, like I may or may not have had yesterday, if you can say to one of your directors and another of your directors, I cannot believe this is happening, you know, whatever, and they kind of have your back, that's a really nice thing for you.

How do you build the empathy? Check-ins, step-ins. I don't know if people are familiar with that. I don't want to belabor it if you are, but sort of a check-in. How are you doing today? What are you bringing to work today? How are you feeling? What mood are you in? Whatever. I know. But it works, right? It really works. And it's important and it's helpful. So start a meeting that way. Hey, it's Friday. What's everybody looking forward to on the weekend? Who wants to sleep in? Who wants to do this? Who wants to do that? Step in. Step in. If you have ever thought, I will never go to a gym again because I just ate four bagels and I need to live under a rock and shame. You share your vulnerability, right? Relating to each other, recognizing points of common connection, points where you can, and it can be professional stuff too, but I think the personal stuff is all the more, gives you all the more mileage, correct? And I think, and one of the things that they kept stressing at Harvard was to remove at least from your responses when people talk to you about things that are going wrong. I mean, a horrible and heart-wrenching example is if someone has a miscarriage, well, at least you can try again. That is the last thing anybody ever wants to hear. Or trying to fix the problem. I don't know if anyone's seen the nail in the head commercial. Like, oh, I feel this pain in my head and it won't go away. Well, you can pull the nail. I don't need you to fix it. I need you to just hear me. So my husband and I are complete gender role reversal. He tells me things. I'm like, I don't care that you should just do X, Y, Z. No, he wants me to hear him. Okay, whatever. I hear him. Home, work, two different spheres, okay? So it is important. And again, I'm cynical about it. We know the ingredients of this, right?

So how do you deal with this? How do you make it happen? You have all the stuff there, but how do you bake the cake? One of the things that I did, and when I was at Fox Rothschild, I was there for 10 years. And I have, like I said, terrible ADD. I get bored very easily. One of the interesting things was we went from 400 lawyers to nearly a thousand lawyers in the nine and a half years that I was there. We went from eight offices, four of which were really one office, but we had a very weird suburban footprint in Philadelphia, to 21 offices. So we metamorphosized. It was constantly churning, burning, bringing on new stuff. And that's why I stayed because I have something wrong with me. You know, but I love having to mix up the service delivery, the model, the way in which we did it, the way in which the team was organized. Was this matrix the right matrix? Am I in the wrong matrix? What is a matrix? I don't know. You know, hey, Trish, you know, we're going to merge with this firm. They have 30 lawyers. They're in Seattle. We need to understand that market. And they have a virtual reality practice. So can you get on that? Okay, let me Google virtual reality. So one of the things that I did with the team to keep them engaged, but also to make sure that we were thinking of things in new ways and innovating. And, you know, I think Connor just said it in his intro, like these small changes that you can make that start to acclimate your lawyers to change or whoever your folks that you answer to in the world, acclimate them to change. They start to see the benefit of looking at things a different way. It builds your credibility. But one way to get at that and get your team to think that way and be proactive  and be resourceful because they are holding computers in their hands all the time. So why are you asking me questions? Is to put together teams within your group. I had about 50 people, so you may not have teams that big. And I would say if you don't, you want to befriend the folks in other departments. Maybe you want to work with your service providers, but kind of take somebody who never talks to somebody else and put three or four people together and throw them at a problem that has really almost nothing to do with their day-to-day and make them research it one. It helps them professionally because they expand their skill set. Helps you because it's a little bit of cross-training. And three, they sometimes bring really innovative and interesting solutions to the problems because they're coming at it with a fresh perspective. You know, and I gave some examples here. I do think that brainstorming goals for the next quarter in little subgroups and then reporting back to the full team can be a good exercise. But you have to kiss a lot of frogs, right? You know, it's part of the exercise. It's part of what you do to get to the better place. Add a personal flavor to it. Like we talked about sort of these personal check-ins and things like that. There's a book that I am a little bit weirdly obsessed with called Reframing Organizations. It's like 9,000 pages long and so dry and horrible. But they basically say, and it's like a standard for business school, which I never went to. I've also never had a marketing class, probably evident. But they talk about looking at organizations through different lenses, right? And one is political. One is HR, one is structural, and one is symbolic. I really like the political. That's my fun spot. But the symbolic is important because it's basically the softer side of things, but that goes to team bonding, that goes to feeling part of and proud of and things like that. So I will say, and again, examples, you're going to do whatever works for you. But at Fox, we had this weird thing where we, I mean, we started with a smaller team, right? We probably had eight people. I don't know. Andrew and I worked together back then, right? I don't know, eight, 10, but we started doing a Thanksgiving meal, which became a nightmare. I mean, in my mind, because I was bringing turkey for 50 people and everybody else was making sides and we ended up renting out or using the whole conference space in the bottom part of the building and other departments would we come because there was so much food. We would have food for like 150 people. But every time I suggested, hey, maybe we don't want to do that anymore. Oh, my God, no. This was their thing. They lived for it. We talked about it all year. We had great pictures year to year, whatever. So, you know, you're going to find the things that you do that work with your team. And I think, you know, you want to be authentic about it. So if, you know, if everyone hates eating on your your team don't have a Thanksgiving meal. You know, we did this weird decorating contest one year for the end of year holidays, and. It became insane. You know, there were cubicles where people, sometimes three, six people would get together and they would make a winter wonderland walkway with inflatables. There was somebody who had an elf yourself, you know, photo studio set up in their office. Some people would, I don't know if it was legal, but they were roasting marshmallows. I mean, there was so much going on and we brought in people from other departments and often the firm chairman or the chief privacy officer, one of the lawyers, to judge. And we got a special clipboard and a really absurd plastic trophy. And there was a whole ceremony about it every year. And every time I said, you know, we really want to do that again. Oh, my God. Yes. Like, I don't know if they still do it now, but it went on for many years, nearly a decade. So those kinds of things stick with people and they make them stick with you and they make them stick with each other. And so I don't want to belabor this point too much. I'm going to stop here. But I was a little cynical when we were at Harvard this week. The one professor was saying, it's so important to brand your department and to have a shared vision and to have a tagline and to put together your brand promise and whatever. And I started reflecting. I am a cynical as a lawyer, if not more so. So I was like, all right, put it aside. I don't think it's a bad idea, right? What are you delivering?

What are you going to be proud of? What are you going to be part of? And everybody sort of knows it. So in all of this stuff, in the mix, in the recipe. I haven't really talked a lot about leaders, like what's missing. You're not there. You shouldn't be there. It's not your job to be there. Your job is to empower, to orchestrate these weird Machiavellian, maybe, you know, subgroups that you're going to put together, task forces, whatever it happens to be. That's your job, is to put that out there, to empower people, to encourage them to think for themselves and to think for you. I mean, you benefit from this, right? And then one of the things that we hit on when we were prepping for this session is hierarchy. I am really a very strong believer in not having a hierarchical organization because I think if you run your team right, everybody knows where they fit. I don't need to dress you down or remind you every day that you are 1.76 steps down from where I am. And with Gen Z, I mean, if you feel strongly you need a hierarchy, knock yourself out and see how many employees you keep from the Gen Z group. Because they want meaning. They want to feel invested. They want to feel part of. They want to lead with ideas and whatever. Millennials are old now. But I had a lot of millennials on my team when they weren't old. And they were the same way. They really liked titles, though. That was my titles. And I had a firm chairman who said titles are cheap. So it was great. You want to be the Grand Poobah. You want to be the Queen of Sheba. Knock yourself out. I don't care. But I think that that gives everybody a sense of ownership. And it makes them feel comfortable driving things and suggesting things. And also, people see different things at different levels. Just like I say to lawyers, you need to have client teams that encompass everybody who touches the client. And they're like, well, I'm doing the important work. Okay. But when we did client feedback interviews, this in-house counsel was saying, I've been asking for my bills on purple paper for 20 years, and I'm just done with your firm and I'm leaving now. I mean, weird things sink ships, right? Loose lips certainly do. But other weird things sink ships too. But by the same token, odd things can rise, get the tides to lift the boats. And I think that what you might miss sometimes is that somebody who perhaps is more junior on your team has a relationship with someone in accounting or has a relationship with someone in recruiting. You get intel, one. You get insight. You get a fresh perspective. Their minds are not constrained. I mean, talk to toddlers. They're crazy, right? The stuff that comes out of their mouths. And oh my God, like if you can make products that they come up with, you'd be so rich because this stuff is so fun. So, you know, I think it does take confidence to have a non-hierarchical type of approach to your team. Too bad, right? I mean, you can't, if you want to walk around being an arrogant jerk, people are not going to work with for you. You're going to get a bad rep around town. It's going to be hard to recruit, you know, whatever. So take a breather. Nobody's out to get you. I see, and I'm being a little flip, but I have seen this in my many years in the industry that there are just a lot of horrible bosses, far fewer than there were when I started. But I literally have modeled myself on trying not to be a horrible boss based on some real doozies I worked with and for. So I think that, you know, again, it speaks to the diversity and the generational differences and all of that. So step back and give your team space to grow and to really lift the whole effort. And that will help your innovation and manage the strengths and interests. I say that when I interview people. I say that in reviews. I like to manage the strengths and interests, but it's work. So I'm not creating nirvana. So I'll manage their expectations. But if I found out somebody loves drones and wants to do drone footage and has a drone license and I don't even know what that's about. And he works for Lora and we can send him to a conference and he gets to like drive around California and do drone things. Then we're going to do that because what's it really cost? He's already going, right? He's happy. He's taking drone footage. So look for those things. And you're not going to know that stuff if you don't know your team. But I did want to go through a couple, for instances, quickly.

It’s rare that I get to put a picture of Biggie and Faith Evans in a PowerPoint, but I'm happy. I'm happy that it was here. So when I was at Fox, and again, this is a multi-year sort of initiative, but it was constant change and reorientation of firm leadership's attitude to clients, what clients were, what kinds of services we should provide to clients, what types of perks, what types of interactions, what types of things we should do to attach, attract more types of clients in a certain vertical, whatever. So we had a lawyer join the firm, I guess, maybe after I was there one or two years. And he had some, you know, interesting entertainment clients. And he had been a singer in the service. I don't even know, whatever. I was fortunate that I have a family member who's very senior in the entertainment industry. So I had this much insight into the entertainment industry. But this partner and us, you know, marketing, it was one of those wonderful sort of serendipitous moments when you got to build a practice with a partner. It was a true partnership. You were like running towards a goal together. We were trying to build this up. And so as part of this, we were servicing clients that we had. And I got a call one day that we really needed to pay for Faith Evans makeup to be done for a red carpet event. And I was like, yeah, I don't think that's happening. And, you know, whatever. I was a little bit newer in the job. And I was like, I just don't want to put that through Chrome River right now. Like, no, let me talk to the firm chair was like, what the? And I was said, well, listen, this is the type of perk. This is the type of service that entertainment clients expect. She's asking because she expects us to deliver it. So if we say no, I mean, we have people asked to play golf at your club. We have people asked to do all these other dull things. She wants nice mascara and whatever and blah, blah, blah. So leap of faith. I had to explain to him, this is a very different type of client.

It's one, it's an individual client. Two, this is an industry that's built on perception and look and all of that sort of thing. So, you know, the partner wasn't going to waste his time convincing the firm chair. He wanted me to. So I did persuade him and we did Faith Evans makeup and it looked fabulous. We didn't do it. We hired someone. That's just to show you like the sorts of clients that we were dealing with, which, yeah, if you work in an entertainment law firm in L.A., you're seeing all the time. I was with a Philadelphia backwater firm that had no offices in the middle of the country. And we started to build this. And so one of the things we did was have a Grammy party. Do you want to go to a law firm Grammy party? Is that going to be glamorous and fun? So one, we're trying to make it something that anyone would want to go to. Two, we're trying to convince farm leadership we should have a Grammy party, you know? And they're like, well, what, who are we inviting? Well, we're not actually inviting that many. We're inviting clients, but then the word gets out and there's this secret list that floats around of like the hot parties to go to. And sometimes the Hollywood Reporter website has it. And sometimes, you know, it's on this site. Billboard has it, whatever. Again, it was just like educating the lawyers on how this would work and constantly having, I think, the proof of value, you know, and coming back and saying, look, we got these people to come and here's what the billings were and here's what this was like. The data helps you tell the story. And I think that that's something we all need to be aware of. And everybody says we're data driven and we're this and that. Like, know the money. Know your people in finance. Know the CFO. I mean, a lot of you have MBAs. Are the MBAs focused on finance? I don't know. I have a journalism degree and I took that major because there was no math requirement. I have not had a math class since my sophomore year of high school and I got a D. So I get the finance stuff theoretically, but I don't want to be doing it. So make friends with the folks around the firm who can help you with those things. Some of you are going to be the finance whizzes and trying to give a presentation and be inspiring and really make people feel things. I have the facts, so they should see it. That's not enough. You need to also have the pizzazz. And so, you know, work with those people who can help you where you have gaps. So we did start having Grammy parties and we had them on the rooftop at the London and West Hollywood, which is a Gordon Ramsay hotel. And we paired them with substantive sessions with clients. And so NeNe Leakes came and talked about, you know, how Daryl, I don't know, Real Housewives people know, send it to Daryl. It's that Daryl. You know, he would do Q&A with them, whatever else. One year we did Blair Underwood talking about how Daryl had helped him make more money from his line of clothing at K&G than he ever made in entertainment. You know, whatever it is. Yeah. We we would diversify. We tried to do it on the cheap. We literally were giving people mini fish and chip cups on this rooftop and it worked. But again, like document, put it out there. Ashley Graham became a client first plus size model on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but again, had to explain to the firm, you know, how is this going to benefit us? Well, we're going to get mileage out of it. We're going to get placement out of it. We're going to get the firm name into publications, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know, that was just a constant sort of shift in changing people's perceptions. That practice at one point, you know, we didn't have any offices in the middle of the country. And so I got the firm to, you know, own the name. We copyrighted ’Entertainment Law Coast to Coast’ because we weren't in the middle. And, you know, so you turn a negative into a positive. Hey, we're everywhere. Then we did eat up a Minneapolis firm, and they represented Prince's estate. So, you know, it was kind of a little bit more diverse. But again, you know, they're like, why do you want to do this? Why do you want to waste an associate's time trademarking this? Whatever. I checked last night, perhaps early this morning, and Fox is still using that, except now it says ‘Entertainment and Sports Law Coast to Coast.’ And I don't think it has the same ring. 

This is more of a tech thing and more of, you know, something along the lines probably of digital transformation. But COVID hits, right? And I'm at this stodgy old Wall Street firm. And these guys have no ability to think creatively, these real estate co-chairs. And everything I say to them is, you know, snidely dismissed and whatever else. And I said, we should have virtual events. We should do this and that.  So they're slowly starting to do that stuff. But I was like, no one is doing anything with their clients. We need something big. So froze like deer in the headlights. And I said, well, how can we deal with this? We've got all these accolades in real estate. We've got all this great thought leadership we're putting together. We didn't have pastel. But, you know, I was like, how do we draw people to this? And I thought, you know, I'm brainstorming with some of the people I worked with at the time, some of my team, younger than I am, you know, and I was like, I don't know, like, could we make like a virtual world? Could we make a metaverse? Like, of course we can, because we have law firm marketing budgets and they're limitless. You know, could we do like, we were brainstorming all kinds of thoughts, like a choose your own ending sort of, you know, walk down a New York City street, something like that. we came up with an idea that I pitched probably to five or six different agencies. I said, you know, we want something where people walk down the street and they see like, you know, partner up on a marquee of a movie theater and we see a chalk artist has drawn a partner here or something else like that, whatever. And people were like, we could do it for sure. So anyway, I did find an agency that I worked with, Lisey, and Robin is here today. And she was like, you're nuts. But she said, give me a couple days, crazy head. And she came back and she was like, I don't know that we can actually do this. And I don't know how to price this. And I don't know any of it. And I was like, deal, let's try it. But I needed to get some money and some buy-in, right? How many of you have gone to lawyers and you're like, you've got this huge, beautiful PowerPoint, so much more professional than anything I've shown you today. And you've got your facts in order. You've got all this stuff. And the lawyers are like, oh, why is this slide blue? And you're like, well, we can change that. We can make it red, you know, whatever. All right, but why is it blue? I don't, that looks like a French, is this a French plant? I don't know. Have you been to Paris? Like, you know, you're like, dude, I just want to get to the second slide, right? And again, we talked about at Harvard, I think it's very true of where services delivery is going and product delivering. I mean, services too, but professional services is going where it's experiential, right? It's that, I was at Maya Angelou, I think. I don't know. I don't know who said it. I'm so bad at these things. But people don't remember whatever, what you said to them. They remember how you made them feel. So you need to make lawyers feel things. Very difficult. I understand, right? I don't even feel things and I'm trying to make people feel things. And I thought, let me just get through this. How am I going to do this? But you need to own your space. You guys would not be in this room if you weren't smart and weren't capable. You wouldn't have the jobs you had if you're not smart and you're not capable. And you heard me say, don't be arrogant, but be confident and own that space and don't be wallflowers. So I went into this meeting and I said, you're going to stop and you're going to listen to me. And I'm going to show you this presentation. You are lying on a beach and the water is rushing over you and there's a beautiful warm breeze and you're just going to enjoy my words while I speak them. And they said, well, and I said, guys, you have nothing better to do. It's COVID. I'm sorry, but like one's on Long Island, one's in Kiowa, suck it up and listen to me. So they did shut up. I mean, I got probably 10 slides in and one co-chair of the firm said, can I ask a question now? And I said, absolutely not. We are not finished. And we went through and we created this thing, which was the first version, very clunky, very quirky. We used kitschy and fun, you know, but it was basically like I'm walking through New York and I see things about Strook and whatever else. It wasn't that great. I mean, no offense. Robin did her best with it, especially with the budget we had. But we got PR out of this thing. We did some paid content stuff with Commercial Observer. We did a lot of stuff. So there was a lot of value to it. It came out of it, but it opened them up to doing other types of things. So you're in the driver's seat. There's no I in team, two I's in innovation. You're the one who can drive this stuff. You need to do it. Confidence leads to gravitas. When you have the facts, you're securing your vision. You prepare for the discourse. The confidence comes. Go and prepare. These guys depose people. Go in ready for that. Have all those questions anticipated. How do you do it? Scan the horizon. and know people who are going to influence. Influence map. Do the ladder of, you know, who has more influence and more power than others. Who do you need to convince first? Who in the little army of people do you need to build into your constituency?

Know people, spend that time. And we tell our clients, walk the halls. Even if you're virtual, I don't know, do virtual coffees, 15 minute check-ins, whatever. Know what their dog likes to eat. Know that their wife hates purple cake. Know whatever, have points of connection with them. If you don't know them, you can't leverage them. I mean, have a good relationship with them and then also work collaboratively, you know, and make sure you do it with your peers across the organization. So map out the hierarchy of stakeholders and their influence, and that will help you do it. Thanks, guys.

Charlie: That's all for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. You can subscribe to the CMO Series Podcast from your favorite podcast platform and find out more about how Passle can help make thought leadership simple, scalable and effective at passle.net. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening.