From Olympic Ice to GTM Impact: Rebekah Bradford’s Playbook

Overview:

Rebekah Bradford, Olympian turned tech marketing leader, to explore how elite athletic training mirrors the demands of fast-paced B2B marketing. Rebekah shares her journey from the ice track to global messaging strategy, offering hard-earned lessons on how to scale alignment across teams, measure internal adoption, and build positioning that holds up under pressure. She breaks down how to make AI-enhanced content truly resonate, why marketing is never “done,” and how stepping back can be the most powerful way to lead forward.

Whether you're a founder, product marketer, or team leader, this episode is packed with insights on resilience, communication, and playing the long game.

Transcript:

Rebekah Bradford 0:00

It's female. Have that macro and micro focus and knowing how to be fluid in between the both, right? You have your vision, your time, back all your objectives to the company's focus, and seeing how that's tracking. And then we have these sprints that fall into those places to make sure that we're still aligned with what our company wants to do, how our solution and products are having that market fit, and making sure that we're actually developing products, communicating what we need to the needs of the market and to our customers.

Kerry Guard 0:42

Hello. I'm Kerry Guard, and welcome back to Tea Time with tech marketing leaders, hot off the heels of Martech World Forum. If you haven't seen my posts, I went to a lovely, intimate event in London where I got to emcee some amazing guests from HSBC, Condé Nast Virgin, Atlantic, and so many more. So go check out those posts and see what we talked about when it came to really AI, how that impacts martech and, more importantly, the human side of it all, it was wonderful. Thank you so much to the Martech Weekly team for having me. I'm so honored, so hot off that all those conversations, I get to keep the party rolling. I'm so excited for today's conversation, especially, oh, I've been waiting for this one. I've been waiting and waiting. You train for years, for one moment, the Olympic stage, the product launch, the investor pitch, and then the equipment fails, the plan shifts, the pressure hits. That's when mindset takes over. Today I'm joined with Rebekah Bradford, Olympian, product marketing leader, and someone who knows how to perform under pressure. Rebekah brings some of the same discipline and adaptability that got her to the 2010 Olympics into her current role leading global GTM at a software company supporting the world energy transition. In this episode, we talk about building customer-led innovation programs that actually ship coaching internal teams through hackathons that influence real roadmaps, using AI to streamline content without losing the human voice, plus what it looks like to lead with presence on the track in the boardroom or in the messy middle. Rebekah, welcome to the show.

Rebekah Bradford 2:22

Oh, thank you. I love that intro. Thanks for having me.

Kerry Guard 2:26

Yeah, so excited to have you before we get started. Let's just do a little quick, rapid-fire, sesh. Super easy. I'm going to say two words, this or that, and you just have to pick the first one that resonates with you. You ready? Okay, let's see. So we've you got this all right, sprint or endurance.

Rebekah Bradford 2:50

Come on, I'm a sprinter, but you have to have the endurance to do it.

Kerry Guard 2:55

Fair, fair ice or snow,

Rebekah Bradford 2:59

ice,

Kerry Guard 3:02

Early mornings or late nights. I'm an early bird. Teach me your ways, data or storytelling.

Rebekah Bradford 3:12

Ooh, in order to tell a good story, you get to have the data.

Kerry Guard 3:18

I recruit that I agree with that to both. Sometimes it's both, yeah, that's okay, reps or moon shots,

Rebekah Bradford 3:26

Ooh, you got to do the reps, because you can take the moon shot after Oh,

Kerry Guard 3:33

Oh, I like that. I like that. Have you taken any moon shots in your life?

Rebekah Bradford 3:38

I've taken a couple. Some. Some, I've landed on the moon. Others, you know, you get closer, it's all works in progress. What is it that we're all a work in progress and a masterpiece at the same time?

Kerry Guard 3:52

Oh, I love that. Oh, that is so true. I like to talk about from baking, where I say that I'm just a cookie that's never fully baked. Still yummy, though

Rebekah Bradford 4:03

It's delicious. You don't want to have an over-baked cookie either.

Kerry Guard 4:06

No, you don't. You really. Oh, but I love that one about paintings, yes to that. Oh, so good. All right, Rebekah, you've talked about psychological flexibility, performing even when everything goes wrong, which you just mentioned. Can you share a moment on the ice or in your career when that mindset carried you through?

Rebekah Bradford 4:28

There's so many that I have that I think, you know, a major one was how I made the Olympic team in 2010 so in order for me to make the team, I had the I had to win the race at the time, because of the way how the team was selected, you could pre qualify for a spot for the games at a World Cup setting, and I missed pre qualifying by two tenths of a second, so I had to come back. To the national stage, and then there's only one spot that was available, and you had to win the race in order to compete. And so I was going about my race, and I fell right before the finish line. And it was not a beautiful moment for me. If you could imagine, I split my skin suit, so I'm mooning. I'm bare mooning my friends and family crying over the line, kicking and screaming. And I come in second at that time. It did not make the team. And I look into the stands. I see my three-year-old nephew at the time, and I go, I have a chance to restate eligible for a team selection, but do I think I can do it? No, because I've already done an all effort. It's 29 minutes after I had that emotional fall, and I'm at the start line because I wanted to show my nephew that you can stand up after falling. Yeah, and I just skated for myself in that moment, for the joy of it, to finish my career on my feet. Yes, I didn't know how fast I was going. I couldn't hear anyone. My coaches were on the backstretch cheering their hearts out. But normally they show, like a lap board to show, like, how fast you are going, and it was just cheering me on. I skated personal best and became national champion, but I made the Olympic team in that so that time was like lesson was something that has brought me through my journey of all these other setbacks that I've had, and learning that you're asked about a moon shot that was a moon shot for sure, yeah, gonna go. I'm going to go for this moonshot. But I did put the reps in that allowed me to perform at that level, because you fall back to your prep.

Kerry Guard 7:01

yeah, perform

Rebekah Bradford 7:03

and get that spot on that team.

Kerry Guard 7:09

I mean, how do you come down from that moment when you fall right? You said, you looked up at your nephew and you had this moment that is it, in terms of like, how we calm ourselves down to bring ourselves back to center? I mean, that feels impossible in that moment. Was it just your nephew grounding you? Did you do anything else to prepare to to just say, I'm just going to do this race for me? And like there feels like there's a gap of information that sort of needed to happen between, yeah, getting on your feet and then winning that next race?

Rebekah Bradford 7:43

Yeah, that's, you know, that's a great question. You know, I had a team of support. You know, my coach took my skates. He was checking them, make sure he was checking the edge right. It's very important that we keep the blades sharp so we actually sharpen our skates by hand. And there's a lot of checking that you do. So that went to an equipment manager to sort out I had a backup skin suit. Right when you're preparing for competitions and high performance, you have a checklist before you go, do I have extra pair of skate laces? Do I have extra nuts and bolts for my boots? You know, all these things. So that way we you're in that moment, you're prepared. I remember our trainer took me aside and, like, shook my legs to try to get lactate acid out, and then I was just breathing, going, this is this. Is it I gotta. Um, just focus on what I need to do it, yeah, so had so there's two coaches. There's the head coach and the assistant coach. I remember the assistant coach coming next to me was like lacing up, trying not to cry, because I wanted, didn't want to dehydrate myself, and I what we were talking about earlier, was calming down, your the nervous system, bring me on the back, and he goes back. You got this? And I remember not arguing with him, and I was like, Okay, I don't know what you got. This means find out. Yeah, that really helped out with, you know, calming down, like having someone cheering you on and patting in the back and saying you got this, and then stepping on the line.

Kerry Guard 9:28

off you go. Off, you go. Preparation. Sounds like a really big important piece to that you just, you just said, you sort of, you know, you go for the moonshot, but you fall back to your reps. It sounds like you also fall back to your preparation as well. Yeah, so I, I love that you the checklists are so important. We do that in marketing, don't we, in terms of making sure that even if we're going for a moonshot moment and a big splash, that we still have those evergreen campaigns on in terms of those reps and then being for. Paired for catching, you know, anything that you know, sort of back plan. So I can see how that translates. Really lovely from a marketing perspective. Oh my gosh. What's one lesson from Olympic training that still shapes how you approach launches or leadership today?

Rebekah Bradford 10:16

Yeah, it's female. Have that macro and micro focus and knowing how to be fluid in between the both, right? You have your your vision, your time, back all your objectives to the company focus and seeing how that's tracking. And then we have these sprints that fall into those place to make sure that we're still aligned with what our company wants to do, how our solution and products are having that market fit and making sure that we're actually developing products, communicating what we need to the needs of the market and to our customers.

Kerry Guard 10:59

I love that. Yes, it's the building blocks, right? Building on top of building, building through it, and building together. I love that in terms of what helped you design a source of truth. Sorry, I'm skipping, skipping ahead here, Kerry, in your post about stepping to the line at 75% you reframed imperfection as progress. How do you help teams embrace the same approach at work?

Rebekah Bradford 11:35

I think it's important to realize that everyone on your team has the best intentions, and it's finding that alignment cross-functionally across the globe, to make sure that everyone's aligned, and we're communicating the message the way, how we want to message it. And it's you want to have your key counterparts in those departments, you know, through solution engineering, through marketing product, make sure that we're capturing that voice into the messaging, because that's what's going to resonate back to our customers and users. And so if that, if you can't get the message right, sometimes you've got to stop there sides of the coin right, there's there's good, and you can build off a good, and then there's a pause here, and let's figure it out and get it to good so we can build from there.

Kerry Guard 12:37

Messaging is the foundation. I've been I've been hearing this more and more, and I've actually been experiencing it myself when it myself when it comes to my own clients, and making sure that we do have a strong message in the market that also encompasses the brand of who they stand for, but also meeting the customer where they are. You're trying to do this on a global level across many teams. Where is that source of truth? Where does it live, and how does everybody access it? And how do you keep it updated on a regular basis?

Rebekah Bradford 13:08

Yeah, so our company has three goals, and we want to tie back all our portfolio and all our solutions to those three goals, but then each of our solutions has a positioning doc. And I typically don't create other assets and other messages, as long as the positioning Doc is agreed upon across those parties that we want to be involved in, because then everything stems from there. And then, if there's like a word that we're not supposed to use, or there are certain jargon that our customers resonate with. We want to get that positioning so that way it is reflected throughout. Because even with now, with AI and creating all those assets, if you have that positioning dock slightly off, it's going to be reflected through, you know, your bill of materials that you prepare for a launch. And so that's my source, source of truth there, and then change something that we can go back and, you know, with chat, GBT or other AI sources, you have your projects that you can go and manipulate that back up through to make sure that the messaging is consistent.

Kerry Guard 14:20

It sounds like, in order to have this one source of truth in this document that everybody agrees on, it feels like a lot of cooks in the kitchen. How do you navigate all the opinions, which I'm sure there are many?

Rebekah Bradford 14:33

Yeah, there are, and there's some information that, as you as you can say, those are opinions, and there's worth, there's valuable. Back to what are their company initiatives? I do a lot of collaboration with marketing too, and I'll ask those questions. Hey, I had a colleague bring this up. Uh, you know, do we use this logo for this solution? And the answer is like, do we use the logo for other solutions? No, not necessarily, because we're talking about our portfolio. So we want to make sure that this solution is actually, you know, branded into our family. Let's treat them like the family, because we've put this logo on this one solution, it might be viewed still as not part of the total portfolio. So those are that's when I bring up those types of questions to our, you know, the next level up to our VP or our Senior VP, and bounce that off too.

Kerry Guard 15:42

I love that. I think it's really important to cross, collaborate, and sort of have that one person who ultimately owns it and makes the decision, which sounds like it's you and the VP, sort of working together on that. I you know, when we have committees and we're trying to make everybody happy, I find you sort of lose the intention of what you're trying to do. So coming back to that source of truth and making sure that everybody's in alignment first, and then talking through the messages and the logos of how things are used, and constantly pointing back to as we agreed to over here, as we agree to over here, I think, is so helpful, so helpful, so smart.

Rebekah Bradford 16:20

I mean, honestly, we're we're strong in our team. A lot of it is collecting data, and with more data, you're going to have more success, but it's what you're saying, filtering out those pieces in order to know how to perform, because there are only a few things that can do well. And I'm gonna use a reference going to the start line. You can't think of everything, but you can think of the one or two things that are going to be the most impactful. And so, yeah, you take that information to still it down, and then align it back to what we're talking about, the source, and what is the message, and that great product market fit?

Kerry Guard 17:02

Yeah, no, I love that. And we were talking at the Market Martech World Forum, a lot about data and the depth of data, and making sure that, especially if you're using AI and ChatGPT, that it has the right context to the data. Because if you have so much information to look at, right we have so much data these days to filter through. It's how do you know you're looking at the right data? So how are you figuring out the KPIs that everybody should be using in relation to knowing that your positioning and messaging are essentially working and doing their job?

Rebekah Bradford 17:43

Yeah, um, I think, I think we're still figuring out some of those KPIs, as we've been we've been working, actually, over the last two months, to make sure that everything is consistent. And then we're internally, we're seeing, let's say, for example, if we're updating a portfolio, then we're trading our internal teams. And we're seeing how many people actually show up to the training session, how many people are clicking on that stuff after the training session. And then the assets that we are that our customer facing, how many times and used, and then we're circling back, and I'm we'll see that trend, how that incorporates into how that is sold. So then we'd be tracking that information through Salesforce, and then ultimately, it's like the adoption of the product and the amount of cross sales and upsells that we have from this campaign. So I know that there's going to be a lag, but it's quite fascinating when you start tracking your internal teams on how much traffic goes into your internal website after you have a training session, and you're like, This is really resonating. Well, we should have been doing this a lot sooner. And this is great information. We're surveying our internal folks, you know, seeing how that works, and I know that we're going to capture those external KPIs soon as that starts getting traction and that messaging goes out the door.

Kerry Guard 19:16

Oh, interesting. So you sort of test it with your current customers and your internal folks first, and then if that resonates, that's a leading indicator that it is going to resonate outside of that. Then, because one audience moves faster than the other.

Rebekah Bradford 19:33

I mean, we actually, we actually take our customer decks and we train our teams on how to talk through those slides so they know what a good presentation looks like, and then they can ask those questions. Then, we can circle back and fine-tune that if we need to, but that is our team is so smart, a nd they're you. It's awesome, customers, and so they have that first line of knowledge that I can grab from and instill that into our messaging.

Kerry Guard 20:11

I've had so many of these shows, almost 200, I've talked to so many product marketers, and I've never heard or maybe they said it differently, but I really have never heard somebody talk about how they test with existing customers in this manner. I think so it feels so no duh, but I don't hear people are doing it. So I hope you're listening now, and this is some great testing ground to look to your current customers. Get some presentations out there and see how things resonate internally, before you take them external, I think. And what a great leading indicator. Gosh, I love that. Absolutely love that you've led six product launches this year. Did I capture that right? Six product launches this year? Did I capture that right?

Rebekah Bradford 21:01

Rebekah, oh, my goodness, I, I'm think, I'm thinking here, yeah, I oversee six solutions, and then I'm over the America's products. So it's the portfolio over overall, and then then, then we have product-specific launches that we're doing for the Americas. And then my I have colleagues on my product marketing team who focus on Europe and Asia going on right now. It's super exciting, especially with the AI portfolio. It's been so fun being in my current role. I've been an energy exemplar for six years, and I was brought on when we were doing cloud beta. And now cloud beta became a platform, and then now we have AI, which created all these other branches of solutions that we have available for our customers. And what that means is that we took a very technical, complex tool that a lot of folks who are needs to they needed their PhDs, like they're super smart people, and we made it to could go in and ask a question and get the insights in order to make a decision, and then we have a scalable solution where it it feeds that technical users, but then also is available for the executives. And what I love about our solution is that we're making a global impact the world. So we're an energy solution software company, and over 50% of the world's assets go through our solution, and we're telling our end users how to optimize their assets to meet their green

Kerry Guard 22:59

assets, meaning like, how long lights are

Rebekah Bradford 23:04

turned on. You know, power like transition lines, windmills, like any kind of like power, gas, hydrogen, any source of energy that you have, you can input it into our model, and we'll tell you how to optimize those energy levels to power your city or Wow, company,

Kerry Guard 23:28

wow, you're doing that on a global scale.

Rebekah Bradford 23:32

Yeah, it's so fun. I love it. It's amazing. Oh, what's great too, is that the way how we were to do that was through our product program, which is a program where we're talking to our customers and we're making sure that it's the right product fit like so when we did the cloud six years ago, we were giving away free trials. We were walking through we had, they had one on one sessions with our product team members, and we were actually creating that product for that handful of customers. Got it real good, and then we're able to market it out and expand it out to our other customers. Yeah.

Kerry Guard 24:16

So it helps to start in one area, and then again, get those leading indicators and then expand. I think that's so smart. And that was just six years ago. It's kind of wild to think that you went from not being global six years ago to now being global. I mean, that feels like such a long time in such a short time at the same time. Yeah. How do you keep everything? Yeah? How do you keep them consistent, enough to scale, but fresh enough to resonate with each audience, each launch, right? So every time you launch, it's got to be consistent to the holistic brand. But it's got to feel fresh at the same time, because it's a new platform, right?

Rebekah Bradford 25:08

That's something that we're currently working on, and that's why we're doing our portfolio refresh, because we had all these amazing things happen in 2025 and then you realize, if you have this great AI integration, you have to get it through everything else. And I did, I am starting to ask that question, what are we going to do once we update this content and things are just going to continue to be accelerated. We are going to have to continue to update that and keep it fresh and renewed, what you're saying. But currently, our global, global approach is that we're having these enablement sessions internally, and we have EMEA focused one APAC America, and we're posting them up, and we're having great collaboration with our team, and they're even making requests that we're adding onto the list of more collateral that we're going to be updating through the end of October. So I was like, I thought we were going to be done at end of September, but we'll probably be done in October, but that's what we need to do. And you know, it's rewarding, it's busy.

Kerry Guard 26:26

I mean, is marketing ever really done? No, when you think about go to market, what part of the process do you find most often gets overlooked, and how do you bring it back into focus?

Rebekah Bradford 26:44

I think it ties back into our we connecting with our customer. They're a human being at the end of the day, and we're human beings. And I think that sometimes we think that more words will and it's not it's going to be those conversations that we have with them and making sure that we're connecting and preparing our commercial teams on how to have those Conversations, having product team be available to have those conversations and taking in all the feedback that you can. But there's a human component to it.

Kerry Guard 27:32

Yeah, there has to be. I'm curious in terms of the human element, and how you're able to get people like if you have to have a conversation, that's the best way for us to tell you more, opposed to putting more, just more content, more words, more visuals out there. How are you moving people from never having heard of you to getting them into that seat? I feel like, you know, most people talk about B-to-B sales cycles as being anything from 12 to 18 months long, but the way you're describing it feels faster.

Rebekah Bradford 28:08

You know, honestly, LinkedIn is a great tool to have and enabling your team in order to talk about what you're doing, instead of just relying on the company page to post things, but going, Hey, post this to your network, write your own thoughts, share it with people within your network, and have those conversations about it. That's why we're doing these posts, and it's that networking. I feel like that could be a way how to bridge those communications and loop them in. We've also talked about doing private groups too. We've been toying around with that idea, because then we can have more targeted information in there, and it's a private invite-only group, and then those users will know that they can have a direct line to our product team members so that's something that we're toying around.

Kerry Guard 29:06

The direct line to your product team definitely feels fresh. I don't most times product teams work with sales folks to make sure that sales teams have the right information. But you don't often hear that product teams are the ones who are backing up those sales folks and the ones actually in the room doing the work, is that, did I capture that? Is that what's happening?

Rebekah Bradford 29:27

Yeah, what I love about, too, about some of our product team members on an email, they'll have their calendar set up, and so they can schedule those meetings and get on, you know, the product teams calendars, or we have an ideas portal too, that our product team actively checks every single day, and that's where our customers will put, write comments, see where your comment or your idea might be, because it might. Get put into the backlog, and so we do communicate that back to our customers, saying, that's a great idea. It got voted this many times. We're going to put it into our backlog and make sure it gets into our product.

Kerry Guard 30:13

That's amazing. I love that the collaboration that your team has with the actual customer, existing customers just feels monumental and so helpful. You helped design us. I already asked that one you built a product innovation partner program. How do you turn customer feedback into actual product designs, not just a list of requests? It sounds like you just sort of described that.

Rebekah Bradford 30:44

Yeah, one of the things that we do with our innovation partners is we have accelerate conferences at the first half of every year, and we'll invite those innovation partners, and we'll actually hack their ideas or their pain points in real time and present the concepts at the end of the conference, and those ideas and concepts will get put into the backlog. So it's very public, it's very on the spot, and it's fun to end the conference that way to say, Hey, look at this cool we had this pain point, and look how we responded. And then this is the roadmap on how we're going to incorporate that. And some of our most favorite features have come from our innovation partners through that hackathon.

Kerry Guard 31:37

That's that, I mean, that's truly building in public, you no place to hide. What a wonderful, creative environment to be a part of. And so your innovation partners are folks that use your product, the energy the like the energy companies that are plugged into your product. Who are your who are your partners?

Rebekah Bradford 32:02

Yep, those are our, like our, I don't want to say top users, but they're actively using our product, and they're fully engaged, like they're they're fully aware of the pain points and what they could need in order to make their lives better. And then we do ask them to come with those thoughts, be ready to share those, and we'll schedule them one on one with a product team member to talk it over. So it's it's a small, intimate group setting, and they get, like, an hour to one one-on-one with a product team member and talk about

Kerry Guard 32:38

it. Okay, so your partners are essentially customers. Yes, I love how you talk about your customers that way. It sounds like your customers are really helping you build the product, which most companies do right. People put in requests for different features, and it'll and it, you know, it'll make it into the product roadmap or not, depending on priorities. But this feels more like and the way you talk about it in terms of calling them partners, it does feel like a true partnership. Of like, what pain points do you have? How do you see that solution unfolding and then working with a product, market, product, you know, your product team to essentially build that out

Rebekah Bradford 33:13

together, yeah, and then, I mean, we would do there's other ways our innovation partners can participate, like they can do beta testing on features, but this is developing features that we don't have currently in the product. So that's that, that's the front line of it, getting it implemented into the solution.

Kerry Guard 33:36

Can you share a story of one customer, a customer insight completely shifted your go to market plan, or maybe even the product itself?

Rebekah Bradford 33:45

Yeah, so we have an executive View feature, and that's like the pretty dashboards, and we didn't have the pretty dashboards, and that was coming from, you know, we call that from the executive view, because that came from one of the executives looking to have that pretty dashboard into the product, and that's one of the favorite features now that we have.

Kerry Guard 34:07

It feels so simple, right? Just that visibility, but it sounds like it's really gone a long way. It has. How do you decide which customer voices, Kerry, the most weight? I mean, you mentioned it being an executive. Do you have other customer voices that help shape the roadmap?

Rebekah Bradford 34:28

I mean, we can look at customers too, as our internal folks too. I mean, we have our staff like we'll test out our features. I'm sure other companies do that too, and our internal folks as well, participate in innovative ideas. So we have an internal hackathon that we run at Energy Exemplar. And our team might take ideas from the exchange portal that we talked about earlier, or they might actually have a. Customer conversations and go, this is a great idea. This. These are conversations I'm having on this customer let's see if we can put that into the hackathon. And that's a big deal at our company, because we have an ideation phase where our teams can collaborate, make, hey, this is a great idea. I love it. Like there's pre videos uploaded and content to review, and then our team will then do the hack and present to the C suite. And those type top ideas get put back into our product, and those are reviewed from our product team as well, and they go through a whole prioritization like, there's lots of planning that goes into your reviews as well. So a lot of that falls onto our product team to see what's feasible in the moment or what might go into the backlog for future implementation.

Kerry Guard 36:04

You've run six global hackathons now with over 700 plus employees. What have you learned about sparking creativity inside an organization?

Rebekah Bradford 36:14

Yeah, it's we have a lot of creative folks on our team, and I love it. And what's great is when you're working with folks whose goal is to be excellent, and you give them a opportunity to showcase that. It's competitive but collaborative at the same time, and it's giving our folks a platform in order to shine on that and allowing that to come through. So I feel like maybe that's the spark, is that I'm able to say, Hey, this is the platform we're using. This is the event that we're coming and the secret sauce is the my colleagues that I'm working with, because they make it so

Kerry Guard 36:58

fun. Sounds like you give them a place to have fun. And I'm not just talking about tennis, you know, ping pong tables and free lunches. Love that coaching others to lead hackathons. What did that teach you about scaling leadership, not just innovation?

Rebekah Bradford 37:16

Yeah, that's a great that's a great question. It's letting go some of the processes that I've done that I'm like I and tried and true, but others will have better ideas, and others will be able to run it bigger and better than what I have. And it's fun to see, it was fun to to see others step into that role and still see that creativity, that inspiration come through, and that camaraderie and being able to cheer on from another perspective.

Kerry Guard 37:55

It's it's hard. It's like you going from being the one in the Olympics and running the races to now, sort of being on the sidelines and a coach. It's the that you talk about mind shift all the time. How, what was the mind shift for you in watching, you mentioned the spark and the camaraderie still being there? But is it relief? Is it like that? We do so much right as individuals, and so when we hand stuff off, it's like this moment of so many things. What are those? What are those feelings for you?

Rebekah Bradford 38:31

I think in that moment, I was so busy with so many other things, there was relief going. I don't know how I could take this on my plate to do the skill that I would want. And I'm glad that this other person is taking it was two people. I'm glad that they've took it on, and being just being honored to be asked questions to knowing that I was still a safe space to come to and to help through that transition and have success and be able to give shout outs like gonna publicly share that over and over again, because I'm so impressed.

Kerry Guard 39:17

I love that and that to know that it can keep going. I at the conference. I was just at Keanu Taylor was the first keynote speaker, and he gave this amazing analogy, right? We always talk about how we build marketing systems while you're flying the plane, which is a terrible analogy, because planes cannot fly without the necessary, you know, engines and things that would that's terrible. So we compared it to Theseus, ship that sailed for hundreds of years, even after Theseus had died, and keeping the ship up to up to date while sailing, it was a much better marketing metaphor. And what I love about it so. Much is that it's not just about keeping the ship afloat or building it the ship while it's while it's sailing, but more importantly, that it can keep sailing even after the captain is no longer able to sail it. So yes, to you being able to hand something off to your team to keep such an important program going, and it's not reliant on you being the captain of that ship. So hats off to you for being able to do that. It's it's hard letting go.

Rebekah Bradford 40:33

It is, yeah, because you know how it is, like those last-minute changes and requests, those are where some of those great relationships grow, too and to go. I mean, those opportunities are going to go to someone else to be able to, you know, grow those connections and depth that they have. It's good. It's fun to see others experience that.

Kerry Guard 41:00

So cool. You've described yourself as an Olympian, a product marketer, a blood clot survivor and a transracial mama. How do those identities shape the leader you are today?

Rebekah Bradford 41:12

I think it's all encompassing. I think it's a lifestyle, and it all starts with how you start your day and end your day, right? So I wake up, I do a meditation. I wake up in the morning, I write down my three to five must haves like I feel like a lot of people do that, and I work hard on those priorities for the day, allowing time for other things to come up, because they do being okay with, you know, plan B or C for the day, and then I try to wrap up with what I accomplished and how that value brought back. And I think doing that global perspective of the day really helps me stay focused on what I need to do as a mom. What do I need to do for you as an employee, into my marriage and having that thread through. So that's something I learned as an athlete. It's not just you go get your workout in, you leave for the day. It's all encompassing because you have to live the lifestyle in order to perform well for skating, and I feel like that's the same thing. Professionally, you're not just the profession at the end of the day, it's just software, and we're the total package. And so we have to have that mindset when we go into our starting our days before we get into our work day.

Kerry Guard 42:38

I absolutely love that to ground yourself in the in the morning, of what your priorities are, across the board, of what you want to accomplish, and then reflecting back to say, Did I did I do it? Did it happen? And why or why not? And making sure that you show up the next day and just do a little bit better. I know I could. Certainly. I took August off because I needed a reset. I needed to reset my priorities, and it was exactly what I needed to remember that as much as I love running a business, and I love the company I've built, and the wonderful people I have, my family needs to take precedent, and they have it for a while, so I am grateful for that reset, and I love this, this intention setting, and I'm going to take that with me. I'm so grateful for that. Rebekah, thank you so much. Last question, I'm sad to round this out, I could talk to you forever. What a wonderful conversation we've had. We've unpacked so much. So my last question for you is, what's currently bringing you joy, whether at home. We've talked a lot about work, so at home right now, outside of work, what is bringing you joy?

Rebekah Bradford 43:48

I just started sharing this. So as you mentioned, my daughter, we adopted her through a transracial adoption, and we have the privilege to adopt. So I may be a mom on December 6, so we'll be adopting a little, little baby boy, and I've been prepping my daughter and asking her she's ready to be a big sister. So that is something that's bringing me a lot of joy.

Kerry Guard 44:20

Not cry. I'm totally crying, so I'm

Rebekah Bradford 44:23

excited to share that on LinkedIn with you.

Kerry Guard 44:26

Oh my gosh. What. What a thank you for that. What a gift. And wow, that you can keep them together, and wow, that you get to become a mama too, because it is a whole different ball game that everybody should totally have and to not have. I always said this to my husband when we were when we were trying to have kids, I said I really wanted to, because I'd never as an only child, I really wanted them to have each other, if anything was to happen, that was just so important to me and so, yes, that's so amazing. Oh, man, I. Know how to wrap up right now, because that's just when's the baby due. I was.

Rebekah Bradford 45:07

Yeah, I was checking my email one day while making dinner, and the agency reached out to us, we were not planning or anything at all, and asked if we would consider to adopt to keep the siblings together. So he is due December 6, but I would assume he's going to come early, because our daughter came early. So I was talking to my boss about this this week, and I said my goal is to wrap up year end the end of October. So that is my big as we're talking about doing our priorities for the day, you know, our daily, daily goal setting. I'm like, Okay, this is the goal is to finish everything by end of October.

Kerry Guard 45:52

All right, 45 days. You got this? You do totally got this. Um, I can't wait to see pictures and see the joy of you and your daughter meeting her brother. Oh, it's going to be so good. It's going to be it's going to be so good. I cannot. I can wait because you need those 45 days. But I also can't wait because of babies.

Rebekah Bradford 46:19

I know it's so important. It was, it's, I'm so excited that she's going to have a sibling that's going to look like her, because she notices our skin color, and so I'm so excited that not only are we having another transracial adoption, but it's going to be a blood sibling. Yes.

Kerry Guard 46:40

So much joy. So so much joy. Rebekah, people who are listening to this conversation, I hope, are as inspired as I am. Where can they find you?

Rebekah Bradford 46:50

I'm on LinkedIn. I'm also on Instagram, but under my married name, so that's a little secret, but my Mary name is Plath. It's P, L, A, T, H, and I post more about my family on Instagram. Sometimes I'll post a couple of pictures of my daughter on LinkedIn. But if you're looking to follow the adoption journey, you'll see it all.

Kerry Guard 47:17

I'm heading over there. That is happening. I'll be following you shortly, and I hope others will too. What a beautiful story. Thank you.

Rebekah Bradford 47:26

You're like I'm typing that in right now.

Kerry Guard 47:30

Oh, so good. Progress doesn't live in what we repeat. It lives in the moments when we load the bar a little heavier. Rebekah Bradford shows us that Leadership isn't just clean reps and GTM muscle memory. It's about daring to lift more than yesterday. Whether you're building a campaign, mentoring a teammate, or showing up to the start line on a big moment, you don't need perfection; you need presence. As Rebekah said, step on the line even at 75% that's leadership worth lifting for. Thank you again. So much. Rebekah, what an honor and an absolute, absolute joy. This episode was brought to you and produced by MKG Marketing. We build your marketing engine for sustainable growth for more episodes just like this one. Head over to MKG dot marketing forward slash podcasts, you'll hear from content expert Laura Kenner, comms leading lady, Carmen Harris, and ABM, GTM pro Mark Bliss. Links are in the comments. Catch you next week when I sit down with Desiree Goldie, who's about to fill all the tea y'all.