#176 Growing Your Business with Personal Branding, AI, and Innovative Marketing: A Session with Andrew Bolis

0:00:01 - Mehmet
Hello, welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. Today, I'm very pleased to have with me Andrew, joining me from Chicago in the US. Andrew, thank you very much for being with me on the show today, although your title is something we start to see more in the field fractional CMO, fractional CTO. But before we go into this, if you can just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about what you do? 

0:00:27 - Andrew
Sure, and thank you for having me on the show, mehmet. I've been doing marketing for 15 years. My last full-time role I was a CMO at a serious B-tech company. Currently I'm a business growth consultant where I work with business owners, ceos, founders to help them drive growth in their business. 

0:00:48 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's great. Now, the first thing when I was preparing Andrew is you have a different journey, I would say, because you started actually from a tech background and then you started to be a marketing manager, then a CMO and now a consultant. Can you walk us through this journey? 

0:01:11 - Andrew
Sure. So growing up I was very good at math. I was very logical, so I ended up studying computer science in college, really enjoyed that and then worked in tech for two years in the early 2000s. Around that time I came across online marketing because back then there was no social media. I was just starting out and all marketing was websites, email, seo and display advertising. That was what all marketing was. It was intriguing for me because tech at least what I did in tech, which was a lot more programming it felt like I'm communicating with a machine. A lot more marketing is communicating and influencing people. So that appealed to me in marketing. Funny enough, I couldn't really get a marketing job back then, so I started doing marketing on my own for a few years just to learn it and things like that. So I learned a lot of things there. 

0:02:11 - Mehmet
That's cool. Now, currently, what kind of companies do you consult for, andrew? What do you focus on in this consulting? 

0:02:22 - Andrew
Sure. So I typically consult for I'd call them growth stage companies. So they're anywhere from 50, 100 employees. As far as revenue, maybe like their 5 million revenue of their profitable 10 million of their VC or PE backed. They have some product market fit and they just look going to grow faster and in a more sustainable way. That's what I help with. So I usually create marketing programs. I coordinate with the sales team. My focus is not just to generate leads for them, but to also ensure that they are converting into actual deals and, hopefully, customers for them. As far as the types of companies, they tend to be more technology companies. So at tech companies I've also worked in supply chain and logistics technology companies A lot. Chicago is a hub for logistics and supply chain More tech companies as well and also sales tech companies. 

0:03:20 - Mehmet
Okay, that's great to know. Now you have led the growth in multiple companies, from Series A to E-Stages at multiple startups. What are some? Of course, we can talk for hours maybe about this, but on a high level, if you can share with our audience some strategies that you implemented to achieve these successes with these startups. 

0:03:50 - Andrew
Sure, I'll tell you some of my favorites right now. 

So I think in 2021, there was a lot of money flowing around, a lot of investors investing, so it was easy to do a lot more like paid media and that worked well. 

But end of 2022 and now in 2023, a lot of companies are trying to grow, but they have to watch their customer acquisition costs and do it sustainably. So a lot of my strategies are a mix of brand building and creating demand. So one of my favorite ones, for example, is cold email outreach, which is cheap, easy to execute, but you have to do it in a way where you're adding value, not just pitching, just sending sales pitches, because if you do, you're just going to get blocked. So that's one I like to also work with founders and building their personal brands, because the bigger the brand they have, the more they can just charge for the same product or service that they're selling. And then I like to also do things like partner marketing, where I help the companies I work with partner with other companies who are not direct competitors but go after the same audience. That creates a lot of efficiencies and helps both companies grow. 

0:05:08 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's great. And, just out of curiosity, you mentioned something about outreaching I mean cold email and you just then said that you help founders and even the companies to build their brand. How much in these days, this is important to really start to get inbound leads as well. 

0:05:33 - Andrew
So yeah, so it's very important because the inbound leads they tend to be the highest quality, they're gonna close the fastest and especially if you're selling something more high end, like whether it's high end consulting, a high end service or a more expensive product the inbound's end up even being like a higher lifetime value customers. 

But to get inbound it takes time, right. So, like, think about and I like to use the example of like buying a car because it's a big purchase Think about, like how many touch points, brand impressions, conversations, research someone does before they decide, like, what kind of a car they're gonna buy. So it's the same with, you know, marketing, like, if you're selling, especially something high end, there's a lot of touches, so you have to kind of be proactive about it. So that's why, like you know, even things like building a personal brand as a founder, you know, make it so that you can easily get in touch with the right people that you're trying to sell to. Just because of your brand, they'll see you as an authority, they'll wanna talk to you, they'll wanna be in your network. So it just creates a lot of opportunities for you futuristically and it helps you, you know, sort of sell a lot easier. 

0:06:48 - Mehmet
Uh-huh, okay, that's good to hear. Now, if you can walk me, Andrew, like when you work with a founder or anyone like who want to work on their brand from personal perspective and I'm asking this question cause maybe if a founder today he's listening or watching this episode like, what are the key elements that they need to focus on when they start this journey of building their own personal brand? 

0:07:17 - Andrew
I think one of the advantages founders have is that they have a founder story. So there is a reason that you know they wanted to build their company. Maybe it's something they're passionate about. Maybe you know some of them, some of the most successful founders, actually could never get a full time job and they ended up building their company because of that. 

So, whatever the story is, I help them actually, you know, create their founder story. And it's not that I'm, you know, making anything up. I'm just help them tell it in a way that's like emotional, so that when someone hears it they remember it and it provokes some kind of emotion in them. I'm trying to also have them tell it in a way that puts them in the best light and also put it in a way where they somehow still touch on what it is that their company does or offers to customers. So working with them on their founder story and how to tell it works pretty well, because then they can take that story, they can tell it on LinkedIn, they can tell it on podcasts or in interviews, and it just makes them a lot more memorable than a founder, you know, versus just another, like company name or you know something that a prospect heard of. 

0:08:23 - Mehmet
Yeah, so, and we are seeing now, I think, podcasting becoming one of the main, I'd say, marketing for both personal and even enterprise brands. Now, andrew, regarding what you mentioned previously, does it apply for B2B and B2C you know, startups or is there a different marketing formula? Now, of course, I know the answer, but I want you to like shed some light on this part. 

0:08:51 - Andrew
So yeah, so to be fair with you, like most of my, the last seven years has been on the B2B side for me. Before that, I did some B2C. I think in B2C, a lot of the branding is based on like working with influencers, working with you know, even like mini celebrities in your space, and that works pretty well. So you don't necessarily need a person to be the face of the brand, although you could Like a great example. That is like Michael Jordan and you know his shoes, yeah. However, in B2B, the personal brand matters a lot more because, it's to be fair, you know a lot of B2B companies. You know they do great work, but they're kind of boring, like you know. Like, if you're at accounting software, you know great and I'm sure you offer value, but if you tell me the story of why you started your accounting software company in the first place, difficulties you've overcome and lessons you've learned, like, I'm way more interested in that first, and then I'll want to hear about your software. So I think that's why in B2B, it matters even more. 

0:09:54 - Mehmet
Do you think, like ever, we will make it more, I would say, because it's rigid, as you said, like B2B, whether it's from sales marketing, it's really rigid sometimes, yeah, like I've seen. You know, I walked in in in these companies as well myself from consultant perspective, and I always wondered would we ever have a product I don't know what's this product yet that really could be marketed the same way that we market, for example, a shoe or I don't know, maybe a mobile phone, if we want to stay relevant to tech, like what do you think like could we see a brand that can do this? 

0:10:34 - Andrew
You can't. There are, you can see it, but it's it's more rare, right? So that's why, even when it happens, you know, people remember it a lot more. So there's one like you know small company that comes to mind. They're tiny, so I you know people outside of marketing and sales probably have never heard of them. They're called lavender and they're an email outreach tool and they created this character. 

His name is Lavender Joe and they make these, you know, video clips they're pretty popular on LinkedIn of Lavender Joe showing up with his like neon green suit, just annoying people you know, to kind of emulate, like you know, when, when a CEO gets a sales pitch and it's annoying and and, and they haven't actually played a character to show, like, how not to do cold email, and I think it works pretty well for them. In fact, a lot more people know who Lavender Joe is, so that works pretty well. But it's a very strategic approach that they took there. But they approach that almost like a BDC brand where they realize, hey, you know, we need a character. Almost like a Disney, you know, like we need a character, everything's going to be around the character and then we're going to, you know, introduce the product yeah, that's cool, cool idea. 

0:11:45 - Mehmet
Because you know, I'm always I wonder why, at least in tech, we know some brands that really they did cool stuff. Maybe it's not like funny, but I mean I'm my fan and I'm biased. I'm fan of Apple products, for example, and I like the way they do marketing, you know, and I always wondered, because I work in B2B all my career, I mean from from consultant perspective, and I always say why no one can come, but yeah, let's it's. I think that the nature of of the business itself and businesses like they are taken more seriously. I would say now, when it comes to startups and small businesses, and what are you know, like the main trends you are seeing dominating from marketing perspective, like what, where everyone would be going in their strategies in the near future? 

0:12:42 - Andrew
sure I think the biggest trend right now is is obviously like how can you use AI to make marketing more efficient? And you know it's impacting marketing, sales and customer success. I've been monitoring it more on the marketing side. So questions like, hey, so you know, with these AI tools, for example, can you have a smaller marketing workforce and still produce the same results? Also, like a lot of the AI tools currently just do one thing. Is there going to be a super tool that just does it all? That's kind of a lot more sophisticated, so I think that's a very hot trend. So you know that's something you know I'm trying to learn myself, trying to even talk about more on my LinkedIn and stuff, because I know a lot of people say that AI is not going to replace jobs, but I'm pretty sure that it will. It's just that it's not going to be a direct, like one to one replacement. 

0:13:32 - Mehmet
It's just going to be creating a lot more efficiencies where you know what you needed a team of 10 to accomplish, maybe now you can do it with a team of five because they're using these tools yeah, and you know, like you took it out of my, my next question was actually about AI and you answered but just, do you think it's more about content creation for AI or is it like about strategies, like where do you see it would be effective the most? 

0:14:04 - Andrew
so I think right now it's it's more about a lot of things in marketing that I would call busy work is where AI is really good at now. 

You can try it to do, you know, pure content creation or strategy, and it's starting to get better. I don't think it's fully there yet, but what I mean is busy work is like. A great example is a lot of you know companies have podcasts, right, and they record the podcast interview. They then need to transcribe it, they need to turn it into clips, they're going to create a blog post out of it and, just, you know, repurpose it into all these different formats. Well, there's two, three AI tools that can do all of that for you and do it to where it's like 90% done. And if you have a human, you know, quickly reviewing, you know, put in the final touches on it. You now, you know, if it used to take you four hours, you can now get it done with one hour of work, you know, plus the tools. So it's things like that they're just more busy work and repetitive that AI is getting pretty good at doing yeah, I agree with you actually, andrew, on this point. 

0:15:04 - Mehmet
Now, coming back a little bit to what you do and you know now, as a consultant, um, I'm a consultant also myself and you know there are some times that I, you know, I'd say no for me or I'd say yes, yeah, I would like to help these guys, and for me it's from tech perspective, sales perspective, from you it's marketing perspective so what are from stand startups perspective. 

You know the things you look for to say, okay, I think these guys are worth it to to work with them because you know three dots, what are like three. Three dots like what make something appealing for you from marketing perspective to work with founders you sure so? 

0:15:53 - Andrew
So with the founder, I like to ensure that they at least have a basic understanding of why marketing even matters for growth, because some founders, even this day, still think that, hey, you can just create this awesome product and the product will take off. And sometimes products do take off on their own, but that's very rare, those are always kind of the exceptions. So to me it's like the founder even understand why marketing matters, because I don't want to work with a client where I'm constantly having to convince them that I'm wasting my time and theirs. I also like to look at the category therein. Are they in a category where there's a lot more potential for growth, or is it a shrinking category? Because if it's a shrinking category from a marketing and sales perspective, I'm sure you can help, but you're kind of running uphill the whole time. 

And then I like to think, hey, is this? And that last one is more too, because I've done both. I've worked full time and I've consulted. If I'm specifically considering a full time position, I like to think is does this founder or this company have a competitive advantage of some sort? And their competitive advantage could be as simple as hey, this is a founder who's very charismatic. They're great on video and whenever they speak people listen. And to me that's a pretty interesting competitive advantage because I know if I can get immediate opportunities, they'll get the brand out there, they'll create a lot of awareness and they'll generate business. 

0:17:24 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's a good filtering part for me. It will be also different Again if they are in the first place. I would say, if they are not open actually for opinions, I would not work with them because these guys they made their minds, so they don't need me actually. This is the way I take it. Now, one of your notable achievements actually when I was preparing, like you have worked with a company and this day you made them reach a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. How was this experience like and how did it impact your approach to marketing? 

0:18:11 - Andrew
Sure. So yeah, that company was Forkites and, just to be fair, it was definitely a team effort. I was one of the first people they hired on their marketing team where they were building it. I was there for three and a half years and by the time I left there it was the second year in a row that they were recognized as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. So one is they were creating a brand new category. So that was supply chain visibility, which is a kind of a new set of technology in supply chain management. 

Supply chain management is a bigger umbrella category. A lot of what went into it was, you know, forkites did a great job of creating a lot of brand awareness. So, you know, first year it was attending a lot of trade shows and getting in front of people physically because they didn't even know that the solution existed or that this supply chain visibility was a thing. You know. Later on it was a lot more, you know, getting media attention, media mentions. We were also. So I worked with a company called G2 Crowd. They started, you know, covering the category first before Gartner, which is also pretty common. So with G2, I also talked them into creating a brand new category, which is supply chain visibility, because they were trying to just stick Forkites in just supply chain management, which is very broad and got like a lot of, a lot more mature players in there. 

So by the time you know, gartner was thinking about creating a magic quadrant, forkites, you know, already had such a head start as far as awareness and it was just Forkites and another you know competitor of Forkites that were the two most well-known already. So it was kind of pretty easy to work with the analysts you know at that point to you know, to get Forkites recognized as a leader. And the funny thing about that is, once you recognize as a leader by Gartner, like unless you do something like really wrong or really bad, you just stay as a leader. Obviously you have to work with them. Every year there are surveys, like 100 different questions. It takes like several weeks to even fill out their survey. They interview customers of yours to verify that you're like legitimate. They look at your finances. I mean the whole process it's very in depth. So it's not, you know, like the whole process is very serious. But that's what's great about it too is you end up sort of, you know, being recognized as a leader, usually for years to come. 

0:20:30 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's great achievement actually. Yeah, and I didn't work directly, but from the companies I work with because they were also. You know, they entered the quadrant down first and then you know, but I used to know what happens behind the scenes and, yeah, it's a very tough job to get to the leader quadrant actually. Now, one thing you know I'm a little bit wondering about it. So you, you know, you were a VP of marketing and you wear a CMO and now you are a fractional CMO. Would you ever go back, Andrew, and why you choose to become a fractional CMO? 

0:21:15 - Andrew
Sure. 

So the why is because the last company I was at unfortunately they had a lot of financial problems. They were expecting additional funding. The funding didn't come through, so they did two rounds of layoffs and through that my role was eliminated. And then, even after I left, which was last December, I heard there was more layoffs and another 15-20% left. So it's funny, even when I look at LinkedIn now half of the people I'm connected to who used to work at that company are no longer there. So again, it was just one of those situations where the company had to do layoffs. Since then, I've spoken to other companies, did interviews, just haven't had anything work out. 

I would love to become a VP of marketing or a CMO at another company. Ideally it's a growth-stage company but, as you know, when the current market, a lot of companies are just being very careful about who they hire, a lot of categories too very few categories are even growing. Like AI software is a big one that's growing. Those are companies that are actually getting funding and things like that. Besides that, a lot of companies in many ways are shrinking or at least trying to stabilize their revenue and stuff, so they're not losing money. So that's what got me into doing consulting. 

The fractional CMO thing is funny because everybody uses that phrase now. But I look at their job history and a lot of them never even led a marketing team before. They weren't even a VP, some haven't even been a director and now they call themselves a fractional CMO. That's why I like to say that I'm a business growth consultant, because I'm just trying to get away from just being bucketed to and that big bucket of everybody calling themselves that. I'm sure you run into that as well with a fractional word. 

0:23:04 - Mehmet
Yeah, the fractional word recently. There's nothing wrong with it, of course, definitely. Actually, funny enough, when I started to my consultancy five months ago, I called it CTO as a service and everyone was saying what is CTO as a service? And I start to see people calling fractional and then I said, okay, the best approach to do it. I say I'm consultant, so just say you are a consultant. And people, if they nowadays and back to the point of building the brand and personal brand so people, if they want to find someone today, they go to their LinkedIn profile. They would see where they have worked, what they have achieved, they would do a search about them and they will find out who are these. So, honestly, title for me is not like that big thing, right, but, of course, fractional. I've talked to fractional CTOs. I'm talking now to you as a from marketing perspective. I think I've talked to someone who's planning to do kind of sales as well, sales consultancies, which exists. Honestly speaking, they exist for a longer time. It's not something, it's not a new concept, these things going there. 

But do you think like and do you touch base on something important? And this is a theory that I have and I like to share it with my guests. I think there's something broken out there with, let's say, startups who are in the growth stage, scale apps and people. More and more this is what I'm hearing even the people. They don't share this publicly, but there is a fatigue from all this that happens. They are growing very fast and all of a sudden you see them going down and lay off stars. Do you think this will continue? Or are we going to have to see a correction in the market after some time, where everything goes back? Or people will figure out hey, like, see, like Andrew is working as a consultant, Mehmet is working as a consultant. Why we don't do it also as well? What do you think we are heading? I know it's a very generative question, but I'd like to hear your opinion on that. 

0:25:13 - Andrew
Yeah, no, it's definitely a great question. So I think the economic slowdown is testing the model of a lot of these startups. In that the economy was on upswing for several years, it was again easy to raise funding. A lot of the funding didn't require you to have a great product or any kind of competitive advantage. So if I'm being honest, I think a lot of these companies, unfortunately, if they have a bad business model, won't even necessarily make it. I think the economy will pick up, but nobody knows when and how fast it's going to pick up. So even now it seems like it's not shrinking as fast, or at least it's stabilizing. But if it even stays stable like this for another year or two, well again a lot of these startups will run out of the funding that they raised. They won't be able to raise anymore and then they'll go out of business. And I think you're right. 

I think right now that creates a lot more opportunities for fractional professionals or consultants. So when a company hires me, for example, I work with them one or two days per week. They have a small, more junior marketing team, but because I'm working with that team, even within a month or two of working with me, that team has been upleveled. I help them create a lot of efficiencies, because a lot of these things I've done it before, so they're getting the complete playbook from me and it's a lot more efficient. So I don't think right now a lot of these companies can afford a full-time head of marketing, a full-time CTO, but if they can work with a fractional, they get the best of both worlds it's affordable and they get access to deep expertise. 

0:26:52 - Mehmet
Yeah, and, as you said, time will show us where we will be heading. I have still two questions One where people can find more about you, andrew, and your services. 

0:27:03 - Andrew
So the best place to find me is on LinkedIn, so I'm pretty active on there. Just send me a connection request and I regularly post on there about different marketing strategies and different work I'm doing with companies. 

0:27:15 - Mehmet
I will make sure I will put your profile in the description of this episode. And I have a very famous last question Is there anything you wished I asked, or did I miss anything to ask you and please you can answer that? 

0:27:30 - Andrew
I mean to be honest. No, I mean I think you did a great job. I liked how the discussion too, like there were thoughtful questions, but it was more casual conversation, so no, nothing else to add, thank you. 

0:27:42 - Mehmet
Oh, thank you very much, andrew for being with us today and, as I said, I will be putting Andrew's LinkedIn profile so you can connect with him. You can ask him anything related to marketing, especially, as you know, we focus in the show on startups and small medium businesses, which I like to help honestly. So you can reach to Andrew if you have any question and, as usual, if you have any question or feedback about the episode or the show in general, I would love to hear it. You can find me on LinkedIn also as well, where I'm very active Twitter and you can send me an email also as well, directly, if you would like to be a guest same as Andrew was today a guest. Reach out to me on the same mediums LinkedIn mainly LinkedIn or email, where we can discuss it. We can set up a time and do the recording, and thank you very much for tuning in and we'll see you in next episode. Thank you very much, bye. 

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