The Silent DTC Killer: Why Your Team Structure Is Holding You Back With Jenica Oliver

Jenica Oliver is the Founder and Fractional CMO at Blueprint Marketing Group, a certified women- and minority-owned marketing consultancy helping CPG brands scale through omnichannel expansion. With over 20 years of marketing experience, she has held leadership roles at companies like Yum! Brands, Mission Foods, and Borden Dairy Company. As an advocate for small- and minority-owned businesses, Jenica serves on several boards, including the Women’s Business Council and the Minority Supplier Development Council’s Minority Business Enterprise Input Committee (MBEIC).

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:36] The most common mistake e-commerce brands make when building marketing teams
[6:17] How a lack of team diversity hinders brands
[11:45] When should founders step back and delegate leadership responsibilities?
[16:41] Operational challenges brands face when shifting from DTC to retail
[23:17] The marketing roles necessary for scaling into retail operations
[26:34] Cautionary tales about misaligned team structures and its impact on performance
[38:38] Jenica Oliver shares a leadership metaphor she learned from her mentor
[42:56] How to structure teams for current execution and future innovation
[51:48] Strategies for gathering actionable consumer insights beyond sales data
[1:02:05] Why Jenica founded Blueprint Marketing Group and how growing up an “Air Force brat” shaped her vision

In this episode…

Building a high-performing marketing team can be the silent killer — or the secret weapon — for growing e-commerce and CPG brands. Many companies hit a plateau — not because of weak products or poor performance — but because their scrappy, early-stage team can’t support long-term scalability. How do you know when it’s time to restructure, and how can you do it without breaking your budget?

As a seasoned marketing executive, Jenica Oliver has developed a framework for scaling teams strategically. She stresses the importance of building for where you want to go — not where you are today — and recommends leveraging fractional roles, agency partnerships, and diverse skill sets to bridge capability gaps. When balancing innovation with daily operations, brands should identify the team members best suited for creative, forward-thinking projects versus those who excel in managing existing processes. By aligning roles with core strengths and emerging capabilities, companies can unlock surprising talent and avoid frequent restructures.

Join William Harris in the latest episode of the Up Arrow Podcast as he interviews Jenica Oliver, the Founder and Fractional CMO at Blueprint Marketing Group, about restructuring teams to unlock growth in the DTC and CPG space. Jenica explains how to gather authentic, actionable consumer insights, the impact of misaligned team structures on company performance, and the challenges brands face when shifting from DTC to retail.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

"Sometimes they got to realize when it’s time to get out of their own way."
"It’s not that you can’t do it, but is this the best use of your time?"
"Bring in talent and resources that will allow them to focus on things only they can do."
"The most obvious person on the team may not be the right person for the role."
"You have to know what people do well, what they want to do, and what they’re willing to do."

Action Steps

Build for where you're going, not where you are: Structuring your team based only on current needs can hinder long-term growth. Future-focused hiring ensures you're not constantly rebuilding during critical inflection points.
Leverage flexible staffing models: Using fractional leaders, contractors, or agency partners allows you to scale without bloating your org chart. This approach preserves agility while still bringing in top-tier strategic support.
Hire for complementary skills, not just culture fit: Culture matters, but hiring people with proven, diverse expertise fills real knowledge gaps on your team. This balance drives innovation and prepares you for category-specific challenges.
Identify and nurture stretch potential: Evaluate what team members can do now and what they’re willing and able to grow into. This mindset unlocks hidden talent and minimizes turnover from misaligned roles.
Separate innovation from operations when needed: Some team members thrive in execution, while others excel at ideation and strategy. Dividing responsibilities helps avoid burnout and maximizes each person's impact.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders, sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show.

William Harris 0:15

Hey everyone. I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million and beyond, as you up arrow your business and your personal life. Today's guest is a sharp, seasoned operator who's been behind the scenes of some of the biggest names in consumer packaged goods, and now she's helping growth stage brands break through the invisible ceiling that's holding them back. Jenica Oliver is a 20 plus year CPG veteran and the fractional CMO behind Blueprint Marketing Group. Her career started with powerhouse brands like international delight, Borden, dairy, mission, tortillas and Pizza Hut, but for the past nine years, she's been the secret weapon for founders and executives who've hit that critical inflection point where your scrappy get it done team isn't quite cutting it anymore, and it's time to professionalize your marketing without bloating your org. She works with companies that have reached that magic zone, 10 million plus in revenue and growing, but can't seem to crack the next level. And she's found that more often than not, it's not a product problem, it's not a performance issue, it's a team structure problem. Today, we're diving into what Jenica calls the silent DTC killer, while your current team may be holding you back how to recognize when it's time to level up and what it really takes to build a marketing organization that scales. This conversation is packed with sharp insight, real case studies, and the kind of operational clarity that every growth stage brand needs to Jenica, welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast.

Jenica Oliver 1:37

Thank you. That was great.

William Harris 1:41

I like having fun writing these. It's something that I really try to put a lot of time into. I love it. Um, I want to give a shout out also to my friend, previous podcast guest and the another brilliant CPG marketer, Tiffany Wilburn. Thank you for making this intro so Jenica and I could bring this content to the world today.

Jenica Oliver 1:58

Yes, I love Tiffany. She's great. Yeah, she's

William Harris 2:01

really fun. Last little housekeeping thing that we're gonna dig into the meat here, I do wanna announce our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we felt 13 of our customers get acquired with one that sold for nearly 800,000,001 that ipoed. You can learn more on our website@Elumynt.com, which is spelled Elumynt.com, that said. Finally, on to the good stuff. Let's talk about the infrastructure problem. What's the biggest mistake e-commerce brands make when building their teams,

Jenica Oliver 2:36

building for where they are today as opposed to where they want to go? It definitely takes a solid foundation. But just because you need a junior marketer who can handle a couple of different things, maybe like marketing coordinator or social media manager, they can't do all of the things. So you have to have a vision for the future. You have to have a strategy in place, and then you need to resource that strategy across all functions to make sure that you don't hit a roadblock at a critical time in your growth.

William Harris 3:05

Yeah, it's tough because, you know, as somebody who's worked at a number of fast growing organizations, I think I was, you know, employee like six at a SaaS company, and then we grew there and founding my own company, it's, it's sometimes hard to know how far ahead you can hire or things like that, right? And so I like that you said you have to have a vision at least of where this is going. You can't hire ahead if you don't know who you're going to need and where you're going to go. But how do you balance that, that back and forth of, hey, I could see 10 years from now who I need, but I don't have the revenue yet to hire 10 years for where I'm at. You know, how do you find that balance? Well,

Jenica Oliver 3:43

I think we really have to take it back to when we talk about hire. They don't always have to be on your payroll. They don't have to blow your SGMA. You can find contractors, temporaries, agency partners, they can fill those gaps. That's part of what I bring to the engagement that I work on, they're not always ready for a full time marketing leader, but it doesn't mean that you don't need strategic oversight. So find those levers that you can plug and play that will allow you, you know them, to grow with you, or the structure to grow that you're not locked into a certain structure, because that's typically what hinders organizations, is, you know, they lock into a long term agency relationship, and they can't get out of it when they need to do something different. Or, you know, they've hired all these internal resources, which means they're constantly scaling up and then laying off. So look for flexible models. That's where I think the strategy becomes so important, because you may have short term needs that you need to resource for, but if you bring on someone full time, then you've got to find something for that resource to do next. So leverage those flexible options for staffing solutions that'll grow with you. Yeah,

William Harris 4:55

it reminds me a lot about the EOS model. I know that one the best, because that's the one that we implemented. But there's EOS traction by Gino Wickman. And to your point, it's like, the way that they talk about this is, you've got all of these different seats. You have to know what the seats are though for, you know, to start with. So it's like, write down all the seats, like, put together, like the org chart, if you would, and then write down whose name sits in that seat. And it's okay for you to sit in more than one seat, right? So you might be the founder visionary. You might also sit in the sales seat. You might even sit in the finance seat, but what you can't have is you can't have more than one person sitting in that seat, right? So you can have, you can sit in more than one seat, but you can't have two people sitting in that seat. So you can't have two people that are in charge of finance, because then nobody knows whose responsibility is to get it done. And so, yeah, I have but to your point. Now, if you at least map out what is the structure, you can find out, I'm not ready for a full time hire here, but I can have this, you know, fractional person here. I can have this agency here. I can have these different pieces, at least sitting in the seats. And I know what those seats are for, what the business needs to be. I like that. Okay, you you've talked about how you know having the wrong team can hold you back. What is it about a team that, let's just say, is underdeveloped, that holds brands back,

Jenica Oliver 6:17

whether it's lack of experience, lack of diversity, oftentimes, teens will be built out with resources that have the exact same skill set, and so it's Wash, rinse and repeat. But when you need something different, you don't have the diversity of talent, the diversity of age, the diversity of skill on your team to be able to do it. So you're constantly out looking to fill holes. There's other times when you hire for a specific need, and then you pivot, or the economy pivots, or the category pivots, and then you don't have that resource internally. So I think it's, it's really important to have a flexible structure, especially when you're growing talent that has a diverse skill set, where, as you talked about, you know, fill in the seeds. Maybe they can also sit in multiple seats. You might have a marketing manager who also has some graphic design skills. It's not to say that they're going to become your graphic designer, but when you have a need for a scrappy creative or something that's really turnkey, you could leverage that resource to help, you, know, fill that gap in the short term, or even partner with an outside agency to ensure that the brand guidelines are met. So it's helpful to have a bit of that diversity. I think oftentimes people look for really deep experience in one area, like a specialist, and when you're still growing, and to your point, not necessarily sure how far out you want to hire, it's good to have people who can play more than one role. I'm a

William Harris 7:41

basketball fan. Do you like basketball? I love basketball. Okay, so hopefully this will, this will work well with you here as well. I can remember when I was building out my team, there were moments where I would hire, let's say, say, maybe they're running Facebook ads. And one person maybe was really, really good at the analytical side of running Facebook ads, but no creative ability whatsoever. Both are necessary, right? And then another one was maybe very creative. It's like, man, the ads they were coming up with were stellar, but like, couldn't figure out the analytical stuff that I needed. And I can remember banging my head against the wall sometimes figuring out, like, Why can't, why can't they just do both, or whatever this might be, and that's, you know, that's rare. But to your point, there are people who can do both, but sometimes being the coach who can see your team for what it is and saying, why don't I lean into this person's analytical abilities? Why don't lean into this person's creative abilities? And where this comes to the basketball, is what I realized is maybe I was putting my five foot guard in and asking them to play post, you know. And they're like, I'm like, get the rebound. And like, I'm the wrong person for the job you need to get the person that has that skill set for this. And it reminded me of Dennis Rodman and I, my youngest daughter, played basketball for the first year. This year, she's so scrappy. She is that person where it's like, the coach would put her in and she's short, but the coach would put her in, and he said he had her guard, whoever the best player was, because she would just be relentless about almost just pestering that person to get the steal or cause of, you know, turnover or whatever. And she's, she's nine, and there was one time where he put her against somebody that's like, easily a foot taller than it was the tallest person he's, like, because I know that she's going to get the job done, because she's just going to be like Dennis Rodman out there on this court where it's like, I need you to get the steals and the rebounds, like, don't worry about it. Just this is your thing. Go get it go get it done. And to your point, that kind of reminds me of that, you know, figuring out those diverse skill sets and like, leaning into where each person is capable of, even if they're not your graphic designer, they maybe can be scrappy to get that done.

Jenica Oliver 9:38

Absolutely first, first of all, your daughter sounds just like my son. He is not the tallest person on the team. He also plays basketball, not the tallest person on the team. I don't think he knows that. However. I mean, I'm sure he knows that, but he doesn't approach the game as if he's the shortest person you know on the team. He plays point guard, but, um. And but he's going to block a shot. He has amazing vertical and so he's going to block a shot. He's up defending against the tall guys. You know, he sticks to them. He's definitely going to be a pest like your daughter. So I know he's 11, so I know exactly what it means. But in translating that into this scenario, that's also one of the things, like, the most obvious person on the team may not be the right person for the role, but maybe there's somebody else who has unique skills and abilities that aren't specific to what you need them done, but they're transferable skills. You know, they may have really good interpersonal skills, and they can work with the toughest person on the agency side. That really is good, but can't really, you know, work well with the team, so sometimes you have to leverage those soft skills. Also, it's not always just about, you know, the deep experience. It's soft skills, it's interpersonal skills, it's eq as well as IQ. And those are the people that, often times, can fill in holes. They're willing to learn a new skill, they're curious. They ask a lot of questions. That may not be the person that you thought based off of the resume or the role that they're currently in, but that could end up being your star player, you know. So you have to really get in tune with not only what people do well, but what they want to do and what they're willing to do. That's how you really get the most out of your teams.

William Harris 11:24

I like that willing to do too. So in the Eos model to talk about, gets it once in capacity for it. And so they might get it, they might have capacity for it. They don't want it, right? So they might be able to do this. But they also have to have that desire. When and how should a founder step back and let some other people take, you know, lead in certain ways.

Jenica Oliver 11:45

You know, I think for founders, it really comes down to, you know, what they're comfortable with. Sometimes they gotta realize when it's time to get out of their own way. But sometimes it's not that you can't do it, but is this the best use of your time? So oftentimes, when I, you know, engage with an organization. The founder has been leading marketing, or, you know, marketing's just been kind of on autopilot. They're busy founder, CEO, President, whatever the title is, you know, they're busy wearing all the hats. And that's generally how the business got to where it is. But now it's time to bring in talent and resources, and it doesn't mean that they can't do it, but it's a question about whether or not they should still be doing it. Is your time, energy and effort, your expertise, better suited for something else? So bring in talent you know it, I think it even starts at a very early stages. Whether it's bringing in a bookkeeper doesn't mean that you don't know how to use QuickBooks or whatever. You know accounting software is out there. But should you be like, what else could you be doing with your time if you weren't doing that or bringing in a virtual assistant, you know, the ROI on that, paying someone you know dollars to do something to free you up to earn 1000s of dollars, just makes sense. So, you know, it's not that personal. Sometimes they're a little connected to a little closely connected to it. I think that's also where bringing in resources that are outside, that don't have that emotional connection. They're it's not that they're not invested, but they're not emotionally connected. So they can oftentimes encourage and influence leadership to bring in, you know, resources that will allow them to focus on the things that only they are uniquely positioned to do. Yeah,

William Harris 13:29

and that's, I think that's good it. I'm going to borrow a quote from Dan Martell, which says something along the lines of 80% done by somebody else is 100% awesome. And so while maybe they can only get an 80% over the line, and you still got to do that 20% to do that 20% or, you know, it's 80% as good as what you could have done. It's still 100% awesome having somebody else do that, because, like you said, it allows you to do the things that you are still the only one who can do that you are uniquely capable at doing. I want to dig into some of, like, the other practical ways that we can impact this. What about on the hiring side? So what are some of the mistakes that you've seen founders make in their hiring when they're going about saying, okay, great, let's say that they buy into this. My team structure. I need to work on this. I'm gonna start hiring. What are some of the mistakes that they make hiring

Jenica Oliver 14:15

strictly for culture. Fit. Culture is important. I definitely think that there is an element of importance with culture. You want to make sure that they're going to be able to work well with the team. But a lot of times, particularly in the consumer products industry, it is not an industry that is well known to people outside of the industry. It's very nuanced. And so if you are planning to really build your brand in the consumer products industry, it helps to have people on the team in certain key functions that have direct consumer products industry experience, whether it's finance, a P L for a consumer product is very different from a service brand. Sure, you know, operationally, you may be able to get a. Y or Z over the line, but there's going to be some unique nuances and challenges that you're going to face in the product space that you may not have seen. There's even differences between e-commerce and brick and mortar. So having people who have that direct experience, I think, is also really critical, because they can bring expertise to the table that you as a leader of whatever function may not have. And so looking for those complimentary skills that proven expertise, not necessarily at the executive level all the time, but it's really freeing to be able to bring somebody in who knows a little bit more about what they're being hired to do than you do or other people on the team do. So then, when you run into those challenges, or when you're thinking further ahead, they already have that road map. They can help at least walk with you. They may not be bringing you along, but they may be able to walk with you so that you don't have to spend your time hand holding or or constantly training. Yeah, there's something to be said about that direct expertise.

William Harris 16:03

I've seen it myself as well, that there are some things where you're you you could train somebody to do it, but having the experience to already know what you don't know is really helpful, especially if it's an area that you don't know, right? Um, I like that. You kind of talked about the difference between retail and, you know, CPG, or, sorry, e commerce and CPG. And I want to dig into that a little bit, because you run into this a bit too. What are some of the biggest operational shifts that you've seen when moving from, let's say, strictly d to c into retail, or vice versa, from retail into D to C? Definitely

Jenica Oliver 16:41

the scale is very different. You know, scaling direct to consumer versus scaling brick and mortar, the infrastructure looks different. You might have to get a different logistics partner. Your supply chain is going to evolve and grow on the production side of it, you know, manufacturing that oftentimes is very similar. You might have to get a different location for geography. And, you know, some of those things that that tend to cut down on costs or make a little bit more sense, depending on where the product is going to end up. It's not just shipping product, you know, from point A to consumer house. Now you've got a couple of extra steps in there. You've gotta get into a distribution center, and then to, you know, fulfillment center, then to the retail store, you know. And those retail stores are scattered across the country, so those things are oftentimes, you know, challenges for organizations as they're growing and scaling. The other thing that I would say is financially, the direct to consumer model is very looks very different financially than it does. You may be doing ads, you know, pay per click, you know, you might be on a third party retailer platform or something that has some programs when you get into store, they have those things too. There aren't very many retailers that aren't omni channel at this point in time, but there are programs that are in store, there are programs that are near store, there are programs that are totally above store, and being able to afford to play that game to get visibility for your product to get off the shelf and into carts, whether it's a digital shelf into a digital cart, or as the physical shelf into a Physical cart, you got to move that product. And oftentimes I notice that people aren't ready for the investments that it takes. And they're comparing how they did business, direct to consumer, to what they think is the model for, you know, in retail stores. And the math just doesn't math, and it throws them off quite a bit. You know, they're not prepared for those investments. And it's not a one time investment, it's multiple times or or they're not their P and L is not built for all of the players in that food chain that have to eat. So, you know, they're setting their price direct to consumer and then thinking it's going to translate in store. And that doesn't happen. And this

William Harris 19:01

is where that playbook came in, or somebody that knows what you don't know, that I really appreciate. Because even when I think about in my world, digital advertising, Google ads, Facebook ads, both digital ads completely different in the way that they're approached. And if you approach one of them, you know the same way that you do the other, you're not going to find success, even ones that seem very similar, like Tiktok and Facebook ads so similar, wildly different. If you take an ad that's doing well on Facebook and bring it to Tiktok, it likely won't do well. Interestingly enough, though, if you take something that's doing well on Tiktok to Facebook, it usually does do well. But besides the point, they're still so similar, but so different. And you literally just throw out terms that I, you know, I not that much into the retail world, and so I don't know. And you're like, in store, through store, above, store under store, like, all you know, it's like, yeah, you need somebody who knows what those are, how to navigate them, what plays, what doesn't play. So you don't waste your time testing things five different ways when there's someone who likely knows. Hey, maybe this isn't. Right way, but nine times out of 10, this is, I've got enough experience. Let's run with this. If it's not, we look at the data, we, you know, pull back, we say it's one of these other ones. But maybe we don't have to test and figure out what the best shape is for wheel anymore, right? Exactly,

Jenica Oliver 20:12

exactly. There's something to be said. I mean, for me, particularly, I learned all of this along the way happens to be on somebody else's dime, but it's a shortcut for the partners that I engage with, they don't have to learn those same lessons. Now, will it be apples to oranges? Absolutely not, but I'm not figuring it out along the way. We're going to test, we're going to iterate, we're going to make changes. But some you know, with that experience, you learn which things to test or how to best test you can, you know, impact the results of any research study, any test, based off of how it's fielded. And so even just having someone understand the platforms, like you talked about the difference between Tiktok and, you know, and Facebook, is not to say that you gotta go out with totally different approaches, but someone who knows those two platforms and what makes them work, you could probably get much more synergy, so that when people go from platform to platform, it's not like they're having a totally different brand experience, but they're experiencing and engaging with your product or service or brand in the way that is most engaging or useful or effective in that environment. And that's the same thing with the retail store. You don't have to totally change your messaging or your packaging presentation or your promotion just because you go in store, but it's a different environment, and your shoppers or your consumers are going to engage with the brand totally differently in those stores. So having that understanding it also creates some efficiency. You know, I already know these are the different formats that we're going to need. These are the different, you know, elements or assets that we can leverage from our online campaigns and pull them into in store so that there is that connection and recognition and awareness. We're really talking about engaging with your shoppers along the path to purchase. We call it like from the time they become aware of it all the way to the shelf, whether it's the digital show or the physical shelf, but leaving that trail of bread crumbs so that the user experience for them is almost seamless. You know, they're I'm not asking you to tell me, where did you see the ad and was it different in a different in a different platform or in a different environment? I just want you to have recall. I want it to get into your consideration set and ultimately lead to trial and repeat, you know, all of those things that really build brands. But I do think that having that, that experience and that knowledge is kind of like the accelerator for brand growth.

William Harris 22:40

Well, comm me, Hansel and Gretel, because I'm just going to fall on your bread crumbs here that you're leaving. Let's talk about this idea of the team then that you need for CPG, so you're, let's say you're moving from strictly D to C. You're moving into retail more. One of the things you need is you need this strategic thinker like you to be able to come in and provide this oversight. But what are the other roles that likely they're going to need over the next year or two that they should be thinking about saying, Hey, these are the people you're probably going to need, whether they're full time or not. But it's like, these are, you know, a buyer or whatever else like. What are the next several roles they're going to need over the next couple

Jenica Oliver 23:17

years in the marketing function? Specifically, you're going to need someone who is responsible for the brand, how the brand shows up, whether it's a brand manager, brand director, but someone who's really in tune with not only the brand voice, but the packaging, how it shows up. Someone has a deep understanding of the consumer, or is, you know, charged with gaining a deep understanding of the consumer, there's really no way to get in the game without some level of online presence. So having someone who is connecting all the things you're doing offline, from a brand standpoint, to what your customers are seeing online. So maybe that's a social media manager or digital manager. When you start getting into things like digital and ad placements and things like that, I think that's where that's a great opportunity to outsource even people who are really in tune with the social media platforms, those algorithms change so quickly that what you do today may fall like totally flat tomorrow. And so someone who's close enough to those metrics or has connections with a representative at those organizations that can really help you know you to navigate that space, probably better to have that role sit someplace else. And then someone internally who would liaise with them, the person that they're working with and connecting with, making sure that the specs for the creative and you know, do you use hashtags? Do you penalize for hashtags? You know, does a link work? Does it not work? Someone who has that technical information, you know, keep them on the agency side, that's going to be well worth the spend there, but someone internally, who can you. Execute, you know, much more tactical in nature. Those are the two that I would, I would, for sure, say, and then someone who's a little bit more of a generalist, particularly potentially even a more junior member of the team who can help with project management, making sure that the marketing team is aligned and connected with the other functions, getting them what they need to be successful. Kind of that enabler who can help to make sure that all of the parts and pieces are are working well, so that you don't have to necessarily bring in a project manager, because you might not need that all day, every day, but there, you know, that's a role that they can also play.

William Harris 25:43

There's some of my favorite people, the people who are because that's not me by nature, right? I'm definitely the visionary in the company. But those people who are like, I want to be able to know all the little details, bring it all together to make sure everybody has what they need at that time, I'm like, God bless you. You are wonderful. Thank you. I really appreciate them. What about any cautionary tales that you can think of where somebody didn't take this advice and you saw it backfire for them? And I mean, you've worked with some really, really big brands. You maybe don't want to mention them by name if it was one of them, but it's like you've also worked with some smaller startups where, but a story where you can think of where you know they didn't hire these roles, or they didn't build the structure they need, and you could see that the immediate backfire, like what I'm trying to get here, is, how could you tell that this was a team thing and not something else?

Jenica Oliver 26:34

So generally, I'm not marketing hire number one. I'm generally not even marketing hire number two, but I've come into engagement, or I've been asked to evaluate or audit resources on teams to ensure whether I'm going to be their marketing leader or not. They're trying to figure out which seats and which boxes to put names in, and in a lot of cases, I find that they have people potentially in roles that they really are interested in but not equipped for, or they have people in roles because they do a really good job here, but that's not what the person wants to do. There have been times and there's resources that I've led on my team where I've had to move people around, and it's not always where they feel like they want to be. You know, I hear all the time, but that's the fun part, you know, of my job and and I'm like it. All of it is the fun part of your job, but what you're really good at, and where we really need the most help on this team is in this area, and this is the role that we need for you to play on this team at this time. It doesn't mean that it's always going to be the case, but when, and that goes back, oftentimes, to hiring for culture, because you want people to be happy in the roles that they're in. And I'm not saying that that's not important. It absolutely is. Like, I think there's a direct correlation between the job that people do and how they feel about their job, or the feel about the role that they're in or the company that they're in. But you know, we're we're here for a reason. We're here for the company to make money, for the company to grow, and that means doing some things that you may not have necessarily thought were you were going to be doing, or it might not be something that you even wanted to do, but it's something you're capable of doing or really good at, like the people who love managing projects and timelines and things like that, oftentimes, I find those are people who that's not even the role that they're in. They become a project manager for, you know, a really important strategic initiative, because they're really good at tracking those details. They're really good at tracking down the people who haven't completed this task. That's critical to us get into the next step on the team. And so you have to find that balance between what they want to do and what they're good at, as well as giving them stretch opportunities. So when I'm looking at teams and evaluating resources on teams, I'm not just looking at what you were hired to do. I'm looking at what you were hired to do, what skill sets you bring to the table, and even what you want to do. Because if I can help place you in roles or on initiatives or in assignments that satisfy you. It might not be part of your your role today and in small organizations, there's not generally an opportunity for, you know, promotions and you know, move sideways this way and the other. So you gotta find ways to keep people engaged and motivated and growing, even within a small team environment. And so, you know, people are always like, well, I want to raise or I need a new title. And you'll see titles get manufactured. You'll see people getting overpaid for certain roles. And then at a point in time, somebody's sitting up looking like, Well, why are we paying on that? You know, for what they're doing is because you didn't evaluate the resources that were on your team. You just want everybody to be happy, and we've gotta strike a balance between people being happy and getting the job done. And sometimes, you know, you need someone in a role for a short period of time to bring some skills. You know, whether you call it a developmental opportunity, or whether it's just, hey, take one for the team, like you've got what we need in this time. And. This moment. So we need you to come and help us out, and you need someone in position that can help you have those conversations and even help you leverage and get the most out of the resources that you possibly can internally. And that's often part of the role that I play when I engage with organizations.

William Harris 30:18

You know what I love about what you just said there too is what's interesting is sometimes people feel like they want to be happy, and the reality is the majority of people just aren't right. Like, just in general, like, a lot of people are very unhappy, or feel they feel unsatisfied in their work, or whatever this might be, like, there's, like, a lot, I can't say General, I don't even know, a percent, but I'd say half of people right. Like, there's a lot of people that maybe feel that way, just in general. But what's interesting is we feel good when we do something well, regardless of what it is, we feel good when we do something that moves the needle forward. And so while that might not be the fun part of the job, if all of a sudden you're in a position where you're excelling at doing that thing that you thought wasn't that fun, but you're like, but it's fun now, because you're doing a good job at it, and it's moving things forward, and you can see the momentum. That's exciting. And it reminds me of like a guitar string, or a string right where it's like, if you take, like a tuning fork and you hit it, and then you bring it, if it's tuned to the right frequency of that guitar string, if you bring it to that, it's gonna start vibrating, because it's like, oh, yeah, this is what I was meant to do. But you put it next to another one, and it's not vibrating because it's not tuned to the same note. But to a point it's like you might not realize that the thing that you think isn't the fun part of the job might actually be the fun part of the job for you once you get in there and find out that you're good at

Jenica Oliver 31:35

I've had those experiences. I've had really, yes, yeah,

William Harris 31:39

yeah. Any in particular that you could think of? Yeah? Well,

Jenica Oliver 31:42

in my last corporate role, I was at Borden dairy company, and for many years. So at the time, the company was owned by Grupo La La out of Mexico, and they had purchased some they'd acquired some businesses in the United States. They had brought the La La brand over. The Borden Brand, obviously, was always, you know, US based, but they decided that there was an opportunity to the leadership decided there was an opportunity to bring products from La La in Mexico, cheeses and, you know, traditional Hispanic products that did really well in Mexico to the United States. Sure. Obviously, you know, lots of opportunity with Hispanics in in the United States and their affinity for the products and the flavors of home. But a lot of those products had really short shelf lives. They were not grade A, which they have to be for the United States, you know, for sale in the United States. And so at the time that I was asked to lead this initiative was creating this imports program. I had never done that before. It's not traditionally what as a brand leader, you know something I would do, but I was head of innovation, and they This was considered innovation. And so there were many days when I was in Laredo, Texas, which is down on the border of Texas and Mexico waiting for trucks to cross the border, to make sure that not only they cross the border, but then they didn't get held for too long, because the shipment, all of the goods on the shipment, would expire. But there were a lot of firsts for me in that role. I honestly thought it was punishment to get started. I was like, What did I do? I thought I was doing great. You know, everything was working well. So how did I get put on this program? But what it taught me was, and I think one of the reasons why I was asked to lead the initiative, because it squarely, it was not squarely set in the job description that I currently had, but I was really good at getting stuff done. It is a personal mission of mine to not fail, and if I'm going to fail, is going to we're going to fail fast, you know, we're going to learn the lessons that need to be learned. We're going to move on, we're going to recap, we're going to, you know, document all of the steps and the processes. So we're going to find ourselves in this position again. But I've been known to be pretty scrappy, and it's not a skill that I set out to develop, but it was born out of the roles that I had had in different organizations. So when we were given this challenge, unbeknownst to me, it had been attempted multiple times before and had not been successful. I honestly think that we were given this challenge because we got new a new leadership team, team came in, and I think it was one of those things was probably thrown out in conversation like, well, I bet you can't do this. You know, I was involved in those conversations, but as I understood it, and the way it was presented to me, like we had 60 days or 90 days to to get this program up off the ground, which sounded crazy, like from start to finish, and but we ended up doing it in far less than that. And so you talk about really celebrating a win, not just that the program was from start to finish, developed in this period of time, but that we actually did it faster than the amount of time that I thought wasn't going to be nearly long enough. And it was a testament to the team. It wasn't about whether it. Difficult, or if it was easy, it was we all bought into this vision for our new leader, who he had tons of respect for what he was trying to do. He said this has been something that the organization has deemed a priority and very important, and nobody's been able to get it done. And of course, we all rallied around that vision. We clearly understood what the assignment was. We understood what success looked like, and we understood that we would have the support of the organization to get it done. And it was really about tapping into those teams, leaning into them. When I talk about going down to Laredo, I wasn't by myself. There were other people who were tracking the movement of trucks and shipments across borders at all hours of the night, you know, taking trips at the spur of the moment, because some shipment didn't pass the, you know, the testing that it has to has to pass to make it in. And nobody was getting, you know, paid anything more. Nobody's day job went away. These were all things that we were asked to do on top of what we were already doing, and it was only because of the dedication of the team. I think, how I like to believe that my leadership style and the collaborative nature being inclusive, listening to people who knew things that I did not know because I told you, I never worked on an import pro, you know, I never started an import function. But there were people in different areas of the organization who had experience, not necessarily with imports, because we didn't do that, but they had experience with logistics and transportation, USDA, FDA, and we pulled all of those people together to play their unique part. I wasn't asking the person who knew about the USDA to, you know, come up with the packaging. Well, I kind of was, we collaborated on that, make sure the regulatory information was the same. But my point is, people had a specific role to play, and I knew where their skills were. They had never done this before, but none of us had done it before, so we're going to try some things. Everything's not going to work, and that's okay, like, nobody's going to get fired because this happened, and we had to create that safe space for people to try new things, for people to speak up and say, that's not going to work. I can't tell you know, I can't point to something that we did here that it's not going to work, but I'm telling you it's not going to work, and here's why, but not just come with the it's not going to work. They were coming also with but let's do this instead, and that really comes from team that has bought in on the vision. And that was, you know exactly what happened?

William Harris 37:29

You just reminded me of something I posted on LinkedIn, maybe yesterday, or it was very recently. There's a song by Ruth B called Lost Boy. It's a really good song. My daughters like it, and it's basically like this idea of like Peter Pan and escaping from reality a little bit. And the thing that I liked about this song, or at least what I posted about, is that everybody that I know that's been very successful, though, they don't run away from responsibility. They chase responsibility, right? And so to your point, it's like everybody's day job was still there, but you're like, but I'm going to chase responsibility that you have the personality that says I'm not afraid of it. I want to make the tough decisions. A lot of people are like, I don't want to make the call, I don't want to make the decision, right? And just like, No, I want to make that call, I want to make that decision. And I think that that's a really good attribute of somebody that ends up in leadership, which, and you started talking about some of the leadership stuff there, and so I wanted to bring in something that I read. I think it's something that I either you and I were talking one time, or I read it that you had said one of your mentors said you have to be able to fish and eat at the same time. What does that mean, at least in context of of leadership and startups here, that

Jenica Oliver 38:38

is one of the things that has stood out for me. I was not a consultant at the time, but I had worked for a gentleman. He was our chief marketing officer back when I was at Mission Foods, and at the end of his tenure with the organization, he became a consultant. And he was really a smart marketer. He was very fair, I mean, faith based guy like I just always really enjoyed working with him, and so we would often meet for coffee or for lunch just to kind of catch up and talk about things. And on one of our lunches, he mentioned, you know, I was asking him, how is it has been the transition to consulting? And he mentioned that, you know, the biggest challenge is being able to fish and eat at the same time, and I've applied that in different contexts throughout my career, since he shared that with me, when I was an employee, I thought, you know, for teams that are working on something actively, like that import program, we had to be able to keep up with our day job while also taking on something else. You gotta be fishing and eating at the exact same time, because you don't have the luxury of doing one or the other. As a, you know, an independent consultant or fractional chief marketing officer, I have to be cultivating relationships with leaders and organizations while I'm working on engagement. Or you're constantly going to be in this feast or famine cycle. You're constantly going to be, you know, chasing and refilling, and that's exhausting and it's expensive, so while you're working on the thing, you have to be fishing so that you have something to eat later. And that's a constant cycle. I did not know what a gym that was at the time that he shared it with me, but I have shared it with just about anybody else who talks about starting something new, whether you're currently working in corporate and you're trying to figure out whether or not this side hustle that you've been working on is going to become your main hustle. You better be fishing and eating while you're still in that corporate role, start testing those waters so that you're setting yourself up for success when the corporate thing is no longer the main thing. So I just think it has application in so many instances, and I think he intended it to really explain to me, like his experience as an independent consultant, not no longer attached to an organization, but I'm telling you that has been gold. For me, it has totally been gold. It

William Harris 41:10

even makes sense from the idea of, let's say you're an e-commerce brand, and you have to balance, you know, satisfying existing customers and going after new customers, or you have to satisfy keeping the product the way that it is, and innovating on the product. And so, like, like you said, there's like, this balance of both of these, and it can feel like you're pulling on two sides of the same string to fish and eat at the same time. What are, what are tips that you have for being able to do that effectively?

Jenica Oliver 41:36

I think it's, you know, not losing sight, not ever being too comfortable while you're busy reveling in and patting yourself on the back for, you know, the client that you just landed or the work that you've been doing. I've been in that situation myself. You've got a retained engagement. You know, there's no end in sight. We're just going to keep rocking and rolling until you're not and if you are constantly having those conversations. You're remaining visible. You're talking to people about what you're doing that's kind of planting those seeds. And you know, one of the things that doesn't happen is you don't plant a seed today and reap that harvest tomorrow. There's always time in between. So you gotta be preparing for the what comes next, because by the time you get there, it's probably going to be too late. If you're hungry tomorrow, you better fish today, and if you're eating today, you better be fishing or you won't be eating tomorrow, you know. So I just think it's applicable in so many areas of life and different types of business.

William Harris 42:38

Let's talk a little bit about some of the innovation, because you talked about this, and one of the things that you and I are talking about here is this idea of, how do you get your team to think beyond fixing what's broken and creating what's next? How do you how do you get that mental shift? It's

Jenica Oliver 42:56

difficult for some people, some people, and here's where knowing your team and knowing their strengths and where you can stretch them and where you just absolutely can't doesn't mean that the team that member doesn't bring value, but they might not be the person that can work on what's right in front of them now and then, think creatively around something that doesn't exist yet. And so I've often found that in organizations where those resources can't do both at the same time, you're better off splitting that function and letting that person be responsible for just the day to day, if they can't shift even between tasks, like on their to do list, between what needs to be done right now and they get over consumed with what needs to be done right now, That's an indication that they're not going to be able to manage the brand day to day, as well as think about something that is totally new. But what they may be able to do is, I like to talk about the distinction between innovation and renovation. And innovation is something that is totally new to market, totally new to world. May not exist at all, whereas a renovation is something much closer in, maybe it's a new flavor, maybe it's a new form, maybe it's a new pack size, the people who are really good at thinking about today those things are close enough in that they can visualize, that they can see that next step to get that done. So it's not that they can't be part of the innovation initiatives and that they can't have responsibility for innovation, but what you may really task them with is a renovation, not an innovation. You know,

William Harris 44:27

what's interesting about this is I see this even in all the organizations I've been in, that sometimes there's the doer that is excellent at doing there's the manager that's excellent at managing, and sometimes you take the doer and you put them in the management and maybe they fail because they're that's not managers, but they're not managers, but they're very good doers. And I think Shopify has gone down the idea of, like, dual track, and we're trying to do this at Elumynt here as well, which I really like, where it's like, maybe you just want to be an excellent executor at what it is that you do, and you don't want to go the management track, that's okay. And what's also interesting about this is sometimes. We expect managers to also be the innovators, and the reality is maybe they're actually really, really, really good managers, and they're just not innovators, and that's okay too. It's sometimes like you said, it's like, maybe split those off and realize that just because they're the senior most person on that team doesn't mean they also have to be the thinker or the innovator of that they just might be really good at directing or managing. Might be one of your doers who's the innovator or the renovator, right,

Jenica Oliver 45:25

exactly, and that, again, it goes back to knowing your team, knowing their strengths and weaknesses. You know, I found I never liked as someone's direct report. I never liked being managed like everybody else, it's not a, you know, a blanket guideline that what you do for this person is what you do for this other person that often doesn't work. And so as part of my leadership style, I like to really get to know the people on my team. We spend far more time with the people that we work with than we do spouses and kids and, you know, especially during the work day. And so why not take some time to get to know a little bit about the people that work with you, that'll help you to understand what motivates them. It helps you understand, you know, what their interests are. It helps you to understand when they've got maybe they're having an off day, if you know them well enough, you know that this is an off day, something that's temporary. Maybe you don't ask them to do this thing today, but tomorrow, they'll be back in stride. You'll be able to leverage them in the way that you know you've leveraged them before. They may even be the people who can go out gather information on things that are new and bring it back to the team. Maybe they're not the person that's going to execute that for the team, but they've got that vision. They've got more of an entrepreneurial spirit. They might not be the person who sits in the office all day and just checks boxes and ticks thing off. That's important. But trying to get someone who's much more creative and free thinking and fluid in the way that they go about their day to check boxes and, you know, be rigid and always in the office, that's not how you get the best out of people. So I like to manage people. Kind of meet them where they are again, manage them in a way that's going to get the best out of them, build trust between us. Because sometimes I might ask you to do some things that you feel like are impossible, starting an import program where you've never done that before, but if they trust me well enough to know that I'm asking them for a reason, I'm also going to explain generally what that is. But you know, they trust me enough to know that I'm not setting them up for failure. They're in. If they do fall short, we will call it as opposed to failing. That it's going to be okay, like we're going to be in this together. People will go out of their way when they like or respect and enjoy the person that they're actually working with. You get far more out of your team that way, you also have to know not to abuse it. Just because they will doesn't mean that they should or because you've asked them to do you gotta. You gotta keep that, that power balance in mind, so that you're not you know, people aren't saying yes to all the things you're asking them because you're their boss, and not just because they're willing to pitch in and help.

William Harris 47:58

One of my favorite quotes by Josh McDowell, and I say this all the time. It works in family life. It works in business. Life is rules. Without relationship leads to rebellion. And to your point, if you haven't developed that relationship, then there is going to be a rebellion. If all you're doing is giving the tasks. But if you've developed a relationship, that it's much easier for those tasks to be welcomed like you said, it says, like, Hey, we're on the same team, speaking of motivation, and you talked about the different flavors. And I like that concept. Why do so many brands focus on the next flavor instead of the next big thing?

Jenica Oliver 48:36

Well, oftentimes you need both, and you can't put all of your eggs in one basket. There's something to be said about giving people more of what they like. So when you realize they like eggs, I've worked in yogurt as an example, tons of flavors, and you would think, why do you need so many flavors of yogurt? Well, because I don't want to have strawberry banana every day, but if you only gave me strawberry banana, and then you go off and do something totally different. When I want some variety, then I'm gonna have to go outside of your brand to find it. So being able to balance that totally unique and different with a variety seeking personality, or a shopper that's looking for variety, it actually increases the basket. You'll get that incremental purchase out of them, which is why there's so many, you know, scents of candles and soaps, and no one wants the same thing every day. Otherwise we would just have vanilla ice cream. You've got to have flavor

William Harris 49:35

ice cream, though, too. Yeah.

Jenica Oliver 49:38

Everybody loves vanilla ice cream until you want chocolate. You know, like very can either give me chocolate or I can go someplace else and get chocolate. So that renovation and the strategy behind how you satisfy the needs of your target audience is really important to portfolio management. That's within the brand, but you don't want to be. At vanilla ice cream. You want to be the vanilla, the rocky road, the chocolate chip, the cookie dough, because on some day, somebody might decide, I've already had vanilla. I don't want that. I want something else. If you don't have that in your portfolio, they're going to go someplace else. And once you lose that shopper, it's hard to get them back, particularly if they like what they find as a substitute, and that substitute has other things that they like. They're much more likely to try a new flavor from the brand that's satisfying their needs than to go back to the old flavor that they left because they weren't satisfying their needs. So retention is super important. It's as important as acquisition, and you've just got to be able to keep your eye on both of them.

William Harris 50:49

Humans are platform minded, aren't we? Like I didn't think about it until you said that, but it's very similar to, you know, buying tools. It's like most of my tools are DeWalt, and even if I have to get another tool, I'll sometimes spend more money, not even, even if it's a corded one. So it's not even because it's going to match the battery that I already have. But I'm like, I just want them to match. I just want them to look the same. I want it to be yellow and black, right, or whatever. And to a point, we are very platform based. And so if you're like, Well, I got this other ice cream for this other brand, and so I just buy all my ice cream flavors from this brand, because they have all of them. Even though I still like the vanilla from this other brand, I just like all my brands to match some buy, all of my all of my stuff from the same brand. And so I can see how, you know, once you've lost a customer to a different platform, per se, to a different brand, all their purchases start going there. So using that. How can brands prioritize consumer insights instead of just reacting to sales data? I

Jenica Oliver 51:48

think it's very important to keep a pulse. It's not good enough to talk to your consumers just one time or assume that the thing that got you there is the thing that's going to keep you there. Their needs change. They're exposed to other options, and to think that they're not going to take advantage of those options is crazy. They household makeup changes, children age, you know, you get into a different maybe. I used to work from home, and I really love this thing, but now I've got to go back into the office, and that thing doesn't work for me anymore. So you really have to stay number one true to who your audience is. You can't be all things to everyone. So really dial down into that persona that you can replicate. You know this is the profile of this person. And just know that there's enough of those people out there to build a business on. But then stay close to them. Understand what they're doing, what's impacting their life, what challenges, what pain points do they have? How can you be a solution for them so that when they need another tool, they're going to pick up the do all, even if there's other options that are available because you've been good to them, they trust you. They know or have a feeling that because you were their helper, their partner, and whatever their challenge was before that if you offer the same thing, even if it's a bit more, that they can trust it. And there's a lot to be said about trust with a brand and being able to meet their needs, but then they all that trust you can also leverage when you come out with something that they've not even realize that they need yet. If, if you, if you know me really, really well, and you've been able to deliver the best, you know, chocolate ice cream, and then you come out with a popsicle that does something interesting. Well, you knew what you were doing on the last thing, so I'm gonna take a chance and see if you know what you're doing on this thing, and they'll give you a little bit of grace. So they consumers, love to tell you their opinions. They love to share with you what's going on with them. They don't always have the answer. Like, don't go ask them. Like, what do you need? Sure you're going to get like, Bambi and headlights. They don't know, but they can react to options that you put in front of them. So do the work up front? Do your due diligence. Really get to know them. Look at innovation as well as renovation and just day to day. Brand management through their perspective. It's not about what Jenica likes, that doesn't matter. It's about me being able to listen to the consumer, tease out what they're saying, and also be able to tease out what they're not saying. Maybe they're not telling me they're answering my question, but if I didn't ask the right question, I'm likely not going to get the answer to something that we really need to know. So how you structure consumer insights partnering with someone who is a professional, you'd be surprised at how asking a the way you ask a question will get you to a totally different result. And there's an art form to being able to do that. I know people like I should do a questionnaire, but you're leading them in the questions, or you didn't ask this question because you thought you knew you really need to. You know, that's a great area to invest. I think you can't have enough of that. You don't always have to commission the study yourself. Everything doesn't have to be. Primary research, there's studies out there that you can people, people have published. You know, I always say, check the source, but secondary information, trend reports, you know, retailers will tell you what they're looking for, what's up and coming, investigate all of those things, but then validate it with your audience. Just because you can doesn't mean that you should do something. Sure.

William Harris 55:21

What's your favorite way of getting that information? Let's say on a budget. You know, brand that's 10 million, and they're not spending big, big bucks on, like, the really deep data and stuff like that. And I'm gonna, before you answer, I'm gonna give an example of the way that's the most expensive way probably will. Leach was on the show as well. And he was Pepsi, you know, X Pepsi and Frito lays and stuff. And a lot of what he did was they would actually go to those people's homes and, like, just sit there and watch them, you know, do their morning routine. And it's like, Oh, so that's why you ended up picking that cereal, because it just happened to be here. And so, like, that's how that works. And so, very, very, very deep insight, very rich insight, very, very expensive and complicated put together. And so, like you said, then you could just send, like, an email form, and the only people who replied to that were the people who naturally want to reply to things. And that might not even be that representative of your base. And so, like, what is your your preferred way of going about this for the average, let's say, you know, middle brand, 10, $20 million so it's

Jenica Oliver 56:20

always great to start with qualitative you don't know what you don't know, so you have to go into it with some baseline understanding. You know. You can't just go in and say, Hey, what do you want to talk about today? Like you have to have some framework around it. But just having conversations like focus group style. They don't you're nowadays, you can do a good virtual focus group. They're just effective as in person, focus groups, look at people in different markets. I live in the Dallas Fort Worth area, so some of the regional things that are commonplace to me doesn't necessarily mean it's someone who lives in the Northeast or New Jersey. We're not going to have the exact same things. When I worked at Pizza Hut, we would constantly do market testing consumer insights. And it was amazing to me. I live in the Met, you know, in metropolitan area, and so we don't have a lot of dine in restaurants here. Most of them have gone away. Yum brands. Pizza Hut is headquartered here. And so a lot of things when they're rolling out, to making changes to their their store formats are here in this marketplace. And so a lot of the Dine in restaurants that have the traditional buffet and those have gone away like you can't go into a Pizza Hut and eat like that. And so when we would go to markets rural areas where the Pizza Hut was still the local Italian restaurant, their perception of Italian was very different. Their perception of buffet and pizza was very different. So it was important for us to have an understanding of where people what people's experiences are, what their frame of reference is. You ask people when I worked at Mission, when you ask people like about their knowledge of tacos. It was not uncommon to hear people say that Taco Bell is their favorite Mexican restaurant. Well, I live in Texas, and so we don't really consider Taco Bell Mexican like it's just Taco Bell, you know? And so it it's you have to really understand that if Taco Bell is what they perceive to be traditional Mexican, giving them a you know, Tostada and expecting them to make enchiladas from scratch or mole, yeah, you've gone way too far. They're just looking for, you know, chalupa, or you know, or you know, something that they could get off of, off of the menu. So it's that's where consumer insights will help. You can also do, instead of doing an ethnography or going into an in home use test or sitting watching people, you can also have people fill out diaries, send them product to try in a natural way. The thing about a focus group is they're going to tell you everything, from memory, what they've done before or what they haven't done before, but being able to allow them to experience the product journal about it, give other people in the household. When we do focus groups, if, particularly if it's a product for a child or the primary shopper is making the purchase decisions. But they may not be the end consumer. They may not be the person that's using the product. You'll get different perspectives. So it's beneficial whether you're going to go and sit in their home and watch what they do versus what they tell you they're going to do, or you provide them with a product to use in the way that it would normally be used, and then provide a journal for them to capture those responses in. They can do it digitally. And then you get them back together, and you talk to them about not only what they've submitted, what they provided as part of their journal, but what their perceptions are, what their key takeaways are. What would you do differently? Were you the person? You're the person that I'm talking to? But were you. Person that used the product, or was it a child? You are? You answer answering on somebody else's behalf, so it allows you to tease out that information that you wouldn't otherwise uncover. And it's pretty cost effective, like you don't have to. I still suggest that you partner with somebody who knows how to formulate the questionnaire, you know, and get it all, get everything asked the right way. But some of these things are things that you can field yourself, as long as you are building a sample or a pool of people that aren't just your friends and families. They love you, they'll tell you anything but recruiting the right people, getting them to participate, making sure that these are people who are already in the category today or are likely to utilize the category. You're not asking them to evaluate something that they'd never use, or they'll tell you, but how accurate is that going to be? And then also making sure that, if the product were full price, would they purchase it, not just on a discount? People try anything on a discount, and if you give it to them free, they're going to love it even more. But if it were at this price point, would you purchase it? What would you purchase along with it? What would it replace? Like, those are some critical questions to answer, but that's an effective way. I like doing those too.

William Harris 1:01:07

It's a good point that you bring up about the the purchase price. A lot of times people will do especially in the D to C community. You know, these coupons spin the wheel, whatever. And so if somebody buys the product, and because it's incentivized them, and you gotta get them in the door, you gotta get now you've captured the email. Captured the email. You have the potential to remark them. There's, there's a lot of good reasons for it, but it's a very different customer than the person that was willing to pay full price in the first time. And so I really try to steer away from too much discounting early on, because I think that you, you're shooting yourself in the foot a little bit. I like food. I like that. You I didn't realize this. Susan, a thing. I kind of want to know, how do I become a food tester? I want to I want pizza to test all their new ideas out on me. Send me. Send me all the free pizza that you want. Sounds like fun. I want to dig into your specific company here, Blueprint Marketing Group, and your journey there. So like, why did you decide to start this? What was the what was the thought that said, Yep, this deserves to be in the world needs to be

Jenica Oliver 1:02:05

so I actually started Blueprint Marketing Group in 2008 while I was still working, and it was intended to be not, not even necessarily, a side hustle. I loved working in corporate organizations. I love being a brand leader that I never thought that I would be, you know, an independent professional of any sort, not necessarily much of an entrepreneurial spirit. I love innovation, but it's still insulated within a larger organization. But I started the organization because I would always run into people, small business owners, folks from my church who hear your marketer and they've got questions. And so I wanted to be accessible. I wanted to be able to provide them with a resource that, you know, could help them out with smaller projects, things that they wanted to do. Oftentimes, we were doing some in kind exchange of some sort. I needed this, or I, you know, I needed that. And so it wasn't for me about making the money it was I had an opportunity to do what I really liked to do, and people kept asking me. So the company was formed. Then at that point in time, kind of rode along, kind of here and there, just helping people out. But in 2016 the company that I was working for born dairy company. I was at a marketing innovation and the organization restructured, and they that restructuring impacted the role that I was in, my entire team, and it kind of went away. And so the CFO at the time, asked me if I would be interested in staying on. They were going to be courting investors, somebody to buy the fresh fluid milk division, asked me if I would be interested in staying on to help ensure that the brand maintain value. And what he described was a fractional engagement. He didn't say that. He didn't say, can you be our fractional CMO or anything like that? But what he talked about was, these are the specific things that we need. I know that you're going to find a full time job, but in the meantime, we really need your help. So can you give us X number of hours, you know, like a week? All I heard was I was still gonna get paid while I was looking for another job. So I was like, Sure, Sign me up. Sure and and since I already had this company, it was easy for me to make the transition. But it wasn't until I realized that there was a market for fractional support for marketing that I thought this could be a real thing. Because despite today, there being a lot of ways that, you know, CXOs, fractionals, you know, show up the way that I work, I have found is very different than the way other fractional CMOS show up. The level of tenure that fractionals have is not standardized. And so when I started back in 2016 here is nine years later, I wasn't thinking like, Oh, I'm going to be innovative. I call myself. It was just the best way to describe I wasn't a contractor. I wasn't a temporary I couldn't work for anybody full time because I had already given away some of it. I had committed some. Of my bandwidth. So in partnering with with Borden, through their transition, I started networking with people and tell them what I was doing. They're like, Hey, I know somebody who needs that. And so I started pulling, you know, taking on these fractional engagements. And in a lot of cases, there was a fractional CFO there. So I was like, Well, wait, you're kind of doing what I do. And so probably nine months in or so, I rebranded as a fractional CMO. And at the time, I spent far more time explaining to people what a fractional CMO was. They're like, I know what a practical CFO was, but what is a fractional CMO? And I was like, it's kind of the same thing, you know? And so it was the most accurate description for me, because I didn't want to be the day to day, tactical temporary or the contractor, you know, I didn't even want to have those expectations. I couldn't and so I also needed to show up uniquely and distinctly different, because what I was asking them to do, or the way I was asking them to partner with me, wasn't something they were familiar with. So I couldn't call myself the thing that they were familiar with, because I'm like, that's not that's not bad. You know, I wasn't a consultant. Just come in and audit your business and tell you good luck with that. I'm going to shepherd the team through it. So so it really started that way, and I credit my husband because I was on the phone talking to girlfriend of mine, and she was unemployed at the time. I effectively was unemployed. I wasn't a full time employee, although I was working and we were complaining about interviewing and the job market and, you know, all the things. And I get off the phone and my husband comes in, and he's like, You need to stop saying that. And I was like, why are you listening to that conversation? You know, completely missing the point, you know. And, and he was like, You're not unemployed. You weren't. You've been self employed since the day you left, you know, walked out of the door. And it was just that reframe, that mind shift, that I guess in a sense, gave me permission to try something that didn't already exist, something that I wasn't familiar with. So in the true marketing fashion. I was like, Well, I gotta go validate this, you know, I gotta test this out and see if there's a market for it. And I did. And honestly, the market had already been tested, because I've been doing it at that point for, you know, many months, and I had already replaced my salary, you know, more than replaced my salary. And thankfully, I didn't have a need for, like, insurance benefits, because he's got great benefits, but it gave me an opportunity to try something new that added value and didn't require me to, like, reinvent myself. I don't want to pivot. I love marketing.

William Harris 1:07:34

I love marketing too. That's a really I appreciate the way that that all worked. Sometimes these things happen, and we can't see what's on the other side of these events, right where it's like, oh, they're restructuring. I don't have this. It's like, this stinks. And we don't realize that those can be the catalysts, oftentimes, for some of the biggest things that happen in our lives. I want to keep getting to know who is Jenica Oliver a little bit more. I understand that you grew up as an Air Force brat, moving around frequently. How did that shape who you are to this day? I

Jenica Oliver 1:08:08

think it. I think it had a profound impact on me looking back now like at the time, it wasn't odd. We lived on military bases. Everyone moved around a lot. It was much more odd to me after I no longer lived on a military base, when I realized that everybody doesn't move every couple of months, when I met people who, like in high school, who had had the same best friends since preschool or, you know, nursery, and I was like, I just I don't have that. I didn't feel like I had been slighted in any in any way, but I just didn't have that, that same experience as them. But what I did have was, I feel like because we moved around, we had to find comfort, like it was easy to adapt, easy to adjust. We were constantly in multicultural environments. I didn't realize I was minority until I was an adult, because I had never been around a majority, like everybody kind of was we all. It's like this really interesting melting pot within a city, or, you know, adjacent to a city. Oftentimes, those some of the best experiences. For a long time, I went to school on the base. We had shot, you know, we grocery shopped on the base. There wasn't a lot of reason to be off. And then when we moved to the last location that my father was stationed in Oklahoma City, we didn't live on base anymore, and there were a lot of people, although a lot of people still either worked on base. It was just one of those types of communities. Not everybody had the same upbringing as me. Their people had lived in their in a home their whole entire life. And I was like, Man, the stories that I have, you know, my sister and I, and so I learned how to adapt. I pretty much can get along with. Different people from different cultures, because I've had different experiences. I I've not yet met or come in contact with a situation where someone was like, Huh. I've never met anybody with that background or, you know, I have an appreciation for diversity and what I can learn from them. I have an appreciation for other cultures and different ways of thinking, and so it, I think it helped me, because when I got to when I became part of the professional workforce, that's exactly what you're doing. Like, my whole life was a group project, working with other people, you know, getting stuff done and and having to figure out, like, how do I influence and how do I do this? And then I get into the workforce, and people have come from all over. They didn't all grow up together. They didn't all look down the street from each other their whole entire lives. And so you have to have respect for the differences they bring, as well as the similarities what they can contribute. You may not, might not be somebody that you want to hang out with on the weekends, but you know you can find some common ground, or at least a place of respect that will allow you to co exist in the workplace and, you know, ultimately do good work. So I think it shaped me a lot. I until I got around people who didn't have the same experience, I didn't think it was anything major, you know, introspective like, Oh, this is how this has impacted me. But I've grown to appreciate that as I've gotten older.

William Harris 1:11:22

It's really beautiful. And I know that you had shared before that you actually, as a result of all the different cultures that you were surrounded by, you were better at using chopsticks before you could use a fork. Exactly.

Jenica Oliver 1:11:34

We had some neighbors that were one of our neighbors was Japanese. I learned how to make spring rolls and egg rolls like very early. I remember food again, yes, again with the food. I remember being at one of my friend's house when we were younger, and my mom had come over. My our parents were best friends. We lived right next door to each other, and, you know, military, traditional military style. And I remember being at their house one day, and my mom overhearing me doing Buddhist chant, and we're not Buddhist, we're Baptist, and so she was a bit a nerve. She was like, What are you doing? You know, but I spent a lot of time with them after school, and the way that their parents would get them to say their prayers was they would put candy there, and they could get the candy after they had said their prayers. So of course, I'm there with them and I wanted candy, and they're like, Well, you gotta say your prayers first. So I learned, I learned the prayer with them. I would say it with them. I had no idea that that was what. All I knew was that there was candy at the end of it, and so, so, yeah, it was my mom was like, Yeah, I'm glad you got an appreciation for it. But I also learned a lot about their culture. I learned a lot about the importance of people's, you know, religion and their faith, and how that faith enter in, you know, comes about, and the way that they go about doing their their daily business, you know, their lives. I was able to introduce them to some of our cultures. I'm sure there's some things that we ate that they were kind of like, what you're doing, what you know. So it was, it was great to share experience like, truly share experiences.

William Harris 1:13:18

We need so much more of that. I do think that's one of the issues of modern society that's happened since the advent of social media, is that we're lacking a lot of that melting right? It's too easy to find people who just think and act and say exactly the way that you do, and you don't need to interact with people who are different in any way a lot of times, and I think that that's caused, I don't know, a lot of confusion, a lot of emboldenness in certain thoughts. Because you're like, Well, look, obviously, I'm not crazy. These people agree with me, and it's like, well, maybe, maybe, just maybe, we can learn a lot from each other if we take the time to, you know, have a meal with somebody who's different, or, you know, conversations, learn about what's important to them and where they've come from and what they're doing. And it's a tough thing that I, I wrestle with, because I grew up, you know, I probably similar to you. I, you know, presupposing here that you're around the same age as me here, but I grew up where, you know, pre digital, and then I've seen digital, and so it's like, I've gotten to experience a little bit of both. And there's definitely the the 40 year old in me that looks at this and says, like, I missed some of the good old days when we actually got a chance to just dig in with people, and you can do that. And I think that that's where we need to be a little bit better about being intentional

Jenica Oliver 1:14:38

about that. Now, yeah, for sure.

William Harris 1:14:42

I also wanted to ask you about just this idea of you're you're you're busy, you work hard, and there was a time when you said your son told me something along, or told you something long as I was like, and can you not be on your phone? And this is something that I feel like a lot of us. Are self employed. Can struggle with, you know, putting it down or whatever, but it's like, how do you manage being as effective as you are at work, but also being as effective as you can be at home? That was a soul crushing

Jenica Oliver 1:15:17

moment. My youngest son is pretty transparent. He and I love that about him, yeah, and it for him, it was an honest request. For me, it was an eye opener, because I did not realize that that was his perception of me. I thought we were spending quality time if we were together at some place where he was having fun, not paying attention to me, you know? So in my mind, it's like, Well, we're here. You're doing what you want to do. I'm just busying myself. But what he saw was I wasn't present, and when he asked me, you know, it happened to be during a one of the school breaks, or something like that, and the program that they went to was going to take them, like, on a field trip, and I messed up the time, and so they missed it. So I was like, Okay, well, I'm still going to take you. We just won't go with them. I'm still going to take you. And he was like, Oh, this is great. You know, it's like, can you come and but can you just not be on your phone? And I thought, I was like, oh, like, what? What do you mean? And he was like, you're always on your phone. Now, in my mind, I wasn't always on my phone, but I did prioritize work. And if for me, I was there with them, like, but I'm here, and he's like, physically, but mentally, you are someplace else. And so I really had to, A, not get defensive, but then B, think about what are the behaviors that I'm demonstrating that have led him to think that when I'm with him, that I'm not really with him, and I realized a lot of that was baggage I had from corporate. I'm not proud of it, but, you know, I'm from the age where I remember getting my first BlackBerry, when you were able to be connected. You know, outside of the office. I remember getting my first laptop, you know, when you were able to be connected outside of the office. And although no one ever said you've got to, you know, they give you a laptop and you're in the office, but the whole point of the laptop is to be able to be mobile. So by nature, when you left, you had accessibility. Same thing with the Blackberry. When you left the office, you now had email, you had phone, you had all of these things, and I it was just something that I thought you did. I didn't realize the trade off to that, and what one of the things that I made a priority when I became a fractional CMO was that I wasn't going like I was going to dictate the amount of time that I give up. And yes, there are times when I'm up at six o'clock in the morning on a call or I'm working late into the evening, but that's not going to be the norm. And if I wanted to go on a field trip with my kids, because my son also told me, he was like, Can you come on the field trip? And I was like, I gotta work. All the other mommies, come on all the field trips. And I was like, no, they don't. Yes, they do. I was like, well, maybe they don't work. Yes, they do. Like he had an answer for everything, and what I realized was that in his mind, it was just that simple, if you want to come on the field trip, you come on the field trip. So when I was separated from my company and like a whole ball of mess trying to figure out what I was going to do, I had so much guilt from the trade offs that I had made in my corporate days. No one ever said I couldn't go on the field trips. No one ever said I couldn't go have lunch with my my kids, but I didn't see other people doing it. And so I think representation truly matters. If you don't see someone else in your organization blocking their calendar and not explaining why, you won't know that that's something that you can do. So I found a lot of freedom in being able to set my own schedule. If I want to go to a field trip, I don't have to announce it. I just block my time and I go. And when I'm there, there's an there's not an expectation that I'm going to be accessible. And I had to, you know, I had to set those boundaries. And it has been very sobering to know that I could have done that all along and likely still ended up in the exact same place. As I mentioned. I wasn't the person still standing after that organizational restructuring, and I'd given up a lot of opportunities with my family, and so, you know, I'm I'm not blaming anyone. Those were choices that I made. I don't know that they're necessarily conscious choices, but definitely choices that I made, and I'm just not going to do that anymore.

William Harris 1:19:32

So good of you to realize that, and then to be able to put that into words and share that here as well, because somebody who's listening to this is, this was the moment for them to go, Ah, I have that permission to do that as well. And so, like you said, like without seeing somebody else do that, you almost feel like you don't realize it's even a choice. And so thank you. I just also want to thank you for joining me on the show here today. Jenica, it's been so wonderful talking to you, learning from you, if people want to work with you or they want to follow you, what's the best way for them to get in touch or stay in touch. I love connecting

Jenica Oliver 1:20:10

with people on LinkedIn, so you can follow me on LinkedIn at Jenica Oliver, J-E-N-I-C-A-O-L-I-V-E-R, I've gotten some really great connections there. I love being able to help people share what I know, and I've got a really solid network, Tiffany being an example. And so I like being able to connect other people everything. You know, I'm not the solution for everyone, but I know really great people who do really great work, and I found that my network has also become a resource for others, as well as the partners that I engage with. So I like meeting with people on LinkedIn. I think that's probably the best place to connect with me, if if you want to work together, or just want to bounce ideas off or see what type of work I do, LinkedIn is great platform.

William Harris 1:21:00

That’s great. Well again, Jenica, it's been so nice getting to know you, learning from you. I appreciate your time and your wisdom here today.

Jenica Oliver 1:21:07

Thank you. You too. This has been fun. Thanks for having me.

William Harris 1:21:10

Yeah, and thank you everyone for listening. Hope you have a great rest of your day.

Outro 1:21:13

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

‍