Transcription – [Fully Managed] Jessica Goodrum Ep. 82 – Podcast Highlights and Transcript

Opening Segment: Bizarre News

Daniela: Okay, so a bizarre news for the week is that a man in China found himself trapped in a massage chair, and he had to tweet to get assistance, so that somebody could come in and help him outside of this massage chair that he got trapped in. I mean, is there any better place to get trapped than a massage chair?

Jessica: Massage chair? What I don’t understand is how did he not – I don’t have any context for this, so I don’t understand how he got trapped. Why he had to tweet for assistance. If he had a cell phone, why didn’t you call your friend or something? That’s ridiculous. I have seen massage chairs where they squeeze your calves too, so maybe it just like stopped and locked his leg in.

Daniela: Yeah. I don’t know. That’s insane. That’s fun. But that is how we’re starting the podcast today, guys.

Introduction

Daniela: You guys know everything. Welcome to Fully Managed. This is where we discuss marketing and business tips to assist you with your business journeys. I’m your host. You know me, Daniela, and I’m Penji’s partnership coordinator. Joined with me today is a very special guest, Jessica Goodrum.

Hi Jessica. How are you doing?

Jessica: Hi. Happy to be here.

Daniela: I’m so excited to have you on the podcast today. It’s gonna be – we talked about the podcast before we got on a call, so, you know, we finally got to filming and I’m really excited to have our episode.

Jessica: Yeah, I am too. I’m excited. I hope we get into some good stuff.

Daniela: Me too. So, to get us kind of going, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, about what you do, favorite color, animal, whatever it is that we need to know about you to get the call rolling.

Getting to Know Jessica

Jessica: Yes. Okay. We’re getting personal. I love it. So, my name’s Jessica Goodrum and I work at Rival Mind, which is a digital marketing agency, which is just a part of it, right? We all work somewhere. I have, I’m kind of a naturey person. I really enjoy climbing, so rock climbing. I’m kind of new to it, so I consider myself a noob. I love climbing. I love, you know, dancing. I live in the Chicagoland area. It’s just like a really cool place to live. Very flat land. So maybe some mountains would be interesting, but I enjoy connecting with people and just, you know, finding authentic people and figuring out how to just come through authentically. And even from a business perspective, how do you show up authentically in the business atmosphere?

Daniela: That’s awesome. I totally relate to the feeling of needing mountains. That’s not business related, but when my family moved to the states – I don’t remember the year I was a child, but I’m from El Salvador, so my life in El Salvador was with like mountains. And we moved to Plano, Texas. For people who are not familiar, Plano means flat in Spanish. Very different. So it was like, it was called Plano because it was so flat, like legit. It was a desert. And I remember the same feeling of like, it’s just land and nothing more, and I always felt that desire for mountains. When we ended up leaving America and moving back to El Salvador, I never appreciated a mountain and a volcano more in my life. I’m telling you something about those mountains for sure.

Jessica: Yeah. It just, it can get a little suffocating to be in the desert, I think.

Daniela: Yeah.

Discussing Authenticity in Business

Daniela: It’s so great to have you here and I think Jessica, we have such a great conversation today planned because one of our main topics today is actually talking about authenticity and how it comes across in business, which I think in marketing, it’s such a coveted thing, right? To have authenticity. And it’s also not often done very well. And sometimes you see it succeeding so much. What is your take on that? What do you think people struggle so much to have authenticity?

Jessica: Oh gosh. I mean, it’s kind of a profound question. So really to show up authentically in any way, you have to be someone who’s self-aware. So we just talk at the personal level, right? Because everything kind of starts with you or starts at home, if you wanna say. You just really have to understand who you are and know the lines of how you show up, right? I mean, there are certain conversations or situations that you might express or explore with deep close friends that you aren’t going to express in business.

So you have to figure out how to be a really genuine version of yourself. A genuine message that you hope or you try to resonate with others while also knowing the line between how to present yourself too. Which is a far cry from maybe let’s say years past where each generation has their own flavor, where things were very perception management and it was the business world was primarily occupied with male counterparts with men, and I think that with more women stepping into the scene, a leadership role, there’s opportunity to just really show collaboration and authenticity and who you are and who your brand is, from a marketing perspective or just business in general.

So, I mean, have a pretty good take. You start at home and then start with you and go from there.

Daniela: I think authenticity is also just a lot like you said about perception. ‘Cause I think a lot of times you in your head, you’re being authentic and people are not perceiving that as authentic. And you know, it’s a complicated discussion because then it’s like, well this is truly what I feel or think or this is my work and whatever and, and people are like, that’s a lie. And you know, it’s because it doesn’t feel authentic, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not authentic. And I think that’s kind of like a gray area where it’s like, well, I think with especially the coming of social media where I think social media blurs the line between authenticity and kind of curated perception and maybe like little bits of authenticity, which we saw on users, but now we’re seeing very much with brands being kind of integrating that into their whole space.

What I wanna know from you is how do you think people can actually sort of keep that line of identity and, you know, I think there needs to be a little bit of thinking through when you’re posting, not just entirely authenticity. How do you do that or advise a brand owner, a business owner to do that?

Integrating Authenticity in Brand Strategy

Jessica: That’s a great question. So I love that because that’s something that the current agency that I’m at, that we’ve been working on, so is how do we show up more authentically in the space, social media, on our website, which is great, right? That’s forward facing. But then once people, clients get in contact with us, how do we show up authentically to them? And so it just has to be, for one, it has to be built into your culture. And so if you aren’t, if you find that you aren’t a very authentic business, or your atmosphere or culture of your business isn’t very authentic all the way through, the good news is you can work on it, right? You can start to work on it today.

The best way to do it is to know how to represent professionally, but also using your people. So one of the things that we’ve been working on is really showing who we are to where in the past, it’s not that we were hiding it, it’s that we just wanted to have the most, I guess, direct representation set forward. And typically, a lot of times, if you look older or if you act older or there’s a certain facade that you have, there’s a perception that you’ll be received as a professional, right? And that’s not always the case. You can have very talented people at a very young age who can also represent for your brand.

And so I guess my advisement would be is who or what in your organization is a best representation of you that you could kind of put forward and how do you put forward that on social media. There’s different platforms, right? So you can be more playful on Instagram and TikTok than you would on LinkedIn. And then bring that all the way internally in house so that when clients meet you, who they see on your website, who they see on your social media is who you are behind the scenes.

A lot of that has to do even in sales calls, right? Sales always has such a bad name to it. Salespeople have been perceived as shady in the past. And so I think just one of the things you could speak from is, one, knowing who your market is and knowing who you serve best. And when you come across potential clients that might not be the right fit, that you can be transparent with them and say, “Hey, we’d love to help, but we’re either we don’t have the capabilities for what you’re asking for, or we’re above your range, you know, whatever it is.”

So, I think it just, it’s a thing. You have to find how to weave it all the way through while still knowing how to engage professionally and to just build into your people set so that their professionalism and their expertise also have the ability to grow as well with you.

The Challenge of Authenticity in Social Media

Daniela: Yeah, I think, I mean, I, it’s so difficult. I think authenticity is just so… it’s such a difficult topic. At the same time, it’s so simple because it really is just putting your honest, true identity as a brand, as a person out there, and then connecting with that with those people. But I think with just everything that has been changing online with the coming years, it’s a lot harder. And like you said, you have to sometimes pass the baton.

I think a huge part of kind of showing authentically more on all of these forward facing platforms that we have nowadays has a lot to do with charisma. I don’t necessarily think that it’s the most authentic person as much as it’s the most charismatic person. I think obviously authenticity is great, but I think a lot of times what you see sort of being really successful is just because you’re having a very outgoing, extroverted, funny, really cool person at the front forefront of that and they might not be that. It is probably just an aspect of who they are as a person or you sometimes forget this is the job that this person is hired to do, but this is not necessarily what they stand for, who they believe in, or a lot of what they really feel.

I think it’s, my opinion is just, and correct me if I’m wrong, I feel like it’s hard to actually find genuinely authentic people who are kind of a hundred percent supporting something when they’re putting their face forward online.

Jessica: You know, I mean, it is, I mean, just at the individual level, it is hard because we want people to perceive us a certain way. Right. And then marketing is all about building a visual or building a message around like, “Hey, I want you to receive this business or what we do, or who I am in this way.” It is something very difficult. It’s something difficult for individuals to grasp or even choose to pursue because you know what? It can be very scary to be genuine and authentic.

I would say again, kind of like in the beginning how I was saying encourage a business, is any individual to encourage and them and explore what that looks like. My question to you would be, do you feel, obviously with the rise of social media, but do you feel that the younger generations crave more authenticity in the things that they interact with now in comparison to like older generations?

Gen Z and Authenticity

Daniela: I think there’s a dichotomy. I think that there’s a kind of clash of ideals in a way with the younger generations. ‘Cause I feel like yes, there’s a larger crave with authenticity, especially with AI rising. Because now you don’t even know. Now it’s not just about authenticity, it’s the question is even if, was this made by a person or is this a machine? Right? But I think yes, that crave is there, but at the same time, I think it’s not.

Okay. So like a very specific example that I have is for when with Gen Z on social media, specifically on Instagram, a very popular trend that started rising was photo dumps on your Instagram pictures. Which was kind of just like random pictures of your week, right? Like the Sunday photo dump?

Jessica: Dump. Yep. I gotcha. Yeah.

Daniela: The Sunday dump, or sometimes they would do like the week or the month, like “March 2025 dump,” and then you just post everything that happened on March. And they were supposed to be kind of like not edited. They were supposed to be against the highly edited, kind of very saturated millennial photos that we were seeing from Instagrams, from millennials. But then I started seeing a lot of influencers and content creators making videos of “this is how to make the perfect aesthetic photo dump.”

And the pictures were also, a lot of these pictures were, you could tell that people were taking them with an aesthetic in mind. Yes. They felt a little bit more natural, but they were not authentic because they were obviously posting the best meals, these really specific angles to make everything seem mysterious and cool and like your life is different. And so I feel like, I mean, this authentic photo dump thing is not really authentic when people are actually following a different aesthetic, but it’s just what’s trendy right now, if that makes sense.

Jessica: Yeah. You know, that’s a very interesting point. I wasn’t thinking about that, but you know what would be neat if, so, I like, I follow photographers and artists and you understand that you’re looking at art. A lot of the artists show up quite genuine anyways, but it would be neat to almost have a delineation of accounts that are like, “I’m producing art.” So even in that case, if it was a photo dump, you understand from that creator that they’re trying to give you a perception. They’re creating a story for you, right?

And then it’s just super clear, especially for young viewers. I mean, a lot of people with filters are kind of dead, but still there, like you said, the aesthetics, and then there’s the question of, well, what’s real in person? And then maybe we get conditioned to see the falsities and then when we see what’s real, it throws us off.

So that’s a very interesting, you know, authenticity is, I’m gonna say this. I am gonna continue on my own personal journey of authenticity. I’m gonna push for that and be as genuine. And I would wanna just share that people can do that too. I mean, to what degree anyone could judge an individual, like, “I didn’t wake up like this.” You know, is that authentic? I curled my hair. But just I guess taking that who you are in your heart and who you are in your mind, and letting those come together and just be the best person that you can be in that season of your life and continue to grow and just encourage others to do the same. But it’s definitely an interesting journey.

Women in Leadership and Authenticity

Daniela: Yeah, I think, I mean that what you said is really important. I think it’s just a journey that you have to sort of embark on. And you touched on something earlier that I wanted to bring up, which was how there’s with women kind of joining the workforce a little bit more, sort of growing more in roles. I think women have sort of come in and changed a lot of things because I think, at least if you see, I think it’s very, at least to me, maybe it’s because I’m a woman, but it’s very clear to me when I see the touch of women, like the female involvement in something. Than when it, when I don’t see it. If that makes sense.

Jessica: Yes. Oh, agreed. Yeah, I think there’s something about that. There’s so, I mean, I love to see when men and women work together and just honor and respect each other’s for each other’s gifts and intellect. And what I’ve seen evolve, but I think there’s a lot more room to grow, is that we used to, in the past, I’ll say older generations, you used to say, “well, men are this way and women are this way. And men think like this and women think like this.” And that’s not always the case. I mean, there’s very like, how women show up in those spaces. But there is a uniqueness to women, maybe because we’re women, you know, we feel that too. That really brings something to the business environment. Not just atmospheric, but like decision making too in leadership.

Daniela: Yeah, and I think like I, with women in leadership, I think you also kind of, I feel like for women in leadership and authenticity in a lot of different spaces, even though I guess society has advanced in a lot of ways. I still feel like there is a double standard. I just think it’s a little bit more subtle of that perception that we have of how a woman presents herself versus how a man presents itself. I dunno if you agree with me, but like, I genuinely feel like we’re still not at a place where we’re just, we genuinely are completely equals a hundred percent. It’s, we aren’t there yet.

Challenges for Women in the Workplace

Jessica: I think there’s a lot of pushback I’ve seen, again recently against women, women having a place in decision making. I think that businesses, communities, et cetera, miss out when women and girls aren’t considered for their intellect, talent. And just like the beauty women bring, and I don’t even mean physically, but just the way we think, the way we build community. But yes, there’s still a pretty decent divide. And I don’t think that’s just up to men or I should say it’s not just up to women to change it. It’s the men too.

You know, I enjoy being a woman and I think that men should enjoy being men. And we aren’t talking gender bias here, but I’m just saying what I’m saying and like in that just finding how to work with each other or finding how to honor the space for women to lead. Because again, you don’t make space for us. You’re missing out in your business.

Daniela: I think just what happens also is that I noticed there’s a lot of preconceived notions regarding women. Just you see a woman show up in an office and I don’t think that necessarily it’s gonna be immediately like, “oh, okay. Woman, female, go make the coffee.” I don’t think it’s like that kind of primitive, it’s not that direct, but I do feel like I started to notice it when my colleagues or the people around me would approach me with preconceived notions and biases and then that would affect how they worked around me.

If that makes sense. And sometimes it’s not even because they’re trying to directly harm you or be, or sometimes people are not even aware of the fact that this is affecting the way that they are behaving. But it is affecting it and it also takes a while for you, yourself to kind of come to that conclusion. But it’s kind of there and I think it made me realize that it’s like, yeah. I mean, I think we’re still not at a place where like we can genuinely say that women and men have the same kind of work expectations, the same kind of leadership expectations, even the same expectations to performance or any kind of thing.

Jessica: Sure. Yeah. And there’s a lot of great information out there if you wanna look into their research. It’s far more common for men to ask for raises than is for women. I mean, generally women have a softer nature in comparison. Generally not always right, and you could perceive it as less aggressive or whatever that might be, but it is more common for women to actually not ask for a raise, but more common for men too.

And I think there’s a lot of neat programs that I’ve seen that really encourage women and teach women how to do that. And the question becomes, it’s all our programming. Do we feel we don’t deserve it? Or like you mentioned earlier, you come into an environment or a workplace and you notice maybe how without intention, women are maybe treated a certain way and then other women pick up on that and then they don’t speak up, or they don’t step up, or they don’t push harder because it doesn’t feel safe for them necessarily too.

And maybe it’s not worth the fight for them, then they treat it like a job and they go home. And I think then you just aren’t getting the best from your people when you don’t recognize those things.

Daniela: Yeah. ‘Cause you also have to make your work environment enjoyable. You wanna make the people that are working there feel some type of way about it and yeah, if, I think sort of treating it like a job, going home, not being worth the fight is probably the most common thing that we see. And I think it’s mostly because people wanna protect their peace and they also wanna protect their jobs. Unfortunately, I think most people don’t feel like the company’s gonna have their back if something happens.

Jessica: This is true. Yeah. This is true. Yep.

Personal Stories about Workplace Issues

Daniela: Especially with situations with women. This didn’t happen to me, but I had a friend who told me that she had been sexually harassed at work. She didn’t really give me details. She kind of was like, “oh, you know, like this thing happened to me” and she wasn’t sure if she should say anything, report about it. And I told her like, yes, you should. I didn’t work with her. She was just kind of telling me the story and she was kind of really let down when she reported it to HR. HR just wanted it to cover up and they sent her with a warning that if she was trying to cause this type of stir up again, that she was gonna get fired.

Jessica: Wow. Wow.

Daniela: And then she would just got ostracized by her entire office. ‘Cause everyone just thought that she was like the worst person. ‘Cause apparently the person that harassed her was like this very loved person in the office.

Jessica: Go figure. Sure.

Daniela: And so everyone loved this guy. Everyone thought he was the coolest guy ever. He was super fun. And I think that really speaks volumes because it really shows how, at the end of the day that says a president, because the next woman that gets actually harassed by this man, it’s gonna feel like, what happens if I speak up? They’re just gonna tell me that I am like a liar, that I’m trying to cause drama that I’m this bad woman, blah, blah, blah. And like, I mean, how do you think that, how are you gonna motivate other female employees in your company if that is the environment that you were causing?

Jessica: Yes, that is. I feel so sorry for her. That’s terrible. It’s terrible. It still happens today. Obviously it does. And then you’re right, in the future, if anything were to happen with that party that had created that negative interaction with her, it could happen to another woman. And will she speak up?

There’s something to, if I could, so I’m not that old, but if I could say like to, ’cause I recognized it in myself when I was younger. You, when you’re coming into your womanhood, you’re also you can call it the programming, whatever – you are afraid to speak up. There’s some people that will, but you don’t understand the world yet.

And so what I would do is I would encourage young women to make connections with intelligent wise women who have, you know, if they’re in business and they wanna remain in business, business sense, and build a community there so that they feel like someone they have wisdom backing them. But it is also more common when you’re young and those things approach you. You just don’t know how to handle it. And then you go through a few rounds of that, get a little older and wiser, and then you know what to say, when to say it, and generally, you know, not to back down. So that’s a scary experience and I would like to see those types of experiences eliminated from the work environment or in the world in general.

Early Career Challenges

Daniela: Yeah. No, it’s, it’s so common to get taken advantage of when you’re starting at work. I think my first job, I remember I got, I was, I got out of college, I got hired to this company, was like two months after school. So it was super, super early. I hadn’t done any internships before, so this was genuinely my first experience in an office. And they were offering me very little money. And they told me that they were gonna give me, like, they were like, “we’re gonna give you like a probational amount for the first three months.” So they had given me an official salary, but they said, “we’re gonna give you less than that for the first three months.”

Jessica: Interesting.

Daniela: “To check if you are good. And if you don’t make it after those first three months, you get fired. But if you do a good job, then you can go to the salary that we promised you.” And I remember thinking like, this is kind of weird, right? Because if you offer something from the start, you should be giving me that from the start.

Jessica: Sure.

Daniela: But I wasn’t sure if that was a thing that people did in work. If it was a thing that companies did, if it was a standard. My friends were all my age. We were all super young. We were all like, I don’t know. And I remember thinking, should I take it? The thing is, I was living abroad at the time, so I was kind of dependent on having to get a job and this job sponsoring my work visa. ‘Cause usually, when you graduate, you have like a certain period of time to find a job to stay interesting.

And if you don’t, you have to leave the country. So I was also worried about the document side of it. So I couldn’t really kind of be like, no, and then keep looking. And I ended up accepting that job. And I mean, I think in hindsight they were kind of taking advantage of the fact that I had no idea what was going on because I don’t think that they, that like amount wasn’t even written in the contract. They were just trying to save money. They were trying to not spend money on me. And I think it took me like a few months, right? Because after that I started, started sort of working at other jobs and then I realized like, yeah, this wasn’t like a normal thing. And I think it just really came with just experience.

Jessica: Yeah, no, you’re right. I personally have never heard of something like that. But to that point, all these little lessons we learn and we learn how, where our value really sits, and we learn how to negotiate those things and it. If I can say the word “sucks” on this podcast, it sucks that we have to go through that. I think that could, that’s a human thing, whether more women experience that versus men, I’m unsure of. But yeah, man, those lessons of just like not knowing.

And, and like you said, you even felt a little bit pressured to take that, but would you do that again? Probably not.

Daniela: I feel like I still had time to get another job. I definitely was on a time crunch, but I could have probably gotten another company to sponsor me and get me a better option. But like you said, I had no context on that. I had a lot to lose and that company ended up being super sus anyway, so I had to go through that to learn though.

I feel like, like you said, having someone around my network that was probably more experienced and knowledgeable than me would’ve helped me because that person could have told me like, maybe you should do this.

I remember another job when I got hired was that they had offered me good money. The job was perfectly well, but they didn’t disclose that after taxes and you know, like a lot of the stuff that they take away from the government, the salary was gonna be like a lot less than the initial amount that I had been given.

And so my first paycheck, I was like, why is it so little? And then they had to explain all of the deductions. And then I remember I was kind of like, oh, I didn’t, I felt kind of skimmed, but my colleague, she was a lot older than me and she was like “you know, like next time that you’re looking for a job and you’re negotiating salaries, you should ask for net amount. I don’t remember what the terms that you used were. ‘Cause it was like from the country that we were in, but she was like, “but just ask for what the amount is after deductions.”

Jessica: Yeah.

Daniela: “So that you can have like an actual idea of what money you’re gonna see coming in at the end of the month.”

Jessica: Interesting. And I think that was like a great, great advice. I do that since I’ve always wanna make sure kind of how is my salary breakdown in a much more detailed way than just being like, yeah.

Daniela: I love that. It’s really wise. I mean, definitely help you with setting up a budget that’s actually smart. I’ve never heard of that. I might implement that.

Jessica: Yeah.

Daniela: ‘Cause like, I mean, especially if you’re kind of like starting and your salary’s not gonna be the highest, right? Because if you, as you get, you get bigger in your career, you can ask for more money and then maybe those deductions won’t feel as bad. But when you’re just starting and the deductions feel huge, it’s important to be able to understand that.

Jessica: Yeah, and I mean, I can only speak for America. We need all the pennies we can get, you know, right now, things for a little while have been a bit rough economically though, great country, so much gratitude for it. But yeah, so I love that and it’s, I think that’s all a part of understanding and negotiating.

Looking Forward

Daniela: Yeah. I do. I think I agree. And I think we’re moving forward in it. We’re definitely progressing. It’s just taking, if you compare how the workforce is now versus how it was a few years ago, I still think it’s moving more forward than it is backwards. But you still have to sort of be fighting for more justice for more. I think the new generations are doing a really good job at that.

Jessica: I agree. Yes, I agree with that. Yeah. Yep. We gotta just keep it going, you know?

Jessica: I have to say this to kind of like swing it back. Something I just really appreciate about the job that I’m with is that we are people-centric. I mean, even our clients, to us, one of our core values is how customer-centric we are. We’re all very human. And so we really work towards an atmosphere that we don’t even think about inequality, equality. We’re an atmosphere where people with ideas despite where you come from or gender, whatever the case is, really have the opportunity to be introduced to even the functions of the company.

So I would say as a small agency, the one I’m working at is that we rep pretty well internally and even to our clients, but there’s still opportunity for growth there too, you know?

Closing

Daniela: Yeah, for sure. And I think that’s a great note to end this podcast, ’cause we are unfortunately running out of time. Jessica, it’s been so great having you today, but before we end it, if anything that we spoke about today resonated with our audience, if they would like to work with you, get to know you a little bit better, this is a space to plug anything that you would wanna plug.

Jessica: Yeah, I mean, I guess the best way to connect would be LinkedIn. You can find me Jessica Goodrum. There’s probably more than one. But I’m not sure how you would share that. But I am on LinkedIn, so if you wanna talk business, you wanna talk women in leadership, marketing creatives, let’s have a chat.

Daniela: Yeah, I will be adding the link to the description. So that’s how they’re gonna find you. And guys, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Subscribe, comment, listen to us. Thank you so much, Jessica. It was great.

Jessica: Yeah, thank you. This was awesome. Thank you.

Daniela: Thank you everybody. Have a great day. Thanks.

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