For our episode, we have Elias Rubel, the Founder Partner/CEO of MatterMade. Where they help the most promising venture-backed B2B companies hit their audacious revenue goals faster. Teams at Dropbox, Calm, and Sticky.io have leveraged Matter Made. Clients are back by Sequoia Capital, True Ventures, NEA, Redpoint, and just about every other big name in the valley. Before MatterMade Elias is a 2x founder. In this episode, Elias dives into the cutting edge of marketing, what decision doing marketing, what are companies commonly doing wrong, and how to fix it. This episode is for anyone interested in accelerating their growth.
Please tell us your favorite part or quote in the comments below.
Show notes, outline and transcript
Click show more to find details on the show and the transcript.
Show Outline:
Elias introduction [:41]
How does Elias apply his Charlton background to B2B strategy [1:30]
Exciting things in B2B marketing [2:30]
Decision-making marketing [4:10]
Why is authentic marketing more prevalent [9:50]
Elias projections of 2nd and 3rd order effects of the pandemic [11:35]
What patterns of what companies are doing wrong [13:40]
How to validate marketing messaging is working [15:00]
Communication cadence with different parts of the Go-To Marketing team[17:10]
How rev ops is an essential part of Go To Market [19:44]
How to start aligning marketing and sales and what metrics matter [22:00]
How Elias developed different mental frameworks [24:00]
How to think about recruitment? [27:20]
What habits and process help Elias in his day to day [30:10]
Recommendations [34:48]
Advice [36:56]
Last Message for listener [38:10]
People mentioned
Stuff Mentioned
Marc Benioff – Raising awareness on social issues. (North Carolina bathroom issue).
Transcript
Walter Pape: let’s do this, man. Everyone, watching and listening, will give some context of who you are, and you will find your roles and responsibilities.
Elias Rubel: Yeah, for sure. Well,
Elias Rubel: For background. My name is Elias ruble, and the founding partner at Matter Made is a B2B growth marketing firm. We work with companies like Dropbox and calm. Many other venture-backed high growth startups and scaling companies help them scale revenue on the business’s marketing side. So that’s, that’s what I’m up to now. My background, though, ranges. I started a venture-backed software company that was acquired in 2014. We did contract lifecycle management software, not a space I expected, my first company to be in. But, uh, you know, hey, I picked a category that was unsexy and went for it. I’ve also, you know, scaled an e-commerce business or not to private equity, and so I’ve got a bunch of really my backgrounds weird, man. It’s all over the place.
Walter Pape: Yeah, no, that’s awesome. And I think that’s one of the things that I, you know, I guess so appreciated having a very unique and weird background, you know, within that. How do you now apply your past experiences to help companies with their go-to-market strategies and growth plans?
Elias Rubel: Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean that’s really everything right is like pattern matching and kind of having those experiences to call on I think that initially even before matter made you know I’ve always been big at just like having a lot of irons in the fire and testing different things and then waiting to get some form of signal. Whether that’s at a macro level with companies like multiple companies or, you know, more micro-level with campaigns and testing kind of quick iteration on that front, that said, nowadays, what’s fantastic is we’re working with and helping scale anywhere from five to 10 high growth B2B startups, a year. And so, you know, whereas your average revenue operator or marketing leader is going to be with the same company for. Call it three years, something like that, you know, they get deep on that one specific problem space. But then when they move on there. They’re learning all over again. Our ability to see patterns in the industry and test all sorts of, you know, the tip of the spear in B2B marketing and growth and Test and learn from that. Then we get to deploy that for our new clients. So it’s cool to take that pattern matching, learn quickly, and then see results from it.
Walter Pape: Well, what. So what are some of those pattern matching? I mean what, what is it that you’re seeing. I mean, what would you say kind of high level are you sort of like recognizer right now is some exciting things
Elias Rubel: Sure, yeah. I mean, I think the one that’s in front of everyone. Right now, and everyone’s trying to figure out how to react to it, you know, we’ve been in this. We’ve been in this shift back towards authentic community building and social selling. I mean, those things never really went away, but for a while. There it was a little bit more mechanical, a little bit more, you know, case studies and white papers and downloaded content gated content. Now we’re moving to this place of, you know, authenticity, sharing freely, not getting content. I mean, it’s that statement that we keep hearing this year and last year about You know buyers are already forming their decision before they get on a call with a salesperson or an SDR or at least a lot of their buying. You know the process has been done up front, and then sure there’s, you know, there’s a buying committee that has to be worked around, and there’s a bunch of mechanics to close a deal. And so There’s still a ton of hard work that sales reps and sales leaders have to navigate. But on the marketing side, the research is being done up front. So creating programs that play into that make it really easy for someone to self educate. Then I think that the best organizations now are figuring out how to Make their buyers. They’re buying committee thought leaders and champions, and that kind of ties into social selling. So one of the things that we’ve been testing, just to give you a more specific example because I know that’s kind of like theoretical and stuff we’ve already heard.
Walter Pape: Yeah. Yeah, give us that 30,000-foot view but Let’s look at those trees and
Elias Rubel: No. Yeah. No. All right, I’ll go down. There’s this new thing that we’re releasing this week called decision maker marketing. The whole premise here is that traditional marketing takes a while. Right. And this is generally where sales and marketing start to split and have their differences is when it takes too long to generate the demand that sales need to do their job well. And so decision maker marketing is a shortcut to go from, you know, what might be a three to six-month marketing program just to get to those results to, you know, a seven to 14 day expedited process which is nuts right and the Way that is by cutting out all of the, you know, traditional method. We walked through it and be like, Have a content brainstorm, figure out what it is that what type of educational pieces. Do we want to make sure that our buyers are reading or engaging with what we know the research we go through making that content? Then we take that we turn them into ads or some sort of paid channel promotion to get them in front of our prospects and decision-makers. And we hope that some percentage of them are going to engage with that. And then we hope that some portion of them will raise their hand and whether it’s a request to them or whatever your golden motion is And then. The sales motion can begin again as a lot of that takes a lot of time so that you can be six-eight Elias Rubel: You know, months out on a program like that. It’s still very much has its place. Even decision-maker marketing says, What if we could just cut out all of that process and go straight to building a real relationship with your decision-maker at the highest level executives executive? Get to know what that person’s priorities are for the year. It’s virtually like a call. Call but disguised and disguised as a bad word. Still, It really, it’s like you’re creating thought leadership with this person, and you’re building relationships in the process. And if there’s alignment, they’re going to acknowledge that they’re going to find that out. So for us, that looks like you know a podcast right or some sort of content creation what we’re doing right now. Let’s pretend that I was your buyer persona; you would take you to know the list of target accounts. I was one of those who reach out and say, you know, hey, Elias. I’m thinking about; I’m doing a podcast on the go to market excellence. Go to Market leadership; we’d love to have you on, of course, now I’m flattered. Right. I’m like, well, sweet, that’s something that I’m an expert on. I’d love to. Thank you for thinking of me; I’d love and so, bam, like, just like that. You’ve now booked a meeting with me. You’re one of your decision-makers in this theoretical example. We’re about to spend as we are right now 45 minutes getting to know each other. And in this program, you’re able to weave in your call questions right like you might ask me something like, you know, the last What’s top of mind for you this year. What’s your biggest challenge. What’s the thing that’s keeping you up at night. I’m inquisitive. Where do you think the industry is going? They could ask me all of these questions that usually would be like pulling teeth with an SDR; you know if sales context, but in this context, and we have a brainstorm. You’re asking me these thoughtful questions. And now, at the end of the call. We’ve built a relationship. And you know what matters to me. And I’m probably curious about what’s going on with you and what your company does, so I almost qualify myself into whether there’s an opportunity there. So that’s decision-maker marketing in a nutshell. And I think that’s something that we see a ton of traction with, and it’s very kind of a tip of the spear in the market right now; companies like
Walter Pape: It is
Elias Rubel: Gone are blazing a trail on this with their, you know, revenue intelligence show, and I think they’re taking a very similar strategy. So they’re great examples in the market of this working well.
Walter Pape: So taking it even further, you’re probably assuming that content that is from this podcast or whatever may be spreading out into case studies and other things to going back to your, your paid advertisement that you’re using, or even more civilly
Elias Rubel: Exactly. If you think about what I describe it to folks, it is like 75% of decision-maker marketing. Building that relationship is the most crucial part, but 25% of it happens to be that you produce a ton of content like video snippets—an actual podcast. You can turn those you know highlights into blog posts, so you don’t even have to think through what we will blog about. You can just hand it off to a talented writer, and they Get to pull quotes from this thought leader who’s also a prospect of yours. Additionally, you can even invite in. In some sense, it doesn’t replace the need for case studies, but when you ask a client for a case study. It’s an ask; right, you’re using it. You’re cashing it in. Whereas if you ask a client. Hey, We have a show that you’re an expert, you know, on this topic and a thought leader; we’d love to have you on and share your thoughts about the industry’s future. You can weave in questions where they talk about how they’ve seen success using tools like yours or whatever it is. And it. I think it’s more potent than a case study because they’re freely sharing it there. It’s not like the canned, before, after, You know, business case ROI. You can still get around to that same stuff, but more organically and authentically without burning that ask as well, which is cool.
Walter Pape: Yeah. So you talked a couple of times about authenticity how that’s key. Why do you think that is like, why is the pendulum shifting to that.
Elias Rubel: You know, I wish I had the answer. I think it’s people who want to enjoy the work they do, and I think we’re starting to see through just the ones and zeros of traditional, and it doesn’t make it any fun to engage with that. And I believe our bullshit detectors are unlike ultimate high alert right like anybody can put together. A case study, but to hear someone casually honestly talk about their challenges and talk about what they’re thinking about. Then you know it happens to be part of your solution happens to be part of that story. You can relate. Right. It’s a sense of relating ability. For the longest time, B2B lost that sense of connecting power, and it wasn’t. It just wasn’t right. And so now I mean, I think Dave Gary hart when he was at drift started to pave the way for this kind of authentic open sharing. Many folks have just taken that and run with it, and now it’s as though the industry has been permitted to be more accurate. You know someone broke the ice people liked it. You see, it turns out we enjoy being human, more than we want is, you know, button-up, you know tie up to them strictly.
Walter Pape: What are you trying to say here, don’t
Elias Rubel: Have a tie on and
Elias Rubel: I still have buttons.
Walter Pape: Oh, I like it. I like it. Um. Oh, that’s so interesting. So I agree. You know, I think it is about people who want to connect with people.
Walter Pape: In a day. I think that’s something that a lot of us are, you know, are craving. I think, especially in today’s pandemic. What do you think it’s been like a second and third-order like wave impacts of being in a pandemic, or from home orders. We think it’s going to happen, you know, moving forward.
Elias Rubel: Man, I wish I had a crystal ball.
Walter Pape: But if you do have a crystal ball, what we say.
Elias Rubel: Hypothetically, yeah.
Elias Rubel: I should just hold an eight ball here. Just as a joke, you’d like, Well, you know, what should we do, like, All right, well let me consult the eight ball.
Walter Pape: Again. Yeah, I mean,
Elias Rubel: There’s the obvious stuff right like in-person events, everybody’s scrambling to figure out on the go to the market size and the growth side, you know, how do we reallocate Those budgets to meaningfully engage with folks who are now at home at the end. So there was a giant pendulum swing right at first. Everyone was scrambling to figure out how to do this. Like, how do we engage with this media in a way that we haven’t before inconsistency in a production value that we haven’t before Great? We’ve got the budget. Let’s throw it into there. But then the pendulum swung, and now everybody’s like, I’m so sick of being on Zoom’s I’m so sick of staring at a screen all day. So I think that’s the new challenge: how do you create unique experiences that don’t feel like a drag? You know they don’t feel like it because pretty quickly, now zoom is getting to be this. The conference where you’re like, man, I just want to go home. My feet are tired, you know, it’s like instead of your feet being tired. It’s your brain and eyes.
Walter Pape: Right.
Elias Rubel: Right. So yeah, I think that’s the challenge right now is coming up with ways to make. There’s a lot you can do with
Elias Rubel: You know this medium. And I think the companies that are going to win will find ways to slice and dice it’s it feels fresh, and if someone doesn’t feel like it’s just another zoom.
Walter Pape: Right, right. So, you know, you mentioned that you work with 510 companies every year, fast-growing. What are some things that are not working? When you go into these organizations, and they’re like, hey, we’re doing these things. What are some pattern matching that you see that doesn’t work, and you have to kind of correct the path?
Elias Rubel: And what’s interesting is a lot of the time, it’s real stuff. You know you. I think when we started down this path, I was expecting a lot more of, you know, very specific in a strategic there’s plenty of that but If I were to identify the most significant pattern here that we see is that companies are rush to ship campaigns that aren’t well matched to their buying committee. And without truly understanding their buying committee and sometimes that happens for later-stage companies that happens when Sales and Marketing don’t have a good partnership or haven’t set up a cadence of communicating with one another, like a weekly cadence of communicating with one another about the conversations that sales. So whether that’s SDR or even an opportunity stage, you know, they’re having and learn like really hearing that feedback. Then bring that over to the marketing side and honing campaigns that either you know help grease the skids so that the deals don’t get hung up. So the buyers are better educated or even targeting just really understanding that that persona and honing in on the ICP. So I’d say if there’s one thing that I get up on my soapbox all the time and rant about, it’s that just like really take the time it’s it’s If you’re about to dump 50 grand 100 grand, you know, a million dollars in a channel per month that you understand our clients range from series A to post IPO. So we deal with all sorts of different budgets, but Regardless, like that money is not going to be well spent, it will fall into a leaky bucket. If you’re, if the fundamental you know piece which is Who are we talking to. What do they care about? And do we have something interesting to say to them that they that not that we think is interesting that they think is interesting? It’s worth taking extra time to nail that down and to test it before throwing a ton of budget behind it. So it’s a that’s, that’s my number one. A pattern that we see folks, you know, everybody thinks they can shortcut right everybody gets a little bit excited. It almost always ends up taking more time than if they just invested upfront.
Walter Pape: Interesting. So how do you tested how you know that you got that messaging and that person. Correct.
Elias Rubel: It’s it’s the sales conversations that validate that right when you have a sales teams like wow, these people are primed right they are eager the messaging, the script everything that we’re saying to them is hitting
Elias Rubel: And they seem well educated about what we’re talking to them out already. They come in, well educated, And then the sales cycles as those shorten up that’s usually a great sign that the matching. They’re both on know at the top of the funnel, who are we bringing into the funnel, who are qualifying the horn. How are we talking to them and educating them and then how a sales are doing in continuing that sales motion, all the way through. So I think the best teams today are thinking about revenue ops, not sales and marketing, right. It’s a team effort. You know, you have top-funnel middle funnel bottom of the funnel and whether you’re in sales and marketing like that funnel. Everybody should be. That’s the thing. Right. And so I think the teams that are better align on that front are the ones that can sprint faster. They’re communicating better, the feedback loop is more robust, which’s essential nowadays.
Walter Pape: So you mentioned bottom of the funnel, and we’ve been talking a lot of, you know, marketing and sales.
Elias Rubel: Yeah.
Walter Pape: How does, how does the bottom-funnel play into, you know, things that you see with these type of companies.
Elias Rubel: In what sense very curious about the bottom phone
Walter Pape: Yeah, yeah. So how are you? How are you thinking about the bottom of the funnel in the feedback loop, you know, once they become a customer? How does that feedback play into your different growth strategies or go to market strategies?
Elias Rubel: Yeah, so I mean as far as I’m concerned. And one of the things we immediately set up. If it doesn’t exist, is there should be a weekly meeting between marketing and the SDR team right so that it’s higher up in the funnel. There should be a doesn’t have to be weekly, but there should be an options review monthly. The account execs to underwrite between marketing and account execs to understand what’s going on and the opportunities. Where are they getting hung up? What’s the feedback. And then likewise, you know, maybe, it isn’t monthly, but at least at a bare minimum, it should be monthly, but at a bare minimum, it could be quarterly with the success team. Understanding, you know what, what are those stories of success. Whereas, they’re still friction, and how can marketing support, you know, the places where there are friction and champion the sites, and the customers were their success. So that’s critical. Yeah.
Walter Pape: No. So, so to me, it sounds like you. You’re not only just talking about what you can do for marketing from the buyer perspective; we’re also thinking from sales. Through just, you know, simple conversations are what you’re seeing is, you know, tactics that people can implement today to make their go-to-market plans more attainable.
Elias Rubel: Oh yeah, I mean, Players Sometimes when as a team, you know, like it’s funny how early teams will silo themselves. And it’s just like such an easy adjustment. If you can take a step back and go, Okay, let’s just think about this as we’re a funnel team or revenue team. I need to communicate at certain junctures On a certain cadence so that everyone. Everybody can be in lockstep, so yeah, it’s Super key’s we didn’t expect to spend so much time on organizational coaching and on, you know, these, these bits, but they are the fundamentals everything else follows from. So those have to be set upright in the beginning. Yeah.
Walter Pape: No, it’s interesting. So, and you mentioned earlier about DevOps as An essential piece. Can you expand on it? Or why, why do you like, why did you bring that up. Like, why do you think that’s like an essential piece.
Elias Rubel: Because if so, When I think of revenue operations. I’m thinking of like the the the merger of sales And marketing, right, if we take away those titles like it is revenue operations is the plan, the strategy, the goals. The measures and the two teams that play into the various pieces of the funnel. Right. And so I think that like I use that term, to sum up, all of those pieces. These, if any one of those, gets out of whack. Right. Like even if you know when the CEO, CFO, sets benchmarks with the board and the CEO and others. Like, if not everyone is present at the table and bought in on those goals. That’s, again, you end up with these fit like Fisher’s between groups and people not pushing in the same direction. And then you sometimes end up with like arbitrary goal setting, which is the worst. Like, I think we’re getting away from that. But, you know, If you comp a marketing team on an SQL goal, which is the wrong thing to be measuring right, who cares how many MQ else there are if marketing is contributing to Opportunity creation and revenue creation. Right. And a lot of the time, I mean we’ll see companies clients of ours who will bet about their MQ L’s. You know how many calls they need and like, no, no, no, like, Our goal should be to support however many opportunities we need to create based on what we know our average close one ratio rate is To help whatever revenue we know we need, and in that way. We’re also aligning ourselves with the sales team because if they’re not getting opportunities. And they’re not closing those opportunities; they’re losing. So why would marketing not fail in that case? Well, we hit our SQL goal like that. That doesn’t matter.
Walter Pape: Because
Elias Rubel: The people who matter. The ones are closing the deals and supporting the companies if they’re not happy, we’re not, we shouldn’t be satisfied. So I think that that’s almost becoming old news, which is excellent. Like, I guess, modern marketing teams are thinking in this way, and they’re partnering with sales, and they’re setting the goals in the same room together. But that certainly is something that if teams aren’t thinking about it that way, yet they should, they should think about it that way.
Walter Pape: Interesting. So if you were to give somebody advice that they’re thinking about more, the SQL at sales qualified you to know opportunity created That you know your traditional pathway. How do you start having that conversation? How do you get to a point where it’s lining up to be that opportunity creation. How would you, where would you advise people to start
Elias Rubel: Simplify just, you know, like, Get, get the two leaders in the room or three leaders in the room and say, what are we like, what are we even trying to accomplish here. What shuts this company down what? How do we fail? And how do we win? And it’s probably one number or two numbers, maybe, you know, like, what is our turn. And thereby engagement, all these things customer success customer happiness. And what is our revenue? Right. And of course, there are others I’m speaking purely on, you know the house’s revenue side, right, but When you boil it down to just what matters. Then things become a lot more straightforward. It’s like okay like marketing team what like They can say the sales, like how many. What do we, what’s our win rate. Right. Okay. Based on that, now we know how many opportunities we need to create great we’re going to wear your partner to make sure that they are completed. And then you’re our partner to give us feedback if we’re doing an excellent job of creating opportunities, but that there, for whatever reason, not closing. Well, or they could close. It could be a better alignment. They could complete more quickly right you you partner with us. Let us know about that will partner to make sure that you’re getting those at-bats in a meaningful way. And our only our, our goal is closed one revenue and making sure that those are customers that are retained. So, those, those are yours. Those are two
Walter Pape: guiding star for your
Elias Rubel: North Star, for sure. Yep.
Walter Pape: Awesome. So once I have been noticing a lot about it’s, you talk about frameworks and how to think about things from marketing from revenue to operations to sales. I mean, where did all these different ideas and frameworks come from, like, like, how do they develop and where do they come like yeah, where did they start
Elias Rubel: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s just you make a lot of painful mistakes along the way. Right. Like I can call out a time when I had an awful partnership with a sales leader. And I think both of us fucked it up in fantastic ways. I mean, we were just like, doing all the wrong things together in our partnership. And it made it so contentious. And so I was not optimized for company success due to how we chose to partner and how we were thinking about our goals. That was the genesis for me of The first big slap in the face, with this kind of more organizational and objective setting. Indeed, we’ve been through many more examples where we see this being done pattern match and say, Okay, let’s call us out early. Let’s fix it. Let’s help them get on the right path. But for me, there was one in particular where We both weren’t doing it right. I made a ton of mistakes, and I certainly think he did as well. And I’m sure now, in retrospect, we would see that, and we would probably laugh about it and go wow, you know we could have done so much better together. But I think sometimes you have to learn the hard way. Know, have some of mine. Some of my best business learnings have been the hard way, for sure.
Walter Pape: What’s another one that comes to mind.
Elias Rubel: Oh, man. They’re so bright. I think there’s a lot about when I usually go through these, and I jump back to the founder stuff. Right. And like the, you know, not necessarily with matter made today, but I’ve had several other companies. Two of them that were acquired, and so I mean everything from founder mistakes. You know, like picking. How do you choose the right people to work with? How do you evaluate those folks and You see, I’ve been through many founder breakups and replacement of executives and all these things that, you know, until you’re in the hot seat, trying to figure out, like, do I need to part ways with this person. Do I need to bring someone else in, do I like You can’t learn how to handle that until you have to learn how to take it almost like I don’t think there’s any class theory or You know, Harvard Business School papers that I could have read that would have prepared me to handle those situations. You know what happens when you sell a company and then end up in court over payment disagreements right like for the payout like this shit. You don’t think about it; you’re like, oh, hey, you know, like, we’re good.
Walter Pape: Awesome. And then, you know, like things come up and you have to deal with them, and you have to learn on the fly.
Elias Rubel: And thankfully, you know, I’ve been fortunate to be surrounded by some talented and helpful mentors and whether it’s formal or informal along the way. And I think those are the moments where You lean on people like that who’s been through it before and can advise, and you come out the other end than being able to do that yourself a bit better.
Walter Pape: Absolutely. Well, I want to get back to those opportunities, talk about your mentors in a little bit. I would be curious to dive into how do you think about recruitment. I mean, I go to market plans for any level for a founder to an operator, you have to make good hirings. That sounds like he was a critical learner for you. How do you think about it now?
Elias Rubel: It depends on what level. But typically, the first thing so okay for the longest time, I kind of chuckled when people were like culture. Culture. Culture. Culture Like, all right, sure, but like rubber meets the road. People need to be talented and have experience. Still, I’ve made enough bad hires through my career thus far to realize now that like culture and Team Fit is the most important thing because if you get someone who is a bright mind who Thinks on their feet, culturally is align. By culture, I mean many different things like it matter made One of the most important things is that people take Extreme Ownership right, so if something goes wrong. It’s that person’s responsibility to fix it. It’s my responsibility to everyone assumed as I’ve got, I must do something because we don’t accept that, you know, Stuff to go wrong, like that. Everybody jumps in, everybody picks up in, or everybody’s paddling together, but that mindset is sometimes hard to find. Certain people just enjoy being in their swim lane doing their thing and not thinking about things in such a proactive way. I think culture. Then also expands into like how to how to individuals feel about corporate responsibility and are necessary involvement in community projects and community impact and so Nowadays, where I’m seeing the most success is finding people who line up with those principles just naturally not because they want the job, but because this is already. This is They’re actively seeking for a company like this and. And I’ve found that most of these people also happened to be highly skilled and again happen to have fascinating backgrounds. So that, that’s kind of Where I think about how I feel about recruiting today is looking for that kind of diamonds in the rough that are aligned on that front. And then, of course, going through, you know, skill set. And, you know, giving them practical experience to see how they handle situations and all that.
Walter Pape: That’s good. I like that, especially like you can give them like that you find a rough diamond, but you still verify. Hey, you can do the job. And now. Okay, great. Like culturally, you fit with the principles because you were seeking us out or for whatever reason. No, that’s, that’s interesting. So can I shift? You’ve two companies; you’re doing five to 10 large scale growth advising probably different companies. How do you do it like? What are things you do for yourself, like what processes or habits have you formed to help you today?
Elias Rubel: Good question. I do my best to keep my mind clear; that sounds stupid as it’s coming out of my mouth. Still, by that, I mean I try not to overwork myself because I find that if I let my days drag out and I’m not regimented about how I’ve used my time during the day. And I start logging too many hours. I just fall into this rut of pure execution, and that’s not what you know I wouldn’t. That’s not the top priority when people come to us that, of course, performance is significant. Right. But it’s like table stakes almost that it’s the thoughtfulness behind the execution and some, like, as we talked about earlier. Sometimes you have to simplify things down. And have that, you need to have the headspace to simplify things down in the first place. And so for me, I’ve in the last couple of years, I’ve become much more regimented about like, when is my day starting to end. How much time do I give myself between meetings to like process and clear out and start fresh for the next person? I’d say that’s a really core thing that has helped me and helped our clients see more success. Because I certainly you know we’ve all been there, grinding it out. Your brain just like steam coming out the ears, and you’re just trying to stay above water, and that’s not helpful for anyone. So I’d say as far as a personal toolset, that’s at the top for me.
Walter Pape: Yeah, now are you doing this, like, the day before the morning of the week before, how do you kind of plan out your, your day today
Elias Rubel: Yeah, I mean, it’s I work with an assistant who helps keep my calendar straight, and she’s fantastic. And we have a chief of staff that Makes sure that all of our everyone set up for success in the meetings they’re having and that. You know, we’re all enabled in the way that we need to be, even though it’s kind of funny. Like, we’re a small team in the scheme of things, right? We’re like between 10 and 15 people depending on how you look at it, and We don’t work on paper. We don’t need a chief of staff, but this person enables us to do our best work. And to have the most transparent minds and so I would say that that for me, like when I’m chatting with folks who are trying to be too high performance and Optimize the most out of their time the advice that I give them over beers, rather than saying like Man like cram more into your calendar is to say, hey, what can you take out of there. How can you cram less than your calendar and I always recommend finding someone to work with. Even you know, even if you don’t think that like I have it under control, or I can manage it. Like my output is the equivalent of three of me because of the person that I work with. And she indeed enables me to be a much better version of myself, you know, we’re context and a personal context. While keeping my mind clear. It’s, it’s, I kind of was slow on the uptake of going down that path. But I’m thrilled that I was convinced to do so. There’s I’ll send a wreck a recommendation out for everyone listening. There’s a company called mind Maven that was started; it’s a consulting group. It began with a gentleman who was in charge of I’m going to space. The division that he was in the order of it at LinkedIn early on LinkedIn. He was in the order of like the network effects of the product or something like that. But I was thinking about how Networking works and how people build trust in one another and has a consultancy that helps folks help leaders make more meaningful relationships while using effectively less of their time leveraging an EA and called yeah my Maven. Check it out. It’s powerful stuff. We worked with Connor is the name of the guy that we worked with there. And I would spend that money 15 times over to get the results that I have.
Walter Pape: Also, well, we’ll add that in the show notes. Make sure that everyone gets it. So that’s an excellent recommendation on recommendations like any other tools resources that you found to help your day-to-day execution.
Elias Rubel: tools and resources. I’m a big fan of grain and D script. They do similar things, but the grain is a newer company that plugs into your zoom and allows you to create like highlights snippets from conversations based on text. So it’s mighty. If you’re trying to produce content from your zoom meetings, I highly recommend checking that out. They have great integration. Let’s see, the script is very similar, but it doesn’t integrate with zoom. So if you’re having a lot of meetings or not meetings. You have video content that isn’t coming from zoom recorded elsewhere, and you need to upload it into a tool to edit it quickly and create highlights. It’s an excellent tool for that. And there are so many tools. I’m just trying to focus Focus my mind on something that would be helpful. One of the things that we like doing is as quickly as possible; having a dashboard cockpit. For, you know, both at the executive and board level all the way through, like, what is, you know, the CEO care about seeing and reporting to the board. What does the CMO care about having at their fingertips, like what You know, what does she care about seeing at a glance? And then what is the team underneath that person care about being able to deep dive into with like campaign level reporting and boards? A data box is a tool that we use for that. And I think it’s fantastic. And worth checking out.
Walter Pape: All right, I’ll add down below in the show notes. Wherever this will be so, you’ve been a founder Now, helping companies with a marketing somebody who is either thinking, hey, I want to become a founder or want to get into the marketing, or I’m just starting, what advice would you give them.
Elias Rubel: Start
Elias Rubel: Start reaching out to people I that was, that was the genesis. For me, I come from a very nontraditional business background. Like you know, I went to art school. I dropped out of art school; I founded my first company after waiting for tables. So I didn’t have any like if that first company hadn’t succeeded. I wouldn’t have had any criteria by which anyone would have hired me for anything, right, like I just didn’t I wasn’t qualified in a traditional sense. I knew that I had to prove myself through that. And so what I did was Reach out to just a bunch of people who had been successful in the arena that I cared about was interested in And was honest them was like hey you know you’ve been wildly successful I have everything to learn I’m you do eager just to hear your story and to learn from you. And you know, I have nothing to offer in return, except, you know, open ears. Hopefully, someday we’ll be able to have beers and talk about how your advice. Was impactful for me. And I think that spans both if you want to found a company or even if you’re at the beginning of your career in growth or marketing. And you want to accelerate your ladder up in learning and growing and titles and all that responsibility, I think. Same thing as Surround yourself with people who have done more and better and continue to push yourself to do that. The only moments in my career where I’ve felt stagnant are when I stopped reaching out to people and stopped going myself to think about what is above and what they are doing.
Walter Pape: That’s excellent advice. Last question. You want people to take away from this conversation hard that you want to leave with them doesn’t have to relate to the dialogue just, hey, this is something that I want to go with you and in our time together?
Elias Rubel: Yeah, I think about how you partner with people, whether those people are, you know, internal and team. It’s A new visual level like just another person on your team; how I think about how you’re partnering with that person are you doing something that is going to help them be a better version of themselves, or that enables them to be the best version of themselves. There’s a quote about find some find one thing to do. What one thing can I do today to increase the energy of my team And I think that that applies to both leaders, and I sees right everyone has the opportunity to do that, and groups that have the most fun are the most effective I think, to push themselves and one another to think about how they’re enabling each other. So that’s one thing. Another thing that I wish was talked about more and more action was taken was asking ourselves as individuals. Again, whether we’re an IC or a leader or a founder or VC. I think we have tremendous influence in the world today And: I think we need to do more with that influence in our communities. And not just talking about and not just supporting it with our words, I think Marc Benioff is such a great example of this, where, you know, there was the Law that was up. I’m going to butcher the specifics, but I think it’s like North Carolina and the bathroom gendering the bathrooms. And he was like, You know what, we’re done doing business. If you guys aren’t going to be supportive of everyone in this world, like we just will pull out of North Carolina, as a whole, right, and I think he’s done this a couple of times now. And I think that yeah, it’s Salesforce, and yeah, they could probably afford to not be in North Carolina or whatever state. It was, I apologize, North Carolina. If it wasn’t you, but I think it was, But I think we have a lot more power than we realize and have a lot more skills than we learn. Finding ways as individuals and teams to lend those skills to our communities and causes that will impact us will affect our children. We all need to think about that more often, and we’ll talk about it more often.
Walter Pape: No, absolutely agree. I think that’s, that’s good Elias, if people are interested in, you know, reaching out to you or want to get to learn more. Where should people go
Elias Rubel: Yeah, I mean matter male Co. To learn more about matter mid and then connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m always happy to have conversations with smart folks who are doing exciting things out there. Or folks are the beginning of their career and trying to figure out what they’re doing. Regardless, Elias ruble on LinkedIn.
Walter Pape: All right, perfect. I will add those to the show notes as well and allies. Again, thank you so much. It was great chatting with you today.
Elias Rubel: Walter. Always a pleasure, man.