In this episode of the Interesting B2B Marketers, Steve Goldhaber and Priscilla McKinney discuss the value of market research and self-reflection in marketing. Through a case study example about a large facility provider for focus groups, they bring to light how collaboration can help industries boost performance.
They then share their own experiences from their first jobs in marketing and how it has influenced their approach. They also talk about the use of market research as an insurance policy, the importance of using it to learn instead of just validating, reverse mentorship, and the need to prepare and respect audiences.
All these topics are vital for successful B2B marketing research. Lastly, they emphasize the need to constantly learn and network in order to stay ahead of trends.
Key learnings from this episode:
Connect with Priscilla McKinney and Steve Goldhaber on LinkedIn.
With 25+ years of marketing experience, Steve Goldhaber is a former head of global digital marketing for two Fortune 500 companies and the current CEO of 26 Characters, a content marketing agency in Chicago.
Connect with Steve on LinkedIn.
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Steve Goldhaber: Hey everybody, it's Steve. Welcome back to Studio 26 and the interesting B2B marketers podcast today. Happy to have Priscilla join us on the show today. Welcome, Priscilla.
Priscilla McKinney: Thanks so much for having me, Steve. This is gonna be easy because my husband's name is Steve, so I just feel right at home.
Steve Goldhaber: Alright. Okay, so we are gonna jump into case studies, but we always do the get to know you in 60 seconds bit. So give us a little bit of understanding of your background and what you've been up to lately.
Priscilla McKinney: Well, I am an anthropologist by trade, so I think about how people and societies work. And so I'm a C E O of a digital content marketing firm, so I help companies who need engagement from their most ideal client to actually move toward lead generation. Marketing is marketing, but I'll tell you what, we're really after revenue generation, so that's what I'm all about day to day.
Steve Goldhaber: Yep. Awesome. And I'm excited to talk about the book that you're working on. I wrote a book years ago, so we'll table that into the queue. We're gonna do case studies first. It's my favorite thing to do I don't know, case studies, just, I feel like I learn more about marketing when we structure the conversations in cases. So that's why, just some context for the audience of why I always do the cases. And the first one you're gonna share for us has to do with. Community outreach. So take it away.
Priscilla McKinney: Yeah. I had an insurance agency reach out to me and they really wanted to get into the social media game, and I joked around with the owner, he's like, Priscilla, I know that you're really great at social media and social media engagement. Why don't you create a Facebook page for us? And I came to visit him. I'm like, well, I don't want to because insurance is boring. So he was like, well, what else could we talk about? And I ended up brokering this client because of just that truth-telling at the beginning. I don't think it's ins who wants to follow an insurance page. You know, what is it that's going on? But as I dug deeper into this business, the truth was they were doing amazing things. In the community and they were not very good at tooting their own horn, which I understand. They were really great philanthropists and they just quietly served the community. And I thought, wait a minute. I'm in this community and you know what I'm getting all the time is calls from charity saying, Priscilla, do you know anybody? We're doing this charity event and we don't have a tent. They're like $3,000 to rent and you know it. I was just thinking a little bit about all of the problems in our community and what charities really need. And I thought, wait a minute, this company needs a way to really showcase what they do in the community, but without maybe patting themselves on the back. Yeah. Okay. So I came to them and said, Hey, how about you don't create a Facebook page for your company? And this was a company called Buying Dick Insurance. And now it's changed names. So what I did was take. The obvious problem in the area and say, you know, I think this client can solve it, and in fact, they want to solve it. So instead of patting themselves on the back, what I said was, let's create a Facebook page, because this company is a mega fan of things that other people are doing to help the community. And so it was really a support role, which. Really showcasing very truthfully what this company was doing. They weren't out there leading and deciding, you know, what charities should do. They were supporting the charities and so any charity could come forward and say, Hey, we need this tent, water bottles, this whole thing set up for our outdoor event. Would this company come set it up? Yes,, they would. They would handle all of it, put it all together, take all of that pressure off of [00:04:00] charity. But guess what? The tent was branded with its name in the community.
Steve Goldhaber: That's nice. I mean, I feel like marketers get caught in the trap of always trying to be clever or trying to broadcast who they are. And this is a really nice example of just its utility. They need something. And obviously, you know the brand's gonna get exposure because people see it, but I like that. I feel like there needs to be, Content marketing or marketing more broadly shouldn't just be about the words and the messages. So nice idea.
Priscilla McKinney: Thanks. I like it. The anchor for me is about looking for itchy backs. Like who needs a good scratch in the community, like, and trying to symbol, you know, it changes the way you listen to conversations. You're listening to people's conversations. How could I scratch your back? And once I get some of these problems in front of me, I'm like, wait a minute. I know someone who could. Scratch this back and it would be good. It would scratch their back, by the same token. And so looking for that collaborative win is really important for me in B2B marketing.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. You've just started a new company called Itchy Back. I want to invest money in Itchy Back because I love the idea. I mean, what's nice here too is like this shelf life of this, you would imagine like the. Probably it could go for a couple of years before you might need, to get a new one. Like how are they able to kind of like, evolve that, or, I mean, are, are they still using it today?
Priscilla McKinney: They're not using it today, but we did have two times that we bought the tent and we kept it up going for about five years. And as it progressed, we also added more money to charity grants. So not only could the charities ask for this help for outdoor events, but quarterly they began to give money away. Through that Facebook page and the engagement by people talking about amazing things that people were doing in the community. So the Facebook page for this regional insurance company didn't become about insurance, it became about the community itself.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. What's nice too is like, I would assume there was pretty strong engagement on the page because you've got people who are finding out about it and they're probably commenting. A little bit of algo gaming probably there, which is, which is smart. I don't think it was, it's some algo. Gaming is manipulative. This is just good, right. People are, are asking or volunteering. So that's cool. I, I really like that idea. What else can you tell us about the case study? I mean, is it, it obviously went on five years, so that's always my litmus test in marketing is if it gets to year two and three, something's going really well. Did they branch off into any other types? You know, marketing as a utility or, where did they, where did they go with the idea eventually? I know you said it stopped after five years.
Priscilla McKinney: Well, that stopped, but it made them very willing to think about non-traditional approaches. And a couple years later I had assembled a group of charities who wanted to, you know, who, who needed desperately need marketing, but they can't afford it.
And so we put together a new initiative called Happy House where. We got five different companies to build a kid's backyard playhouse and display them all over town, and people got to vote on which one was the coolest theme and how it was great. And so, you know, it just parlayed, I think, into this willingness to do something unusual that would help the community.And of course, the whole way they're getting exposure. But one thing about itchy backs is that think about. All of those charities got exposure, exposure, exposure, and that's what they need..
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. All right. Let's jump into case study number two. This has to do with collaboration or as the kids say, collab. I'm gonna be really cool and call 'em collabs. My nine-year-old son, Charlie. Is just getting the sneaker itch. Everything's gonna be an itch. Now, since we're talking about itchy back, everything's be itch related. Okay? So he's got the sneaker itch and he's all excited. He brings me to the mall and he's like, dad, it's the Nickelodeon Lam, Melo Ball collab. I gotta get this shoe. And I just was cracking up. I'm like, well, good for Nickelodeon that they've figured out how to get into a whole new genre of shoes. But anyway, this one has to do with market.
Priscilla McKinney: The cool kids also call it a mashup these days.
Steve Goldhaber: There you go. The mashup.
Priscilla McKinney: I have a client who is a large facility provider for focus groups, and that's obviously a face-to-face business. Well, you can imagine what happened in Covid when nobody was meeting face-to-face. How can you test your product and get that high quality in-person feedback from people when nobody wants to be close?
And so the industry as a whole was taking a massive dive. Now, of course, they also provided virtual. Focus groups and there was other solutions and medical research could not stop. So there was some push going forward, but as an industry, it was really suffering for the idea of is it really valuable? Do we need to figure out a way to be in person? So that was the problem that was brought to me. And instead of just looking at it and saying, okay, let me help my client. And get brand awareness. Instead, the client really came to me saying, I really want something bigger. How do I reach out? And how do I create a bigger swell of interest and a bigger swell of understanding of how important this industry is? And it may be on pause, but we wanna come back bigger and stronger. And so she brought together about 20. Get these competitors and brought in room together and discussed what they could do together more powerfully. So I was able to come together kind of like you think like the dairy association or drink more milk, you know? Yeah. But really trying to boost an industry, and I think this is a case study, is so interesting because it's not saying, look, this one company has a problem. This industry has a problem, and how can we cross the aisle? We're not sharing trade secrets. Right. But we are helping each other in this moment of need for the industry, and so we were able to put together a massive online campaign of social interest. Yet all of those companies now had people sitting and twiddling their thumbs, right? Yeah. They could engage on social media and really put that time into marketing when they couldn't put more into marketing.
Steve Goldhaber: Interesting. So I want to get into the structure of the collaboration. Specifically money. I feel like money is what drives a lot of structure. So I'm curious, did everyone put in a fair share? Did it change based upon the size of their business? Like take me through like how all that went down.
Priscilla McKinney: You know, really kudos to this group because not everybody was able to contribute and they still let them participate, and there was a good measure of goodwill and people really got honest in that room about what they could do. But we put forward the number that we needed to pull, and it was obviously quite lower than what I would normally charge. And so in that way I collaborated with them as well because this was a client of mine and we just put it out to people and said, look, there's 20 of us. If everybody were to put in, this is how much we would need to reach the goal. And if they put in, then that was how much I spent. So, you know, I had, basic costs like found fundamental costs that I had to get solved. But besides that, it was about how much more money could I spend on pr or how much we could spend in ads. And so then I just basically tailored the program to what we could collect, but they did not exclude people who really were in dire straits at their company at that time, which was great.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, that's great to hear. I've seen more kinds of, Political or the nicer term for political diplomatic conversations around, Hey, I have a seat at the table. I bought this seat. I want more influence. So it's great to hear that where, where people just kind of came together cuz obviously there was a bigger thing that they all needed to combat. How long did that collaboration happen?
Priscilla McKinney: It lasted over a year, but just recently I actually refreshed one of the main videos because as Covid has faded, we didn't need imagery in there that talked about, you know, social distancing and so it is still actually running. We just went in and, you know, went and. Edited the video and the assets to say, Hey, we could still use this, and they use an actual hashtag for the program. That hashtag has now had over 25,000 uses, so the industry has kept at it and really said, look, this is our mark. And so I don't see it really going away at any time. It's just not maybe in the same machination as it was at the beginning.
Steve Goldhaber: All right. Awesome. Okay. Third and final case study. I'm gonna paint the picture in the form of every marketer can relate to this problem. They have content, they're super excited. They log into, let's say, Google Analytics, and then they look at time spent on site, which is, you know, not the best indicator, but a really good one to figure out like, what's the engagement looking like? And you are disappointed. You're like, ah, there's not, like, I thought they would spend like six, seven minutes on here. So, Case study number three. How do you solve that problem?
Priscilla McKinney: Well, this was a multicultural agency who, to be perfectly honest, was just full of very, very smart employees. They were fantastic writers, which for me is a rarity to come across because people are paying us to. Create their content. So it is very rare for me that someone comes and I look at their content and think, wow, that's smart. So they had an amazing asset really, which was all over their website, but they had not really done the first piece of work, which was developing a very, very codified system for their ideal. Buyer, right? So they hadn't developed personas. And so we sat down with them over two days and created very detailed, highly developed buyer personas, and organized a strategy designed to target those people. So even looking at the amazing content that they had written, it was amazing in their own minds, but it wasn't necessarily speaking directly to the challenges whether. Very persistent challenges, old challenges or newly emerging challenges of their most ideal client. So with that work, we were able to help them refine the scope of what they wanted to talk about, and also take their existing assets and say, You know, we could rewash this with a look of what we know now about our most ideal client and really make it very obvious that we're being overtly helpful to them. Yeah. That would build rapport and get people reading much longer.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. I mean, it sounds like the classic problem of the companies with good intention want to talk about their solutions. They wanna talk about themselves, and that's. You have to have a ton of media dollars to make a dent in the marketplace. The right way to do it is essentially, I'm gonna talk about your problems, your pain, get this ready, ready, you're itchy back, right? I'm gonna keep the itchy theme like I promised. It's just so much more productive and I think that's always my goal is a content marketer is for the audience to go, oh my God, they get me. This company knows exactly who I am. They know my issue. They know the crazy world that I live in. So I'm glad that that was able to happen. Were they, were you quick to get them? There were, was it like a big aha moment or was this like No, it took months to finally like, get them there.
Priscilla McKinney: Well, it took months, but I gotta tell you, what we do is very long-term and very rapport-building. And so aloft often I tell our clients, you know, this is gonna take a year to 18 months to get these kinds of goals met. And this is what was interesting about this particular client, is this. Happened in six months. In six months, we were able to increase the organic traffic on their website. Meaning, you know, we looked at the personas and what those personas were using their thumbs to look for online. And so we found more meaningful, relevant more relevant content to create. So we increased their organic traffic in six months by 16%. We increased their web sessions by about 8%. But a big thing for me that was a win was that we increased their time on page by over a minute, a minute and 12 seconds more. And I gotta say, because they had good content, they were already performing, but bringing them past four minutes. I mean, anybody who does web knows, that's just, you know, that's crazy in B2B. Yeah. And you know, even social sessions were up by almost 200% and we saw that then generate leads, actually convert people because they felt that they were being spoken to directly.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. Awesome. All right, let's jump into Q and A. We always like to start with, tell me about your first job in marketing. So when did it all start?
Priscilla McKinney: Well, I actually owned a credit card processing company, and what would happen is somebody would say, well, I don't really like our credit card processing fees. How can you lower those? And I'm like, well, why would you care about lowering a minuscule amount of money? That's an interesting proposition. Why don't you just get so many more sales that you don't care what you're paying to? The money it did to me that just seemed very clear. And so, you know, I started doing really free marketing consulting to my clients, and my husband could tell when I'd come home and I'd be like, so jazzed about my day. He's like, you did some marketing consulting, didn't you? Yeah. And so it took someone else in a marketing company. To basically say, you know, you referring a lot of business to me and I'm making a lot of money off of you saying, Hey, this is a good idea. Why don't they do this to generate more income? And she wanted to get out of the business. And so my first job in marketing was the CEO of my same firm.
Steve Goldhaber: So it's kind of interesting. I always think that people who start smaller or are CEOs, like, it's such a good early career path because. It's rare in marketing that someone has access to all the different parts of the business or the ability to make those decisions. Have you, have you ever worked on the opposite, which is like a bigger company where you felt like I'm one of many contributors or you always have, have run the show?
Priscilla McKinney: I've always run the show. Yeah. I'm the linchpin for good or for evil. But I have to say, I think that's why our clients come to us because I understand that revenue piece. It's my money on the line. Yeah. And I only use marketing as a way to build my business and create revenue. And to me, I do very well with clients who really understand their revenue picture and understand that flow. And the other thing is, because I started small, I mean, I know how to bootstrap. I now have yeah, gorgeously beautiful, huge budgets to work with and can really help people create massive strategies. I work internationally and that's super fun, but at the core of it, I know how to get so much Yeah. Out of so little.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, we're similar in that way. My marketing hero is MacGyver because you know, growing up I watched MacGyver who could do anything with, like, oh, these little three materials. Yeah, that's fine. That's all I need. So even though I've worked at very big companies, that required a lot. You know, investments and machinery, meaning like process. I'm very always just connected to the like, Nope, I can do this in, in my head and this is how it's gonna get done.
Priscilla McKinney: Okay. Well I grew up in Spain and they only have like two TV channels and I have watched more than my fair share of MacGyver because that was a big hit. And so I watched a lot of Mickey vt. You made a giver.
Steve Goldhaber: I like that sounds so much more interesting,
Priscilla McKinney: Yeah, so I love that. I've never heard someone say that was their marketing hero, but that is so spot on, I think Steve.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. So now I'm interested in what we're talking like US subtitles or did they do the dubbing? How did it go?
Priscilla McKinney: Total dubbing, but Mcg Mcg, Vander's voice was the same guy who was the, you know, the father in Dynasty, cuz that was on Next, and then La Familia Cosby, you know, Bill Cosby. Then it was his same voice. Yeah. So MacGyver, you know, Dynas like whatever it is that we could see syndicated, it was all dubbed over, but it was all the same voice.
Steve Goldhaber: That's amazing. I remember for, you know, I grew up in the US for the most part. I lived in Belgium for five years as a kid. But I remember when you'd have like actors do different things and as a kid, like it was my first realization that like, this was a fake world of like, wait a second. How come the dad from here is now the brother on that show? Like, your brain just couldn't, couldn't process it. Like how I told my kids recently, They're, they're all about YouTube, right? Like, they're just starting to kind of like get into that world. And I told them that Google owns YouTube and they looked at me like I had bad information. They're like, Google doesn't own YouTube.
What are you talking about? I'm like, guys, I have been to their headquarters. I can assure you, Google started it. Or at least Google bought it. Anyway, that always that. Humbles them. That's my, yeah, that's my way to exert my dad authority is to impress them with technology knowledge.
Priscilla McKinney: Well, I got a good one because I used TikTok, like the week it came out, but then I didn't really care about it, so I never used it cuz it wasn't designed for me. And then I think it was like a year and a half later, my kids were like, TikTok, this, TikTok. I'm like, guys, I, yeah. Like, mom, you don't know what what it is. I'm like, yeah, I sent you a TikTok a year and a half ago. Yeah. They're like, no you didn't. I'm. Oh, thank God for technology and scrolling. I'm like, and here's the TikTok I sent you back then. You know, sometimes you've gotta have some parental street cred, Steve.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. PSC parental street cred. Yes. I too was on TikTok early. I tend to do that. With new things that happen, I tend to like jump in right away, even though part of me is like, what are you doing? I force myself to do it. To really understand what it is, and I remember the early days of tos, which were dance videos. Today you really aren't gonna see a, a dance video may like, I don't know, maybe like two, three, 4% of the time, but it was like 90% kids doing dance videos.
Priscilla McKinney: That was it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It morphs. I'm with you. I jumped on Clubhouse, you know, within the first week we've been on chat, G P T yeah. You know, whatever it is, you can't afford to get behind, so you have to really understand it.
Steve Goldhaber: What are your thoughts on club?
Priscilla McKinney: What, what's clubhouse? I'm done. You know? Yeah. I mean, I always find it interesting when there's a new platform that really is not providing. Something I can't get somewhere else. Now it's in a different form, but, I actually hosted shows on it. I did collabs. I really went for it. So I'm not saying this out of I don't care. I mean, I collabed with several different people, but the reality is, is that there wasn't for me the long longevity. There wasn't a stickiness. I was in my other you know, podcast. And other forms of marketing getting much more accomplished than there. So it didn't provide anything. Even with a long, probably a four to five month investment, when you can't prove the value to me in that time, I'm out.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, and especially to like LinkedIn Live is. Kind of related. I, I did really appreciate when I was on Clubhouse, I felt the audio quality was really good. Mm-hmm. Like that was like, that's something LinkedIn Live is like, they should get there eventually where you can say, no, this is a purely out of the bandwidth or the, the tech driving the platform. That should be better over time. But I'm with you. I, I did the clubhouse thing for a couple months. And then got angry at all the iPhone notification messages I got if like, all I was like, I don't need to know 50 times during the day that someone has entered the room. Right, right. What do you really enjoy about marketing? You've been at it, you know, for a while. Like you said, your husband was like, oh, you've done marketing today. You, you're energized by it. Like today, what do you really, what gets you excited?
Priscilla McKinney: Well, I just onboarded a new client over the last two days and every time it gets me so excited, I'm like, what do you do?
Like I am an anthropologist by trade and so I am curious about people, but I'm also curious about how people can persuade other people, like, you know, so for me, it's always so interesting when you find a new product or services, how to do you, how. Put them in the right place. You can't just go broadcast to everybody what you're doing.
It's all about this finesse of narrowcasting. So for me, it's just a logic puzzle. Who is your most ideal client? How can I as quickly as possible, narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow this down because that's when it's gonna be more meaningful? And that is a difficult puzzle. Who has not done this before? Who has done this before? Where do you sit in that ecosystem? What could make you different? And to me, You know, even though I work in largely one arena I'm a hundred percent B2B, but I do focus on the market research community, and a lot of people think that I've seen it all before. I tell you every client is a new puzzle, and that's what gets me so excited. Like, how can we do a new voice? How could we get a new system, and how quickly can we get to lead generation? Yep.
Steve Goldhaber: I'm gonna deep dive on market research for a second. I've done a. Of it in different forms. What's kind of fascinating is there are some times when it's very just, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've we're validating this. Nothing has really changed. And other times it's like, oh my God, we just got this insight that changes us to think about our business in another way. How do you see those two different worlds? Is it rare to get those moments, like I'm describing where like there's a, there's a customer insight. How do you see that playing out? How often for like the clients that you work on just validating things and the others like there's true breakthrough? Things happening.
Priscilla McKinney: That's such a good view of the industry because you can divide it, in my opinion. These are people who are going out trying to validate their opinions, and these are people who are really looking for open space and looking for a crazy, innovative idea. And unfortunately, you know, there are a lot of things in market research that just have to get done. Longitudinal brand tracking kind of things. But there is a lot of talk in market research about are these things broken and are they meaningful, and should we completely go a different direction? And I love working with startups and with really interesting technology right now in market research that are really putting big questions out there and turning things on. Its head and with chatGpt talking about how, not, not even chatGpT, but just AI and generative AI and natural language processing, these kinds of things entering into market research. Is so interesting right now. It is the freaking wild, wild west all over again. So kind of back to your question, is it validating or is it asking new questions?
I actually work for the market research firms themselves and so which kind of work they're doing largely is about what kind of client they're attracting. So they would say they have some clients who come to them and want them to validate stuff and some clients who. We're open, what can we do?
Steve Goldhaber: Yep. Yeah, it's interesting. I, when I worked with bigger companies who were, who were, you know, they was gonna spend 10, 20 million on a campaign. They wanted to, to share it. And my, my frustration, so many people Do this, but my frustration was market research was really viewed as an insurance policy. Yeah. Right. Total. They were investing a lot of money. Right. They, and, and as we developed the questionnaires for the market research, we were always like, we need more open-ended questions. We want to figure out what their issues are. How do we like, connect with them better? And it was just constantly, like, it was never said out loud, but it, it was, we all knew loud and clear, this is an insurance policy and I'm using to get the executive summary that I can take to the c e o to say, here are the marketing concepts. Number two is most, you know, well received or it scored high on these attributes. So that's my question. Any, any C m O listening today? Let's start using market research to learn. Not to say that you can't validate, but you have to learn first If you're just validating I don't know, insurance policies.
Don't belong in the market research world.
Priscilla McKinney: I just talked to someone from a major studio on my podcast and he came in talking about his framework for market research as disruption. And one idea he talked about, which I really think is very strong, is not only doing market research on your most ideal client, but doing market research and taking the time to listen to your anti. Who is not using your product, who in fact hates your product. Yeah. And what is involved there. And it was such an interesting perspective and it really does help you prepare for disruption if that is even possible. And honestly, when you think about market research and the things you brought up, like the very much like c y a mentality that people have to apply it, it is about saying, You know, everybody at this point is swimming in the soup of disruption.
Nobody's immune. And so are you using market research, you know, intelligentlyto be prepared?
Steve Goldhaber: Yep. All right. What another question. What are you looking back at all this that you've done? What are some things looking back at your earlier version where you're like, ah, that was a mistake? I approach that differently.
I wasn't as strong of a marketer yet. What are some things looking back that you would, you can share with the audience?
Priscilla McKinney: Well, I think I really have a talent. I'm a very charismatic person. I'm a good connector. I have a lot of social intelligence, and I think that I would look back on my career and say I relied on that. Too heavily. I think there is no substitute for being truly prepared. And I think I got a lot of interest, a lot of people asking me to speak at conferences. I'm very good iin a room, but I look back and think that one of my biggest failures has been not really sitting down and preparing for, you know, some of the outbound reaches I've done. Because in the past my talent kind of brought me through and I look back and go, You know, the talent should be your base, and you should stop, take the time, and really love your audience. And you know, that's what I'm trying to do now is say, great, okay, Priscilla, great. You're talented, but, but you know, where could you really kind of like. Tune the guitar, you know, before you get up to, to play it. Because that to me is loving your audience and saying, I'm gonna take more time to do more research. I'm gonna take more time to really polish what I'm coming to you with, because that's gonna show you respect. Yeah. So I guess that's a lesson learned for me. And yeah, I was seed of the pants just like a lot of people are when they're young. So I don't begrudge myself for, you know, doing it and trying. But I do wish that I would've had maybe a mentor stop and tell me, you know what, you're good but not that good. So let's think about how you can practice.
Steve Goldhaber: All right. That's good advice. All right. Final question for you. Someone is just jumping into market research in the B2B space. Give them a quick, like, you have to do this and whatever you do, don't do that. What's your advice to that person?
Priscilla McKinney: Well, I think often people jump in and they don't look at the body of literature. They don't listen to podcasts, they don't go out to YouTube, and they don't read other blogs. They literally have no idea what the competitive landscape or what the thought leadership is in the industry. So my push, I don't care what industry you're in, I think you should. Always learning, always listening, always looking for all of the freebies. I mean, you know, when, when we were younger, not to date us too much, but there wasn't this much information so readily available from experts. Now, honestly, you know, I go out and look for podcasts about things I wanna learn about, and sometimes I listen. I'm like, eh, okay, not so great. I get that it doesn't use all of my time wisely. But the idea of constantly listening for what's out there is so important. And I think the other piece that goes hand in hand with that is you can never start networking too early. People are afraid to ask someone who's like eight steps higher up the executive ladder to connect with them. Yeah, I think that is a massive mistake.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, that's great advice. I think I've fallen victim to the hierarchy or the latter to be like, oh, if I talk to that person like my boss or my boss's boss might, might not appreciate that, but I, I agree with you that, and I think also, you know, the last five, 10 years, there's been a lot of great reverse mentorship. So someone who was at the executive level sometimes wants to talk to someone who is in the trenches, who knows what's going on, especially. You know, digital reverse mentorship. I think we're almost done. I felt like 10, 15 years ago, that was a huge thing, right? Where it was like the wise c e o, who would say, yo, I really could use some reverse mentorship and nothing wrong with someone who's in their twenties, who knows digital as a native, teaching the CEO o about that.So yeah, I think the mentorship things is really good. All right, Priscilla, I've enjoyed having you on the show. Thank you for sharing your perspectives and your stories and your new company itchy back.com. Really, I'm really excited to go there. So anyway, thanks again for joining and thank you. If you are listening or watching the show, make sure to like and subscribe or as the kids. Smash that, what do they say? Is it smash the like button or smash the subscribe button? I don't know. I'm truly showing my dad colors here, but, anyway, you know what I'm talking about. Thanks again for joining us and we'll catch you next time. Take care. All right.