Introduction and Game Start
Shannon Donnelly (SD): Alrighty. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast. Thank you, Chris, for joining me today. I really appreciate it.
Chris Moulton (CM): Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
SD: Of course. So today we’re going to start with a game. This one’s an interesting one, I will say. I like to make this one as strange as possible. So this one’s called Market Me This. So I have a product for you, and you are going to market it to me in less than a minute, if possible. You can go over the minute mark a little bit, but I’ll allow it.
CM: Okay. We’ll see. We’ll see how the coffee set in. As I mentioned, let’s just let’s get it done, though. Let’s throw it at me already.
SD: This is an interesting one. OK, spaghetti scissors. Context, I can give them to you, but I think you can make assumptions that are made of spaghetti.
CM: No, that would be great actually. I was thinking, well, okay, if you want to market that even better, I was thinking like scissors meant specifically to cut spaghetti, so you know when you like—
SD: Yeah, yeah.
CM: You know what I mean? Slow start, slow start for me, so spaghetti scissors. Yeah, I think—let me just come up with something good here. How about—
SD: We don’t have time to prepare. What’s the target market, the ICP? Just any kitchen goer, is it?
CM: I’m just gonna brainstorm through this myself. Start—anyone that would eat spaghetti.
SD: Okay, okay. Start scissoring now with spaghetti.
CM: No. No, scissor. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. Spaghetti scissor extravaganza starts now or have fun. You know, that was not meant to be inappropriate, but sometimes you have to push the envelope.
SD: That would get people’s attention.
CM: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. You know, not to be inappropriate, but yeah. That’s so funny. The best scissors are for spaghetti.
SD: Yeah, I think that first one really, you know. That one hit. I think that was a good one. I’m going to be honest. I think that would get people’s attention. You might have to cut that. You might have to cut that, but—
CM: I don’t think we should cut that. I think that is the funniest thing that’s been said on the podcast in a while. So unless you want to cut it, I’m happy to keep that in.
SD: Listen, I think that it’s, you know, when we’re talking about advertising and marketing, sometimes really there’s a lot of, yeah, it’s about grabbing attention. And sometimes it is through methods that are provocative in that way, right? So—
CM: Yeah, like the really—
SD: Okay, so every time I look at a commercial that’s really obscure, I assume it’s for perfume or cologne. I don’t know if you know the vibe that I’m just talking about.
CM: Yeah.
SD: The other day I saw one and I was like, this has to be for perfume and cologne. And it was for—
CM: And I was like, that’s weird.
SD: Well, I mean, you know, if you look at the market, just like with spaghetti scissors, that might work too, right? Something really like, like just so vague, right? But high touch and has that really luxurious, you know, minimalistic sensationalist vibe that might sell the spaghetti scissors as well.
CM: I think it would. I think Italian lesbians would absolutely love that marketing. There’s a need for it now. I’m sure the data is behind that.
SD: It could be. If you support a certain group, you’re definitely going to get a big boom of clients just from that particular.
CM: You will. You will. I mean, you’ll get the boom and then you’ll get the backlash. You’ll get a little bit of both, right?
SD: Yeah, exactly. I think the only reason I was hesitant to mention what I mentioned originally, as I said, I—you know, might be a bit risque—but yeah, you definitely appeal to a market when you’re doing these things and, and uh, yeah, I mean that’s just, that’s the nature of the beast. You’re gonna have people who like what you did and who are attracted to it and some who are not.
CM: Yeah, no, exactly. I think that it is, um, especially if you’re doing a risk like that, I think that what you, it’s really interesting because if it, if it aligns with your views or whatever, if you’re going to like push away an audience, I think that that’s more than fine because you have an ideal client. Like, I don’t know if like the alt-right would really like this campaign.
SD: They might buy it. They might buy it.
CM: They didn’t see the commercial.
SD: Oh, yes. Exactly. It’s like the Republican convention with all of the people using Grindr, but they would never tell you that they’re using Grindr.
CM: Um, you know, just, yeah, I mean, some, we’re all just human. I think at the end of the day, we all have our, um, you know, our, our flaws and, and philosophically you can believe what you will, but, uh, but at that individual level, we all have, um, I don’t even know what the word we wanna use is there, but yeah, I think—
SD: We all have a need for spaghetti scissors.
CM: We do, we do, or something of that nature, right? Something along those lines.
Transition to the Podcast Introduction
SD: Well, to introduce the podcast as a whole, this was a great start to this. I’m so happy. It’s embarrassing. Just embarrassing. Please do not attack me in comments if people are going to be.
CM: I promise. I promise this isn’t how a meeting usually happens.
SD: Well, welcome everyone to the Fully Managed Podcast. This is a podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. Maybe they’re unconventional, but they’re still tips. And I’m your host, Shannon, Penji’s Partnership Coordinator. And I’m joined here today with a very special guest, Chris Moulton from Moulton Digital. Thank you so much for joining me today again. It’s already a great start. I’m very excited.
CM: Absolutely. Thanks for having me again. These days, any chance I can get with a good podcast or to just get out there. And it’s not just about myself. I think there’s a lot happening in the space and people are interested in what’s taking place now and I have been involved in it for quite some time, at least growth, right, like scaling growth and marketing and before that advertising as well as startups in parallel. So, yeah, so I think it’s just an interesting time. There’s so much going on. So, yeah. Love to just share the info.
Marketing Insights and Lessons
SD: It’s starting with, you know, spaghetti scissors. And that’s the last time I’ll mention that one.
CM: It’s always, if there’s something funny that happens on the podcast, I feel like it’s a general theme for it to come up like six more times.
SD: Yeah, a hundred percent. It’s a nice fallback. But yeah, I’m super excited to talk about you today because I, well, scoping out your LinkedIn, being a little bit stalkery, knowing all about your life now, I’m like Nardwar, if you’ve ever seen those interviews. You’ve worked with a lot of interesting brands, like luxury brands, as well as startups. So you had like an extensive amount of experience. To start out, I would love to know what you think was like your biggest learning experience as like a marketing role or maybe in the industry in general, because I know your roles have like kind of varied based on—
CM: They have, they have. And over the years, so I would give you maybe a few.
SD: Yeah, that’s fine.
CM: To different audiences, right? I would say that—really early on, when I started out in the space, it was very intimidating. I went into this traditional ad agency and was asked to build out a digital department. And a lot of the stuff that fell under that umbrella, I had not had experience with at that time. I had significant startup experience and some failures, some really major failures and some success. But, uh, aside from sheer tenacity and a natural inkling for a lot of these things, uh, I went in and uh, so this is more of that entry level and started handling, you know, six-seven figure spends on paid and things of that nature and a lot of it really early on was trial and error and so there is a point where as a marketer, you’re going to have to take that initial step and just be okay with the outcome. But I think the takeaway there is to hyper obsess. And that growth mindset is really important if you are in the position, which a lot of people end up where all of a sudden they’re managing these things. And it can be a little bit intimidating early on to just to just inform yourself and these days there’s a lot of technology, a lot of great tools that assist and really can go take the campaign the extra mile or even help you, uh, scaffold is what I call it like structure that initial where a lot of brainstorming and—
SD: Sorry about my dog if he continues we’ll have to move him out.
CM: Yeah. And so that’s one is that just don’t be afraid and just you have to learn this somewhere. And back when I started, there was no edX or really a Coursera, anything like that. It was just late nights and learning with clients. And so that’s what led me to go off. And the clients at this ad agency said, we want you to go out on your own. We will defend your space. One of them was a very large bank, a lot of people in alternative energy. And he said, we really like this data driven approach, which leads to the next. And that is don’t be afraid to take a leap, right, to take that leap. More and more people seem to be doing it these days. It’s there’s less risk. I like to call it de-risking. And so don’t be afraid to take that jump if necessary and it makes sense and you can see the bigger picture you know work towards those longer plays. One of the biggest mistakes I made early on when I was doing that is I never took a percentage of revenue or equity in early companies. And so that led to taking nice amounts of cash payments and being able to rapidly scale and have this lean team for a while, but it didn’t pay dividends in the long run. Great for the reputation, but I would say if you have that option to do a mix of percentage of revenue and if you can, if it’s an early enough company to get some equity and really diversify. And then the next is always stay on top of what’s happening. Actually, ironically, there’s a book or funny enough, not ironically, there’s a book that was just released that I wrote a contributing chapter for with some pretty big names in and outside of marketing funds, like the president of Rotary International and the guy who coined frozen yogurt in the eighties and nineties. And so, yeah, so I would say just use the resources at your disposal and figure out where it is you want to be. Hopefully that’s helpful.
SD: No, that’s extremely helpful. I think it’s also, I like what you said about like making sure that you get a percentage of revenue even earlier on, because I think a lot of people aren’t like they’re not, they still have imposter syndrome. I think sometimes working with such big budgets where they’re like, I don’t deserve this because I feel like I fell into this by accident. Like I was successful like by accident. And I think that that is something that people should, I wish people knew their worth earlier on because they miss out on like a lot of financial gain that they kind of deserve. Whereas if you’re helping a company so much like insurmountably where they are improving on a scale that they didn’t expect and it’s because of you or your team or the team that you put together, then you do deserve a cut of that because it’s not, you’re making them way more money than what you’re being paid.
CM: Exactly and I, and that’s the key right is, make sure and, and that’s exactly what I was kind of getting at with that imposter, uh, like you have these huge budgets and all of a sudden you’re like what just happened right early on and and the key is just and I guess for me, looking back, it was easy in that initial position because I did work for someone else right before going out on my own. And so I just said, we’re charging this. Right. And it wasn’t make or break for me at that moment. It has become that and did become that. uh when I left but I had no you know I just said we’re charging this and and they go really and I said yes absolutely this is what we have to do um and this is the position that we’re in and we have these skills that other people do not have uh and we’re taking this tact of like growth hacking. And this was like two thousand fourteen, fifteen. We’re using the data and we’re not, you know, we’re really results focused and we’re able to show them what we’re doing. So we absolutely need to spend what makes sense. Right. And not not carry these loss leaders that start out as loss leaders that go on forever. And all of a sudden it’s just like, grueling uh to get to work with the client because you’ve set the expectation and the bar and all of a sudden if you go and change that it’s like well what just happened right so
Transition to Chris’ Personal Experience
SD: Yeah, no, that makes complete sense. So is, how is the transition from being in this position? Well, one, what do you think taught you to believe that you’re worth that cut? Like, because I think that’s a transition that a lot of people sometimes don’t even get to in like a marketing role. And I think that that’s something that’s really important is like figuring that out. Like when was that like a discovery for you?
CM: So initially it was a discovery when I was under that like umbrella of the other company, when I just said, we’re eight X-ing this number you have, because we need that in order to carry this forward. And then when the client said, absolutely, it makes sense. I had validation there, but that wasn’t me, right? That wasn’t my rate. That was the company’s rate. And so the real validation initial, and I was still scared or on edge about doing it, was when… Two of the clients got together and they said, we want you to leave. We need you to leave. We’re not going to pay these rates unless you go out on your own. And we’ll basically defend the space that you’re in, meaning like legally and give you some runway and you can hire whoever you want. And so that was when I realized that there was worth with me and it was not with the company that I was working for doing this new endeavor first. But there’s always going to be, and this still happens, right? Just the other day, I had someone call and say hey we need this done in like a month can you do it I’m like well what’s your budget and you know they they throw out some number and so you just have to learn to say no and know that everyone’s not for you I mean it happens all the time right but you just have to know your just hold strong and so uh yeah you have to hold the line and and that’s a hard thing to do when when depending on your situation and if you’re just getting started. So sometimes you can like do creative things like, hey, let’s defer payments, right? Or let’s bring in a third party to finance this situation for you. There’s some cool tech that’ll do that now. And this was not done before because there are, yeah, There are a lot of early companies that are cool and and and they just don’t have the cash up front, but they can finance and they do understand that go to market and growth in marketing is very important at a certain point.
SD: Yeah, it’s very wonderful that you had that support from a client that was like, that liked utilizing your work specifically and liked you, but they were willing to support you outside of that company because that’s like, I feel like that’s something that’s kind of rare. So it’s very cool to know your value through that as well. Like someone still wants to work with you specifically.
Transition to Founding a Digital Marketing Agency
SD: Hey, should we pause? Should I go put this guy outside?
CM: Okay, so Chris, how was it like transitioning into founding your own digital marketing agency from working within other businesses before that? Because I know that’s, it’s a very large jump for some people, like it’s scary and there’s, you know, it seems like you had that support, but there’s also so many different things you have to navigate through.
CM: Yeah, yeah. It’s hard. It’s hard, but it’s doable. So, you know, I don’t want to give anyone who’s who watches this any false to give them false pretenses about what it takes. Now, this was when this originally happened. It was circa two thousand fifteen or six. Yeah, fifteen. So I would say now there’s so much at your disposal digitally to simplify, even whether it’s accounting, all these all these things that you don’t think about setting up your business. So if you I would say that have a client or two lined up before you take the leap, if possible. And that’s what allowed me to go out of the gate. And I’ve never been one to take funding or anything like that or or even. I never did earlier on. and you know it was always an option of course but it’s just something that if you can bootstrap and you can get one at least one but ideally three clients minimum, so that you’re not losing sleep over the next deal or you’re prepared to hyper scale as people call it in tech right to just really focus on scaling up front knowing that you won’t have that runway but I I guess the to really say, in addition, it’s about what you want with your life. Because I saw something the other day online. I’m in the Bay Area and in San Francisco and that tech community with founders and advice. company or two here and there and, you know, the VC world and some people, you know, everyone will tell you something different. But I would say that if you look at your typical founder and look at their exit, I’m not talking about like the hundred Xers, but the typical company. You then break down their salary over the years that they work there and what they walk away with if they get an acquisition or something of that sort. It’s not going to be that much more necessarily than you’d make at the senior level. And that’s controversial because that’s not my opinion. That’s what people say. So I’m not I’m not to take flack for that. That’s what some would say. I would say. If you have the growth mindset and you’re not fulfilled, and I feel like more and more people are not, and you are willing to constantly learn, absorb like a sponge and to get out there and to build a network or get a few clients, then do it. Then absolutely do it. But do it in a way that is unique and I get a hundred and fifty emails a day about, you know, buy our system, buy, you know, lead gen or more even. And people trying to, you know, somehow getting my calendar link and trying to fill it up and like private calendar links. It just really, really crafty, actually. And Point being, find something unique, right? Like that is specific that you really enjoy enough within the marketing space, whether it’s like ad tech or scaling early stage companies or working with enterprise companies as a consultant, you know, really focus in and then build out from there. That’s what worked for me.
Growth Mindset and Healthy Balance
SD: Do you think that there’s any substantial problems with the growth mindset and the idea that sometimes people may push too much too fast or that maybe something isn’t meant to be as big as it can become? Does that make sense?
CM: Yeah, yeah. So I think there’s a lot of like… What you see is not reality for a lot of people on Instagram, especially influencers in the creator economy. It’s just not realistic a lot of the time they’re renting the space or most of the time they’re renting the space renting the car it’s an act and and so knowing that, um, that this is showmanship a lot of it for for what you’re seeing on the daily, um, the other thing is the growth mindset can be really unhealthy right, um, balance in life is just as important. It took me a while to learn that, and some health issues, some serious health issues. I wouldn’t just say that it was from work. It was also just luck of the draw, right? So that said I had a lot of perspective and with all of these things that have happened right life is always throwing curveballs to everyone and and yeah I think this philosophy that used to be the dominating thought process at least in a place like silicon valley and many others that hustle culture, you need to work twenty two hours a day, forget sleep, like sleep later, sleep when you die. Right. The quote that is not acceptable anymore. It’s unhealthy. But what I was getting at is that growth mindset, just knowing that in the beginning you’re going to have to do things most likely, that you don’t want to do and have to sacrifice elsewhere. It’s not forever. And if you’re willing to do that to give yourself a better life or to have more of what you want in the long run, whatever that may be, and not just financially but in life, freedom, whatever it is for you, because we’re all motivated by different things and no matter what you know society likes to say, uh, underneath it all and uh, and and tells us so so yeah I would say just know that you will have some of that but it’s not every day and balance super important and and that long game that I spoke of really early on is is what it’s all about and so I think seeing what you want out of your career and manifesting that. But really, practical pointers there. Focus on a niche first and be really good at that. And don’t jump on some train or system or something that creators are telling you. Obviously, you know where that intersection of passion and work, uh, skill, uh, come together. And if you’re a T level, meaning like you’re really good at a bunch of things, but then really, really good at one or two, even better. If you’re not, you’ll learn along the way. Right.
SD: Um, so yeah, I would say balance is, is that the growth mindset is nice to have. It’s important to execute. Uh, and, and I guess I’ll just end on this note, cause I went down a little and just kept going there.
CM: Yeah, go ahead.
SD: No, no, I was just going to say, I think that was all encompassing. Like, I do think that that was very comprehensive to explaining. So I don’t think that you went too long or anything.
CM: Yeah, I would just, the last thing I would say is you see these things and let’s say someone is not faking it and it is their life. There’s a lot of work usually behind the scenes. You see what happened when they hit them. a certain threshold and all may be forgiven or whatever happened prior to that is irrelevant but there was a lot of work and for some people there was a lot of uh backstab you know a lot of a lot of things took place um unique to everyone to get there. And so just, I guess, just remember that, and I think everyone knows this, who works in this space and most in the corporate setting, that execution and delivery is going to be paramount to all of this.
SD: Yeah, I think that’s why I really love doing this podcast specifically and people sharing their stories. Because I like hearing about the lows. Because I feel like places like LinkedIn and any kind of social media, people aren’t sharing the lows as much. Or they’re sharing weird stuff that I don’t want to know about.
CM: LinkedIn is a strange place.
SD: Yeah. Like spaghetti scissors.
CM: Yeah, people are very strange on LinkedIn. I feel like it was always like a professional place. And it’s strange that it is very, some people overshare and they don’t know that they should not do that in certain ways. It’s very funny, but.
SD: They do. Regardless of that. Yes. Well, they think it’s handling their brand is kind of like, right? And it’s, yeah, there’s some do’s and don’ts down that avenue.
CM: Yeah, because I do I very much support people sharing their lows because I do think, I mean, there’s difference in lows like if you’re, if you’re your wife left you maybe you shouldn’t share that on linkedin.
SD: Right, right, people do.
CM: But I think more like when people have lows that contribute to their professional life that are not too personal or, and I think that’s up to the person, like if they want to share that their wife left them, that’s up to them really. I, you know, But I like when people share the lows because I do think that being transparent about that is so important for the professional world to learn that that happens. Because I think that so many people who try to build something see all of these other people that have built something from the ground up and that they’ve been successful the whole time and that it’s always been good things and only good things have happened to them and only growth has happened and they didn’t have any hiccups along the way. And that’s just not true. That’s not true for anyone. I mean, I’m sure that there are these very… specific industries or businesses that have done very well and only done well and that’s like very infrequent but the realistic part is that people work really hard to get to the point that they are most of the time like I’m there’s definitely people there’s nepo babies I’m sure that fall into things but or had money from the get-go but
CM: Or got lucky. But more often than not, there is so much hard work that goes into getting to a certain spot. And people often don’t show that hustle, I guess, publicly because it’s not picture perfect or it doesn’t look good. Or maybe they think it will deter clients because they’re so busy and they’re going to think that they would overwhelm them for even longer. trying to use their service or whatever it may be. But I love that transparency. And I think that is what makes people trust you more and actually believe that you’re a real person.
CM: Yeah, I’m totally in agreement. It’s one of those things where, like I said, there’s just different paths, right? Different paths for different people. And there’s nothing right or wrong about any of those paths. It’s just unique to you. Again, like you said, nine times out of ten or eight times out of ten, the people who have become successful have sacrificed to get there. And whether that’s physical or social, whatever it may be, there’s some sort of sacrifices they had to make for a certain amount of time along the way. It’s not an absolute necessity. necessity, but it typically will happen at one point or another. And I think one of the other takeaways separate from this is really think unconventionally, right? And I think that’s where I have been able to create impact and where my bread and butter is, is in the professional space, not doing those things that may seem so foundational or important, not just doing those, but really thinking outside the box and coming up with solutions that someone may not find elsewhere, right? And that may be specific to me, but I think that’s a great philosophy for someone who’s thinking about taking up this kind of endeavor, even if it’s just starting out freelancing. Like, how can you position yourself uniquely and offer your services or your capability to someone with that same unique advantage when there’s so much noise all of a sudden. When I first started doing this, I will tell you, it took so much buy-in. To close a large client, it could take a year. And that still can be the case. But it’s because people didn’t understand there was a different kind of approach around marketing and it wasn’t so much data driven and the number, you know, that now it’s a, there’s RevOps and performance marketing and growth marketing and, you know, head of growth and all of these titles, they did not exist then though. It was, you know, marketer or PPC or SEO. And that was, you know, just very, what we would call conventional now. That said, don’t be afraid to approach it from a different vantage. And I think that’s the takeaway from that.
Closing Remarks
SD: I think that’s a beautiful note to end on because we are like perfectly a little over time. And I truly think that’s a really important thing that people should consider is that like, and I think that’s kind of what everyone almost strives for in marketing. Like there isn’t a very specific way of doing things, even though maybe places like HubSpot might tell you that there is. And of course there’s things that are known to work, but I think taking risks and, you know, being innovative and creating different solutions for things is where people strive in. And obviously there’s mistakes that happen along the way, or maybe not even mistakes, but just, you know, it just doesn’t work the way that you, that you maybe even proved that it wouldn’t. And that’s okay. And I think that people learn from those, but I think that if you don’t, do that at all then you know you’re just gonna maybe not be happy or not show results, um in the way that they could be.
CM: Yep, absolutely.
SD: So well thank you so much for joining me today, this is really fun. The spaghetti scissors were a great start but this was like entirely a really fun conversation. I enjoyed this. I think so. I if I, you know, I hope I hope that uh there were some good takeaways.
SD: Yeah, no, definitely. I think you’ve provided a lot of valuable information for our audience. So I really appreciate it. And a lot of wholesome information that people should know for starting their own business or their agency.
CM: Which part are we talking about? The first five minutes, I don’t know if that was wholesome.
SD: After that.
CM: It was funny. I think the right audience, you know, Penji audience has a sense of humor, I’m sure. We’re going to find out, aren’t we?
SD: Thank you again so much. This was a blast. I really appreciate it and thank you everyone for joining us watching or listening. I really appreciate you guys and I hope everyone has a lovely day.
CM: Thank you so much.
SD: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
