Office Hours: I'm the founder of House of Wise, CMO at Teal, and former VP of Marketing at The Knot. I'm Amanda Goetz.
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Office Hours: I'm the founder of House of Wise, CMO at Teal, and former VP of Marketing at The Knot. I'm Amanda Goetz.Featured
Hi everyone! Iβm Amanda Goetz, Founder of House of Wise and Chief Marketing Officer at Teal. I was formerly the VP of Marketing at The Knot, CEO and co-founder of Availendar, Marketing Director at David Tutera, and Marketing and Business Development Manager at EY. I have a bachelor's degree in business administration and marketing from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Iβm a single mom of 3 kids (ages 7,5,3) and have navigated a lot of the ups and downs of life. Ask me anything about marketing, leadership, the founder journey, launch, brand building, and more! Iβm an open book!
ElphaStaff·Jan 10, 2021ElphaStaff·Jan 10, 2021Thanks so much for joining us @amandagoetz!Elphas β please ask @amandagoetz your questions before Friday, January 15th. @amandagoetz may not have time to answer every questions, so emoji upvote your favorites π₯ππΎβ
Hi @amandagoetz! Thanks for agreeing to share learnings and insights from your incredible path. I've been a B2B marketer for the majority of my career and for the past 6 months, I've been working on an alpha test product in the field of Fintech (essentially financial coaching at scale for SMBs and Enterprises). While I know how to launch tech products, jumping into a totally unknown market and building something that's unfamiliar to my past experience seems daunting (not to mention I'm nervous about going full steam ahead since I'm bootstrapping all the way!). Any advice on how to disqualify these doubts and build confidence in pushing forward?
Starting a company is like entering a serious relationship. you have to truly love that person, product or mission and hold on to that fierce love and passion during the ups and downs. Talk to customers, get feedback, iterate, get more feedback.....you won't launch a perfect product at first and don't even try. Since you are bootstrapping it's VERY important to not waste any energy on features or ideas that don't resonate. Lots of small launches! You've got this!
Your response is everything as THIS is exactly how I feel. Thanks for validating the 'lots of small launches' mindset since that will help us focus on on what truly matters when reviewing our A/B test results and collating user feedback π
Hi Amanda!! I'm a native Iowan (go Hawks) and big fan of your Twitter account. πI am SO impressed at how much you juggle. How do you effectively split your time between Teal and HOW without it turning into two full-time jobs? Are you a master delegator? I don't even have kids and can't imagine doing both.How are you addressing the stigma around CBD in your marketing efforts? As somebody that grew up in a conservative Midwestern family, I naturally veer away from topics like tattoos, politics, or drugs with family and friends back home. You have a massive following on social and must get some crazy DMs. How do you manage your relationships and think about networking? Are there any downsides to your successful personal brand - like overwhelming scrutiny or feeling guilty for unplugging?
Hi Mollie! Love a Midwest gal! Thanks for this question. I am strict about boundaries of my time - I believe I can only do one thing at a time really well. Mondays, Thursdays & Friday mornings are for HOW and Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Friday afternoons are for Teal. I check slack for 20-30 minutes every night. I also prioritize like a maniac. If the thing is not a good use of my time (or the best use of my skillset) I don't do it or I delegate it. Same! This is why I am leaning into it HARD! First and foremost, seeing someone like me as the founder in a male dominated industry helps. "Oh wait, she is a mom + an executive AND is talking about cannabis?!" Then we think about education, community and the highest quality product is all very important. I recently went through a breakup and thought "I don't need to tweet this" - just because i do share a lot online doesn't mean I HAVE to. That distinction is important. As for DMs, I actually don't get a lot of creepy ones and I try to respond to everyone when I can. I do fall behind but play catchup when I can. It's definitely growing more difficult but it's very important to stay connected to the community that helped me build this company.
Hi Amanda! Thank you so much for joining us :) I am an early career marketer and would love to get your advice on how you managed up & advocated for yourself to achieve amazing career growth within organizations and broadly in the marketing domain!
1. Don't focus on offending people by managing up - the only person looking out for your career is YOU. 2. I used to think about problems that hadn't been solved yet and I used 2 hours a day to work on creating decks that showed the solution to those problems. I would then ask my boss if I could show her something I was thinking about and if she liked it, I would ask to either get resources for it or give me the opportunity to present it to the team that could implement it. I stopped caring about offending people as long as what I was doing was going to move the company and business forward.
This is fantastic advice - thank you so much, Amanda! Love the idea on creating new solutions
Hi @amandagoetz! Thanks for being here with us. What have been the standout, super scrappy marketing efforts that have produced great results in the early days of your companies? How do you help your team strategize/prioritize marketing efforts when every channel feels like it needs attention stat?
Hi Claire! 1. Being human -- 1:1 interactions with key people. At The Knot we actually helped plan our influencers' weddings and brought them to our office, gave them our cell phone numbers for wedding questions, etc. Now in the startup world I am really spending time getting to know and highlight our WiseWomen and interact them on social, in slack and beyond. 2. this is so important. you can't do everything well. I have very clear Company OKRs that I want to hit and we only focus on the channels that can help hit those goals. When you focus on outcomes vs. output, it makes it clear what you should or should not focus on.
You are ... fucking awesome. Anyways. I'm in the process of hiring a head of growth (we raised a 3M seed round this October) and if you could give one piece of advice on how to hire for this crucial piece of the pie, what would you say?!
Ditto!! Love this community!!! Congrats on the seed round (hope to follow in your footsteps shortly!!) My advice: that person needs to be able to actually run the experiments. Don't go too senior. Most of early stage growth marketing is running a fuck ton of multi variant tests. If you hire too senior too early you'll find them saying "we will hire an agency for this".
Uh genius. Thank you so much. Extremely relevant. Also, happy to intro you to our investors :)
@amandagoetz Very excited to learn from your journey! As a marketer & expert in career transitions, what advice would you give to someone looking to shift careers from ad agencies to marketing roles? Other than interviewing people in the marketing space are there other critical skills that would make someone a more robust candidate?
Not to be too much of a marketer here (lol) but Teal is literally created for this and why I came to the company. Most of our decisions are about moving away from pain vs. moving towards a goal or aspiration. Teal literally helps with the key part of the process where most fall short: introspection. Before you move to a brand, it's important to understand what you didn't like about the agency world and what skills you want to acquire in this transition. Marketing means VERY different things based on size of company, stage of company and culture (is marketing a priority). And yes, definitely talking to people in the different functions is key.
Thanks Amanda! Agreed my best career moves have been based on when I am moving towards something β€οΈ
Rockstar Amanda! :) I looked up House of Wise and it sounds super interesting! What has been the biggest challenge you've faced launching the company?And a totally separate question: what segment of marketing are you most excited about and where do you see the "industry" (is it even an industry) go in the next 2-3 years?
Hi Iynna! So great to meet you!thank you for the kind words. Honestly - it's working in a non-regulated space that will be regulated any day now. Cannabis needs more regulation and legalization so we can 1) get more funding and 2) allow only the reputable brands to move forward. There are a lot of bad products out there and that led me to create HOW!I'm most excited about nano communities. I think women are tired of living in the public eye on social and want to find more like minded communities where they can let their digital hair down. I love that the HOW community can talk about bitcoin, sex and parenting in the same slack channel!
Thank you for the thoughtful response, Amanda! I love that the term nan communities is actually a thing and absolutely agree with you. To a certain extent, I find that Elpha allows us to create those nano communities while being part of a greater whole, which is still fantastic/supportive thanks to great, inspiring women like yourself!
HI Amanda. I'm Iza Martin, a 13 year old tech entrepreneur in NYC. I recently got a US patent for my invention. Would love to get your marketing advise for an app that I am building πππ. Please lmk if I can DM you video presentation? Thx Iza
Yes! I am in the middle of fundraising at the moment so I might be delayed but would love to see it! And congrats on the patent!! [email protected]
πThanks for doing an office hour with us Amanda! I don't have any questions but just want to say how much I love your copy and brand voice in your House of Wise website :)
THANK YOU!!! That means so so much!!
Thank you for taking time to answer questions here! Iβm the cofounder of a seed stage startup. Any tips for an early team without a seasoned marketer that still wants to have a strong brand voice?
I have a tweet thread about building a brand strategy doc (below for your reference). Then you can hand that over to a great copywriter to write your emails, website copy, etc for not as much as a full branding agency. Remember that a brand will grow just as your company does. No one expects Series C branding from a seed stage company. And good luck!!! https://twitter.com/amandamgoetz/status/1292857099911921665?lang=en
I know you from twitter. What are best no-cost strategies to communicate to current online communities of women ? Gender Fair just relaunched our consumer tools showing women how to avoid giving money to misogynist companies--we think women who fund orgs, will care
Wow! What a great question - there are so many communities for women (Think Elpha, Chief, etc). I would start with the widest funnels of Twitter and Linkedin and then continue to connect with women who are creating their own niche communities. I get more benefit from meeting with the founder of the community and sharing how we are helping to further our mission of empowering women and then we figure out mutually beneficial ways of supporting one another.
yes, niche is maybe best, not the larger groups. Mutuality is key, but hard to persuade all parites to englarge the tent.
Hi Amanda, could you recommend online communities for b2c startup marketing leaders where you can discuss how to build a team, growth strategy, recommend vendors etc.?
@amandagoetz. Thank you for this! Love following you, and especially appreciated the article about de-demonizing sex. I write about this topic in my poetry performances. (Let me know and I'd love to share my piece about celebrating sensuality). My Question: I've just launched a special occasion custom-poetry business.; besides collecting positive reviews, what are some considerations to make as I strategize to pitch to the wedding industry for partnerships and placement? Thank you, Neelam (Instagram @DanceWithNeelam)
So amazing!! I would reach out to wedding planners - they have way more pull in the industry than you know!!
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