In this episode of The Next CMO podcast, I speak to Stephanie McCarty, CMO of Taylor Morrison. From start to finish, we create a seamless and inspired home building experience for our home buyers because we understand that your home is the most important home we can build.
In this episode of The Next CMO podcast, I speak to Stephanie McCarty, CMO of Taylor Morrison. From start to finish, we create a seamless and inspired home building experience for our home buyers because we understand that your home is the most important home we can build.
At Taylor Morrison, we work to earn your trust by providing the resources, support and deep industry experience to inspire you, and help you make educated decisions about your most important purchase. It’s this trust that earned Taylor Morrison the recognition of being America’s Most Trusted® Home Builder for eight years in a row.*
We approach each home with a discerning eye, ensuring we select locations and amenities that fit for our homebuyers’ lifestyles. We want your home to be a place where you create a lifetime of lasting memories. With more than 100 years of experience building a lifetime of memories for our homebuyers, you can rest assured we’ll build the right home for you.
Learn more about Stephanie McCarty
Learn more about Taylor Morrison
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Peter: The Next CMO Podcast explores topics that are on the minds of forward thinking marketing executives from leadership and strategy to emerging technologies. And we bring these topics to life by interviewing leading experts in their fields. The Next CMO is sponsored by Planful for Marketing. A leading marketing performance management solution that automates marketing planning, financial management, and ROI optimization.
And hosted by me, Peter Mahoney, an experienced CMO, CEO, board member, and executive advisor.
In this episode of the Next CMO Podcast, I speak to Stephanie McCarty. Stephanie is the CMO of Taylor Morrison, one of the largest [00:01:00] homebuilders in the United States, with over 9 billion of annual revenue. And Stephanie has a fascinating story. She entered the CMO role through communications and specifically executive communications where she did a lot of time and has done an amazing job building a brand program that really connects home builders and future home builder building consumers with the way they’ll use their homes through a program they call the Home Edit.
I’m sure you’ll enjoy the show and thanks for listening.
Hey, Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me on the next CMO podcast. And maybe we can start out by having you tell us a little bit about you and a little bit about Taylor Morrison.
Stephanie: Sure. Thanks for having me, Peter, and good morning. I’m happy to be here. My name is Stephanie McCarty. I am the Chief Marketing Officer for Taylor Morrison, been with the organization a little over [00:02:00] eight years. Prior to my emergence in home building, if you will, I had a robust career spanning various other global Fortune 500 organizations in manufacturing, higher education, IT, but really broke into My career in a publishing house leading a small PR firm.
Learned at a very young age that trying to be the know it all, if you will, for various brands all at once wasn’t really my cup of tea. So I went brand side very early on storyteller. By nature, I have a journalism degree, used that for the first 15 years of my career, focused on executive communications, employee communications, really building a brand on the inside.
And about five years into my tenure at Taylor Morrison, It was gifted the wonderful opportunity to lead the marketing part as well as the communications organization at Taylor Morrison and it has been [00:03:00] an incredible ride ever since.
Peter: Well, that’s awesome. And I’m sure it wasn’t an unearned gift. I’m sure those things usually come after a lot of hard work. And I wanted to ask you a couple of things about your background, but first, just give us the high level view of who in the world is Taylor Morrison.
Stephanie: Yes, Taylor Morrison, we are the top, we are in the top five national US home builders. We build coast to coast and we build product really for every lifestyle from entry level, move up, second time move up, all the way to your coastal luxury homes and almost a smattering of everything in between. We are America’s most trusted builder, eight years running and that is something we’re very proud of.
But if you’re not in the new home construction space or aren’t really looking for a home, you know, we’re not a ketchup bottle that you can buy off the shelf, but you might not. I have the strong belief that homebuilders should operate just like every other retailer and [00:04:00] behave more like a direct to consumer brand.
And so that’s part of the mission and quest that we are on today.
Peter: That’s great. Excellent. So with that context, one of the things I wanted to ask you about your background, I find fascinating is… What you learned being in the executive communication space because I assume spending a lot of time working alongside and very closely with senior executives is probably formative for you to figure out.
It either said, wow, that’s exciting, or I want to do that, or it completely demystified it. So I’m not sure what happened. Tell me a little bit about that experience for you though, Stephanie.
Stephanie: You know, I am very grateful. Looking back for my background and my upcoming and in communications, it taught me, I think everything that I use today as a CMO and to lead a marketing organization for a fortune 500, 9 billion business. I think I learned really early on partnering with senior executives and CEOs on how [00:05:00] to create the right message that is going to move.
The minds, the hearts, the spirits of your workforce. Taylor Morrison only has around 3000 employees nationwide, but my first really foray into executive comms was at a fortune 500 global semiconductor that had 13, 000 employees across the globe. And I worked for a CEO who, he was an engineer, he wasn’t a storyteller, he wasn’t sure how do I get all of my employees focused on the things that matter, understanding why they come to work every day and feeling really connected.
That didn’t come naturally for him. For us, natural kind of gifted and born storytellers, I just did my job and immediately started adding value and started getting employees really seeing. The light at the end of the tunnel. We were going through lots of change, lots of acquisitions and [00:06:00] divestitures and furloughs and things that I, at an isolated level, an employee is not going to understand or know how to connect it to something bigger.
So I started doing that early on. Just because that’s what I did. You know, I sat down, I got all of the facts and the important information and started to tell a story with that. And through my rising ranks at other organizations found that, like I said, that’s not a necessarily. Known capability for all executives.
So to be able to do that, you kind of become the right hand to these leaders on, and you get, you’re in every operations meeting because how you communicate it and the impact to employees is so critical. And I think the organizations that understand that they put a communications council and executive in the room for those hard conversations.
And that when I met our CEO at Taylor Morrison, she was on a growth path and she knew [00:07:00] before she started worrying about what’s the message outside, what’s the message I tell consumers. Her first concern was how do I tell the organization what I want to do and why this is important and why this is the place to be to get it done.
And so, And for me, I think this is a lot about a CEO who understands that it starts with your employees first, because I think you would agree, and all of our marketers listening, that it’s a lot easier to take a message that your organization and your employees believe in and push that out into the world than to come up with this glorious message.
They tell consumers and try to feed it back into the organizations. I call it like the sniff test because if your employees don’t buy it, nobody else is going to buy it.
Peter: Yeah, I think that’s important, Stephanie. And it’s interesting because I think there are. a number of elements that came together, just [00:08:00] reflecting a little bit on your career a little bit and how you got there the the idea of, one, just access, right? Being in the room is an important thing. That on its own doesn’t help, because you can fall on your face, you can give them bad advice, you can not be the right counsel.
So being in the room is not enough, but it certainly is a great starting point where you have, one, the ability to understand at a different level from a lot of other sort of up and coming executives, sort of what the company’s trying to do, what the CEO is trying to do, etc. And and then you can help them shape that message.
And I want to come back at some point. I’ll make a note to myself about that idea of, you know, leveraging and sort of that internal message versus the external message, because I think it’s one of the ways people stay really true to their brand promise is to live it through their employee experience and not everyone does that the right way.
But the other thing I wanted to ask you about, so [00:09:00] much came up in that last 60 seconds, is that I assume that it is it is relatively rare to have a female CEO in this business. And so, so tell me about that. Tell me about how that affects the Taylor Morrison brand and how it sort of drives your relationship with your CEO at Taylor Morrison.
Stephanie: It’s an excellent question and observation. It is, one, it’s extremely rare to have female representation in the CEO title in any Fortune 500 company. But to be in a male dominated industry that has a serious lack in diversity, not just gender. All kinds is unique. And Cheryl Palmer in and of herself as a CEO is just a wonderful human and I’ve learned a lot from her.
But when I first came into the organization as the vice president of [00:10:00] communications, I mean, she’s a lethal weapon from a public relations standpoint, right? The only female CEO in public housing. And there was, you know, she didn’t want to play the woman card. She didn’t want to be recognized as the only female CEO.
And it was really coming in and positioning, repositioning that for her. It was like, but if you don’t own it, you know, and we use it as a starting off point, there’s all these females in your organization who won’t know that it’s possible for them too. And what she, her pride point is that.
Just by being a female in CEO, we attract a lot of females in our industry to Taylor Morrison. I think we have one of the most diverse board makeups. I think we’re 50 percent female, which is unheard of again, in fortune 500 companies globally and certainly in home building. But when I think about what that means for our brand, it adds this ownable.
Warmth, right, to who we are and what we produce. I think in the past people [00:11:00] used to view in home building women as the veto, right?
Say no on a home. And now I think we can all safely and confidently admit together that women really drive a lot of purchase decisions. in the United States and probably across the pond.
And there’s such an emotional connection to the purchase of a home that being able to speak to women about the design, the intentionality of a home, how you live in a home, the experience of buying a home, and going after that Remarkable positioning, I think we just have a better chance, I think, because it’s so unique, innate, and ownable to, I said, to our brand, that there are other home building brands out there that build a great product, but the way they show up feels very differently.
Peter: Yeah. It’s really interesting because if you look at sort of [00:12:00] the hero campaign that you’re running right now it’s called the Home Edit Partners, right? Did I get that right? That’s actually a really interesting representation of the Taylor Morrison brand experience because you’re talking about sort of how you exist and how you live and how you experience the home.
So talk a little bit about sort of the origin, what, and what is that campaign all about? The origin of it, and maybe a little bit about how it’s going.
Stephanie: it’s a passion project that is very near and dear to my heart, a long time man, these projects, you don’t even realize how much work goes into them behind the scenes before, you know, they’re birthed into the the world. We have a partnership with the co founders of The Home Edit. They’re the leading consumer brand and home organization.
They, really boomed during COVID when I think a lot of people were at home and DIYing this organization concept. They have a hit show on Netflix called Get Organized and three best selling [00:13:00] books and they are I think a natural extension of what we’re trying to do in this experience of home buying.
I think it’s pretty easy to just sell a home and walk away from it, but we really want our consumers and potential buyers to understand that the process of designing, building, organizing, and loving your home is completely within reach, right? People think, okay, I’m going to get this home and then what?
And we’re not going to just. You know, wipe our hands and turn you loose. We really want to help you exist in the space for years and years to come. And there’s so much like sanity and peace that comes with everything, having a place. And so with the co founders of the Home Minute, we’ve really kind of created this.
Insane partnership and collaboration that I think the rest of the industry is sitting there scratching their head thinking this is brilliant. Why didn’t we think of this? Because the HomeEdit [00:14:00] gals are really, have been, they’re focused on kind of reshaping existing spaces. So in the new home construction world, where you’re starting with a blank canvas, how do you really bring that to life and how do you envision that?
And they’re a leading consumer brand and we want to be a leading consumer brand as well. And so with the magic of that and this kind of emergence into their following, you know, they have millions and millions of followers that we’re really, we’re introducing Taylor Morrison to. You know, we launched in June and the feedback so far, not even 60 days later, has just been incredible.
So we’re really excited to see this come and build over time.
Peter: what’s amazing, and I can tell I had the opportunity to watch some of the episodes, which were really great, and they’re a lot of fun and by the way, I’ll put a link in the show notes for people to check it out that particular episode that’s a campaign, which is really cool. But one of the things I noticed is it just, it feels very warm And [00:15:00] it’s really interesting because they’re really big into color.
And it’s just, it’s very alive and warm and it feels very different from a lot of the kind of cold, sterile kind of home building kind of things. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen, like you see this new home listing and they use like fake generated furniture in the listings and it just feels.
Like cold.
Stephanie: very
Peter: And no not at all. So the idea of getting people to imagine the experience is interesting. So now tell me though what’s the hook? So how do you connect the dots between, you know, the HomeEdit stuff and Taylor Mortensen? Do you say, Hey, that’s really cool. Now I should buy a house or build a house or, so how does that come together?
And how do you think about the idea of you know, what’s the journey that you want a [00:16:00] prospect who starts the relationship with Taylor Morrison through this show, what’s that journey look like over time? What’s the next step you want them to
Stephanie: Yeah, there’s, it’s a great question. There’s multiple facets that we say quite often about this partnership. And let me start. I think towards one of your earlier questions around the brand synergies, when we first started talking to the home edit, there were, I think, three real pillars onto why we thought that this made sense.
The first one being, you know, it’s clear as day in order to organize a home, you have to have a home, right? So let that’s kind of table stakes. The second one is we’re all female led, right? So we have this vision. The third one being Clea, one of their co founders was very public about her journey with breast cancer. And Cheryl, our CEO had a brain tumor about 10 years ago that she wasn’t sure she was going to survive. As part of our. Philanthropic efforts, Taylor Morrison is about to break ground on building [00:17:00] 16 homes at the campus of the Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center here in Arizona. When we told the homeowner that was something we were going to do, it was like an immediate that this is it, we’re going to do this. They wanted to partner with a brand that does more, you know, good in the world. And so when we think about going back to your last question, the consumer journey, one.
We have a hard time of being recognized if you’re not in the immediate need for a new home, but we all know that the seeds that are planted when you’re going to move start, they can start years and years before you actually make a decision to sign a contract on a home. So one, it was just pure brand play.
How do we expose Taylor Morrison through a following that’s tied to home, right, tied to being at home and living in your home and taking pride in how you live in your home. So that was really the first play. But really we set up we’re looking at two big things. [00:18:00] First is we built a video campaign.
of all the major rooms in the house. And when you’re starting from scratch, how do you put the form and function and the modern design of a Taylor Morrison home? And how do you fit the organizational components and systems that the HomeEdit has created and blend those two together for the It’s exceptional living experience and spaces that you want to show off to all your family and friends.
So we did a video series that we call New Home, New Zones, where they’re walking us through the kitchen, your master closet, your bedroom, your office. How do you pack? How do you maintain that once you’ve moved in? And it really, I think, brings it to life and gives consumers an easy kind of step by step guide on how to do that.
And that content is useful for anyone, right? It’s kind of a gift. Whether you’re moving into a Taylor Morsen home. a resale home, or you’re just, you know, you’re at home and you want to reimagine your living space. But really what we’ve seen consumers in new home construction want now is a one [00:19:00] stop shop, right?
They get to pick out their interior finishes and then while they’re at it, why don’t they just pick out the organization package that comes with it? So when they move in, we’ve taken all of the pain and the worry away that they can just, you know, itemize it out. And they’re done because there’s so much stress that comes with a move.
And we want to just find unique ways to make it a less stressful experience because we know it’s going to be stressful regardless. We can’t take that all away, but where we can ease that, we want to be a partner in that experience.
Peter: Yeah, so it’s interesting because it’s sort of a solving the whole problem kind of thing where, you know, obviously it’s building a home is part of the problem, but moving into it, living in it, et cetera, those things. So creating those relationships over time and giving people just an entry point into the relationship with Taylor Morrison is a really interesting thing to do now.[00:20:00]
It kind of business is really interesting because as you said, you’ve got experience in in a lot of different industries. People hear, Hey I’m doing a direct to consumer stuff. Like, okay, you’re selling light bulbs or something. No, these can be like seven figure transactions, right? These can be, these are massive financial decisions for people to make.
And they can have huge impact. So I assume the value of creating these relationships with people is really interesting. So how do you think about the math for a campaign like this? How do you think about valuing the home edit kind of campaign over time?
Stephanie: it’s a good question and one that I will probably be asked time and time again from our operators. If I can take a step back and you think about the world of real estate in general and how consumers have found their next home. If you can imagine a world where Zillow, Redfin, [00:21:00] Realtor. com didn’t exist, the impetus for every transaction really resulted in a real estate agent.
Right? Where you needed someone to pull listings off of an LMLS. Otherwise, you didn’t know they were available. That model has been rewritten. Consumers have taken a more leading role in their home purchase decision. That starts with doom scrolling for hours and hours on Zillow and all the like, right?
You don’t need this third party person to hold your hand through the experience. And I think consumers today With the access that you have to research and information, you know, that role has really the value of that role has changed of the realtor. And so I think as a home builder, we see that and we’re like, you know, we need to be where the consumer is, which is one on their phone to watching videos.
[00:22:00] Three, probably on social media. And so we think about the proposition with the home edit, who has built their brand on the phone through video and on their social media channels. That’s where we want to be. That’s where we have been. I think we’re one of the only top builders to fully immerse ourselves and embrace social media.
You don’t see a lot of home builders. Trying to sell homes on TikTok. And you know what? We’re on TikTok, but we’re not really trying to sell homes. We’re trying to build a relationship with our brand and talk to consumers at that age about what this looks like. Education. We have another campaign running called Real Talk, where you can, we’ll just going to be super transparent and honest with you that this process is messy.
And there’s lots of things in here, but we’re going to be your partner, right? So you don’t necessarily need that third party real estate agent to come in and hold your hand. So I think it’s just a. Complete mind shift, Peter, of we can do that work and the procuring source of our consumers doesn’t have to be [00:23:00] this broker, this in between.
We’re going to be where they are and start building a relationship and planting the seed long before. They are ready to buy a home because that’s where the magic happens. And so it’s really a brand play and that in and of itself is just not something that home builders think of. It’s very, to your point, transactional, bottom of the funnel.
Here’s this great incentive, you know, it’s a purple tag event this weekend, come out, and that doesn’t move people. That doesn’t connect people to a brand. It doesn’t even really connect them to a product or a service. So through You know, the vibrant personalities of Joanna and Clea, we’re building that.
We also know too that there’s real valid research that says people don’t trust companies, they trust people, whether that be an influencer. Whether that be, you know, a neighbor or a best friend, those [00:24:00] recommendations or, Hey, have you heard of Taylor Morrison? Or, Oh, I saw this brand partnering with Joanna and Clea.
There’s this trust already embedded into our organization. We’ve won that award eight times, but even with Joanna and Clea who are saying, We’re in a Taylor Morrison home. This home is fantastic. Let’s go organize this kitchen together. You know, Time will tell. Probably all CMOs know that, you know, what’s not always would always make sense in their mind doesn’t make sense to others.
And that’s kind of, certainly a mantra for this campaign. But I think the exposure, we certainly are seeing leads come in, right? And there’s a… An ROI there, but we think it’s twofold and brand that brand play takes a while. So that runway we’re going to see over time, but the leads, those leads, those are happening now and they’re certainly helping.
Peter: Yeah, I assume at the same time there has to be a, there was some business thesis at the beginning that said that said, we’re going to embark on this [00:25:00] campaign and we’re going to create these relationships. And the thesis was that something was going to happen. So either you were going to create.
More connections to the brand over time, or you were going to build more trust in the brand and you knew that trust created more conversion or something like that. Did you have a discussion like that that said that, hey, there, here’s the logic flow that would take the investment, which I’m sure is non trivial in a campaign like this and flow ultimately into the P& L or the balance sheet.
Stephanie: absolutely. And that was the hard sell to the CEO. And I’m very fortunate because I have a CEO who understands marketing and understands the value creation. But those were the discussions and we had a large leadership meeting in New York in April, where. You know, I made the case for brand and there is a premium that you can place when you have that brand salience, right?
Let’s move beyond [00:26:00] awareness, move beyond recall. When you become synonymous with your industry, there’s a premium that you could pay that you can charge for your product and the experience. So you have to make the investments early on in order to be able to do that. So is it risky? Are we taking, did the leadership take a bet on me and this project?
Absolutely. But I have a phenomenal team and I have the most confidence that it’s going to work and we’re continuing to kind of provide reports and feed into it. And if I can go back to where we started on the employee experience, our employees. Who get it and most of them do. Again, we have a large representation of females and I’d say the home edit consumer following skews a little female too.
They just went completely bananas. They were like, this is incredible. I’m so proud to work for Taylor Morrison who can think about these innovative marketing ideas and these new [00:27:00] approaches to reach consumers in our communities and in our sales centers, we have life size cutouts of Joanna and Clea.
And if you follow the brand, Joanna always wears these really exquisite headbands. We had co branded headbands made for all of our female sales associates. And we have consumers going into these models and they’re taking selfies and they’re so excited. And it’s just an incredible way to start a relationship with a homebuilder, which you know, that relationship is long.
It is a long relationship. And so to start on that foot with all that excitement and wonder It’s a really great place to start, and so we’re really excited.
Peter: Yeah it’s, one of the things that I find most fascinating about this approach is that you’ve taken a the highest of the highly considered products and you know, it’s a, it’s very long consideration and sale process, it’s long to deliver, to get [00:28:00] there, to, to the value, so the relationship you have with the brand is very long.
And, yeah, It’s almost counterintuitive because people assume that, hey, the bigger the deal is, the more complex it is, the less relevant things like TikTok would be. But the reality is that you’ve connected the dots, and you’ve connected the dots by saying First of all, sort of destruct, not destructing, that would be bad.
Deconstructing. Exactly. Deconstructing the overall experience. So you understand the journey that the a new home builder consumer is going to go through. And a key part of it is really sort of this living and experiencing it. And you connect to that, to the brand with this thing. And then obviously once you’ve sort of broken it down to that elemental place and said, Hey, how can I have this?
And a really natural way to connect things like social media and TikTok or Reels or whatever it is to, to that experience. But it takes a real [00:29:00] understanding of the customer journey, of what the brand promise is all about to do that. And you see a lot of insincere. approaches out there, but this one feels like it’s really real.
And as you highlighted, it’s also deeply connected to how the employees feel and things like that. So if you, I realized I didn’t ask, I just gave a speech and that wasn’t very helpful. So, but if you now lean back and squint a little bit and tell me what is the overall marketing strategy.
that you’re trying to execute at Taylor Morrison, where the home edit is a piece of it, obviously, but how do you think about that overall marketing strategy?
Stephanie: Our marketing strategy, I mean, we just want our brand to be extremely accessible and relevant. So that allows for some innovation and experimentation. But we have built a full funnel in house team at Taylor Morrison. So we are trying to follow the consumer from [00:30:00] that. Very early on in that discovery process and ideation of a new home through those people who they need a home tomorrow, right?
They’re relocating. And so where we think about our investment, I’d say, you know, we spend money in all the places that every other marketer that you talk to does. But our strategy now is really shifting Some of the, that investment to the upper funnel, as we know today, you know, we’re a very economy led industry inflation, interest rates.
There’s a lot of stuff that can impact our business. That’s really outside of our control as marketers. So when the market is good right now, we, there’s a low inventory. There’s not a lot of resale homes out there today, which is a benefit to us new home builders, right? So we are trying to, again… Be relevant where we have the, and again, it takes time.
Like every marketer knows you can’t, it’s not a dial that you can turn on and [00:31:00] turn off. So there’s this commitment to building a brand. And so our strategy, like I said, it’s brand relevance. And when there’s so much choice out there in new home construction, there’s hundreds of builders. We happen to be one of the biggest.
That helps. But when you’re in a master plan community where you’ve got seven builders building in there, our product is roughly the same price point, roughly the same layout. How do you get a consumer to choose Taylor Morrison over? Toll brothers or Fulti or the like and it’s by building these relationships early on.
It’s about creating a moment that maybe dabbles in a little humor or involves some influencers like Joanna and Clea that say oh Taylor Morrison. There’s trust associated with that brand. I, they’re, they exist where I exist when I spend my free time. And so that’s been the focus probably the [00:32:00] last 18 months.
And like, like you’ve mentioned we’ve made a significant investment there and feel very strongly it’s going to pay off in a big way.
Peter: Yeah, I can really see that and I love that you really double down on trust because if you think about it, this is the biggest financial decision that almost every consumer is going to make by a lot. And and it’s scary for a lot of people and and there isn’t a lot of trust in the industry at large and because there’s no transparency
Stephanie: have not done ourselves any favors. So
Peter: It’s really scary. So if you can if you can really highlight that the trust and it’s interesting because the auto industry has gone through some interesting changes to, they had zero trust, right? Cause they went through a dealer network and everyone thought the dealers were trying to rip them off.
And then, you know, Tesla came in and completely reinvented it. And you know, no matter what you think of the brand they, you know, made transparency and made it really simple. So I love [00:33:00] the idea that you’re leaning into that. Certainly it is it’s a massive industry and and there, there’s a huge opportunity, I think, to to create a real brand that people can can trust when they’re making a decision at this scale.
So I’m excited for you. So believe it or not, we’re actually at the end of our time. And and I could keep going on this topic all day long, cause it’s one of my favorites. Marketing and home building are exciting for me. So, but I do like to finish up with. The question I ask everyone that I’d love to hear your input on, which is what advice would you give to current or aspiring CMOs, Stephanie?
Stephanie: My advice, and it might sound hokey, but it is my honest advice and it’s something I have to give myself now that I’ve been in the seat for about five years, I have to remind myself is to trust your gut and your intuition and that if it feels right to you, then it’s probably right. A quick story, if I may, I went to a CMO [00:34:00] conference when I was about six months into the role.
And I felt extremely out of place in terms of I lacked the experience, the tenure, the background, right? Here I am coming with this communications experience. And what I found when I just let my guard down was we’re all navigating the same stuff. Some of those CMOs who didn’t have the same upbringing as me were now being told, hey, you need to worry about internal experience, and you need to build a culture, and you need to And they don’t know where to start.
And so all of a sudden I was like, Oh, I have a leg up on this CMO who’s working at this, you know, fortune 100 brand that everyone’s heard of. And so there, we’re all in it together, but I have found that when I don’t trust my gut, when I feel like I should do something that’s different than comes naturally to me, I always.
I always fail. And so this HomeEdit partnership really came from a place of, I had some areas in my home organized. I had my pantry and my closet organized because organization is not something that comes [00:35:00] naturally to me. And the feeling that I had when it was done and the final product, I wanted to sleep in my pantry.
It was this weird euphoria. And I was like, how do I bottle this up? And give this to my homeowners because if I can feel this good, they need to feel this good. And that was really that moment spiraled into this giant campaign that we are now living in and giving to our consumers. And so you have to follow your own path.
And again, what energizes you and puts that fire in your belly. I give, I just, I think every marketer needs to give themselves permission to follow it. Cause that’s why we’re in these roles.
Peter: Well, that’s fantastic advice, Stephanie. I completely agree. So trust yourself, trust your gut. And especially when it’s grounded with that kind of deep understanding and experience that you have with the relationship with the customers that it’s going to go a long way. So really appreciate you being on the Next CMO [00:36:00] podcast with me today, Stephanie.
Really appreciate all of you who are listening. And if you have ideas for topics or guests, just shoot me an email at thenextcmoatplanful. com. Make sure you follow Planful on all those great social media places. And I hope you have a great day. Thanks again, Stephanie, for an awesome episode.
Stephanie: you.