The Hidden Power of Niche Branding: What CEOs can Learn from Paige Arnof-Fenn

Summary

00:00 - Introduction to Marketing Insights

01:57 - Foundational Marketing Principles

09:56 - The Power of Storytelling

17:49 - Breakout Moments in Business

25:38 - Identifying Marketing Challenges

28:35 - Identifying Marketing Issues in Startups

31:48 - The Power of Public Relations

36:11 - Crafting Your Brand Story

39:48 - Niche Marketing for Success

44:15 - Testing and Iterating Your Message

48:00 - Connecting Innovation with Storytelling

52:48 - Living Your Brand Every Day

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Full Transcript

Jeff Holman (00:01.195)

Hello everybody, it's Jeff Holman here with the Breakout CEO. I'm so glad to be with you guys again. And I'm really excited to have Paige Arnauf-Fin with us today. She's done some amazing things. She's gone to some great schools, a little bit of Stanford, a little bit of Harvard, maybe a lot of Stanford, a lot of Harvard, I don't know. But she's been to some great places, worked with some really large companies like Microsoft and Virgin and a lot of scaling companies. And so she's gonna bring us some wisdom today on the marketing side of things.

and how that plugs in with scaling a business and making it through some of those transitional moments in the business. Paige, welcome to the show.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (00:38.104)

Jeff, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk today.

Jeff Holman (00:42.987)

Yeah, it's great to have you here. I saw your background when you reached out and I'm like, this could be a really interesting conversation. So I was excited to get you scheduled and have you on. And now here you are. So this is one of the best parts about it is me meeting such wonderful people who bring all these different insights into the realm for our community to kind of digest and apply. And I know every time I talk to an expert like you or a CEO who's kind of deep in thick of it, I...

I take away so much from these conversations. So I'm super excited to hear some of your words of wisdoms and tips and things like that, that we get to share with our audience today.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (01:23.662)

Sounds great.

Jeff Holman (01:25.065)

With that said, yeah, with that said, I wanted to ask you a couple intro questions if I could. One of them, and we're gonna take this at maybe two different levels, right? Because you've been running your own business for quite some time now, and you might have some of your own breakout stories in your business. Whereas, twice.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (01:44.078)

Yeah, 24 years. I started my company 24 years ago.

Jeff Holman (01:49.643)

That's fantastic. 24 years ago. around 2001 then.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (01:53.132)

Right after 9-11, like basically exactly 24 years ago.

Jeff Holman (01:56.337)

wow.

Yeah, that's a pivotal moment for a lot of people for sure. That was 24 years ago.

Jeff Holman (02:08.363)

Sorry, what was that?

Paige Arnof-Fenn (02:09.486)

No, that's exactly when I started my firm. I had worked for three startups and the third one, they all three had good exits, the last of the startups. Right after 9-11, they shut down their marketing. We went public and we were sold to a big public company. And I just kind of...

hung out a shingle and the rest is history. You're old enough to remember, you know, right after 9-11, the markets were crazy. Back then, if the stock market dropped 500 points, it was a really big deal. Now it's just Tuesday, you know. But back then, it really threw a monkey wrench into everything. And I hung out a shingle thinking I would just kind of park and do some independent consulting.

And 24 years later, I'm still doing it.

Hmm.

Jeff Holman (03:10.199)

That's great. know, it actually coincides, I hadn't thought about this, but it coincides with kind of when I started, maybe I don't, there's not a real direct path for me, but it was November of 2001 for me when I started what ultimately has become, you know, intellectual strategies, my law firm that I run. it's

somebody, you know, I ran into a friend somewhere. It wasn't related to 9-11 necessarily, but, uh, but I ran into a friend somewhere and he said, Hey, I'm working for this patent attorney. said, Hey, tell your attorney to take me to lunch. And that ended up me being a patent agent and then going into law school and then going to Silicon Valley and then going, starting my own firm and going in house. And here I am running my own firm again. Like this podcast is not about me, but it's kind of funny how sometimes these things parallel each other.

you know, the winding paths that you and I take and, you know, in 2001, I'm not sure that either of us would have said, Hey, I wonder, I wonder what we'll be doing in 2025 with our businesses that have been around in some form or fashion for, for so many years. It's kind of a, was your path more direct than mine by chance?

Paige Arnof-Fenn (04:18.861)

Absolutely. It is very circuitous. So I started my career out of college in investment banking on Wall Street in New York City and went back to business school and did a complete rebrand. I got into marketing and I worked early in my marketing career at Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola, big corporate fortune 500, know, big brands, big budgets.

Got bitten by the dot com bug in 1997 and left my big cushy corporate job at Coke to go run marketing for a startup no one had ever heard of. I think my mom thought I was having a nervous breakdown. And, you know, I did three startups in a row as the head of marketing and they all three had good exits. And then I hung out a shingle, but my longest job before starting my firm was three and a half years. So.

Jeff Holman (05:09.972)

Awesome.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (05:16.053)

It's crazy to think I've now worked for myself for more than two decades. I keep joking that if I get sick of my boss this time, I'm dead, because I don't think I could go back and work for anybody else again.

Jeff Holman (05:29.066)

Yeah, my wife just posed that she's like, what would it take to get you to go work for somebody else? I'm like, I don't know. That's like not even in the realm right now. So that's funny. Well, I'm curious to hear along the way, you know, because you've got a breadth of experience, different companies, you know, I've done some similar, I've worked for IBMs and Intels. And then I'm like, I love the chaos that happens or the

Paige Arnof-Fenn (05:39.543)

Thanks.

Jeff Holman (05:55.571)

the energy, well, maybe we'll call it, happens in the startup and scaling world. And there's just something kind of magical about it, despite all of the chaos that exists. So I'd love to hear, know, what is it before we get into like a breakout moment, like what are some of the foundational things that you think are critical from a marketing perspective or otherwise, the things that you might end up talking to a

you know, as CEO about as you're going in and scoping out a project or they're bringing you on board to get your insights. Like what are the foundational things that you like to start with when you're talking with somebody in that position?

Paige Arnof-Fenn (06:33.623)

So, you know, going into a meeting with a new prospect or a new client, you always want to kind of do a communications audit and just see what messages they have out there. You know, do they clean up well online? Is there a lot of digital dirt on them? Kind of what are the strengths? Who are the competitors? What real estate do they own in their customer's brain?

you know, marketing tools and technologies have changed a lot over the years. You know, when I started my business, there was no social media. Facebook didn't exist. People didn't talk about artificial intelligence. So, you know, when I, when I started my marketing career at Procter and Gamble and we were doing advertising, there was television, print.

radio and billboards of outdoor that those were your options for media. Now, you know, there are 500 or more stations you've got streaming, you've got social online. It's a very different marketplace. But the basics of marketing really haven't changed. You know, who's your target audience? What do they care about? What are they looking for?

What are they using without your product and service? Where are the gaps or holes or needs? And, you know, the marketing basics, you got to have a great story to tell. You got to figure out the right words and pictures to tell that story to the right audience. There's a primary, secondary, tertiary audience. What messages do they need? Who's the gatekeeper? Who's the decision maker?

that doesn't change and great stories never go out of style. So, you know, when you're looking at a potential client or prospect, you know, you have to see, you know, what are they doing? What are they doing well? What do they need help on? Are we the right partner for them? And really deconstructing the brand to make sure

Paige Arnof-Fenn (08:50.761)

it's relevant, you sometimes you meet with people and they need kind of an absolute tear down, you know, you got to start from scratch. Some of them just need a facelift. They just need a extra attention and they're going to be fine. And you just have to know what you're walking into. But, you know, the marketing basics still apply.

but the tools and technologies are always changing. I think clients, like in all categories, you have the very basic and the very sophisticated. And it's just a question of kind of where they are, who they're talking to, and how to match their story to the right target audience.

Jeff Holman (09:41.706)

Yeah.

Sorry, I hope I didn't cut you off there. But this whole concept of storytelling is, I don't know if it's the engineer inside of me that says, you know, stories are difficult. But story is like, think, how good of storytellers do you find when you go out there? Do you find people who are just like all the good companies have brilliant storytellers or?

is storytelling, does that come more naturally to some people than others? What do you find in terms of like, maybe if you were to rank the people you talk with, are they all 10s and they're all great storytellers or are they somewhere in between and they need that assistance to tell their story or to even maybe define their story?

Paige Arnof-Fenn (10:30.367)

It's both. A brand is a promise of a consistent experience that you're gonna have interacting with that business. And you wanna connect with your audience on an emotional level. People make decisions, they think they're being rational, but a lot of times they're being more emotional. You can't inundate people with data and facts because...

It's just a blur and that doesn't really connect with them. You want to reach them with their heads and their hearts so that they really feel a connection to your brand. so storytelling is really important for a couple of reasons. People remember stories. They can repeat stories. And if you really connect with them,

they're gonna feel that tug, that emotional pull to your business versus a competitor who's maybe kind of all business, facts and figures. What's really important today with artificial intelligence, where you can stand out and really differentiate yourself from your competitors.

is by really tapping into what's unique, special, and different about your backstory. Where did you come from? What's your origin story? Give me the good, the bad, the ugly. What happened in the trenches? Where are the weaknesses? Where did you get knocked down? And how did you get yourself back up? Those are the things that people love to hear about. And it's pretty simple, actually, because, you know,

when you start really digging into those stories, a lot of nuggets come out of that. And I think artificial intelligence is becoming a bit of a crutch. People think, you know, I don't wanna, you know, it takes too long to write something. I'm just gonna put in a bunch of prompts, use some hashtags, see what comes back. Problem is AI can only cut and paste what's already out there.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (12:47.853)

So if it's like garbage in, garbage out. If you put in a lot of generic stuff, what's gonna come back is a very generic story that anybody could tell and it's not gonna be something that really ties anybody to your brand. It could be any of your competitors. So I really want people, AI, the tools, there are a lot of great tools out there and they can help you do a bunch of things better.

Jeff Holman (13:07.562)

Mm-hmm.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (13:16.545)

They can help you brainstorm. They can help you clean up your grammar and copy if that is something that you're not really good at. But it cannot compete with all the bumps and bruises and the highs and the lows. don't get too reliant on becoming a prompt engineer and figuring out, you know,

I need to fill this space. I need to put out a white paper. I'm trying to do a brochure and I want to be quick. You know, make sure that you're doing something that's really got the heart and soul of what you're all about so that it really breaks through the clutter and people remember it. Because if all you're doing is filling it with generic stuff that everybody's saying with a bunch of buzzwords and jargon, you're really wasting your time.

Jeff Holman (14:13.512)

Yeah, no, that's two things come to mind when you say that. One, this is why all attorneys and law firms sound the same. They're not willing to get into their stories. They kind of beat their chests. They have much money they want for their clients, show how expensive their offices are. then you've seen one attorney, one law firm, you've seen them all in a way. Getting vulnerable and getting into those challenging aspects of how you became who you are and where you got.

how you got to where you are and the character behind the person or behind the law firm is really tough to get to, I think.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (14:50.397)

Absolutely. I just heard a story about a personal injury attorney who lived in Florida and felt like his phone wasn't really ringing and his business was pretty stagnant. And a branding friend of mine talked to him and said, how'd you end up in Florida? And he said,

You know, I played baseball in college and I got recruited to the minor leagues. And unfortunately, after about two years, I got hurt. was a career ending injury and I went to law school and, you know, here I am. And my friend who's really a great storyteller, great marketer, completely rebranded and repositioned him.

to be, you know, the attorney that can help you deal with life's curve balls. And he's the baseball player turned lawyer. And that was pervasive in all of his marketing materials, his website. He wrote a book about it and started, you know, giving his book out like a business card when he'd have meetings, when he, you know, when people, wanted him to come to their office or meet him for lunch or coffee.

Jeff Holman (15:52.905)

Hmm.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (16:14.561)

He'd bring him a book and give it to him and say, you know, I try to help people. I know what it's like when you're injured and, you know, life throws you a curve ball. And, you know, I was a pitcher and, you know, that's his backstory. mean, no one's going to forget that that guy's business went out of control. He, you know, he got on the news. They did a story on him in the newspaper. Like this guy's business is now thriving. And he was just another

Jeff Holman (16:41.236)

Yeah.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (16:44.543)

another lawyer in Florida before my friend met him.

Jeff Holman (16:49.416)

Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. And that's really what this show is about, right? This show is about breakout moments for scaling CEOs. think when, at least what I think of when I think of a breakout moment is, you know, a company led by a smart person, they hit the wall. It's that history that they want to be past that moment in their business, right? But that's a pivotal moment in their business when they've hit that wall.

run up against a challenge that seems impassable perhaps. then they find that insight. They get that reflection. They get that counsel from someone and they're like, I'm gonna try something different. Not the average, I'm gonna do something different that hasn't been done before. I'm gonna, they find, maybe they iterate, they find that lever, they finally switch the right lever and all of a sudden, boom, they're.

They're out beyond where they even thought they could get to. And that's where we usually find these CEOs, right? You hear the stories of the success, but you don't always hear the stories of those impasses, those obstacles that really build character behind the success. And so, you know, as you're explaining that, I'm thinking this is, that sounds like what this show is about, breakout moments that companies and CEOs really should.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (18:04.607)

Absolutely.

Jeff Holman (18:13.662)

think back on, reflect back on to see what was it that I did that kind of defines who I am today. Did I get that right?

Paige Arnof-Fenn (18:21.781)

Yeah, absolutely. And everybody gets knocked down. And I think, you know, with all the social media and everybody trying to, you know, airbrush their photos and curate things, so everything looks so perfect. You know, every shot is like a glamour shot. That's not very interesting and people don't believe it now. They think it's AI or deepfake or, you know, fake news. And I think when people

get knocked down and they get up and they try again. they, you know, it can, like you said, you have to iterate a lot. You keep pivoting until you find where's that hook that I can try again. And then, then you've got a great story to tell. You go from rags to riches. You go from nobody to thriving. And those are the stories that people can really relate to. Cause that's really what happens to most people in business, especially small business.

Jeff Holman (19:23.402)

Well, let me ask a question, because I do want to get, oh yeah, I want to ask a question about, you know, here one of your breakout moments or a breakout moment with one of your clients or something. But before I do that, I feel like there's a kind of an obvious question for me. And again, maybe this is coming from a legal egotistical background, right, that I live in. And that is, I see some people and you say, hey, get vulnerable, you know, tell this story. And all of a sudden they go off.

and it's like they've jumped off a deep end and you're like, like that's, I'm not sure I would tell that story. That seems like, I'm not sure you're conveying, like you got emotional, you went to the childhood trauma or you, know, but I'm not sure that that ties into the brand that you're trying to create. Where's that balance between getting real vulnerable yet staying aligned with the story and the, you know, what you're trying to build?

Paige Arnof-Fenn (20:19.924)

Yeah, so, you again, you either need to work with people that are professional and do it for a living or you need to have a brain trust or a mastermind group or, you know, people that can be brutally honest with you about kind of the good, the bad and the ugly. You know, I've had clients come to me and say,

I've got this amazing product or service and everybody tells me they love it. I don't understand why this isn't flying off the shelf. And I'm like, oh, well, show me your research. If everyone's telling you it's great, let me see the market research so I can see what people are, what are they gravitating to? And they're like, oh no, I haven't done research. I've just talked to a lot of people. I'm like, great, who'd you talk to? My neighbor, my cousin, my best friend, my aunt.

And I'm like, okay, that's not market research. That's talking to your friends and family who don't want to hurt your feelings. And so nobody's going to tell you the baby's ugly. If they're, you know, you're in our circle, you got to talk to people who can be objective. And so, yeah, if you're telling stories that are just inappropriate or really going down that rat hole and not kind of getting to the punchline in the right way.

Jeff Holman (21:18.321)

Yes.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (21:40.289)

You've got to have people around you who are honest that say that story's really not working for you. But one of the things we did with a technology business, they had grown through acquisitions. So was a bunch of companies that kept kind of getting merged together.

and they didn't have a marketing department per se. It was a lot of engineers and a lot of programmers and the board member introduced us to the CEO and said they need marketing help. And so I said, can we talk to the different groups in the company? And they said, sure. So we spent the first week

doing due diligence and kind of going around to the groups, different groups that had been acquired. And when we sat down with them, they'd give us their business card and a lot of them had like company shirts or logo stuff on their desk or on their briefcase or backpack. And when my team got together after the first few days of interviews, we were comparing notes.

And all the different departments were using like different versions of the logo, different corporate colors, different PowerPoint presentation templates. They look like five different companies. weren't even look, you know, if you had met different people at an event, you wouldn't have even necessarily realized they work for the same company and the way that they talked about themselves on the website and in the brochure and in the sales material.

Jeff Holman (23:08.073)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (23:22.611)

Really.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (23:29.398)

They're using different language. And that's just very confusing. And it's not a way to build a brand and to build trust that like, again, you want to know that you're going to get a consistent experience no matter who you deal with at the company. And it was just very interesting that in this first phase of the project, when we laid this out and showed the CEO and the president how confusing it was and just

you're really diluting your brand if you're not constantly reinforcing the same core messages. And you can't stand for 10 different things. You can only stand for like one or two things. And once we kind of fed it back to them as, like let's clean this up, let's streamline it, and let's get everybody talking the same way about what we're doing and how we're doing it.

Jeff Holman (24:27.859)

Mm-hmm.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (24:28.48)

connecting again, not on all the features that you're offering. People don't care about features. They care about the benefit to them. How are you helping your clients and customers and what's in it for them? And it was just like this huge wake up call because, know, again, nobody was telling them like, I'm confused. I don't even know what you're talking about. I talked to this other guy and

He was to giving me a different story, but their business really started to come together when they started acting like they were working together on this. so, you know, getting your.

Jeff Holman (25:07.881)

How, how, had they not, how had they not seen that? Like this is, you know, I mean, I can totally understand how you start layering companies on top of each other through these acquisitions and you bring one team in and you're super busy. Like, like let's just, you know, let's get the culture figured out, let's integrate and let's resolve issues that are inevitably going to happen. But like, was there not a point where somebody just stepped back and said, Hey, we're kind of all over the place. Like, like, was there not a team member there? Is this because it was a

Paige Arnof-Fenn (25:35.597)

They didn't have a marketing department. There was no chief marketing officer or VP of marketing. It was very tech driven. this was like in the early 2000s, this was one of my very first clients. And it was kind of the go-go years, know? Early, yeah, the VCs.

Jeff Holman (25:59.24)

If you had the right tech, just build it. People will come and like figure it out later.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (26:04.796)

private equity guys had given them a lot of money. They had top level VCs behind them. They had a lot of money to spend and they were spending it doing all the fancy technology with all the bells and whistles. But nobody had taken a step back and said, wait a minute. And I think that's why the board member introduced me to the CEO. Cause I think the board was scratching their heads saying, why is this company making more money? Like we put a lot of money into it. They're really smart guys.

but something's not working here. They're not connecting the dots. So it took an intervention, I think, to hit the pause button to say, okay, let's do a reset. Let's take a step back and clean this up. And one of the outcomes of our work with them is we help them hire a marketing department to kind of...

be the flag bearer, you know, to say here are the assets. Here's when you're going out to make presentations, here's the template we use. Here's our logo. Let's get everybody's business cards looking good. Like let's use the same language. Let's use it. Some of them had a tagline. Some of them didn't have a tagline. Like you really got to button up and get everybody singing from the same song.

Jeff Holman (27:25.405)

That makes perfect sense. I'm wondering if there's something that a CEO or some observing person in the business might have noticed. What would be some of those markers that they perhaps could have noticed if they'd to look for them to see that, our marketing is just, it's all over the place or non-existent. How would somebody without your expertise know that they probably need your expertise? What are those markers they should be looking for?

Paige Arnof-Fenn (27:54.957)

So, you you might call me old fashioned, but I kind of listen to Warren Buffett on stuff like this. You know, he says, if I can't explain it to, you know, my mom, my sister, my friend, if I can't explain it in simple words, what you do, I'm not gonna invest in you. Like he is very plain English, no jargon.

Jeff Holman (28:04.392)

Yeah.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (28:21.098)

tell me how you make money, explain it to me like I'm a 10 year old. And I think if companies can do that, if their spouses, if their kids, if their parents understand what it is they're doing, if you have to use a lot of jargon and infrastructure and platform and all the words that you see thrown around in the trade magazines and nobody knows what you actually do,

And it's like, you know, all these tech guys talking to each other using all this, you know, these tech words, that's not really customer facing. It's not friendly to the audience. So that's always a red flag for me. If they're using too much jargon and I really don't know what they're talking about, they're trying to impress me by using all the words that, you know, you see thrown around, but they don't, you know,

Jeff Holman (28:56.266)

yeah.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (29:18.0)

If it looks like, you know, jargon soup, it's a mess. And I would run the other direction. The other thing you can see that's always a kind of a gaping hole is if a company like had traction, they were growing. And then all of sudden, like the momentum stopped. And you have to figure out like, are they missing the mark? Did a new competitor come in? Did the market change?

what happened? You know, they were on this trajectory, things seemed to be going well. And then there was this kind of drop off or they hit a brick wall. I mean, think about it like, you know, if you like to watch Shark Tank, those guys asked the same thing, like, what was your business last year? What's your business this year? Wait a minute, you were growing at this rate. Now you're flat. What happened? And so that's usually a marketing problem.

Jeff Holman (29:59.817)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (30:17.491)

Okay, so stories stop adding up, numbers, like the trajectory starts to slow and pause and there's probably a marketing issue to go to, a story issue, a culture. And that bleeds of course over into culture and stuff like that. That makes sense. You know, I've walked into, as a general counsel for a lot of startups and ceiling companies who are going through these things, acquiring companies, bringing other brands on, rolling out new products, I think it really is tough for the executive teams.

who are small, wearing lots of hats to really kind of keep a handle on all of this. And I've walked into places where, you know, they've brought VC money in, tens of millions, maybe a hundred million dollars. And I'm like, well, I can see just in this first walkthrough of the building that you've had a lot of iterations on your logos, like kind of like you mentioned. And I get into your trademark portfolio, I'm like, okay, well, you've, you know, do some math, you've probably put...

one million plus, maybe one and a half million dollars into your trademark portfolio, yet you're still pre-revenue. Like, maybe we should, maybe we should right size this, like I see you wanted to kind of protect this around the world. Let's right size this and let's not spend your millions on trademark protection, you know, years in advance of actually rolling out product in those markets. And so that to me,

Paige Arnof-Fenn (31:21.44)

Bye.

Jeff Holman (31:41.948)

is I think an example of what you're describing. Hey, these people probably are spending money and time and attention in the wrong spot when they, that's a filler perhaps, or that's like the exciting, let's go get new floor mats that are branded or something. that instead of saying, well, wait a second, let's step back. Let's get our story straight. Let's get our, like our image, our brand image, where are we headed? Let's bring in somebody like Paige.

let's talk about where we're going so that when we make all these really expensive decisions, we know where to put the money. So I think I've seen that.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (32:19.038)

And if you've got a great story to tell, one of the most cost efficient things you can do in the marketing world is public relations because there is so much media out there looking for fresh content, looking for great stories. And if you hire a really good PR person, it doesn't have to cost you an arm and a leg.

but they can help you get those stories in the trade journals online, know, on TV, on radio. And when you're out there telling your story to the right audiences, you start seeing some traction. That PR money more than pays for itself. It's more of a, you're seeing a return on the investment because if you're spending five, six, 7,000 a month on PR,

and you're signing up a handful of new clients every time they're reading about you in a respected journal or on an online or they're hearing you speak at a conference or getting quoted in the media and you're being talked about with people that are very respectable, your top competitors. And now you've got a seat at that table. You know, if every month you're spending, you know, single digit thousands on PR and you're getting double digit thousands

in new business back, that's a game changer. And we do a lot of PR for startups who are trying to get out there telling their story. And we'll put them on like a three month, 90 day program. And then at the end, we can shake hands and say, we did it. We got you some great stories. Good luck.

And they're like, wait a minute, we don't want to turn it off now. Now we're getting our story out there. Come back, come back. But, you know, as I said, when I started my career at P &G and Coca-Cola, those companies have multimillion dollar budgets. You can do ads on the Superbowl. You can sponsor the Olympics. My clients generally do not have that kind of money to spend. So they have to be scrappier. And you can do that.

Jeff Holman (34:36.477)

Yeah.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (34:39.892)

with PR, content marketing, thought leadership, and storytelling.

Jeff Holman (34:44.883)

That's, you know, that's interesting that you mentioned that I always see these insurance ads and I'm like, what in the world does an EMU or the Statue of Liberty or, you, you just think of one, a lizard, like what do these have to do? They don't even tell stories about, about anything, right? It's like the most random thought that somebody had in a, in a conference room. And they're like, let's make a story about a cupcake that gets smeared on a wall. And then we'll

have a funny jingle. I just made that up. I don't know if that's out there, but you know, then we'll have a funny jingle and we'll say, you know, our insurance will solve it for you. And it's like that none of that ties together at all. Now that's, but that's a different world, right? We're talking about companies that just they're, they're out there for awareness. If you remember their jingle, you remember the, those symbols that I just listed off. Like clearly I've seen these ads everywhere. So I know who they are. Not that I've ever once gone and acted on that myself, but that's a, it's a, it's a different type of.

of things storytelling though is, is that core. I'm really curious though, cause I've talked to some really interesting people even in the, you know, 12 or 15 recordings that I've done so far for this new podcast. And they all have these awesome breakout stories, really unique, really personal. What would be, I hope we have time for this, but what would be maybe two or three steps that they should take if they, if they, you know, shared that story on this podcast and they said, wow.

Maybe that is part of my story. Maybe I should be looking at PR and tying that into the broader messaging of the company. What would be the way for them to start doing that? Where would they turn, aside from hiring you and having you do that all for them, what should they start thinking about to put in place if that's something they wanted to do?

Paige Arnof-Fenn (36:34.911)

I mean, think about the brands in your life that really do connect to you. What is it about them that kind of make you think of them, buy them every time you need something in that category? You know, I think when you deconstruct what those hooks are, you can like apply them to your own business.

I just feel like, today, again, you don't wanna be too much of a navel gazer. You can capture those stories internally, in a brainstorming session. Read some of the Seth Godin's and David Meerman Scott's and Guy Kawasaki. There are a lot of people.

A lot of CEO founders that have great stories to tell, a lot of them have podcasts too. As a woman business owner, we all know the story of Spanx and how she came up with turning that into like a billion dollar.

Jeff Holman (37:38.536)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (37:50.578)

Sarah Blakely who? don't even know anything about that. Who are you talking about? I'm just teasing.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (37:53.536)

But everybody knows her, she solved a problem that she was trying to fix that every woman can relate to. And now she's one of the top self-made billionaires in the country. And I think about it, if you go grocery shopping and you're going down the aisle looking for salsa and you pick up a salsa and you look at the label.

There's probably a story on that label about the founder's grandmother who started that recipe and now it's a worldwide brand and everybody loves it. And it's capturing those stories in a way that it's relevant to your market. And you can tell it in everything that you do, capture that, as you said, the culture of the brand, the voice of the brand.

And if there is a CEO founder that is really identifiable to that business, mean, Richard Branson and Virgin are completely linked. He's the renegade, he's the adventurer, and that brand does stuff in his reflection. They're kind of a renegade brand. They don't do stuff the way, you know, the IBMs and General Motors and Xerox does it.

Jeff Holman (39:01.768)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (39:20.135)

So, you know, if you wanna be an adventurous brand and you have an adventurous CEO, like use that to your advantage to stand out from your competition. But it's something that you, you you plant these seeds over and over. You have to do it consistently for years. You know, I worked for Coca-Cola, that brand's been around for over 100 years.

at Procter & Gamble, they're the leader in every category they compete in. They're the top or the top one and two brands in their category, but they're constantly reinforcing it in everything that they do online and offline. And that's how you know that, you you can't be exposed to a message one or two times. That's the tree that fell in the forest that nobody even noticed.

Jeff Holman (40:12.85)

Yeah.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (40:16.607)

But if every time that you're needing that problem, and we worked with a wealth manager, there are a lot of people that manage money for a lot of different financial institutions. And a woman CEO of a wealth management business hired us because she felt like she wasn't getting any attention. And she felt like she just melted into wealth management here in the Boston area.

And when I talked to her about who her best clients were, she said, you know, it's interesting. Most of my clients are women who came into a lot of money because of a death, a divorce. They sold a company and they had a windfall of cash and they needed it managed and they've hired me. And so we positioned her. Most money managers are men.

and a lot of the clients are men, but we positioned her as the go-to person for women of substantial means that need someone they can trust that understands them. we did her website, we did all of her branding, all of her marketing materials, and she was very prominent, active in the Boston community.

It turns out when a woman business owner sold her business or somebody's from a big family and the father died or the husband died and she was going to take over the business, it got to be the point where everybody around that person would say, you know, I know who you should talk to. I'm really sorry about the death of your husband or your dad, or I'm so happy about you selling your business to Microsoft for a ton of money. Good for you.

Jeff Holman (42:13.074)

Yeah.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (42:13.079)

But you know who I want to introduce you to is this woman. She's a money manager and she helps people just like you. And this woman went from being kind of like generic, you know, sea of sameness to like the go-to person for women, wealthy women that needed good advice they could trust. And so it went from kind of, you know, being like, I'm going to push out all my marketing material. It was like,

pulling people in because everybody became like a marketing person for her. Like she was getting referrals from everybody because she was so crystal clear on who her target audience was. And even though any money manager could have helped these women, that wasn't their sweet spot. She was the go-to and her business just flew. It escalated because of being just

Jeff Holman (42:48.338)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (43:02.343)

She was the go-to.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (43:11.163)

niche it down to the most specific, who are you helping and how are you doing it better than anybody else? Once she did that, she didn't need an ad in the New York Times. She didn't need an ad in the Boston Globe. She had a hundred women in town that were her marketing department working hard for her.

Jeff Holman (43:32.925)

all in her fan club. I'm curious, how long did that take? here's, so that maybe two part question. I'm curious how long that took in that instance. it a matter of months? Is it a matter of years? Because I work with a lot of people who are early like you, and in the early stages, there's a lot of hesitation to commit to one thing. You're like, I don't know if I commit my money here, I won't have money to try this one. And I'm supposed to be AB testing. And I don't know if this, like a lot of people want to do,

to like find their voice, but they've got seven different options. They don't know which one to pick. But if it takes, you know, 18 months of consistent, persistent, pushing that messaging out there to try one of these, how do you try all seven of them? And so I think there's this conundrum that startups and scaling companies with, they feel like they're rushed to get to market. They feel like they got to beat everybody else out and move fast. And yet they don't have the resources to really.

test all these messages and you say, well, do I have the time and money and resources to actually test these or do I just commit to one? Where does that balance sit?

Paige Arnof-Fenn (44:43.595)

So in the case that I just mentioned, I think we worked together for maybe six, no more than eight months. And again, when you're working with a small business, the market research you're doing is not statistically significant. At P &G and Coke, I might talk to a thousand or more people online or on a survey. For my clients, you know, I'm, you know,

Jeff Holman (44:51.431)

Hmm.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (45:13.449)

I'm intercepting people in a shopping mall or at the beach or at a store, or I'm sending out an email on Zoomerang or SurveyMonkey and I'm asking a few questions and giving people a Starbucks card for 10 bucks for spending a few minutes answering questions if they're in our target audience. So you're testing and iterating and learning and you're constantly pivoting. So.

You can test a couple of different, like you said, an A-B test, send out an email with two different subject lines and see which one gets opened faster or which one gets more click throughs, better response. But it doesn't need to take years. You can learn a lot in a few months if you know what you're doing.

Jeff Holman (46:03.272)

Okay, that's good. I've got one other question because I work with a lot of, and you've been very gracious with your time. So I really appreciate you sharing all of this knowledge. No, this is.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (46:10.591)

No, I feel like I'm talking too much. don't know. I feel like I've hijacked your podcast. I'm sorry.

Jeff Holman (46:17.288)

Hey, that's being the guest. You're doing an awesome job and I really appreciate it because this is really intriguing to me. And my questions are coming from the things that you're sharing and I'm thinking, okay, how does that apply to my clients? And where do these scaling companies that I work with? I work with lot of innovators and I think, okay, is their situation different than the wealth manager perhaps who's serving a different audience and a different market? I don't know.

What you're sharing is really bringing out a bunch of thoughts and questions for me. And I'll make this my last one for now. And then I'll let you share how people can get a hold of you and maybe your final tips for people who are in our audience trying to scale a company. But this is a question that I'm really curious. I don't wanna leave our audience maybe wondering the same thing without getting an answer. I work with a lot of people who are innovators. They're building brands.

They're building platforms. They're, they're building new products and they're selling on Amazon. They're, you know, launching their SaaS program. And I think as I'm listening to what you say, I can, I can certainly see the value of, you know, the PR around the brand story and making that your messaging. And I wonder if a lot of my clients building technology or bill or innovating new brands and platforms and products. I wonder if they, if they feel the same.

If they feel some tension between, our technology, our product, that's the star. And what I'm kind of hearing is you really need a story to go along with that because the innovation by itself, that might not always capture the audience you want. But if you compare that up with the story behind the innovator or the story behind the innovation or the life changing experience that innovation brings,

that seems to be a stronger position. Have you seen that where kind of these maybe inventor or innovator types get so caught up in the innovation that they forget the story? And if so, how do you tackle that?

Paige Arnof-Fenn (48:29.013)

So we alluded to this before about the features versus the benefits. I think, you know, people get enamored with like all the shiny objects, you know, it does this, it does that, you know, here are all the things that, you know, this widget can help you do. The problem is people wanna save time, they wanna save money, they wanna solve problems. They don't really care about

Jeff Holman (48:34.077)

huh.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (48:58.837)

you know, how much of Microsoft Outlook do you actually use on your computer? Probably like less than 5%. And if somebody's trying to sell you on all the things Microsoft Outlook can do for you, you don't really care. But like, just, you know, it's not really about that. It's like, here's what I need to solve my problem right now. And, you know,

Jeff Holman (49:07.634)

Yeah, probably.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (49:27.047)

I remember when Coors beer started advertising that they were made with mountain fresh water, that it was like the only beer with mountain fresh water. Well, there are a lot of beers on the market and everybody uses different water depending, but that was like the hook and that was the imagery. And so people bought into that because they would thought it was different and special and something unique, but

Jeff Holman (49:48.424)

Yeah.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (49:56.841)

You know, I'm not sure that if, you know, I blindfolded you, you would be able to tell. I mean, there are certainly beers you would know like Guinness beer, but there are a lot of beers that if you had your eyes closed, you wouldn't necessarily know it was, you know, one or the other, but you're buying like people, especially women, they don't just buy brands, they join brands. They want someone.

that understands them, that they can relate to, you get me, you see me. so, try to figure out ways where your clients and customers feel like, this is really adding something really good to my life. Like, this is exactly what I need to go to the next level, or this is really gonna help me have more fun.

spend more time with my friends and family, make more money, whatever. That's what they care about. They don't really care if you have 15 things in your Swiss army knife, because they don't need 15 things. They probably need one or two.

Jeff Holman (51:07.184)

Yeah, that's interesting. And I think, you know, it makes me want to tell some of my clients, hey, listen, and not that I'm a marketing guru, but maybe passing along some of this to them, I might want to share with them and say, hey, listen, if those features don't make your customers feel seen and connected, then they're just features, right? You're not talking about the right thing. Something that makes them feel seen and connected is a benefit, not a feature. That's...

Paige Arnof-Fenn (51:32.391)

Absolutely, yeah. Focus on the benefit to them. Why should they care? How are you helping them solve their problems?

Jeff Holman (51:38.78)

That's super helpful.

Yeah. And I think there are some guru books out there that list off those problems and there are only a few of them, right? It's money and power and desire and maybe, and health, right? Something like that. And if you're talking about one of those, connecting, feeling seen in one of those areas, then yeah. But if it's one of those 95 % of the Microsoft Outlook features and functions that I've never even tried to use,

Paige Arnof-Fenn (51:47.698)

Exactly.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (51:58.271)

You got my attention. Yep.

Jeff Holman (52:09.992)

because all I gotta do is respond to a quick email. It's funny you say that, because I had, I hope I didn't look distracted, but I had another podcast guest who's a week early trying to get into the show and he's, you know, tried to join three times. I'm like, no, no, no. And I finally got on my other computer here. I'm like, all I needed to do was send this guy a quick email. I didn't care about the other 95 % of the features in there. You know, I'll be excited to have him on in a week, but now wasn't the time. So the benefit to me was a,

Paige Arnof-Fenn (52:30.814)

Exactly.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (52:35.454)

You

Jeff Holman (52:38.968)

the simplest, easiest way to communicate that message and be able to get back, you know, get my attention back to the show. So, well, this has been fantastic, Paige. I really appreciate you joining us. We've gone over by a lot of time that I asked you to deserve. So again, you've been very gracious about that. Where could people find you? Where could they connect with you? And what's maybe one kind of final tip that you would want to leave with our audience? Again, scaling CEOs who are,

you know, they've got these breakout stories or they're trying to get these breakout stories. You know, what's that, that kind of final tip or word of wisdom that you'd like to share.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (53:16.614)

Okay, so my website is mavensandmoguls.com. It's M-A-V-E-N-S-A-N-D-M-O-G-U-L-S.com. And I'm on LinkedIn. You can see my last name is hyphenated, but on LinkedIn, it's all smushed together. PageRFN. And as one of my clients said, because my company name has an ampersand, my real name has a hyphen, she's like, there are just too many words on the page and I never know.

which one I always drop why I forget all the names. So when she's looking for me, she goes to Google and puts in page and Maven's and I pop up right away. Thanks to search engine optimization. So you can find me that way too. And my last piece of advice, I would say, a lot of small businesses think that

Jeff Holman (53:58.365)

nice.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (54:08.202)

The people that run them think, I'm not really a brand. I'm just the CEO of this business that does XYZ. I sell this product or I sell these SaaS services or whatever, but I'm not famous. I'm not LeBron James or Serena Williams or Beyonce or Taylor Swift. Those people are brands. Me, I'm just a CEO, just an inventor of a technology.

Jeff Holman (54:35.176)

Mm-hmm.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (54:35.43)

that's not really true today. We're all walking around with these phones in our pockets. We all have megaphones. And you're out there living your brand every day and your customers and clients are looking at you. You are associated with your business, whether it's your name or not. And you have to live your brand every day. And I think if people

hopefully after listening to our discussion today, realize, you know, pick your message, find your stories that sell, get those hooks and reinforce them in everything that you do. And if you're living your brand every day, whether people see you on the soccer field at a, you know, kids sporting event, at a barbecue, at a networking event,

that you show up in a way that's consistent with the brand that you're trying to build. Because if you are one person in one environment and a different person in a different environment, it's kind of like that tech company with all those mixed messages. You're not gonna be a brand people can trust. You're diluting your brand and you're confusing the audience. But if you're always showing up consistently, in a buttoned up manner with the right...

Jeff Holman (55:42.619)

Mm-hmm.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (55:54.57)

kind of, you you look the part, you dress the part, you drive the part, your business card, they're all telling a similar story. That's gonna help you a lot more. People know what to expect and they feel more comfortable recommending you and referring you, because they know what version of you is gonna show up when they see you.

Jeff Holman (56:17.704)

Awesome, well, you heard it here everybody. Be the story, be the brand. This has been a great conversation, I really appreciate having you on the show this week. Thank you for joining me. And to our audience, thanks for joining the Breakout CEO again. It's been a pleasure having you here. I'd love to hear your takeaways. Leave us a rating. Come be on the show, tell your breakout story. We'd love to hear it and share it with our audience. Paige, thanks so much.

Paige Arnof-Fenn (56:45.204)

Thank you, Jeff. It's been a lot of fun.

Jeff Holman (56:48.189)

Take care, everybody.