Beyond Titles with Kendra Johnson

Okay, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me, to join us.

I know you have a very interesting journey and a lot of unique perspectives to share.

So really, really excited to chat with you, all things leadership through the lens of &A
and interesting journeys and experiences you've had on that front.

But before we dive into, you know, kind of picking apart your journey.

If you could share a little bit about what's led you to this point where you're at now and
just give the listeners a little bit of information as to who you are.

Yeah, absolutely.

Great to be here, Kendra, and thank you for setting this up today.

So I've been in the marketer's shoes for close to 16 years now.

It's been quite a journey spanning from everything from startups to fast growing companies
to companies that are mid-stage and potentially pivoting to a new product or a new

go-to-market strategy.

Along the way, I've been fortunate

to be part of exits, an exit meaning you go from capital raise process or an M &A.

And that kind of transition and that experience has taught me a lot about creating value
at different stages of an organization.

Overall, it's been a hell of a ride, a lot of battle scars, a lot of great here.

you

main focus as a marketer has always been building go-to-market strategies across a wide
range of industries from banking to supply chain to healthcare to CPG.

At this point, pretty much, you know, it spans across a wild breadth of different
verticals.

Each industry, each persona is unique, has its own challenges.

And what I've kind of been focused on is developing my own methodology around reverse
engineering characteristics around a particular persona and that

set of primary and secondary personas and really focusing on penetrating that account and
engaging them and moving them from a stranger to a potential conversation and from a

conversation to qualifying them and engaging them down the road from a sales perspective.

Personally, me, success is when marketing stops being viewed as an operational cost or an
operational execution function and becomes a primary driver for a business.

That's when you know the right marketing mix is in place with the right people, with the
right setup and the right processes.

Absolutely amazing and I love that you define success and what that means to you and I
think that's something that many of our listeners, whether they are in marketing or in

sales, there's that classic

I don't want to say us versus them, but I'm going to say it because I think it's what
everybody, it's been quoted a couple of times, right?

But that's, you work in tandem together and you all have the same objective, the same
goal.

So I love that success to you means that marketing is driving that, that funnel, driving
the revenue so that you work again, collaboratively, not competitively with sales.

We could technically do a full episode on sales work marketing.

Let's leave that on the side.

Yes, we'll schedule that in after our call now.

Amazing.

You mentioned that you've developed over the many verticals that you've explored and
you've worked within.

And the contrasting markets that exist within each of these verticals has really
influenced your approach to understanding ICPs, secondary ICPs, and really crafting the

marketing strategies that move them through the customer journey.

So talk to me a little bit about how you

came to this realization how you've crafted those strategies and some of the driving
forces behind the techniques and the, I guess, yeah, the strategies that you use today.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's it's the analogy I use is that of a suspect board.

So, you know, you've seen in TV shows and movies, you have that detective board where you
have like the main target and you have like various different strings tied to various

different milestones and other individuals.

It all starts to kind of make a sense, make sense when you look at from a macro picture
perspective.

Marketing and engaging the right people is no different than that.

because who you wanna talk to and who you wanna engage and who's your main buyer is
usually, depending upon, again, the product and the service and what you're offering, is

gonna be someone in that organization.

And sometimes in the enterprise landscape, it's very complex.

You're dealing with companies with 5,000 plus employees and if you're targeting a C-suite,
you would have to...

navigate a complex hierarchy to get to that person.

There are certain scenarios where you can go direct from it like a tactic to directly to
that individuals, but other times you have to kind of work your way through it.

it's it's what I call the ICP canvas.

It's it's kind of designed to basically break that account up in terms of who is the
primary buyer based on your best assessment.

or historical data.

And then you're basically building that general map of that organization that if you're
targeting a CMO, then you're

entry point could be a director of marketing.

But to get to director of marketing, you may have to also engage with the marketing
manager because then that creates a circle of influence around that group of personas, the

primary being the CMO and then the other folks being secondary or tertiary.

So that by the time you're either you work your way up or you go directly to your primary
ICP, there's that classic, I've heard about you component that

kicks in because that streamlines a lot of the go to market progression.

So that's that's kind of like a very, very high level approach view of what that approach
looks like.

To to incorporate that it does require an understanding of who your prime

is.

And if you don't know, you need to kind of do some research, you need to establish some
assumptions, build some assumptions, test those assumptions, ideally, also define your

secondary because there's in today's landscapes, even within the mid market side, unless
it's a point solution where you can just or something that is directed consumer, that's

different, you can go directly to the

individual, but in an enterprise landscape or mid-market landscape, you have to navigate
that.

So building those assumptions, testing those assumptions will also give you an
understanding of what channels could work, and that also opens up the opportunity to test

different marketing channels.

And then you're orchestrating the whole thing.

And then with

beauty of this is that you can measure every single thing, can measure every progression
of each channel, and you're not just focusing on generating leads, it's more of

identifying, educating, informing, and then eventually compelling them to take that
action, and that action is usually a conversation with you regarding the problem that they

may have and the solution that you may be able to provide to them.

fantastic.

I see why and how the reverse engineering comes into play with that now and I think that's
brilliant that you're forming kind of multiple

multiple entry points and you used a term that I love to hear which is circle of
influence.

I I think I recently read a post I was probably on LinkedIn on someone's coffee mug or
something like that that said success isn't about being well known it's about or success

isn't about who you know it's about who knows you and you know how you can have your name
spoken in a room at that high level so

you already have buy-in and people are vouching for you in those different, before you
even get to the final decision maker, right?

And it also creates this like from a psychological perspective even having some mind share
within different personas or your primary, secondary and tertiary, it acts as a

reinforcement mechanism.

So it alleviates that we don't know who they are and it starts to formulate a very
foundational trust and credibility which is critical in terms of engaging with that

individual.

So, and in this day and age where it's super noisy, everybody is like from marketing
perspective that most of the channels are super saturated, there's still some tactical

pieces that are unique that can bypass a traditional kind of engagement model.

But those usually tend to be circumstantial.

Having this approach gives you more of a scalable approach because then you know what
levers work, you know where your blockers are, you can refine it, you also get closer to

getting to your ideal buyer, the decision maker.

And then it's about scalability and optimization.

now you have a...

a method.

You know you have a process to that from start to finish you know how it works now you can
add more fuel to it and you can scale it and that's the beauty of it and then you can also

opens up a lot of experimentation opportunities to try some creative approaches think
outside the box but the structure remains the same.

Yes, fantastic and process some rinse and repeat with just, know, obviously plug and play
your own research and your own data points is certainly I'm sure what many founders and

many potential buyers are looking for when an organization is looking to exit.

Or when I should say a company is looking to to be acquired when there's an exit looming
down the road to have a standard process is key.

that handoff easy.

So you've spoken about trust which is important obviously with our decision makers and
everybody in between but let's flip that switch and turn the lens internally to talk about

a team and how trust and perhaps any other challenges you've seen that come with the
strategic transition like you've experienced in the multiple exits that you've been a part

of.

What are some of those challenges and you know if

If trust in building and maintaining trust is one of them, feel free to throw that in.

If it isn't, let's hear what you have to say.

Boy, that's a loaded question.

It really depends, and I hate to start it this way, but let me kind of unpack it.

Because there's, every strategic transition has different variables.

The exit or the conclusion might be common, whether it's an M &A, whether it's a capital
raise, but the composition of people, at what point we're in orgs, kind of...

general kind of trajectory that transitions taking place, it changes how the process
flows.

But if you remove that and you look at, what are the core components and roadblocks that
come up that can be potentially considered as very challenging and how do you avoid that?

The biggest lesson that I've learned is focusing on what's in front of you.

There's a lot of unknown, there's a lot of uncertainty during these scenarios.

And you can easily go, pretty much easily get caught up in the what if scenarios.

Like what if my job goes away?

What if my team goes away?

What if this happened?

What does that happen?

What if my buddy just gets slashed?

There's so many possibilities.

And there's no, you can easily go into a burnout state because overthinking, anxiousness,
decision paralysis, all of that can kick in.

Instead, I focus on what I can control, what's in front of me and maintaining a clear,
open and honest communication, both with your team and the leadership team is critical.

For the team, if as a leader, if you're experiencing all those feelings for the teams,
from my perspective is amplified by 10.

because they're one step behind the visibility curtain.

So they don't fully know, they know the macro theme of what's happening, but they don't
fully understand the intricacies of this.

based on the team composition, most of them may not have that level of experience either.

Even though if you may, as a leader may have never been through a strategic transition,
your team members may be even less attuned to what to even expect and how it would go.

so being grounded is really critical.

and making sure you have a feedback loop that informs people on where things are, even
when you don't have all the answers.

And that's really critical.

One of the things that I've seen when there's a kind of front that's been put or, or
generally lack of clarity that's been provided.

That's when people start to, you know, develop their own conclusion and, and

Conflict can happen and potentially result in in in dissatisfaction within across the
organization in different teams Generally people appreciate transparency.

It helps reduce anxiety.

It helps reduce uncertainty and what to expect So having that open and honest
communication is really important even when you don't have all the answers

making sure the entire leadership team formulates that front is really critical because
then they hear from the collective leadership versus team based approach because again,

that's isolated to a particular team.

And you have to acknowledge the key emotional components that it's going to kick in during
these scenarios, it's going to be emotional, it's going to be challenging, and you have to

own it, you have to highlight that it's going to be tough, but that's part of the journey.

You have to do that pulse check with a team or certain teams being stretched too thin in
these scenarios, for example, finance and some of the other executive team members might

be doing a lot of heavy lifting given the nature of what the strategic transition is.

If it's M &A, a lot of forecasting work goes in there.

A lot of number crunching goes in there.

And that is super fast and depending upon the progression of it, it usually happens in a
matter of

months and some of those deliverables are you have to work around the clock in order to
get those done.

So you have to ensure that clarity is there and then general alignment and leadership is
there with the transition team if there is one having a constant feedback loop is really

critical.

And ultimately, it's about being grounded.

The goal is not to freak out, not to, you know, overthink and go into the what if land, be
adaptable, be focused, just know that you're not going to be able to control every single

outcome, but honing what's within your sphere of influence, guiding what you can guide is
gonna is are some of the critical pieces in guiding the teams and the business through

these type of situations and then coming out on the other side.

Absolutely, and I think you know one one thing that you mentioned is just transparent
obviously transparency and would you say that there's so much power and respect also in

the statement of something along the lines of you know I I don't have all the information
yet or I don't know the answer to that yet, but as soon as I do I'll let you know you know

stating outwardly that you don't have all the answers

100 % 100 % I think that that way it again it formulates trust because you're not sharing
something that is is just just more of a cookie cutter response that people will pick up

and you're just highlighting that there are still unknowns and that's the reality of it
smart people and generally most people will figure we'll take that response is like okay

that's good to know will it reduce

anxiousness or uncertainty, maybe not, but it is the truth.

It is what the current state is.

So highlighting that is much better than just sharing a more kind of called like a
roundabout response that might get mistranslated.

People may think of that as that they're not being told what's real or there may be some
other version of the narrative that they are not fully in the loop for.

So

open and honest communication is absolutely critical.

Absolutely, and I'd add on proactive communication as well.

It sounds like all of these, don't wait for your team to ask.

You be the one to share that information, right?

Absolutely.

And in most of the scenarios that I've been in, we used to have very like in during these
these these kind of setups, the setup of the communication structure actually gets dialed

to 100 almost.

You you have multiple all hands or tall town hall like sessions a week, one or two because
things are moving so fast.

And you just want to make sure everybody

has a chance to communicate and share their concerns and questions.

You can have team based sessions more like fireside chat where folks could ask questions.

Different compositions of these sessions come up where it's not just the leadership team,
you especially when the late stages you're also then.

Bringing let's say if your company is getting acquired then you might bring in the
leadership from the acquiring company In the conversation as well.

So the communication flow is absolutely critical that

starts to then move the the process in people's minds further along as well because then
it's see they start to see okay what is happening they can ask the question straight up

and get the response and it kind of starts to clear up that air of the unknown or the fog
of what's not of the unknown starts to kind of lift and you you get a bit of a sense of

like how things are going to play out.

Yes, yes, very interesting.

I mean, the way you've broken it down is beautiful.

It's quite methodical when you think about it.

It is a process, as you said, right?

And of course, some of the variables change depending on the nature of the exit or the
capital raise, the &A, whatever that looks like.

But there are variables that will stay within some.

degree of consistency that you know you need to account for.

Not necessarily that how doesn't stay the same, but that you know you need to account for.

One of those things, mean funny enough we speak about this often at the Venn group is you
the emotions that come up and naming them so that you can actually find a solution like

anxiousness, overwhelm for those that are stretched thin, fear.

So I love that you use that terminology as well because I think it helps team members
identify exactly what it is that they are feeling and you as a leader provide a solution

or we don't know this yet or ease some of

those worries, but regardless, the one thing that will remain constant in any of these is
that you will need to have difficult conversations, it sounds like.

So from your perspective and your also your experience, can you talk to us a little bit
about how you handle those difficult conversations when you're looking to create that

alignment towards both the perhaps accompany goals of?

a strategic transition or new company goals or does that look the same?

But ultimately, how do you handle these difficult conversations and going through a
strategic transition?

That's inevitable and you hit the nail on the head.

That is completely inevitable because the nature of these scenarios, unless you're even on
the acquirer side, in the transition phase, there are impacts that happen to a business

where the business that they're merging with or they're acquiring has certain...

skillsets and strengths that are better than what they have and that might result in
potential changes.

So difficult conversations, whether it's job related or what the

just as the processes is playing out, it's gonna happen.

My approach to these is to go into these conversations trying to put myself in the
individual's shoes to envision from their perspective where they are, what concerns they

might have, and if what, not just the, call it the...

non-work related elements but also from a scope of responsibility perspective what could
change without sugarcoating it without going into the unrealistic land but try to get as

granular as possible and you're also trying to give them as much clarity as possible and
it has to be done in a very empathetic way

In scenarios where let's say your team is getting impacted, you don't want to sugarcoat
things if you see that happening or potentially happening.

want to obviously with the alignment with the leadership team, you want to plan it out and
you want to provide some of that feedback and some view.

And then you have to do it in a way which is super empathetic.

But at the same time, as you're navigating this complexity,

people are going to have questions and they're going to be worried about what their future
is going to look like.

Same feedback would apply to them which is, hey, let's stay grounded.

We still have the things that we're focused on, whether our quarterly activities or plans
and what's in front of them from.

execution perspective, let's not lose sight of that.

Just because this is happening doesn't mean that we stop and we go into analysis paralysis
mode.

Let's keep the focus on that as front and center.

Provide them as much clarity as you possibly can.

Be empathetic, hear them out.

Do not sugarcoat things.

That's the main thing is even if you don't know, but you end up just kind of painting an
inervenous scenario without any type of of assurity or...

call it validation on your at your level, you're setting up unrealistic expectations.

So just being open, being honest, not sugarcoating things, making sure people are
grounded, hearing their concerns, providing answers to best of your ability.

If it's possible to potentially even get in other leadership members so that you get
different perspectives in the conversation, because often there is that

There's that lens of like, my leader is always gonna tell me what I need to hear.

So maybe bringing in someone else helps in hearing a new voice.

That is also some of the things that I've seen really help.

And also highlighting the why.

In some scenarios, I've seen people like, why are we even doing this?

Yeah.

they're so focused into their day to day, they don't see the value or they just don't see
what the realm of possibilities could be.

So you have to paint that for them.

You have to unpack that for your team and general the org itself.

So they can see that this is why.

Even if it's a business level decision that, this is why, because our growth right now is
stagnant and our next phase is...

through this strategic acquisition, that's why.

Yes, that is true and it should connect and give them some context versus just leaving it
open-ended or providing more of a generic response.

So all in all, you are as a leader, as an organization, if you've always fostered a
collaborative environment and communication has always been...

open and there's been feedback loops that go straight back and forth, not just one way,
but both ways.

Then these difficult conversations and side activities around fostering communication that
is open ended is very organic.

But if it's not there, then it's the opposite of even when you're trying to build it, the
trust factors was never there.

There was no baseline trust.

Then it never even these tactical pieces would have limited effect or the impact would be
super very limited.

makes perfect sense, makes perfect sense.

And you, I mean, you touched on something that I want to transition to for our
conversation, which is, you know, the proactive piece of creating that collaborative and

highly communicative culture, which, I mean, it doesn't happen overnight.

It doesn't happen with tactics, as you mentioned, in an instant when you really need it.

We want to make sure that we've built that strong foundation.

So in moments of

strategic transition, we've laid that foundation and we can build on it.

We have much easier conversations that way.

So for yourself and within your experience, how have you fostered the collaboration well
in advance along with that degree of open communication and therefore trust with your

team?

It starts before you in day one at the job.

As you're looking for your next role and you're talking to different companies and
stakeholders within that company, that's when it starts from my perspective.

Because you need to, from my perspective, there are two level of layers of communication.

There's the macro culture that an organization...

has, which applies to everybody in the company.

And then there's a micro team level culture.

Both have a layer of interdependency between them, but the micro culture will always exist
because that's the nature of the teams that each team is going to have a set of, depending

upon the individuals, the leader and the structure, it's going to have its own culture.

and that often gets impacted more significantly with change because if let's say that team
leader leaves and they were the champion of that culture then the team has a trickle-down

effect and everybody else, the dissatisfaction could be significantly higher.

But if the macro culture is strong then that level of disruption doesn't kick in because
it was reinforcing each other.

as a leader or anybody in your career, as you're talking, let's say you're looking at your
next role, that's your opportunity to assess what type of culture does the organization

have.

And that means that go beyond what's there in front of you from your research, like
reading the website or looking in Glassdoor or...

Yeah.

talk to people, request conversations with teams that you normally wouldn't be talking to
as part of your interview process.

For example, you can be like, if you're a marketer, most likely you're going to be
engaging with stakeholders that you would collaborate with or cross functionally would

have more active engagement.

Request to speak to someone in customer success or engineering or product.

get a sense from different perspectives of what the day to day is like.

And that would give you a very different perspective on what is the organization like.

and get a sense of what the damn general macro culture is.

Are the words that you see either the good or the bad, are they true or there's a big
delta?

So that would give you an even talk to your own team as if you're a leader, then obviously
you'll most likely will get an opportunity to interact with the team.

And if you're joining a team, then you still should talk to a few folks within the team.

Just get a sense again what their team dynamics are, because those are the raw ingredients
from my perspective to build.

the collaborative environment to build open and honest communication feedback loops.

Without that, it's an uphill battle because if you don't have those critical ingredients
in place, let's say the team are super siloed and they are very individual driven where

the culture was based off of one team leader.

Now that team leader leaves and the team is completely disconnected and they are very
hostile to anybody new or the quote unquote change.

you as a new leader are going to have the deck stacked against you because now you're
working with pre-established called pre-established conditions that you cannot maybe

beyond your capacity to change and you're going to have a hard time in terms of building
those communication like setups and collaboration setups because the

variables that your team has is just not friendly enough for you to do that.

Or the same thing applies that if you join a company where the general macro culture is
very top down, or it's very hierarchical, and you are more about, you know, breaking down

those silos and opening up, and same thing applies in that case, and then you might be
able to build a world class team based culture, but it would be limited.

Because beyond that, that's not the norm within the org.

So

To summarize it, it's easier to do that when you're starting fresh because you have blank
canvas and you can assess it.

That's when you should double down on and really focus on looking at the both the macro
and the microculture.

Talk to people, do your research and then look at is this how is it shaping up?

If you're already in there, you can definitely do as your current team.

leader, you can definitely focus on your own team and push for a more broader change but
it's going to be slow because it's a much heavier lift.

Brilliant, brilliant.

And I think that understanding the cross functionality of any team is imperative for a
leader or an individual contributor.

You want to know how things function, how the machine, you know, purrs and whirs from
start to finish.

So not just to understand the culture, but also to get a sense of, you know, how does the
business work?

What's the handoff look like?

Who would I be collaborating with or who would I potentially be waiting on work from?

Who is

doing are invoicing, right?

They're always good people that you want to be friends with.

So no matter what, understanding holistically the macro culture of an organization is key.

So I really love those tips.

And Culver is one of those things which is hard to assess from the outside.

You really get a full feel for it when you're part of the organization because then you're
living it, you know, day to day.

But there's still a lot of due diligence that could be done to at least identify, hey, is
this the right set of variables that align with my core values?

Where, at work?

parameters that I need to be super successful.

And that's, you would have both what's out there generally publicly available plus your
own opportunity.

And if you start to see that you're not able to fully assess it, treat that information as
a data point that company A is not letting me do this, but company B is fully letting me

do this, that right there is your answer.

And what I mean by that is let's say if you request like, I want to talk to product and
they're like, that's not part of our process.

That tells you something about what the broader culture is versus company views.

Like, absolutely, you can talk to XYZ.

So all those things can give you a bit of a sense of what the day-to-day is like and how
it's going to play out.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And if you don't ask, you don't get so as to your point, see what the answer is and that
will tell you for sure.

Yeah, oftentimes I've seen people not ask for that and then you know, we're like, well,
this wasn't great.

I don't know what I missed.

I'm like you didn't you were so focused on just just jumping through the stages or going
from one milestone to the next.

You forgot to do the deeper dive.

So it's it's it's important as a as a as a candidate or someone who's just looking to join
an organization to just you know, dive in, ask that because that

shows you what you would get and how they operate.

And it will give you some sense of, okay, this is right, what I want or no, this is quite
different.

And it's challenging to do that with bigger organizations just because they're just the
entities are so big.

But you can still get a level of that.

Even let's say if you're going after a Microsoft and that's your dream job, you can still
do that And you can still apply the same logic to let's another company and say you like

something like an apple just the outcomes might be slightly different and the way you
approach is slightly different, but This the the general kind of methodology it applies

across the board

Of of course.

Fantastic.

In wrapping up, I'd love to ask you if you could leave us with one or two sentences on one
thing that you wish you'd have known earlier on in your career about managing exits and

organizational change.

I think you shared so many brilliant insights.

So if you could put a, you know, kind of a pretty bow on one thing that you would tell
your younger self, in summary, what would that be?

The change is constant.

It's something that you hear and you continuously get tidbits of throughout your career,
whether you're starting out or you're in your late stages, but change is constant and for

vast majority of time, change is good.

And embrace it, especially within technology and even beyond.

if you don't change your dye, it's a hyper competitive environment across the board, both
from a technological advancement perspective that leads into the business progression.

So be comfortable with being uncomfortable, if that makes sense.

And it's the more you...

Focus on what's in front of you and you less you go into analysis paralysis, you will
start to see that the change doesn't affect you mentally that much and you can power

through it.

And then it's also a rep game.

The more cycles you go through or scenarios you go through.

then it also becomes much easier.

The first time will be hard and there will be times you will be stressed out, but it's
okay.

Just keep that's one thing.

It's gonna be okay.

And then the second time you're like, I know what to expect to some degree.

And the third time you might even be able to contribute in ways that other folks may not
know.

I have seen some senior people that for the men that go through this for the first time
that the stress crumbles them to a point that they're not functional because these are

really high stress scenarios.

Livelihoods are online, companies futures on the line, across the board commitments are on
the line.

But you have to stay grounded.

You have to deal with the facts what you have in front of you.

Keep it open and honest.

conversation loops, feedback loops, and just keep telling yourself, be comfortable with
being uncomfortable.

It's okay, it'll be fine.

Beautiful.

That is what a mic drop sentence to end on.

I just want to thank you so much for sharing all of this incredible information.

think, again, you've given so many.

so many nuggets and so many step-by-steps that people can follow and also that they can
look to expect in going through transitions like this.

Again, variables might look different, but the process and the steps are there.

So I just wanna thank you for sharing your time, your experience with us, and for the
listeners, where can they find you to connect and to learn more from you?

Just shoot me a LinkedIn note.

I'm quite active on LinkedIn.

So if there's any questions or someone who's interested in just, you know, diving into
some specifics, I'm always there.

So just shoot me a quick note.

Beautiful.

Well, thank you again.

I hope everybody's enjoyed this episode of Beyond Titles.

Thanks Kendra.