Jeff Schaffzin on Turning Technical Products into Stories That Sell

Overview:

In this episode, Kerry Guard talks with Jeff Schaffzin, a seasoned product marketer and GTM strategist who’s helped cybersecurity and AI companies win analyst love, define new categories, and scale ARR fast. Jeff reflects on the hard lessons learned in pre-IPO war rooms, where engineers spoke in acronyms and sales had no story to tell—and how those experiences shaped his messaging-first approach. He dives into the frameworks behind his success, why product marketers must be the connective tissue between teams, and how to make messaging resonate with both CISOs and CEOs. If you’re tired of positioning that falls flat or decks no one can use, this episode is your field guide to fixing it.

Transcript:

Kerry: Hello, I'm Kerry Guard and welcome back to Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders. Ah, I just had the epiphany. Said this behind the scenes, gonna say it again, that I am wrapping up here for the summer. This is my last show for July. I will be back in September and you are going to be in the very capable, wonderful hands of Elijah Drown, my podcast, sidekick and marketing director here at MKG. He has four shows lined up for you and what amazing guests they are and lovely conversations he's had. So don't you worry, it's going to be great. But I'm so excited for this show because Jeff and I have been going back and forth for a long time.

He's been very patient with me as I've had some challenges with scheduling, nothing like a little Tetris action to get your calendar going. But we are here now. Jeff Schaffzin in is usually in the trenches, building stories, customers remember launching AI powered platforms that actually close deals and crafting sales playbooks teams want to use 15 years guiding AI cybersecurity and SaaS companies from stealth to category leadership, turning bold tech into revenue that sticks. He doesn't just do product marketing. He lives and breathes it.

If your messaging feels flat, if your GTM plant has more slides than traction or if your exec team keeps circling the same buzzwords, this conversation is for you. Jeff brings clarity, energy and tons of practical wisdom to the table. Jeff, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Care. Finally, finally, thank you for your patience. Really appreciate it.

Jeff: Yeah, I don't tell me about it. I mean, I mean, I know how life gets in the middle things. I mean, I know with your, your consultancy, you're extremely busy and, you know, life, you know, life throws things in my direction too.

Kerry: So, we are here. We are here now. I want to jump right on in. You've worked across AI, IoT, cybersecurity and SaaS companies, as I mentioned. How do you approach building a GTM strategy when the tech is cutting edge, but the market maturity isn't quite there yet?

Jeff: A lot of it's about experimentation and conversation. It's amazing to me how much people really know, but they don't really. It's, it's right in the covers. A lot of it's really having conversations directly, not just with the executives of those teams, but also with their prospective customers. And so I've always made it a point to actually really have those involved discussions at every level, you know, try to understand the business value, not just the technical value, really understand, you know, what really is the main pain? I mean, when I look at life, it's like, I look at it's like, are you trying to create a vitamin or a pain pill? And the point is based on what we decide to go. We then create the messaging and your market strategy for it.

Kerry: I love that the vitamin versus the pain pill. I think that's so helpful. Are you, are you trying to be proactive or are you treating an existing problem? That's awesome. That's awesome. With AI becoming embedded in almost every product, how are you helping companies avoid AI washing and the standout with real differentiation?

Jeff: Well, it's important to realize that AI is really, it's a means to a net. It's not a net. A lot of times I'm saying, I can't say in your feedback, in my feed, I mean, a lot of people say, Hey, AI is the unalienable. You know, I can use it to replace my entire marketing team. I can use it to do everything.

I can. But if the reality is like, it has to kind of look at the more mundane things. And that's really where AI really shines. And we have to kind of find those really fixed, those tangible, quantifiable results and work from that.

Kerry: Can you give us an example of what, like a tangible result would mean in terms of showing AI as a, as that versus being part of the noise?

Jeff: Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, using cybersecurity for example, as a lens here, you know, sometimes when, you know, we actually talked about it, they were more enamored with the technology, you know, really talking about how, you know, AI really kind of does a bunch of different things. But if the reality was when I worked with the executive team, we really kind of got down to the brass tacks. We really understood, you know, what does it really provide? It provides instant solutions here. It helps remediation. It helps with really helping with, you know, providing actual intelligence in real time and something which could not be done by, especially by a human being.

And so we spent a lot of time really refining it and honing it and really, you know, hitting it, not just from, you know, to make the executives understand it, but they're understood, you know, their audiences as well, you know, because their audiences were CISOs and CIOs and network admins, people who really are in the trenches, who really, you know, were seconds really count. AI is really there to really make sure things happen versus, you know, kind of like, you know, having to do the latency and the other effects of having to do it with human interaction.

Kerry: AI is great at crunching a ton of data so quickly. So really being able to do that and create speed, especially in cyber, is, is a wonderful way to think about how AI is pertinent to that, to that industry. I love that. You've led a strategies that resulted in double digit ARR growth. What's one underrated lever in product marketing that most teams overlook when trying to influence revenue?

Jeff: The biggest lever I've seen really good that people don't look at is to really, really understand the customer, not just the customer, but their whole ecosystem. What I've seen here is like, it's when you're in an enterprise play here, sure you're working with, you know, the CIOs and so like that, but you're also have to kind of work with people behind the scenes and really having the conversations with the people in those groups. The, and what in one company I've worked with, we had to work closely with organizations like the facility state. We had to work with the customer support folks. We had to work with the folks and, you know, down the line in the stack.

And so having those really great conversations and really, you know, you know, getting them to give us the, you know, the war stories and giving us their issues here and be able to refine those is really where you find the most interesting information, not just all the buzzwords that we all kind of hear, you know, are kind of, you know, are just overwhelmed with on a daily basis.

Kerry: I think that's where the industry is headed. I wrote a newsletter about it last month about the importance of being story led versus any of these other led things, right? At the end of the day, having those true user case stories of people in the trenches doing the hard work, what they're facing every day and being able to tie our product around how we help alleviate that is like the most authentic thing we can do in terms of building brand and relationships. So yes, totally agree, totally agree. And an era of shrinking attention spans and expanding tech complexities. How do you tailor messaging for both technical buyers and executive decision makers?

Jeff: Well, sometimes we're unfortunate in fact that they could be the same, but sometimes they're different. A lot of it really is really understanding the, as I was going in the beginning of this conversation here, understanding their pain points, understanding like an executive, for example, depending on who they are here, has a different goal than, you know, necessarily someone in the, the, the more technical strata.

You know, my, my personas, like I said, are the CIOs and the CISOs. They're concerned about things like integration and architecture, vendor consolidation. Well, on the other hand, I mean, we may deal with this, the CEO and they're dealing with things like ROI, total cost of ownership, as well as the COO too. So it's really important to really kind of understand, differentiate, really kind of, you know, dig between the lines, really understand what's going on. And as I said, as you said too, it's all about the storytelling. It's really about, you know, having them, you know, coaxing the great stories out of them, understanding like with one customer we had to deal with, we discovered that what happened was because we were doing with a physical security platform here, you know, people were actually living in all places in the restrooms because there were homeless people and we had, we found out through our, you know, through our software that things were going on. So we were able to kind of, you know, address that problem and a much bigger problem as well to kind of help not just solve the problem that the company, that the organization was working with, but help try to, you know, a big deal with a bigger picture as well.

Kerry: I think that they can both relate to similar pain points as well as having their own. And so it sounds like you're doing a really good job of balancing that and being able to tell those stories. Picking up on a theme here, folks, picking up on a theme here. Before I keep going, if you're with us here today, TTI with Tech Marketing Leaders, listening to the wonderful Jeff Jefferson, please comment. We'd love to hear questions from you.

I certainly have a ton while we have an expert in our midst around product and GTM. Don't be shy. Elijah's hanging out with you in the comments. He'll be sure to get those over to us.

All right, Jeff, we're gonna keep on cruising here. How do you coach executive teams, especially founders, on what makes good positioning verse, what just sounds impressive in a pitch deck?

Jeff: Well, it's really important to understand that most executives, you know, you can't think about just the technology to the technology's sake. It's really important to really understand what's going on. And my job with coaching with these executives here is really to kind of, you know, really have them understand and help them really build out their journey and really understand what makes it happen here.

So it's about, you know, what made them make the solution great, as well as the solution itself and really combine the two to make that into a very compelling interactive discussion, which hopefully will help the customer and help the executive share that information.

Kerry: I find myself as a founder that I sometimes lose sight of why I got started so many years ago. And even to this day, 14 years later, it still holds. The whole reason why I started the agency is still so part of our, uh, our like makeup of how we operate. And it's just magical to think about. So I love that you sort of help founders return to that because man, can we lose sight of it so quickly? And it really is like, why did you start this thing? Why did you want this? Right. What problem were you trying to solve for almost yourself because you were having this pain, right? It's that I've had that aha moment so many times.

Jeff: I mean, I called those individuals back in the day when they first started a column war of a entrepreneur or, you know, kind of like, you know, they want it really badly, but they just really don't know how to do it. They have this, you know, this great, you know, this, this fuzzy vision that they want to do something. And so, you know, they take this massive moonshot and what they end up doing here is that they actually want to hone it down and refine it and really make it very targeted and very focused. I'm sure when you were starting MKG, you know, your goal is to boil the ocean really to kind of, you know, solve the world's ills, you know, making everyone, you know, a better marketer. But the reality is like at the same time, though, it's important to kind of take it step by step. Really kind of understand, you know, what made you, you know, excited, you know, when you started, when I started off as a marketer, I came from a role of engineering and professional services.

So it was a very analytical play. Other people come from a more sales at length. So they kind of look at it from a revenue generation perspective here. So it's actually kind of fascinating to kind of see how everyone sees their vision and how they help grow.

Kerry: Tell us about a time when your GTM approach didn't land as expected. What did you learn and how did you adjust?

Jeff: Well, I remember once when I first became, when I, when I first clients here, you know, we had a lot of conversations here. We, we actually did, we really love great workshopping.

We actually try to make, we really share it. And we actually did our first announcement in front of a large audience. And it was, you know, we were very excited by it. But what happened was that it's like a lot of people started asking questions.

They started saying, well, based on this, well, what about something completely different? And, you know, the CEO is almost kind of guard. And so we had to really kind of course correct and pivot. And fortunately for us, the, the CEO that I was working with was able to really kind of think on his feet and really kind of, we're the kind of course correct in real time. Um, and he actually had to kind of come up. We, but fortunately for us, we actually had enough building blocks for you to actually kind of be able to build a, a comparable story. And which actually, you know, help them recover.

Kerry: That's amazing. I mean, it's all about pivoting on the moment, right? And how things are changing so quickly. We all sort of need to be ready to do that. So hats off to you and your team for, for living in the moment and making it happen. Um, let's talk about AI and product marketing beyond content generation. Where do you see the biggest opportunity to use AI to scale strategy for execution and or both?

Jeff: Well, I think you brought up a good one example. I mean, it's like AI is great at trenching numbers. It's a great at analyzing synthesizing facts. I mean, I used such EPT and claw all the time to really help, help, help me with formulating those responses here. You know, trying to build those models, create those LLMs and try to figure out, you know, really interesting insights. And the fascinating thing is that when you use different kind of prompts, even the same prompt with the different systems here, you get different responses. And so a lot of it's really kind of, really kind of, you know, just really kind of helping it to really help with different insights here, using different perspectives and, you know, get, you know, I am an analyst or I am this or I am that. And it's a very different story. And then you kind of stitched that together to make something that's a lot more powerful too.

Kerry: We're doing a lot with that in terms of streamlining our analytics processes internally before our clients to be able to deliver reports quicker with more analysis versus just dashboards and reiterating the same information every time. I think the importance of data is the storytelling piece. See what we did there. And being able to use AI to, to get to the heart of what changed, you know, month of a month, year of a year, quarter of a quarter and being able to actually produce strategies and analysis based off of that is so huge nowadays because you're not spending times moving numbers between, you know, cells and taking it from here to get it over here to then pivot it.

It's so much more fluid to be able to crunch that data, get to the analysis, tell the story and talk about where we go from here. What's next? What are we going to do about it? So yes, yes to that.

Jeff: Well, in one company I worked with, I mean, you know, we actually, you know, created a tool actually is like a business analyst in a box. And it's really important that we use AI, not just as you said, I mean, you know, my behind dashboards are very 20th century. It's important that you use AI to help formulate more questions and ask more questions and really kind of take those things and actually do a lot more trend analysis and really look under the covers. In fact, you know, the one customer we worked with, like someone like Cisco to really determine like, you know, hey, you know, like, you know, more routers being sold in this location for that location and really kind of help, you know, steer the direction in that conversation in that real time. So then they're able to actually improve, you know, improve sales or even, you know, you know, grow pipeline.

Kerry: Yes, that's a great example. I love that. I love that. You've taught GTM strategy from the product marketing alliance. What are students or newer marketers getting wrong? And what do you encourage them to rethink from day one?

Jeff: Well, I think that a lot of them think of it. I mean, I think of it really from a product lens. A lot of people say because they are, you know, they're product experts that they can actually just say something. And so it's very important that they actually kind of take that, take the time here and dissect it and not just use the frameworks in their entirety wholeheartedly. It's important that you actually customize them to fit what you want. And so I spend a lot of time, you know, kind of sharing.

I mean, I have various frameworks that the PMA offered, but also other frameworks which I've built, which I've used over years like message houses and things like that and be able to customize them to help them tell the story because not every framework works for every industry. And so they get it wrong because they feel that, I mean, you have to go on every blank and you have to make sure that everything fits in, you know, a tight little box. But life very rarely works that way, right? You know, even if you have this story here, it's like, well, you have to, it's like, you have to kind of think, is that story relevant?

Is that story, you know, what is that so what? What's so pertinent? And so my job is to really coach them and coach them to understand that, you know, when they, you know, that it's just, you know, that it's just not a stable thing here. You have to kind of keep growing and iterating and modifying and refining and testing most importantly, because you can't just assume because it makes sense to you or it makes sense to your immediate universe that that's enough.

Kerry: How are you incorporating AI into that for students? Because the frameworks are all well and good, but I'm also finding that with the help of AI when it comes to positioning and messaging, especially, it's allowing me to move really fast and build on it. So the work that has to be done for positioning and messaging doesn't change.

It's still a slot. It still takes a huge amount of research, which AI can definitely help with. It still takes a lot of questioning and like prodding and pushing to like figure out the thing. But then I seem to be able to move a lot of fat. Like once I have that, I feel like I'm then cruising with everything else that then sort of comes from that hard work. Are you finding that? How are you using AI in relation to those frameworks and positioning and messaging?

Jeff: Well, I use AI to actually bake those in here. I create prompts to help people understand what's going on by having the AI ask questions. So my goal here is to help kind of create this continuous feedback loop. So based on X, this is why based on that you get to Z and you try to build from there.

And it's important that you use it every step of the way. I mean, it's not the end all be all because it's really the human intelligence here that really matters here. The AI is basically that assistant that one to really kind of point out those outliers. The stories, the things that you may not really think about. And as you said, since it's conscious so much information here, it's able to do that in a much more streamlined fashion than you or I could do by ourselves.

Kerry: Absolutely. Totally agree. You've worked in fast moving collaborative environments. How do you keep cross functional alignment between product marketing and sales without solving momentum?

Jeff: Well, a lot of that really is just continuous dialogues between the two. It's important that you work them together as you kind of work them apart and really understanding their goals here. I mean, sales goals, their goals for sales is to work with revenue and really build that out. Marketing's goal may be different. I mean, it's also about thought leadership. It's about market development. So it's really important that to find those ways to find the tie in between marketing and sales and having those interactions with the two to really kind of define the common threads to help grow those together.

Kerry: How does messaging play a role? Not messaging, sorry. How does analytics and goals and KPIs play a role in that? I mean, a lot of people are saying that marketing should own revenue, right? Is that how do you feel about that in terms of pulling those two teams together around a common goal? And do you believe that marketing should have ownership in that goal?

Jeff: I absolutely do. I mean, I think that's kind of really the, you know, which really all marketers really should strive to do. I mean, it's not just a case of just understanding the great thoughts and really understanding to build that momentum. They're the ones that really need to be the ones meeting that guiding force.

They're the ones who actually can not just deal with dashboards as you're saying here. Not avoiding, but also using other technologies outside of AI to really kind of help make those actual make those actionable intelligence happen as well.

Kerry: One of the biggest challenges with that is attribution. It's becoming more and more challenging as audiences are more disparate, as more channels are becoming more important, as needing so many touchpoints to move audiences through. How are you holding a marketing accountable in terms of that and knowing what's working and what's not and giving them?

I don't want to say grace, but there's like this education that's sort of happening right now in the market around marketing owning revenue, but then how you're attributing to what's working and what's not.

Jeff: A lot of it's iterative. It's a lot of it's really having breakpoints at every step in the process. It's really trying to understand and having those, you know, it's really difficult conversations, really understanding what's going on here. It's really understand, you know, like which message really is the ones that actually resonates, the ones that really are really kind of the ones that get home. And a lot of the companies I've worked with a lot of times, you know, marketing sales are two separate organizations and they really don't really see this very clearly. And so my job is to really kind of help them understand like as a marketer, you know, what, you know, you have to think in the eyes of the consumer. And by the other hand, the salespeople have to think, okay, you have to kind of think about, you know, looking from a bigger perspective too, you can't just make stuff up from whole cloth. You have to work closely with your marketing counterparts to really get those, you know, those actionable intites to make things happen.

Kerry: Sounds like you're really working empathy between both teams. You're sort of the therapist, if you will, that coaches them both.

Jeff: I wouldn't use that. That's great.

Kerry: That's one really great example of how you're helping these teams work together. When we talk about that really terrible term called soft skills, because I don't think they're soft. I think they're the hardest, the hardest skills in the whole world. That whole concept of communication, internal communication, I think is one of the biggest barriers that we all have of doing it well. What are some tips and tricks you have for folks as they think about bringing their teams together and trying to be that coach and that therapist between the different teams?

Jeff: Well, soft skills to me is really the key to a trader between something that could be, you know, be over to something that's ultra successful here. And it's important to really be introspective and really understand what's going on. You know, in my experience here is really trying to understand, you know, what is their motivations?

What's their needs, their desires, what makes them happen? And look at from, you know, not just from a self-centered lens, but also from an immediate picture from your group and your company in general. So my job is to really kind of help them with really understanding, you know, what are those little nuggets here that help them really understand, like, you know, how do I communicate effectively with a salesperson? As I said, as we were trying to just alluding to before, salespeople are very driven for revenue and a marketer's perspective may be more, at least in its original fashion, it's more about, you know, just getting an idea across.

But that's not enough. It's like, you know, using these soft skills to really be able to kind of refine your perspective, really kind of be empathetic, be understanding of what's going on to help everyone come ahead.

Kerry: Is that what soft skills really are for you in terms of just that empathy? Or is there more to it than that?

Jeff: Well, it's definitely more than empathy. It's more about, you know, being proactive. It's more about being, you know, really direct, really being to really understand the underlying, you know, the underlying causes of what's going on there, having those difficult conversations and really be able to think carefully about what's going on. You know, my actions have consequences because my actions have, you know, it's like you have to kind of think twice before acting once and be able to kind of take it. And then if you do make mistakes, to be able to course correct and kind of refine as you all.

Kerry: Feedback is one of those things that's so tricky and people tend to take a bit personally. How do you coach the receiver through being able to be receptive to feedback and moving through with that versus being defensive? Do you find people are defensive or do you find people are more receptive?

Jeff: It depends on the situation. I mean, sometimes people are defensive. I mean, it's never easy to hear something that you don't agree with. And, you know, a lot of people, you know, kind of think emotion first, then act, you know, and then act. So my job is to really kind of help them understand and dissect what's being said here. Is this, is the question, is it, is it something that's actually something that's personally an issue or is it something that's something that actually has something that's, you know, that just kind of triggers you. And it's your job and my job to work with those recipients to understand, say, OK, well, what does this make you think? What's going on in your head here?

Like, why are you, you know, why is it making you feel this way? And kind of help them understand and, you know, dissembling to various pieces here and help them formulate a response that, you know, that's, that's factual, less weighted on emotion and helping people move forward.

Kerry: Why is this important to you? Why do you think that these skills are so necessary and why do you think people aren't using them as much as they should?

Jeff: I think that people think that they're intrinsic. I mean, people kind of think, well, soft skills by its very name means that, you know, hey, look, I already have it.

Or it's like, or it's something where you just can kind of just gloss over, just pick up. I mean, you know, what I remember when I started my career in product marketing here, it was always fascinating to see, you know, how I did versus the people in my group. And I always was, I was marveled at the people who always were the ones, the rising stars, the golden children, so to speak.

Why are the ones that are the ones who, you know, get the prime projects, the ones that get to do the great speaking, like this or something. And so it really boils down to like soft skills. It's like, are you able to really communicate? Are you able to internalize?

You're able to analyze? You're able to kind of really kind of also kind of, you know, take those calculated risks to help you go forward here. And so the ones who really were the ones who really kind of went from zero hero very quickly are the ones who were able to really understand how to manage up, manage down, manage sideways to really kind of help, you know, get their messages across. And the ones who didn't are the ones who kind of, you know, blamed others or kind of said that, you know, it's not my problem or it's like, I don't have to deal with this or something. So, and every time when they deflect, those are the people who kind of tend to, you know, kind of don't really grow. And sometimes they may even kind of drink a lot better.

Kerry: Yeah. Yeah, it's been, it's been a growing lesson for even me of the, you know, understanding what those soft skills are and being able to use them as a superpower for the greater good of leadership.

And it's been a journey. It is definitely not something that's intrinsic. It is definitely a muscle that must be cultivated. So thank you for teaching others what that means and bringing them along. I think that is really tough work to do as a leader, as a manager. And I think that managers don't get enough credit for the hard work they do in teaching others about these soft skills that are so, like I said, not soft. They are hard. They are hard to manage. They are hard to figure out. They're hard to wrap arms around and lean into every day.

Jeff: It's very important to manage, just really teach, you know, learn those soft skills themselves. I mean, it's like people kind of think that, you know, it's just easy to just kind of just bark orders. It's important to really provide that engagement, really kind of have those conversations and really, you know, really understand, you know, what makes them tick, but also makes their subordinates tick too. But please go right ahead.

Kerry: Yes, connection. Yep. Absolutely. What's one GTM belief or best practice that you think will be obsolete in the next two to three years? And what should replace it?

Jeff: I think that gut hunch is going to be replaced. I mean, a lot of times a lot of people think that, you know, it's marketing is really about just kind of just randomly just picking things together and pulling together. And, you know, thanks to tools like, you know, using soft skills and AI and things like that, it's really about really making it into an actual suck making war science oriented, maybe very analytical, being very strategic and very calculated. And so, you know, people kind of just relying on just gut hunches. And I think that, you know, just kind of just, you know, just randomly pulling stuff together is going to be kind of go away because people are going to have to have those structured thoughts and be able to have those answers very quick.

Kerry: Random acts of marketing. I could not agree more that we need to stop doing random acts of marketing for so many reasons. One of them is the fact that the systems just don't allow for it. You can't keep pivoting. Google ads is a digital digital ads is a great example of this in the platforms do not like big sweeping changes. You have to be thoughtful and iterative versus throwing budgets up and throwing budgets down and totally swapping out your messaging and changing all Google ads isn't working. So let's go over to Facebook.

Oh, Facebook isn't working. Let's go back to Google ads that those days are gone for sure. So I couldn't agree more about being more intentional from a marketing perspective and thinking about how we build an engine where all the systems work together. I think there's enough data out there now, especially now with AI that we can build the right systems and processes that that build on itself to compound and create growth. So yes to that, sir. Yes that Jeff. I'm so grateful for this conversation. Any last words of wisdom that you think people need to hear when it comes to GTM and leadership?

Jeff: Well, it's important to be really empathetic. It's really it's important to really understand the big picture and it's and one thing which is really important to think it's like, you know, the gold rule still applies. In fact, it probably even applies more even now. It's like you really want to treat others as others, you know, as you want to be treated yourself and and really leverage these different levers, whether it's AI or other pools, you know, when you even do those design those ads or build out those programs and really understand that big picture. And so, you know, don't think small, but it's important to kind of think, you know, think in a large picture and actually kind of iterate and actually kind of break into its respective components and go.

Kerry: I couldn't agree more. Where can people find you?

Jeff: You can find me on LinkedIn. I have a sub stack that I'm working on. I'm going to be I'm actually going to be also, you know, teaching some classes pretty soon as well.

I'll share more about that in the time it goes on. And you know, I'm, you know, I'm available for, you know, for mentoring sessions, consulting sessions or anything as well. So, you know, please feel free to reach out to me at any time. Happy to, you know, you know, provide a consultative session and really kind of share my insights and hear what's going on and help you grow.

Kerry: I love that. Well, hi, soft to you, Jeff. That's exciting. We're going to keep tabs and make sure that we follow along so that when those courses drop, we are we are first in line, first in line. Before we go, you are more than a marketer. And I'd love to know what is currently bringing you joy outside of work.

Jeff: What really brings me joy right now is my family. I'm really, you know, care about it. It's just, you know, I just love what's going on. It's like, I'm really, I'm really happy for what's happening with or on me. It's like there's a lot of exciting things happening. Things are growing and changing.

And it's just very, very exciting to me to see, you know, the world, you know, my world change in real time and every one of the things going for the better.

Kerry: Okay, Emily, I feel that I feel that we're in the summer holidays right here in the UK and my kids are off and I'm looking forward to spending August with them and taking some time off. So thank you, Jeff, for being my last show of the summer. And I'm so grateful for this conversation.

Jeff: I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for allowing me to be your last guest before your well-deserved break here and look forward to, you know, you know, to doing this conversation, you know, in the future about, you know, this and other topics.

Kerry: Absolutely. As I said, Elijah Drown will be back in September with four or August with four amazing guests. So be sure to tune in and hang out with Elijah while I am hanging out with my kids. This episode was brought to you by MKG Marketing, the MKG operating system that helps you scale and compound growth by plugging in and letting us take the stress off of your day to day. Our tagline, we are working on it, but let's see if I get this right, Elijah. We manage the details while you capture the market. See y'all next time.