[Fully Managed] Marisol Arenas Ballen from Stockpress.co Ep. 147

Shannon (Host): Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast. The podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I’m your host, Shannon Penji’s Partnership Coordinator, and I’m joined here today with a very special guest. Marisol Ballen from Stock Press. Thank you so much for coming on with me today.

Marisol: Thank you, Shannon, for having me here. I really like your glasses, by the way.

Shannon: Thank you. Yeah, I tend to have that reaction every time that I use them. And that means they are not the normal ones. And I do feel that they look nice. So thank you.

Marisol: Yeah, I like the color. I think they’re really pretty.

Shannon: My color. So, yeah.

Marisol: Everything okay? The magenta or like, just pink in general?

Shannon: The magenta. More.

Marisol: Okay. Yeah. Okay. Now, that’s a unique pink. Pink, purple. I like the in-between kind. Thanks.

Marisol’s Background and Career Journey

Shannon: So could you just start by telling us a little bit about yourself and kind of your journey up to this point in your career?

Marisol: Sure, guys. Well, I had the privilege to study in France. That’s where I started. Just my career then that I know right now, because I studied economics. And that’s not a usual path to end up in marketing. But a teacher, when I was in high school told me that that was a really good mix, just to be like varying number or age related or number focused.

And I said, okay, I am good with numbers. I can do this. And he told me that in France you could like choose your path, right where you were starting studying. You could change or even just go and specialize in what you thought might be the best by you. So I started with economics, and then I went and did my master’s in marketing.

And I do feel that this is important for all of you to know. And just that I see all that being my thing and knowing about numbers that has been, for me, a very useful tool. And then when I finish my studies, I decided that I wanted to come back to my country in Colombia just to see what it was like to work there, like worked in Colombia, seeing if that working space was something that I liked there and I missed a lot my family. So I wanted to go back.

And I started giving French lessons because I couldn’t find a job. That was really hard for me. But that French lesson turned into being my path or the way for me to go into a French company that’s an insurance company where I started. And in that time it was 2014 when I started really working in marketing.

The digital marketing was not something that was everywhere like you see now. So I started there and I created that marketing department in the company, and I focused myself in the digital aspects of marketing just because I really love how marketing performance can be now measured. Thanks to that digital validation, if we can see that. So I started there and then I moved to the Human resources companies.

I’ve always been working in mostly services companies, so marketing services just quite different than product.

Shannon: Mm hmm.

Marisol: I’ve been focusing mainly on B2B, which is other marketing area that is not that like similar than B2C, you know. So now after that, on Human Resources, I jumped into travel like, yeah, EF Education First, which is a company, a very known company where when, where you can go and learn a language abroad. So there there and stayed for a year and then I started to be more curious about those startups and the startup world.

So I went and, and the digital tech world as well. So I had one and worked for an ERP software company. Then I jumped to another startup that a friend from high school decided to create. And he that friend of mine, like really, really intelligent. And I do have him in a very high positioning himself, his professional career.

So I decided to jump with him and we started that startup with him. However, at the end, like the situation, there is a lot of aspects that made that startup didn’t turn out to be like, successful. I’d been many, many to be one to be recommended to these new startup where I’m at right now.

Zobrist is the American startup that it’s like a digital asset management software. And I’ve been there for the past year and really, really happy to be joining this team because I do love the product that we’re like selling the solution that we’re solving, like the problems that we’re solving more than the solutions. I do like a lot where I am right now.

So yeah, that’s me up until now.

Non-Linear Career Paths in Marketing

Shannon: That’s really great. That’s an incredible amount of experience and I can definitely understand the economics path. I went to school for political science, which has relatively nothing to do with marketing, but I think that it definitely prepared me a bit for the role because of the people aspect of it. Like a lot of my major was debating and like convincing people of something, and I feel like psychology kind of goes into both roles.

Marisol: I understand. Totally. Like I feel that having different or very complex or different background in your in your vibe in terms of like your progression and that that gives your head like an edge, bit like a difference against a lot of other profiles out there.

Shannon: Yeah, something I really like about marketing is a lot of times when I talk to different people in marketing roles, they didn’t really have a linear path to their marketing position. They kind of were in different fields or they went to school for something different. And I enjoy that because one, I think that everyone has different perspective on how they do things, which I think is important and fun to learn about, but also that there are so many things or aspects of life that can contribute to you being good at this role.

And it’s interesting because I feel like there’s not a lot of positions in the workforce like that where you can have a nontraditional background and still be efficient at something.

Marisol: Yeah, totally. Every and I do think that the fact I was thinking this today, even like I was looking at my LinkedIn profile and I was like just seeing it and I realized that I moved a lot between industries as well. And I think that doing that has taught me like a lot of really important things in my professional life.

That’s the way I think that I’ve learned the most. Just because changing industries, changing company gives you that push where you have to just push yourself to be better to understand the new industry and new company, like working with the new people every time that gives you that stretch of getting out of your comfortable zone. Every time you change, that’s what you’re doing.

So I don’t see all that sometimes when you push hard. And for example, for me just being in this company, I’m not used to work English. Like English is not my first language. I speak better French than English, so for me, just working in English full time was a really, really huge challenge. But I found myself that if you don’t do or you don’t face all those challenges, you will never grow as much as you can.

Like for me, just being here and just being able to work in a different market and understanding that market better. Just because I work with a new U.S. company, that makes a whole difference. Definitely.

Language Learning and Cultural Adaptation

Shannon: Yeah, I can definitely understand that. I think having to be out of your comfort zone is obviously an adjustment for everyone, but I think you get to learn more and different perspectives too. When you’re not used to something. You can get all of this different experience from hands on approaches rather than just learning about it outside of that in that environment.

So yeah, and I think that and I don’t know myself because I am very poor learning languages. Unfortunately, I do hear that being in the environment with the language is much, much more helpful in learning it better than well, just trying to study it as I have taken many like two weeks of not effectively learned any of that.

Marisol: So don’t worry, that’s much more helpful. It’s the one that would do that yourself.

Shannon: So I am very lucky that English is the valuable one over the global landscape. Unfortunately, that I had taken German in college and they kind of related it to it made me come to respect of how difficult I like it must be to learn English because they said that German had very similar grammatical intricacies as English did, and it put into perspective to me how difficult it was to learn German having the parallel of English knowing, okay, it must be.

I always thought it was very difficult to learn a language, but English is difficult to read like with your stories. Just know that for me I tried to learn German at one point and it’s hard. Like it’s less than to learn a German, even if they think like anything out. Everything that they told you like it might be true. But learning English, I do think that it’s definitely easier than just learning German.

Marisol: So I say it. I hope so. But I also it put into perspective to me how how difficult it must be for English to not be someone’s first language and learn that because the grammatical rules are kind of parallels with. So I, I it made me.

One you tried to do or to express. What do you have in your mind in another language and in a word like in work environment is really hard when you don’t have that like you cannot do it as quickly as you want just because you have to think a lot more. So I talking to someone yesterday and, and he, he even told me because he’s working with me and then we needed to just speak in English at some point and he well, my God, I feel so dumb in English, you know, like I’m so much more intelligent in Spanish.

That’s you like when you learn other languages and all this stuff. Of course, that if you if you can speak your we are in your native language is easier. But as I said, when you push yourself, you will get so much better results at the end. Just having more languages for example, to speak in and work with different type of companies around the world, just because you know a lot of other languages, that’s pretty awesome.

I think.

Shannon: Yeah, I know. I definitely think that’s awesome. Something that I’m always been curious about. Do you think in Spanish, like do is that the language that you like have thoughts in or do you ever think in like different languages? I’ve always thought about this when people learn different languages, like what their internal dialog is.

Marisol: I don’t quite still thinking in Spanish like that. My okay, which when I was in France I did managed sometimes even had like dream in French. Oh, that’s so interesting. When I said, okay, this is weird. How can I call my friend that I should know what everybody thinks in their native language? It’s hard for me to think in another language I’m not sure made on. I need to be more immersed in the culture in the day to day. It’s just switching to thinking in another language.

But for now, for me, my my thoughts are in Spanish but interesting.

Shannon: I just cannot start a marketing based culture. But I was just really curious. I always my know my best friends is Russian and her first language is Russian, but she basically learned English in Russian in tandem because she moved here very new to the States very early on in her life. But she thinks in both. But it’s kind of I although it was very interesting because I, I don’t know another language enough to be able to think in another language.

I learned I know broken Spanish and like five words in German. So it’s nuts. But it’s just a very interesting concept to me of how people think. But anyway, I’ll move on to some more marketing questions and curiosity based one.

Team Management and Leadership

Shannon: So it seems like I don’t know specifically if your role right now you’re managing a team, but in the past it seems like you have. I was wondering how do you kind of ensure that everyone on your team kind of feels cared about and supported when going through a task or campaign or a project? Because I know it’s very sometimes people can get overloaded and it’s difficult to make sure that everyone is effectively using their time and not doing too much or doing too little.

Marisol: Just as an introduction to the answer to that question, I do feel that it’s important for me to say to you that for me, the biggest challenge that I’d been having as I start working has been to manage people. Yeah, that’s really hard and doing it well is even harder. So you can say that you can manage people.

But no, not everybody’s meant to manage people. So that’s something that I’ve learned through the years of experience. I didn’t think or I don’t think that I was a good leader when I started being a leader. It’s something that I’ve learned through the years, as I said, and what I have learned is that you need to be there for every one or every person from your team.

Like you cannot leave them hanging. And that a feeling of feeling that if you manage to do it right, people that are working under you will be so appreciated of your time and your effort always being there there for them that even their work will be better just because of that. Maybe responsibility towards you. Yeah, I do think then something else is that you need to establish like close relationships.

You cannot be a stranger for your team members. You need to be there and you need to be almost like them. Friend of friendly relationship. If you think that right now or nowadays with all the gen, the people and these old generation new generations are coming into the work space. I do feel that you need to create that relationship just aside from working.

Just be vulnerable and show yourself like you truly are. That authenticity. I feel that that’s me that really makes a change in people and the most most important thing that I always tell my, my, my team, even in their first day in the team, is that I trust them. If I decided to hire, then you need to 100% trust that they will do a good job.

If that trust at the end is not met out or like you feel that you cannot trust the work that they are delivering, that’s where the trouble starts to count, because you as a as a leader cannot trust what they are doing. You start micromanaging, for example. And that’s the worst case scenario. Like nobody likes to be micromanaged.

So if that happened, there’s no turning back, like earning back the trust from your leaders or towards you. It’s really, really hard. But I do feel that those three things, I mean, the main things for me to be able to lead a good, a good, effective team.

Work-Life Balance for Leaders

Shannon: I think those are definitely great foundations for a good team. A question that came up while you’re explaining this for me was how do you also do this and maintain your own sanity? Like how do you make sure that you aren’t putting too much of yourself into your team and not your own work? If that makes sense.

Marisol: You need to create like work frames and work frames. I do think that there are like meetings, for example, and your needs while they’re not due, but I just use ALL Yeah, I can structure strategies like Scrum or these type of tools that are now available for leaders to organize teams that started. That’s like prior product teams focus now where are they are going migrate leading towards marketing and other areas in the company.

But you could use those frameworks and they’d be more the they are really important for someone that manages a very large team just because you have those times. So for example, you need to be there for them. You will have like 15 minute daily meetings with your team where everybody can say to you, like, I have this stopper where I have this blocker, can you help me always be available entrance off Slack messages or in the chat, whatever, until you’re using in your company. But being available, it’s really important and for you to be available, you create those spaces specifics for you to be available and also give the tools to the for the team to know exactly when you’re not available. We know that you will try to integrate different tool, like if you have Google calendar, try to develop an integration with Slack so that people know that you are in a meeting and that’s why maybe you are not being able to answer like directly or immediately that message.

So having those work frames, I don’t see how that makes you like available, not available. And that also gives you the time to do your job as well, not only being there for them because of course you have to be there for them. We also have to do a lot of other things not related, just manage the group or the team.

Shannon: Yeah, of course. It’s like setting clear boundary is kind of like I can be there for you, but at these and yeah, being able to explain that you’re not it, it’s kind of having those failsafe subjects explaining where you are or why you’re not answering is very helpful for the team to know that you’re not just avoiding or not in observing something.

Marisol: And always asking as well, like for the relation of ship and friendly relationship that I will fucking. You need to go more than just the professional settings. You need to care about their like their lives up until what they want for you to know. And you don’t. I mean, if they don’t want to tell you thing, that’s not an issue.

But you just you being showing that you care that so asking them about their personal lives and not only their professional lives, that helps you go through that threshold of not being just their boss or their leader. You are more than that. You can be a friend and just knowledge that life is hard and sometimes you are not having a good day and your performance will not be the best.

Shannon: Yeah, I think that’s really important to be realistic expectations too, because you understand those things and aspects of their life that you can kind of understand where they’re at at all times. And that’s really helpful to kind of understand in a certain situation that maybe they’re not doing their best work, but it’s not because they’re being lazy or they’re not communicating effectively.

It’s just because they have a bad day or there’s something going on in their lives that’s very helpful to know that and be clear on the work that they’re able to do. And it’s just not at that point in that moment in time. And I think that’s really that makes a really good leader because you have to your you do have to have a level of care for your team and you have to understand them and meet them where they’re at.

Marisol: Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah. Okay. Okay. So we’ll move on to another question because I think responding are really like good amount of time on each run though. I like that we’re going into depth a lot. I think that that is better than making sure we answered like ten questions here, peak end the responses, because I think they’re much more important. So thank you for giving me really hard as my answers. You know. Well on it.

Marisol: Though, I guess that if it takes longer or I give too many details does on you know.

Shannon: Never never I would never I ever think that you are providing comprehensive answers to things so I really appreciate that.

Unique Value in Marketing

Shannon: So could you talk about. Okay. So you personally, not a team, not anything else. What do you think that you add to the marketing space? Is there anything that you think you do differently than the average marketer or something that you think should be implemented more in the marketing space that you do?

Marisol: Well, what I as I told you at the beginning, I do feel bad for me and the least like this marketing be so large right now, like marketing so bright, like you could argue about a lot of things inside marketing. However, I do feel that performance marketing, as the the name says, like performance has been a really important aspect of the growth or development marketing nowadays.

Just because prior to the digitalization of my I mean, it was really hard for you to measure success. Right now, measuring success in marketing campaigns is much more easy, just easier. Just because digital marketing is here when you can. I have a lot of digital actions towards different campaigns you’re putting in the market. So in my opinion, what I can bring to that be that it’s really in terms of performance, that analytical and number related aspects or analysis to things.

Even however, I still have a lot of passion for design and I learned through the years that if you don’t put your eyes into the design of things, the things have to look pretty even so. And there’s a lot of people now that are in the in the market of numbers are very analytical people. They think that design doesn’t matter and they doubt matter.

I mean, does matter and does it matters a lot. So I do feel that that balance between being very focused on numbers and being really focused on design aspects as well has managed to help me a lot in my career just to get really good campaigns. So like in, in, in the market and all their life like and the results are there.

And of course it’s like there’s something really important in my mindset and that you need to think. And I do think like that. I’m not scared of failing and I do feel it’s really important someone is scared that never move forward and will never find out like that viral campaign or that thing just because you’re scared and think differently.

So if you can fail fast, that’s the the real difference from you. And I do feel that and I tried to be humble in that aspect, but I do feel that I loved Fail. I mean, I’m not just and I let’s go to I really feel new concepts and it the silly idea I’m pretty sure someone will tell me that and if I cannot make him change or her change opinion, that means that maybe my ideas mother that but if I do believe in my idea and I do think that results might be positive, I tried to push it even if I had fails, I don’t care.

The Importance of Testing and Measurement

Shannon: Yeah. No, I think that’s really incredible. And I think it’s really valuable in the marketing space because as I’ve talked to many people about the idea that marketing is a gamble, it doesn’t. It’s on something that’s guaranteed to work. You can look at all the data and do everything right, but it still might not work out the way that you planned.

And that just means that you just have to try something different. There’s so many ways of doing things and that’s the blessing and the curse of marketing and being in the and navigating the space.

Marisol: And I do feel a little something then you just said, like you have to try so many things at once and that I do. That’s really important for people that are listening or whatever. I feel that that they are meet. They have to do things in an organized way because they try a lot of things just by, because they want to try a lot of things that they don’t get those things organize up and you will never know what worked. And that’s even worse than failing because if you like, and you cannot replicate that or grow or scale that campaign, that strategy, it it’s it’s like if you had never done it, like the saying just you need to be careful and that’s where the analytical part of things comes come up and what like you need to be sure that if you create this and leads, you can measure and you can see which one of the channels or the campaign like performed better because of your decisions.

But if you don’t manage to to measure your success, you will never be able to know what what worked and what didn’t.

Shannon: Of course. And you also want to know why you failed. You know, you don’t just want to fail and sit there wondering why or just move on to the next thing because you might just end up doing it again in a different way. Or and then you don’t get any you don’t get any knowledge from that experience at all.

You’re just doing things to try it. And that doesn’t really work effectively for marketing when you’re trying to be successful.

Marisol: Yes, exactly.

Closing

Shannon: Well, I think that that was really great advice to end on. Unfortunately, this is all the time we have today. But I really appreciate you coming on and talking with me today. I think you provided a lot of really valuable knowledge, so I really appreciate it.

Marisol: Knowledge. And thank you for inviting me to that really nice conversation. Any you need, anything, you can just contact me again and I will be happy to just be here or whatever you need from me. I’ll be there. Thank you so much.

Shannon: And also thank you for everyone watching or listening. Please don’t forget to like and subscribe to. Listen to more stories like this and gain knowledge like I could to do through the podcast every time. Thank you so much.

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