Know Thy Audience

Transcript

Opening

Hello, I’m Kerry Guard, and welcome to Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders.

Spring has sprung. Finally, It was a super grey winter this year and I’m so happy to see the sun and even happier to be introducing you to Season 11! Eight more episodes are all here just for you. Check 'em out and listen in whatever order you choose. I did curate them for you to serve up the best flow possible if you decide to binge, but no worries if you’d prefer to skip around. Listen your way!

On this first episode of season 11 is a GEM. She chimed in all the way from Israel, and we dug in hard around what it really means to know your audience. Not just know them, but understand them - what challenges they face, what their priorities are, and if what we’re doing as marketers is really working for them or not. Dani Woolf breaks it down for me on she has gotten to know her buyer and why we all need to pick up the damn phone and do the same.

Dani is the Director of Demand Gen at Cybersixgill. She’s a swimmer turned marketer and she still has the same appetite to win.

She’s been applying lessons learned as a distance freestyler to B2B organizational success for the past 10 years.

And while still get the same adrenaline rush looking at the scoreboard instead of beating personal records, she prefers racking up net new opps and revenue with growth marketing strategies.

Today, she is responsible for digital marketing and demand gen programs at Cybersixgill.

Dani’s core specialty is in digital marketing with a focus on net new customer acquisition via digital channels - website optimization, SEO, SEM, social media, conversion rate optimization, and marketing automation.

Here’s my conversation with Dani.

Conversation

Kerry Guard: Hi, Dani, thanks for joining me on Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders.

Dani Woolf: Hey, Kerry, nice to see you again, and thanks for having me.

Kerry Guard: Yeah, thanks for being here. Before we get into the heart of our conversation for our listeners, tell us your story. What do you do, Dani? And how do you get there?

Dani Woolf: Yeah, sure. So I've been spending the last decade or so running digital marketing for various B2B and tech companies. Specifically, today, I'm currently the director of the dimension at Cybersixgill, the threat intelligence company. And it was back in 2011 when I fell in love with the importance of user experience as it ties back to technology and the way we do things as marketers. But I mean, ironically enough, I continued for, I think, a good five or six years, continuing to chase after leads all of these vanity metrics that really had no impact on the business, at the expense of what I was so passionate about achieving, which was creating meaningful experiences for audiences through, you know, digital marketing campaigns and websites that resonated.

I've been doing a lot of cool things in the past ten years, and part of that time, unfortunately, I was spending time focusing on a lot of trivial tasks based on assumptions, superficial data, inaccurate dashboards, tasks that had absolutely no impact on what was important to my business into my audience. So, you know, I felt like, wow, this really sucks because I know how to do all this great stuff. But then, when I went to level up my marketing, career share wins showed an impact on growth over time and on revenue. I didn't have a lot to show for it, which was really discouraging. So I was working for companies expecting exponential growth. I was trying to tap into companies who needed exponential growth, and I don't know why a 20% increase in pipeline year over year didn't cut it. So yeah, for like, halfway through my career. I started feeling overwhelmed and anxious and felt like I wasn't making an impact fast enough, and I used those feelings as an excuse not to do things the right way, and I think a lot of marketers do that.

Unfortunately, that's when I burnt out. I wasn't so inspired, and it pains me to say that while I've mastered a lot of skills as a marketer, one skill that was missing for me halfway through my career, which I wish I massaged a little bit more, was learning how to get close to my audience, buyer, or customer, learning how to listen to them and ask the right questions, extract important insights that would diagnose the situation, and then focus those efforts to create good experiences that would then really make exponential growth. So I think it was when I moved into working in the cybersecurity space about four or five years ago, and I started getting close to the actual people I was marketing to the actual mindset. That's where I changed the real core of my marketing values. And ever since then, learning about my audience has been my obsession; creating great experiences for them and my team is my passion, empathy, trust, loyalty; that's my North Star. And so, every day, I'm really trying to carve out. I'm trying to carve out some time just to read about the market, listen online, talk to customer-facing stakeholders internally, listen to the customer calls to identify the bleeding neck challenges, and the motivation is there. So that I am able to redefine the way I work for success, that's what I'm up to now. I'm working in Cybersixgill, working in the cybersecurity space, and trying to change the way tech marketing is done, given our current climate. Yeah, so that was a long-winded answer. Sorry about that.

Kerry Guard: No, it's great. It's the journey you've been on to get where you are now, which I think is what I don't feel like as a marketer. We all have such a clear vision of our passion and how to use that passion for the greater good. That is, essentially, how to serve our customers better. So I love the clarity of it, given where you are now. So you talked about some of the challenges and struggles you've had on this path, but for where you are now and how you're currently working towards your North Star, what challenges are you facing right now?

Dani Woolf: Yeah. I mean, I still sometimes get caught veering off to like trivial tasks that have no real impact on revenue or compromise customer experiences. We're all guilty, stressed, and expected to provide results quickly. So you fall into that trap sometimes. Unfortunately, sometimes you work with people who have a hard time grasping your vision of being customer-centric because I think those people are comfortable with the status quo. It's hard to challenge it sometimes. Learning that I think the big one here is the overarching theme for the smaller challenges that I'm dealing with now is just learning the battle or trying to change that profit at all costs mindset to a mission for money mindset, especially in the cybersecurity space. And in the workplace, it is really hard because not all companies subscribe to that. It has to come from the top. And so, as minions at the bottom, if you will, it's hard to bring that upwards. It has to be a company's DNA, first and foremost, so those are some of the challenges I'm dealing with. It's interesting that I had this conversation a couple of days ago with another cybersecurity marketer. We were talking about this specific challenge that we're all sometimes working in some companies that don't subscribe to it, and what do you do? Is it like, do you leave? Or do you try to fight the battle and educate? I dislike balance; like, what do you do about it? Right? So yeah, those are a few things.

Kerry Guard: Do you think part of the challenge is the status quo, the mission? Do you find that it's coming from a place? Because you mentioned this in your journey, the tactics you're doing, talking about the vision you're talking about now. Correct me if I'm wrong. It takes time. It's not a quick win. It's a compound. Once you get going and like a flywheel, you start to feel the momentum, but getting that going takes time. Do you think that's sort of the push and pull of your feeling of like, well, we need results right now, and you're like, you couldn't get them. But if we take this path, we're gonna get them. It will happen, but we gotta get that flywheel going. Do you think that's sort of friction?

Dani Woolf: Yeah. I think that definitely is it. How do you pitch a new strategy based on new values to your CEO and board? And then expect them to be okay with that? The answer is that this is a long-term play. We will see incremental growth over time, so you need to be able to identify, even with the research that you're doing via data, qualitative, and quantitative insight extraction. What are the low-hanging fruits that I could hit to support growth in the short term while building out a longer-term strategy that's more customer-centric based on customer insights? Your short-term and long-term strategies should be based on customer insights, whether they're qualitative or quantitative, from interviews, surveys, or googling analytics. So you have to come in with a couple of strategies or a few to show this is how I'm going to supplement short-term growth that will eventually supplement long-term growth. This is how I'm going to supplement long-term growth that's going to tie back into the short term. It's intertwined. So you need to be able to tell the story in that way. Right? You have to understand that your audience is your CEO and board. You have different audiences that you're trying to cater to and sell to essentially, as a marketer, not just the end-user or the buyer. But your internal employees, internal audience, that's you need to be able to tell the story there and sell to them. That's definitely a challenge and a hurdle at times, and I asked my CMO that same question just a couple of weeks ago, how do we do this? Right? You know this is where we need to be going. Here, we have insights from the audience. They're saying that this does not work; we need to stop that. We need to move to this type of engagement, messaging, and media. And so, while it takes time to do that, how do we funnel in growth right now? What do we do? And so said, you know, got the same answer then too.

Kerry Guard: So let's talk about the audience and being audience-centric. I can't remember if you mentioned it in your journey or if you mentioned it in some of the previous conversations you've had because we've been talking about this a lot, which I love. In terms of talking to your audience that feels like a barrier to entry for us as marketers because it doesn't feel in our wheelhouse. Would you agree with that, regardless of whether it should be in our wheelhouse, just like the way that we've been brought up over the years? It feels out of our wheelhouse. How have you overcome that?

Dani Woolf: First of all, I struggle with the concept or with what I see, and with this. I'm going to mute my mic phenomenon or sit down. The smart people are talking phenomenons, like marketers or smart freaking people, like we need to speak up, and so I struggle with that. I've been there, and I think it's just this issue we have. We suffer from imposter syndrome. We all do, and even the best of the best. But I think I was lucky because early on in my career, and this is where I think it starts. The journey to being customer-centric, audience-centric, empathy centric begins with having a genuine curiosity, a jet-like genuinely wanting to learn from others. In your career, it starts there and then understanding that you have to build empathy, which is trying to identify and share your audience's feelings so that you can have a deep understanding of those you're working with, and that's hard to do.

Many people are not empathetic or don't know how to tap into that, be it your customers, prospects, employees, colleagues, or partners. That's the action of curiosity. I mean, it wasn't until halfway through my career when I faced into security, where I was like, okay, let's pair my failures with listening to the frustrations of others online where it clicked, and I'm like, okay, this is something's not working. That was the shift for me, and that was the click of, okay, I need to be doing things differently and putting myself in their shoes. So then it's empathy and then taking action. It's not just enough to be curious and empathetic, and you got to do something about it, right? Being able to say and comfortable with challenging the status quo of the way things are being done, right? Because we're comfortable doing it that way. It's people who buy into it. The board buys into those nonsense metrics; sometimes, CEOs buy into non-CMOs and even into nonsense tactics. So being comfortable stopping all that nonsense you're doing, cutting it out based on all those things, based on assumptions and guesswork, and then listening. Being empathetic and applying what you've learned about your audience to diagnose your situation, focus your efforts, grow your business goals, and create pleasant experiences for people you care about. That’s the kind of evolution to me becoming audience-centric.

Kerry Guard: Set a couple of things that I just want to touch on. You said nonsense tactics and nonsense metrics. Do you have an exit? I know this is going to be true to your specific audience and what you've learned, and we're definitely talking to cybersecurity folks, so they may appreciate that. And we're also talking to B2B tech in general, so I think there's gonna be some overlap. Again, I'm not saying that what you've identified is not working for your audience and for everybody, but I think it's helpful to understand what's not working for your audience?

Dani Woolf: Yeah. A couple of examples and I've been guilty with some of these in the recent past, some of them much earlier in my career. But you know, the famous one, like distributing high-level ebooks on LinkedIn, lead gen forms that generate leads that will never buy, like, oh, yeah, we see lead growth over time. But then, just in the past year, we've created one opportunity at 70% lower ACV than any other account we have or an opportunity we've created that people eat that up. We need more leads, and it's just like we're fueled by this fear to not create enough leads. I think a big one that I have a beef with is building ABM lists to eventually bribe potential buyers with a 75 amazon card for a meeting versus just getting to know the person, building a relationship, giving them value, and tying value to the problem. You know, talking to them, getting insights from them, getting feedback, and eventually maybe discussing some kind of transaction.

Another thing is investing in expensive intent tools first versus building out the actual strategy. That wasted a lot of time, money, and no metrics tied there versus the risk of our time, right? And lack of success in specific, ABM plans that we've had. I'd say, another one off the top of my head is creating an overly complex email, nurture flows in Lucidchart, which eventually was launched but had zero impact on our metrics on our growth and it just aggravated people in the security space and it could work somewhere else. So there's a lot. I have a list on LinkedIn, maybe like 50 or 60 things that I've done, which had wasted. It was a waste of time and had no impact on the real business metrics.

Kerry Guard: Yeah, I've seen that. So I'll grab that and put and link it in the comments. I think that's really helpful. There is a shift that's happening away from Legion demand gen and how much of that you get and don't get or if you get any of it. And so there's definitely, and maybe I just created a lovely echo chamber for myself, which is entirely possible. But I love what you're saying in going back to the audience. I'm just gonna say this not because I necessarily agree with it, but I'm wondering if people know if it's flowing around people's minds as you're talking, so I want to ask the question. I love what you're talking about in terms of being audience-centric, curious, empathetic, taking action, listening, and you said a lot about talking to your audience. What do you mean by talking to your audience? Are you talking about going online and doing some research on articles? Are you talking about literally picking up the phone? Are you talking about doing what word I mean, creating content in the pocket? Like, what do you do when you're talking about talking to your audience? What are you actually saying in that?

Dani Woolf: Well, most of what I do is listen to my audience, and it's right in front of our faces. You will be astonished at the amount of, for me, specifically, his ties to security practitioners, people that we're trying to sell to bitch and moan about what marketers and salespeople are doing flick flat out in front of us on LinkedIn. I don't need to go anywhere like I have those accounts bookmarked because I know I can rely on them to complain and tell me what is not working for them. Even tell me their pains about things happening in their lives or things happening in their job. It's just knowing to listen to a little bit and be quiet. Behind the scenes, stop talking amongst yourselves and focus your efforts on listening to that. It's astonishing. I love it and I think that's great. Sorry, I got really excited there. What was the question?

Kerry Guard: No, that's a question of, like, where were you doing that?

Dani Woolf: Yeah, so LinkedIn, and sometimes I think you do need an introduction, right? So I've asked a couple of people ‘’Hey, can you introduce me to this person? I'd love to have a conversation with them.’’ And again, this is not about customer researcher or buyer research. I just want to get to know these people because they look like great people, and I want to know what they have to say about these things. Again, the genuine curiosity and empathy that you got to have like, I'm really fueled by that, and it's really refreshing in my evolution as a digital marketer to have that drive you. Yeah, just like picking up the phone and talking to them and podcasting. Oh my gosh, I think this is a great way to get to know your audience. First of all, I think it's a great medium. I think this is how people are consuming information. It's hard to read, and they don't have the time even if they're not driving; sometimes, they just sit and want to listen in. And for me, specifically, as someone whose deep in podcasting now with cybersecurity, SEO, and also myself, it's a great way to connect with people and get to know what their challenges are, what are they going through, what are they thinking, what pisses them off, what makes them excited, what motivates them to get up in the morning and do what they do, which to me is fascinating because they're doing really cool things and solving so many real freaking scary problems. Like I want to know what's going on with him. Yeah, it's picking up the phone and just asking. Surprisingly, what I've learned might answer some of your future questions, but what I've learned in the security space and about the security practitioners is that they do bite sometimes, lash out, and have strong things to say. But there is a large percentage of people working in cybersecurity, who are willing to help marketers, and salespeople vendors do things in a better way. And I found this so comforting and so empowering that it made me kind of put down those walls and barriers and then put the imposter syndrome aside for a second, just ask for a quick conversation and get to know them. They're very nice people. They're very generous, and one specific relationship that I've built just recently with one hacker, well known in the community, was born out of frustration he had with me as a marketer using buzzwords. And the first thing he said to me indirectly was ‘’Take that person outback,’’ and I'm like, whoa, okay, what the hell did I do wrong? There are emotional people, which is also surprising, but they are people, and I mean, just talk to them. There's no reason why marketers should sit on the sidelines. Salespeople should not sit on the sidelines. We all should be part of the conversation.

Kerry Guard: Yeah, that's sort of where my conversation was going. Because we were talking about it, when you say pick up the phone, my immediate gut reaction is like, I'm not a salesperson like I'm supposed to be.

Dani Woolf: Even better, trust me.

Kerry Guard: Why do you say that?

Dani Woolf: Well, because they don't want to be sold to, your audience doesn't want to be sold to. They either don't have time or money or don't want to deal with shady tricks. In most cases, they will tell people who are not salespeople the truth because you're coming from a different angle, and I want to know your problems. Because then I'm going to go take your problems, try and fit them to my solution. No, I don't know your problems because I'm genuinely curious. I don't want to understand what the issue is, and it's gonna inform me on how to do my job better. Because frankly, if we don't do that, we're shit out of luck as a security community and not doing justice. I know this is a very utopian answer, but we are not doing justice to the people on the frontlines trying to battle some really freaking, serious threats. It's scary, and I'm not trying to inject fudd in here or anything like that, or for whatever. But we've got to figure this out, and we've got to become a little bit more authentic, moral, and ethical as marketers and sellers to do things the right way so that their jobs are a little bit easier. We're not trying to save the world and solve all the problems, but if we can do things a little bit more ethically so that they can solve just one more problem, I think we're in the right direction. A lot of people, not just marketers, sellers, engineers, vendors, but a lot of security practitioners who are being sold to, believe that. I'm very passionate about that I can go on for days.

Kerry Guard: They believe that they're trying to solve a problem.

Dani Woolf: No, they believe that if we're all in this together and starting to do things more ethically, we'll solve just one more problem. You know that they're on board, and this was surprising to me that they are on board, and there are several who want to help, not just ‘’Hey, vendor, leave me alone.’’. There are those people who are bashing marketers and sellers left and right, and okay, what's that going to do? Is that how's that going to help me fix what I'm doing wrong? There are a lot who are willing to say ‘’Hey, this is not the way to do it. This is an alternative.’’ And that's what I'm trying to expose, like let's try. We didn't put that on a pedestal, put that on the platform, stop this because we subscribe again; it goes back to this trivial tech. We get so sucked in as the market so septum knees, useless tactics that are just hurting us as professionals, hurting our business, and hurting the end user. Again, very utopian, but I think we just speak up a little bit more and to your point, get out of the chamber, stop talking amongst yourselves, talk with them and build together. Then, I think we can get a chance to do something pretty cool.

Kerry Guard: Yeah, I agree. I love what you're saying, and it sounds like you've created some of your own little LinkedIn community over there. It's not connected where they're all connected, but sort of you've got eyes on what's happening, having connected, do some outreach to say, ‘’Hey, I'd like you to be in my network or maybe it is a connection as follows. How are you using LinkedIn to get this sort of information and to bookmark these people?

Dani Woolf: I'm joining in the conversation, commenting, putting my point of view out there, and I don't know who it was. I don't remember who said this; maybe it was Josh Brown or something ‘’Join the resistance’’. If they are resisting, you join in. What are we going to do now? Let's figure it out. I make it a habit every day to try and listen to what my audience is saying. At the same time, posting content that is what I hope is useful, practical, and actionable for people reading my posts. So yeah, there's LinkedIn, and there are conversations where I'm asking people what they're thinking or what I could be doing better and putting my thoughts out there, and I realize people are subscribing to it. Maybe not publicly, but it's resonating and empowering to me. Even though I don't have all the likes, comments, and engagement, we're at metrics like booming. I'm hoping over time, I'll see it. But the feedback has been positive so far.

Kerry Guard: There is a shift happening towards the audience first. I mean, there are people who are now having titles and audience marketing, which is fascinating to me. And I love what you're saying about the power of LinkedIn because it is incredibly powerful, and not subscribing to the metrics of likes and comments and those things, but you are talking about the end of the day. In order for us to help our customers, we need to continue to grow our own companies. I find this for myself a lot, so I'm going to speak about myself. For me, it is a curiosity standpoint. As an empathetic one, like I didn't create a podcast because I'm out to sell anything at the end of the day. I'm out to learn and have really fun and great conversations. For us, it's helpful because, as marketers and not being sellers, to your point, we don't have to worry about that to some degree, but there does need to come to a point where that shift is like, okay, here's what you need, here's how we can help. How do you bring them in at the end of the day? Is it just through all these conversations and listening? Is it actually putting together marketing programs to adhere to what they're saying? How do you make that leap? You've done all this listening, and you heard what they said now. How do you actually turn that into marketing and bring things to the sales team to follow through, or is that just not?

Dani Woolf: No, of course, it is. I mean, whatever you got to take those insights and apply them. So, for me, specifically, I apply a lot of the content insights and strategy. We're talking about one thing. We have our own point of view; we're not saying it's resonating, so let's go out and ask, ‘’Okay, well, what will help you do your job better? What inspires you? What do you like reading? Where do you like reading it?’’ So it’s going to help me with my constant strategy and my media strategy. Which then will help me? And then asking customers to take you back to the time when they thought about using a solution? What changed in that journey to say, ‘’Yes, I need to buy now.’’ We'll help you pinpoint the problems and motivations, which will help you pinpoint how you should be targeting buyers in that specific journey. Those with higher intent need to solve specific challenges, asking them to take you through that journey. What did you do? Who influenced you to buy who? Where did you find the information to evaluate a solution like ours? That will help you with placement for specific high intent ads, or search ads specifically, to funnel in more and more demo requests or whatever your raise your hand action is. So, it's taking different things that people are saying and applying them to your strategy, strategies, and tactics, whether creating new demand or capturing existing demand. There's so much that you can do with it, and then that eventually is going to be the ROI of that, which is like lower cost per opps, your sales velocity will improve. Your sales team, in general, will be much happier. So there, there you go. You're making people happy across the board. I'll even take it even further; having these conversations might change who you're targeting, which will change your go-to-market strategy. Many companies go in and say,‘’ Oh, yeah, we're going to be targeting this person; this is the persona.’’ But then there are no strong sales or incremental growth. Are we targeting the right people even if their customer fits our product like that? It's powerful, and then your positioning is changed; it changes altogether. So there's a lot that you can apply because it's not linear. You do customer research, positioning, website, and then add. It's all holistic. It ties into your whole process, and it should be circular, or I am trying to envision it. It should always be on.

Kerry Guard: Changing. It sounds evolving.

Dani Woolf: There are different ways to do audience research. It's not just one on one interviews. You have your web.

Kerry Guard: Listening sounds like a huge opportunity. That's low-hanging, for sure.

Dani Woolf: Yeah. Social listening, heat map tracking, surveys, user testing it for specific products that are SAS products, not necessarily. Well, you could do it for enterprise products to panels, pain point boardrooms, and one-to-one interviews. There's just so much that you could do. It's really fun, addicting and I want to do this all the time.

Kerry Guard: We just had a third. I just told Dani that right before we got on how I've been doing podcasts for over two years now. And it's actually become like, my places then like, I just love having these conversations, and it gives me joy, energy, and connection. And, yes, it's empowering.

Dani Woolf: Quick story. I know we're going a little bit off-topic here. But a quick story, I think it was like a couple of weeks ago when I talked to this hacker that I told you about earlier, and we were supposed to talk about we were working together, also doing some stuff or podcasting. And instead of working, he just asked me how I was doing, and we had a 30-minute conversation about how we were feeling. And he asked me, like, he gave me tips on what to do to feel better because I know I'm stressed, and we're all stressed. I took that to heart, and I really appreciated that. It took our relationship to the next level in terms of having that trust, which is everything in security and in relationships, and it’s a key element to building relationships with security practitioners. You get to meet them, get to know them, and then you get to trust them. That was really the tipping point. I'm like, okay, this isn't a security guy that I'm working with. This is like a friend because if he's interested in how I'm feeling and he's taking the effort to get to know me as well, that's everything. And I know, we're getting all gushy here, like, right after Valentine's Day, but that's essentially it. It's building authentic relationships with friendships with people. In that, asking for a transaction later, I'm not going to ask him to buy our $95,000 product, but I'm asking for a transaction will be so much easier. Once you build that trust, the doors will open. He's already ‘’Okay. I know, I want to talk to security people. I want to get to know them.’’ He's already introduced me to seven people. That's awesome! Right?

Kerry Guard: No, but that's what it's about. If marketers can just sort of break down their walls, like needing the transaction right away, we're just stuck in this. We're just stuck in this loop of the LeSean transaction needing the revenue. Now, if we could just take a step back and be like, what are we actually trying to solve after coming out of the pandemic and being so isolated from people for so long? I mean, we're all craving connection. What better way to do it than to really understand who we're trying to serve, understanding them as people and individuals and the problems they're really having, especially now that the world has changed. And then how can we support them? It's really what it's about.

Dani Woolf: And how can they support us? It's bidirectional. If I'm not getting value, it's a bit opportunistic, but it's bi-directional. I need value to you. I want to know how to do things better. I don't want you to give us fits in a closed-loop here, two-way street close. It's scary. We're in this digital world, and technology's always changing. It's creating so much complexity and evolving behaviors from people behind those screens. So what you did a year ago is not what's going on right now, and that causes all kinds of challenges for us. And barriers, if we're going to succeed in selling technology and helping people use technology and solve those real issues and scary problems, we must get close to them. Hop in their shoes and figure out how to solve it with them.

Kerry Guard: Get the boat. Dani, thank you so much for joining me; before I close out here, I have talked about being people, and we're all human, so it's nice to get to know you beyond your passion for being a marketer. So I just have my three quick people's first questions.

Dani Woolf: Yeah. Are there right answers and wrong answers?

Kerry Guard: They’re your answers. Alright, the first question for you. Have you picked up any new hobbies in the last few years?

Dani Woolf: Podcasting or trying to launch podcasts.

Kerry Guard: Well, by the time this comes out in Q2, your podcast will be live. So let me get a link to it, and so you guys can go check it out and hear who Dani’s talking to and some of these conversations. She already said that she's recorded today, and you'll be able to be a fly on the wall and listen to. It's gonna be awesome. I can't wait, and I'll be tuning in for sure. Okay, I know you're in Israel?

Dani Woolf: Yeah. I am.

Kerry Guard: Like, far away from your team. If you could be with your team, you all will be hanging out and brainstorming together and going desk to desk. What song would you want playing overhead to set the vibe?

Dani Woolf: Oh, we're gonna be here for a while. I'll probably play some like, intense trance songs. I don't know. Oh, man. I don't know. Pass. I'll take it offline and put it in the comments.

Kerry Guard: Yeah, that's awesome. Just send me the song when you think of it and I'll add it to our playlist.

Dani Woolf: Maybe it sounds like Bob Marley or something. I don't know, something chill actually, and I don't think we would be brainstorming. I think we would all be just getting together to like, connect and maybe drink. Those are the best times with employees.

Kerry Guard: Bob Marley would certainly set the vibe. Well, if you have a specific song you want, send me a letter to our playlists.

Dani Woolf: Yes, I will.

Kerry Guard: Alright, final question for you. If you could travel anywhere in the world, although Israel sounds awesome, and it's on my list. Where would you go? Why?

Dani Woolf: Oh my gosh, Italy, the Amalfi Coast, or maybe Northern Italy at Lake Como. I don't know. I've been living vicariously through Instagram because I just haven't traveled in so long, and I want to go there, and that is so pretty and pizza. So probably Italy or Amsterdam. Don't say why but Amsterdam. So those are my top two right now.

Kerry Guard: Great answers.

Dani Woolf: Yeah. I'll figure out the songs I'll take with me to those destinations.

Kerry Guard: Yes. You have a whole playlist—different depending on the location for sure. Dani, thank you so much for joining.

Dani Woolf: Thank you, it was a pleasure. I love this.

Outro

That was my conversation with Dani Woolf. If you’d like to connect with Dani, you can find her on LinkedIn. The link is in the show notes. She also helped Cybersixgill launch a new podcast, Dr. Dark Web. Be sure to check that out. She’s also about to launch her own show so be sure to connect so you know when that drops.

Thanks again for joining me Dani!

And thank you for tuning into the first episode of Season 11.

In the next episode, I chat with Chris Spellman, where we discuss what it means to be mission-driven. Stay on, and the autoplay will take you there...