John SmallMtn (00:00)

Welcome to another episode of Founder’s Growth. My name is John Hill, AKA Small Mountain. I’m the founder of Adapted Growth. And today on the show, we have Kathrine Farris. She is the founder of Marketecs, which is a marketing agency that she has been running for a very long time. We got connected, and I was blown away by how long she had been in the space. So we’re going to dive into some of her story, how she got to here, and some of the things that she’s learned along the way. Kathrine, can you talk a little bit, maybe with some better detail, about the kind of work you’re doing and maybe who you work with?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (00:31)

Yeah, sure. First of all, John, thanks for having me on. I know I came at you in a little bit of an interesting way. I reached out to you, which you don’t typically even do. So I appreciate you having that conversation with me and bringing me on the show. So a little bit about what we do. We have been in this space since 2009 as a marketing agency—

John SmallMtn (00:47)

Absolutely.

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (00:56)

—over 16 years. I lose track of the time sometimes. It’s evolved over the years as far as where our focus is and what we do, but we help professional service-based businesses, for the most part. Mostly consultants, coaches, lawyers, CPAs, sort of anybody that feels like they are a consultant in their own industry can fall into that category.

As far as what we typically do, it’s marketing support and services. Everything from soup to nuts, we can be a full marketing team. But more in the last two years, we’ve gravitated toward the technology side more and more, really going into heavy marketing automations. A lot of people may have a VA or may even have a marketing assistant or somebody like that, and the technical side is still a little bit over their head. We can still partner with them even if they have a small team, and that’s kind of been part of this recent evolution.

John SmallMtn (02:00)

I love that. I would love to jump into that whole thing really quick, right? Because we were talking right before we hit record around how people get very excited about automations and process, and AI is now very, very popular and everything else like that.

Where in your work with clients, where do you have to potentially redirect them, change their thinking, or change their mindset around automations, AI, scale, and different things like that? Does that show up for you a lot in your conversations?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (02:34)

Pretty much every conversation. Yes, we will have clients that are very excited about automation and they will try to automate too quickly. A lot of times, I will have a rule of thumb of:

John SmallMtn (02:45)

Mm-hmm.

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (02:48)

“All right, let’s run through a process manually at least three times before we start talking about automation. Let’s tweak it, write out the SOPs, and do all of this stuff.” Even then, maybe we automate the first half that feels very solid and very consistent, and keep doing a couple of the human-in-the-loop positions on some of the other, right? I’m not for 100% automation out of the gate. I do feel like it’s usually an evolution.

But we still have people where I hear they’re doing something and they’ve been doing it for 13 years, and I’m like, “You know we can automate that, right? You don’t still have to book those appointments.” So it goes both ways, and a lot of times, that’s the whole point of having the conversation to figure it out. I have to actually see what your business operations are here and how you want to use your system to be able to know: is that a pipeline? Is that an automation? Is there a human process in there?

Then you go one step further and you start talking about AI. How much of this can literally be done by robots? There are pieces that can be. Maybe you need the prompt, or maybe you need the brainstorming because your team is not available 24/7. As a business owner, at two in the morning, you have a brilliant idea, so we build you a custom GPT that knows your business.

John SmallMtn (04:20)

I love that whole thing of, “Let’s do this two or three times,” or, “Maybe let me automate the first half,” right? Because I treat sales as a process and try to work on having some consistency and repeatability, right? People will like that, and they’ll come and want to try to build a process that doesn’t map to reality in any way or form. One of the things that I’ve had to be better at is asking, “How much volume do you have going through this thing that we’re trying to improve and bring some consistency to?” Because it’s super easy to think you can build it in the lab, especially with things like growth, anything around marketing and sales. Anything you build in the lab, it’s got to be tested in reality. A lot of people skip that step because they’re very excited to focus on product, focus on growth, or focus on these other things.

Do you get a lot of pushback from people when you’re trying to tap the brakes and bring some sense around reality, or are you at a place where most of your people come in the door understanding what they’re getting into?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (05:34)

I don’t get a lot of resistance. I won’t say never, but I don’t get a lot of resistance. I think more often than not, they appreciate it if I can come at it bringing examples and saying, “Okay, but what happens if somebody responds this way? What happens if somebody responds…?” All the use cases. When you start raising those flags, they start to go, “Yeah, okay, that does need a manual review.”

Sometimes it’s as simple as somebody filling out a form, and there’s a one through 10. Okay, well if they fill out nine and 10, you want it to do something. If they fill out one and two, you want it to do something. But what about that middle, iffy bracket? What if they simply didn’t understand the question? All the “what ifs” you start raising, then they start going, “Yeah, I didn’t think about that.”

That’s the kind of experience that they expect or want, or that’s the reason they called me, right? A lot of our clients we’ve worked with for a very long time. I should also caveat, we have clients we’ve worked with since 2013 on retainer. So when I say something, I know their business, right? So I could say, “Well, okay, but what about Mr. Jones when he did XYZ last month? How would that have worked in this scenario?”

John SmallMtn (06:54)

Being deep enough that you have real examples when you’re going back to challenge them to make sure that they’re thinking about it the right way is a huge, huge part of this.

Changing topics wildly—because when we connected, you shared a story about going out on your own. Can you talk a little bit about how you found yourself on your founder’s path?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (07:25)

Yeah, so—and I think I touched upon this briefly in our pre-meeting here—prior to being in marketing, being an agency owner, I was actually in banking full-time. I started as a part-time teller back in college, worked my way up through the front end of banking. Prior to 30 years old, I was a branch manager, VP, commercial lender, the whole nine yards. So all retail side of banking and community banking, not a big conglomerate per se. I was working very closely with business owners.

At the same time, I was also teaching computer courses at the local community college in the evening. I had gotten married not too far prior to that, and we were rehabbing a foreclosure basically from the ground up. You could see the outside from the inside. It was a new roof, the whole nine yards. All of this stuff was going on.

And I was running my business, moonlighting, running my business on the side. It wasn’t a lot of income; it was just enough that I was sort of dabbling in it at this time. Part of the reason that even came up was because I literally got known in my community as the banker that knew technology. My customers, because I worked with business customers, would come in and bring their laptops to me and be like, “Hey, you know tech. How do I do this on my computer?” I started solving these problems, so I started this business. That’s how I started it.

At this point, it was like 2012. I had been in it for a few years doing this moonlighting, teaching at the same time, doing all this other stuff, and we were planning on a family. It happened a little sooner than we expected, and I was pregnant. I’m like, “Okay, something’s got to give.” There were just too many balls in the air at this point.

Of course, the house was getting finished up, and that had a deadline on it. So I gave up teaching. I had been teaching for four years in the evening, and I gave up teaching, figuring that felt like something I could let go. So then I was down to: okay, I’ve got my business and I’ve got my full-time career with all the benefits, all the vacation time, and all the whatever, right? My husband didn’t work. His job was the house, and the plan was that he was going to be the stay-at-home parent. So my income was the only income, my insurance was the only insurance, et cetera.

John SmallMtn (09:59)

When we talked about this, we didn’t talk about the house, the teaching, or anything else like that. Holy crap.

One of the things that I talk about with people is that first sell: that you’re allowed to do this, you should do this, and you’re enough to do this. What was the decision-making process for you about staying versus going? How did you get to the clarity that that was the right path?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (10:24)

Yeah, so I had my son. I had my maternity leave, which I falsely believed would be a great time to grow my business. Anyone who has ever had a baby and had a maternity leave knows what I mean. I thought it was going to be brilliant.

I went back to work—I went back to my banking job. I will say, there was definitely a thought process around this idea of not wanting to—and I don’t even know how to word this so that it doesn’t maybe come off wrong—but not wanting to be the woman that left her job after having a baby, right? There’s sort of a stigma around that. I never thought I would be. Even right in the delivery room, I was like, “I’m going to be fine to go back to work, and I’m going to have no problem with this whatsoever. No hesitation.”

Things definitely changed once I had my son. There was definitely a change of heart. All the feelings came up—all the feels. I took my three-month maternity leave, I went back to work, and it was the hardest time of my life, even with just the two with my business and work. I’d already given up so many other things I was doing in my life, but even with just those two and adding a child, it was just way too much.

John SmallMtn (11:50)

Wow. When you were going through that time, how long were you in the role after your maternity leave before you wrapped things up and departed?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (11:59)

Even that was an interesting transition. It was about three months before I finally went to my supervisor at the time. I was super fortunate; she happened to be a mom of three boys with a stay-at-home husband, right? So I go to her, and I’m like—I didn’t even know what I was going to do yet—I’m like, “I am beside myself. I am miserable.”

I literally started crying in her office, which I tried like heck not to do. I was like, “I’m so miserable.”

She’s like, “Of all people, I get it.” She was just like, “What do you need from me?”

I just was like, “Oh my gosh, thank you.” I wasn’t even putting in my notice at that point. It was like a conversation I was having before the conversation, because I just didn’t know what to do with myself.

At that point, her and I started working together on what’s next. I started applying for part-time jobs left and right, because I’m like, “I can’t just quit my job. What am I going to do, right?” I’m applying for jobs that didn’t even make sense at this point, like minimum wage jobs, just so that I would have a steady paycheck. Really didn’t even make sense.

A part-time position happened to open up at the bank back office, which I had never done, in mortgage paperwork pushing. My supervisor calls me and goes, “You need to apply for this.”

I was like, “What?”

She’s like, “They need you.”

I said, “But what’s the description?”

She goes, “It doesn’t matter, they need you,” because they were so behind in the tech side of everything. Everybody was tech-challenged in this particular section.

Like a day later, the hiring supervisor for that role comes into my office, and he goes, “Okay, what do you want to do for me?”

I was like, “Huh?”

And he’s like, “Whatever you need, apparently I need you.”

This was a bank where, even at my level, I didn’t have a cell phone, I didn’t have a laptop, I couldn’t work from home. Where I was, they gave me a part-time back office position with a laptop and a cell phone, and allowed me to work from home. Within three months, I worked myself out of a job and doubled my business so that I didn’t need that income anymore.

John SmallMtn (14:14)

What a… I mean, first of all, sometimes going to your boss and asking for help or even communicating struggle is an impossible task, right? But then going and being able to be heard and listened to, and then someone who’s like on your side—oh my gosh, that’s insane. That doesn’t happen in most cases, right? Wow, okay.

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (14:37)

Yeah, I feel like the whole transition story was like it couldn’t have been better, and it was so meant to be. Everything, the way it worked out, just felt like, “How can I ignore this?”

We had a very real conversation at home, my husband and I. I was like, “Look, I am at my wit’s end. I am miserable with life in general. Banking will always be there; my business will not. It does not feel right to give up my business.” I said, “And here’s the deal: if I fall on my face, worst-case scenario, we file bankruptcy and move on with life. How do you feel about that?”

And he went, “Okay.”

John SmallMtn (15:20)

Is your husband a pretty go-with-the-flow kind of person? Okay, awesome. Are you a go-with-the-flow person?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (15:28)

Very much so, yeah. No, I’m a type A, for sure. I am a firstborn, make a list for everything.

John SmallMtn (15:41)

Okay, yeah, wow. So I also worked in banking, right? I started out at a huge, major business thing. I worked for Chase, and it was so funny because they were talking about how they’re a technology leader and why this matters. I was a very stuck sales rep; I didn’t really want to pour myself into selling. It was just a job that had some good upside for me and everything, and I loathed those conversations where our claim to fame was technology.

Then I got the opportunity to move to a smaller bank, a regional bank, and they were still on black-screen CNET stuff. You couldn’t appreciate it until you stepped out of that lane and saw just how most banks are almost like Luddites. They know they need it, but they’re not excited to do it because of all the compliance and regulation. But I felt like I’d stepped into a portal 25 years into the past just by changing the bank that I worked at. It was wild.

So hearing you talk about, “Well, they need you,” did you have any struggles with—it sounds like you had a lot of buy-in. Did you have any friction about doing some of these changes and helping them get caught up on their technology side?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (16:52)

For sure. You know what’s funny is my entire 12-year banking career was with two banks. Like 11 of those were with the same bank, and the last one was with this other bank. I had the same thing happen that you’re explaining here, where both were community banks, but the first one was very tech-forward, and the second one was green screens, right?

So it was that same kind of thing. Yeah, when I went back office, I remember I kind of did the same thing I do now with clients. They told me, “Okay, this is going to be your job, and you have these five steps of something to do.”

And I’m like, “Okay, well, I could do these five steps, or I could automate these two and just do these three. What else you got?”

I think within the first two weeks, I had automated enough that they let their intern go. Then, like I said, they set me up to be able to work from home. He did say, “You need to be here for the first week and see the processes and all this stuff, and then you can start working from home.”

And I was like, “Okay.”

Literally over three months, I cut my hours in half every month because I just started, “Okay, well, we’re just going to have this field pull this field instead of manually entering it every time.”

And they went, “You can do that?” I think they were more mystified than pushing back.

John SmallMtn (18:18)

I mean, it’s wild because you get used to it, and then you forget how much you learn, right? So then you show up and start talking about—I had a really great friend who was teaching me about extract, translate, and load processes, right? Because I was trying to move out of retail sales. I was like, “Okay, maybe there’s more for this and maybe I can go figure it out.” I like tech, but I didn’t really know how to navigate it or use it or anything else like that. Then you get so used to it that it’s just very easy to assume everyone knows what you know, which is not super helpful.

Changing gears a little bit, the retail side of banking is a very interesting side of banking. I remember whenever I got poached into banking, everyone was like, “Oh, John’s going to have those bankers’ hours! Oh my gosh!” All my kung fu friends were very excited because I was going to have all this time, because I wasn’t in retail anymore. Then come to find out that retail banking is very much retail banking.

At least in the secondary banks that I worked in, the branch executives—you know, the branch manager and everything—they were kind of doing the business side of the banking. They managed the business relationships, and they had their own goals and quotas. So I’m assuming you were probably fairly steeped in navigating conversations, being kind of the face of the bank, and getting packages created for mortgages and different things like that. What did you have to either unlearn or shift your thinking on from a sales perspective going out on your own?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (19:44)

That’s interesting. I mean, the biggest thing that I noticed was people were actually interested in talking to me. It’s sad, but true. I will never forget the first time I showed up to a networking event with a different business card. I used to go—I mean, I had to attend networking events after hours, those types of things, probably three nights a week. You know, that was just part of my job description. So yeah, the bankers’ hours weren’t a real thing for me at that level.

John SmallMtn (20:22)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (20:30)

We opened at seven in the morning, and I was out at events till seven at night. Cold calling was part of my job and all of that stuff. So those were the things I did not like about banking.

But yeah, I remember I showed up to a networking event, because that’s how I knew to grow a business—to go out networking. That’s what I knew based on my experience. I show up, and I had these business cards for—I think I was just calling it outsourced business support at that point. Because like I said, it was 2009. The tech wasn’t there yet. People didn’t fully understand things, and I was still a little shady on even what I was offering, because I was sort of making it up as I went as far as what I supported.

I remember somebody went, “What’s that?”

And I was like, “Oh my gosh, you want to talk to me? I’m not even sure I have an answer for you.”

Because I was so used to people like me being like, “Yeah, I’m with such-and-such a bank,” and people just glazing over and being like, “That’s nice.” I was used to just asking tons of questions about them: “What do you do? What do you need?”

So that was a big difference in the conversations. Yes, I had to be a lot more prepared to talk about what I offered and what I could do for them.

John SmallMtn (21:34)

I love how you’re talking about that, because there’s as much room for it to be excited for the wrong reasons as it is to be that. Banking is a commodity, right? I’ve been in those meetings. “Oh, John, what do you do?” “Well, I work in banking.” They immediately check out.

Working at Chase, I was working there during the era of “work the lobby.” I don’t know if this is a concept you’re familiar with, but there was this one guy up in New York, and he hated cold calling. So he was successful with just jumping on people whenever they walked into the lobby, getting them over to the desk, and conferring. It was the whole motion whenever I was there, and I was so excited. I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is great.”

So I go through all the training, I get my licensing, and then I’m in the branch. I remember the first day, these people had been worked to death. This guy comes in, sees a new banker, and I’ve got my Chase tie on and everything. He just turns toward the teller line, gets on the line, and he’s like, “No, I don’t want to confirm my information.”

It was this earth-shattering moment of, “Man, I thought people were going to be so excited to talk to me.” No, this is more or less the same things that I’ve been dealing with being in retail sales, with people showing up and just wanting what they want.

I remember just feeling so stuck, right? Then we started to pile on the call nights to your point of cold calling people. I just remember being so excited because we were very close to a country club. So I was thinking, “Oh my gosh, this is going to be great. This is going to be so easy.”

Well, if you’re living in a country club, you obviously are a private client customer, and I’m not allowed to talk to you at all, right? So in my location, all we had were the business runners and the local community people that didn’t live at the country club. It was such a struggle.

Just that whole thing of, “You want to come over and talk about your online banking?” Their eyes just fog over. No one’s excited to talk about it, but you’re trying to be excited about it so that way you can try to get some of that energy into them.

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (23:50)

Yes! Or even trying to be excited about a quota of debit cards. I was like, “Is this really a thing?” So yes, it’s very different now when I feel like I have real solutions to offer. A debit card and online banking is not a real solution for somebody that needs it, right? It’s the idea of pushing those types of services that is like a painful reminder. It’s like PTSD for me.

John SmallMtn (24:18)

100%. Leaving that retail environment and going out on your own, I’m curious, just from a manner of work standpoint—because in retail, there’s always this thing of “be present, be available, don’t be too busy.” So that way, if there’s a question, or if someone says, “Hey, I need an account,” you can say, “Okay, cool, come on over and sit down.” You’re always being Johnny-on-the-spot.

We were talking in the pre-call about this idea of yours that I just love so much, because I struggled with this and then I got better about it. Can you talk about not being endlessly available?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (25:06)

Yeah! Again, this goes back to when I went full-time with my business, I had a six-month-old at home, right? A couple of months later, I was pregnant with number two. So my boys are 20 months apart. When I’m at my desk, I am either on the phone or working on a project. When I’m not at my desk, I am with my family, because I work from home. It is not ever a good time for me to answer a random phone call, especially when I have no idea how long this phone call is going to be or what it’s about.

Prior to banking, I was in actual retail in the mall. I was a manager of a store in the mall, so it was that “the customer is always right,” greeting them right at the door. It was that instant-need factor.

I was just like, “I am not doing that anymore.”

So I literally put in every single one of my contracts that I do not answer unscheduled phone calls. I’ve actually lost at least one client due to this, because they just wanted to be able to call me. I was like, “I’m sorry, that is never going to work for me.”

John SmallMtn (26:15)

Have you ever shown up as friction in delivery? Have you ever had that client who forgets once or twice?

It always felt forced to me whenever I was in retail to always be available. I remember I had this manager when I worked in wireless retail. He was never on the floor; he was always in the back, but he’d watch the camera. The phone would ring. He wouldn’t answer it, but he would look at the camera. If we didn’t answer within three rings, he would send an email from that back office and be like, “Hey, why are we not answering the phone?” It was so weird.

When I made the shift to invest myself in this, you always overcorrect whenever you’re in a season of change. So I was answering all the phone calls, I was responding to every email, and I was wasting and blowing so much time. Then, through sales coaching and performance training, I learned that your priorities are your priorities. It’s okay to focus on those priorities, because you can’t just be endlessly available.

I really had to unwind a lot of that retail thinking so that I could get there. Ultimately, now I am very tight-fisted with my time and who gets my actual cell phone number, because I know that I need my focus for certain parts of the work.

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (27:54)

Absolutely. The number of clients that have requested my cell phone number so that they can text me—”Email doesn’t really work for me. Can you text me?”

And I’m like, “I’m sorry, no.”

There are just certain lines of communication. If you want me to be able to keep track of what we’re actually doing, this is the line of communication: we have an online project management system, I have an email address that I’m happy to give you, and here’s my link so you can book an appointment with me anytime you want to talk on the phone. I mean, I make myself available, but it has to be through these channels. Otherwise, I could never manage it all.

I have had people before that, for one reason or another, get my cell phone number. They start texting me, and then I forget that they texted me. I’m like, “This is why you need to email me, because that’s where I look for stuff.” That’s why I have those lanes. Ain’t gonna happen.

John SmallMtn (28:59)

Boundaries matter. If you don’t set them, you’re going to run into them, someone’s going to be irritated, and it might cost you a relationship because you didn’t talk about it on the front end and align expectations.

I’ll get people on LinkedIn, and they’re like, “Okay, yeah, John, I’ve seen your stuff. This is pretty cool. Here’s my cell phone number, just call me whenever.”

No, I’m not calling you. Ain’t gonna happen. I’m pretty easy to get an appointment with. Let’s just have an appointment and have a conversation, because you’re just inviting me to probably call you at a really bad time.

We were also talking about this very interesting thing: hiring is always difficult to do. A lot of people tend to hire people that are similar to them in personality and working style, and sometimes that’s problematic. But we were talking about how in your business, you need creative people, but you also need really good technical people. How have you gotten better over the duration of running your company at knowing where it’s a technical spot versus a creative spot, and finding the right person to put into that seat?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (30:00)

Interview questions can be interesting when I’m going through the interview process. Creativity is harder to teach, right? Someone having an eye for design or creative factors is a little more innate in a person. That can come out just through conversation and trying to find out, “Give me some examples. Tell me what you would do about this problem.” Even in tech problem-solving, sometimes it requires creativity.

So that’s an even weirder hybrid right there. You have tech implementation on one side of things and having the aptitude for that, and then creativity is the other side of things. Then there are these places where they meld in weird ways.

With the tech side of things, as long as somebody has the ability to learn—and again, I usually ask certain questions like, “How would you find the answer to this?”—if they have the ability to learn, I feel like the tech side can often be taught, whereas the creative side is a little more of a personality trait.

That has been an interesting combination of things that we’ve learned over the years with different people. Something that I’ve noticed: if you are hiring someone that already has a specific skill set, obviously you can look for that, ask the right questions, and get their experience. There have been times where I’ve gone outside of that, where I have found people where, interestingly enough, the medical industry actually translates really well to marketing and technology.

John SmallMtn (31:43)

Really?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (31:45)

Yeah! It’s funny, because I found this out because I had a friend of mine that wanted to try it out for a couple hours in the evening. She had a full-time job as a nurse, and I was like, “Sure, what the heck, I’ll teach you.”

So I brought her on board and added her to the team. She was amazing. I was like, “How are you so good at this? This isn’t your thing. You didn’t go to school for business, you know nothing about marketing. Everything you know, I taught you.”

Okay, I’ll toot my own horn—maybe I’m an amazing teacher! But she was really good at it.

She’s like, “Well, it’s all about intuition and understanding people.”

She goes, “In my day job, I’m looking at people’s charts, and I’m like, ‘Oh, Mrs. Smith, your sodium spiked today. Okay, let’s look at it. What did you have for dinner last night?’ ‘Chinese food. We ordered out Chinese food.’ ‘Oh, that’s nice. Okay, that explains your sodium spike. Go throw out the leftovers.'”

And Mrs. Smith goes, “How did you know?”

It’s like, because everybody has leftovers with Chinese food, and I don’t want to see this spike tomorrow. That’s the type of intuition that people in the medical field have that describes buyer behavior when you think about it. How they can actually think about, “This image will resonate with this person and here’s why,” or “This message will resonate with this person and here’s why”—they know people.

John SmallMtn (33:04)

I spent some time in the medical field; that was my first field sales role, selling spinal implants and screws to surgeons. I ran screaming from that space, because I was seeing mostly a lack of intuition and care.

I like that idea of having incomplete information, but you have some information, and you must be able to connect with this other person to see if it’s true and valid. Holy smokes, that’s such a sales thing! Because you might have the lead form, or you might have them on your ICP list, but if you’re not really open to what they might be going through, we overshoot the mark a lot. That is fascinating.

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (33:53)

In medicine today, there’s a lot of technology and application for that, too. So again, you get that aptitude piece—the foresight and all of that stuff. I’ve actually had a couple people work for me now that have had medical backgrounds, and it’s worked out pretty well.

John SmallMtn (34:15)

That’s amazing. Have you had to move anybody from a creative seat into a more technical seat because they were thinking they were going to be creative, or that once they got the job it was going to open up creativity? Have you had to make any kind of forced moves because they weren’t aware enough, and maybe you didn’t see it before?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (34:46)

Yes, maybe not specifically like you’re saying, but for different things, for sure. People that I thought were going to be really great team leaders ended up working better on solo projects where we had to ship things. People where graphic design on print would connect better, but they really were bad at video. We’d have to take certain tasks away—I hate to say take certain tasks away, but it is kind of like that—and just have those conversations around, “Hey, you’re really great at X, let’s keep you there. Let me give you more of that.”

John SmallMtn (35:21)

Absolutely. On the pre-call, one of the things you were talking about was leaning into the team in a very meaningful way. You shared a little bit about how one of your best years was actually a year that you were out a lot because of an illness.

Can we talk a little bit about that? Because it’s in all the books: “I didn’t think it could run without me, and then I had to take a step away.” You weren’t going on a mini-retirement or a vacation; you had an illness that took you out of pocket. Can we talk a little bit about that?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (36:13)

Yeah, of course. Very early in 2023—January 2023—I was diagnosed with stage one breast cancer. I went through all the diagnostics and found out it could have been so much worse. So I feel very fortunate that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it was still a thing to deal with. There were still surgeries, and I did do radiation. That was the whole first quarter of 2023.

I was lucky to be able to work part-time. If you looked at the years prior, typically—I would say in 2021—I was probably doing close to 50% of our billable hours, which is really not where any founder should be, right? It’s not where anybody that’s also doing business development and sales should be.

By 2022, I actually had a really good team in place. My team is small, so each person is critical. If they’re not pulling their weight, it makes a big impact on everybody else, especially me. In 2022, I was fortunate to have some really great people in place. Those skill sets of tech and creativity were awesome. They were able to really own the clients as their own, and I didn’t have to micromanage a whole lot. So we were really getting into a good groove, which was good for me based on what was coming forward.

Beginning of 2023, I get diagnosed, and I really had to step back. Everybody on my team just took two steps forward, basically, and filled in those gaps. I told the clients that needed to know. I eventually ended up pretty much telling everybody. But anything like this that carries the risk of us having to pull back on our business can often feel really scary to share.

Even when I was pregnant, I think I waited until a month before I was ready to deliver before I told anyone. I was like, “Hey, I’m going to be taking some time off.”

And they’re like, “What’s going on?”

I’m like, “I’m having a baby.”

John SmallMtn (38:19)

And they’re like, “In nine months?” And you’re like, “No, in about five weeks.”

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (38:24)

Yeah, exactly! Right. I think they were always just in shock: “I had no idea. How have you been working so much?”

And I’m like, “I’m just that good.”

This was kind of similar: I waited until the last minute. I actually waited until after surgery. Then I got to this point—and if anybody’s ever been through radiation, it’s a daily process for an entire month. For me, I live in rural Maine, and that is an hour drive each way to appointments. That involves all kinds of other stuff, plus all the unknowns that can come along with medical treatments.

So I just knew I was going to have to step back. I told the people that I was meeting with regularly, “Look, I’ve had this thing, I’m dealing with this.” They were all super supportive. Like I said, I took three steps back, my team all took two steps forward, and I ended up having the best revenue year in the history of the company.

John SmallMtn (39:21)

That’s amazing. I love that.

I’m curious, though, because being driven enough to go out on your own, prioritizing goals, and having goals… The way that you talk about it now is that you caught it early, and it could have been so much worse. But there is a little bit of a control freak in most founders.

So when you first heard the news, were you mad that it was going to impact your goals? Did you have any kind of weird holding it in? Not so much like, “I’m fearful for my life,” but this weird little pocket of, “Man, this means I’m not going to hit my goals. What does that mean?” Did you have anything like that?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (40:09)

I think we have that feeling for anything that happens in our lives, right? You have a car accident and you’re like, “I don’t have time for this this week.”

John SmallMtn (40:16)

Exactly, yeah.

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (40:16)

Right? Anything that comes up—even your car being in the shop. So my instant reaction was definitely like, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

There are all the emotions: “What did I do wrong? How am I going to tell my kids?” There’s all the things, and no matter what stage it is, there is always that thought of, “Okay, what is my life expectancy on this? Shoot, I didn’t get life insurance in time. We need to set up an estate plan.” There are all kinds of emotions and things that come out of something that big.

Again, even a bad car accident could have a similar impact on someone’s psyche of, “Okay, if something happened to me tomorrow, I don’t have everything in order.” So I definitely went through all of those emotions, all of those steps. There are still some things that I’m putting off that I probably shouldn’t be.

But yes, there was a sense of, “I had plans for this year and darn it, life just threw me a curveball.” But there was also a sense of knowing, “Okay, this is one year. I am committing to beating this thing. This is the year and we’re going to be done with it, and 2024, this is not going to be on the calendar.”

John SmallMtn (41:36)

Wow. I mean, Obstacle Is the Way, right? One of my favorite books, and that’s essentially it. When something shows up that’s between you and the goal, you attack it with the same ferocity that you do your regular goals. I love that.

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (41:48)

Right. Actually, I will say, when I found out I was going to have to have radiation and treatments, I was like, “Okay, so it’s got to be done before summer, because I’m wearing a bathing suit and I’m sitting on the beach.” So yes, just different goals.

John SmallMtn (42:03)

I love that. When you first got your diagnosis, I’m curious if you were able to go into that mode automatically of, “Okay, we’re just going to focus in and we’re going to beat this thing and be done with it.” Or was it like, “You know what? I’m not going to tell anybody, I’m just going to try to work through this”? How were you holding it?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (42:25)

I wish I could say that’s how I responded. I really do, because it probably would have been a lot more gracious than what I actually did. I’m a talker, surprise, surprise. So I probably have a hard time keeping anything secret.

I think an hour after the doctor’s appointment, my kid’s teacher called me, and I was like, “Yeah, I can’t talk about this right now, I just found out I have cancer.”

He was like, “What?”

And I was like, “Yeah.”

So no, I was not good at keeping it to myself. I think within a week I had told all the important people in my life. I’m very fortunate; in 2021, my family and I moved. We were about an hour and a half away from most of my family, and now I live two houses down from my mother. So again, just kismet stuff lining up kind of thing. In 2021 we moved, and then I needed to be close to family quite honestly for all of this when all of this was happening.

I remember walking down to my mother’s house several times, and sometimes we would sit and cry, sometimes we would yell, and sometimes we would… It was a process, for sure. But I talked about it a lot. I wasn’t screaming about it on social media—you won’t see anything about it on my Facebook page or anything like that. But anytime somebody had a question, I had no problem telling them what I learned.

I also went deep into research mode, which again, after talking to me for about five minutes, is probably a huge shocker. But yes, I went deep into research mode. Totally overwhelmed myself, which I think is also another common mistake with any big thing that happens in our lives. Mean, again, you get pregnant: how many books do you read? How many things do you collect? How many websites do you research, right? So I did all that stuff.

John SmallMtn (44:32)

Did you feel any resistance about telling the people on your team or asking them if they could step up? Would they step up? Did you feel any resistance toward having that conversation with this team that you were putting time into and really trying to perfect?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (44:55)

No, I had no resistance or hesitation at all. Actually, they knew what I was going through before the diagnosis. Before the diagnosis, there’s a biopsy, a this and that, and several appointments before.

We have a weekly team meeting, and as I was going through it, we usually have a little check-in at the beginning. I was like, “I have doctor’s appointments. I hate going to the doctor. I haven’t been to the doctor in 10 years, maybe that’s part of the problem.” And I was like, “This is what’s happening.”

I remember one or two people on my team were like, “Yeah, I went through that a couple of years ago, it’ll be fine.” The statistical likelihood of me actually having the diagnosis I had was about 2%. It was ridiculously low. So we were all just like, “Okay, I’m just talking about this because it’s something that’s happening, and it’s going to all be water under the bridge.”

When I came back to that next meeting, I was like, “Yeah, not water under the bridge. We have a storm to deal with this year.”

They were just like, “Wow, oh my gosh.” And they rallied. They totally rallied behind me. They were amazing. I got so many emails.

I had a contractor at that time—not even an employee, a contractor that had been working with me for over 10 years. She remembered back when I was pregnant with my kids, right? I remember her sending me this message just saying, “You’re one of the strongest women I know. You’re going to go through this with such grace, and you’re going to be so amazing on the other side of this. I can’t wait to hear your testimony about this.”

This might make me a little emotional, yeah.

John SmallMtn (46:32)

One of my favorite lines around business is that everything is always twice as long as you think and double the cost. So did you hit the goal of knocking it all out in that one year and having it completely off the calendar, or did it bleed over into the next year?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (46:54)

Monitoring is basically for the rest of my life, so that doesn’t count. I won’t count that. But yes, I finished all treatments before summer.

John SmallMtn (46:58)

Wow, that’s amazing. Coming out of that, being the driver and this being your baby, coming back and seeing that revenue was up and that it was running pretty well without you, did you have any head trash or limiting beliefs coming back into it that you needed to re-prove yourself, that you needed to scale the mountain and get to this next level of performance, or any of that stuff?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (47:35)

Interesting question. I actually did not. I think I came back in like, “Okay, well now that I have this extra time, what’s next?” That was more my mentality.

That being said, my team did get a little stressed out during that time. They did burn out a little bit. As I came back in, they probably took one step back because they had been a little overwhelmed. Of course, I wasn’t going to have a problem with that, they had been so amazing.

Then two of my four key players ended up getting amazing opportunities elsewhere, and I lost them in the same week. One of them with lots of notice, and one of them was just split. They tried so hard to work with me and not have it be the same week and all this stuff, but we did this whole 180 as a team after that at the end of 2023.

John SmallMtn (48:45)

In that mode, you have two key people leaving, and you’re coming back into the pocket and everything. I think one of the coolest things you can do as a leader is show abundance whenever someone has a really cool opportunity and you can see it as a great thing for them. Having been in sales and having some success, I moved around a lot. Sometimes it was like, “You’re leaving,” and then I’ve also had a couple of really great managers and bosses who were like, “Okay, what do you need?”

How did you show up in that mode with all of that potential stress around you and trying to get back in the pocket? Were you able to show that abundance, or was it kind of like, “Now’s not the time, I wish this wasn’t happening right now”?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (49:39)

Quietly on the backside, I probably felt like the latter! But I tried to show up for my team in that way. I can recall the conversation: there was one woman working for me full-time who was getting ready to have a baby, and she decided she just couldn’t do it all anymore. She needed to move to be closer to family—all the stuff that I could relate to. In some ways, I was like, “But this is the perfect job for a stay-at-home mom! We should try to work this out.”

So she did. She went down to working just two hours a week to see if she could make it work, and I was grateful for whatever she would give me. Eventually, she did end up being done.

The other woman—and this one was more of a quicker transition—hadn’t been with me quite as long. She reached out and actually called me, and I was like, “It’s never good when she calls me.”

So I answered the phone, and she’s like, “All right, so I have some news.”

I was like, “Okay.”

She’s like her church had offered her a position as a director with full benefits and all the stuff.

I’m just like, “That’s amazing, that is so awesome!”

She just stopped and goes, “Really?”

And I was like, “Yes! When do you start? Please tell me you’ll give me at least two weeks.”

She was like, “I can’t believe that’s your response. I’ve never had that response when I’ve given my notice before.”

So based on that reaction, I would say I was hopefully gracious about the whole transition.

John SmallMtn (51:04)

I love that. The person I’m thinking about who showed up in that way for me is the person that I was not expecting to. It came after lots of other interactions where people were frustrated because it meant that they were going to have to replace me, or they were going to have to carry some load on their own. So that always stands out to me as an example that I try to follow if I’m working with someone and they get an opportunity to go do something else.

Shifting the conversation a little bit, just because I really want to respect your time, I’m going to move into some of the repeating questions I have for people on here to try to help out founders who are new or on the path.

When you’re thinking about automation and AI and all of these things, and you’re talking to a brand-new founder, what advice would you give them so that way they don’t overshoot the mark and don’t try to automate from the lab, so they can do it the right way?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (52:20)

I think it’s a combination of learning and execution. You need to take the time to—even if it’s just micro-learning in the morning with your coffee—take the time to watch the videos and learn from others’ mistakes and successes before you jump in headfirst.

Don’t be hesitant to jump in, but right now things are moving so fast that sometimes you don’t need to jump in the day you hear about it. Hear about something, learn about it, give yourself a couple of days, and don’t feel like you’re behind the mark.

John SmallMtn (52:51)

I love that. It’s just too easy to play a bad comparison game, especially with social media and some of these networking communities. A huge thing that I have to think about is: don’t compare my first step to someone else’s thousandth step, right? Really approach it the way I need to approach it. Love that.

Next one: what is a piece of business advice that you can now appreciate, but you had to learn the hard way?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (53:31)

It might be almost similar: it’s okay to grow slow. It takes money to make money, and sometimes that can force a little bit of slow growth. Just this year, we launched a new system that we’re now offering called Marketecs Engine.

It was December 15th—a couple of days ago—and I get this alert from Stripe that I owe VAT tax in multiple countries. I don’t even know what VAT tax is at this point, and I’ve got two weeks to figure this out. Now, it was incorrect, which is part of the reason I didn’t really know about it, but what I was thankful for was that, at that point, according to them, I only had like $2,000 in these international sales.

Man, if I had gone gangbusters and grown this thing to a million dollars in the first year—or whatever the hype number is these days—think about what I could have owed in taxes or the mistakes I could have made by growing too fast. When we compare our step two to somebody else’s step 10, it’s so easy to do when you’re starting a new business to be like, “Why aren’t I making six figures in six weeks?”

When I first started, I was like, “I’m a failure.” Now I look at it like, “No, it’s not a failure. It’s respectable growth, it’s consistent growth, it’s growth that’s actually maintainable.”

John SmallMtn (55:00)

I love that. We didn’t really talk about this on the pre-call, so this is a bit of a surprise for you, but I’m curious if there is a piece of business advice that is not helpful in the marketing agency lane, but is a good piece of entrepreneurial founder advice. Or maybe there’s a thing that doesn’t make sense for any other type of founder or entrepreneur that marketing agency founders need to be thinking about.

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (55:42)

I kind of go two different ways with this question, because one of the questions you asked me prior was about unpopular ideas. I think about one of my pieces of advice to people about marketing, and I guess this could go into what I would tell marketing agencies:

I don’t recommend startups spend a ton of money on their branding website and their marketing. I believe more in bootstrapping, because I think 90% of businesses will change all of that within the first three years. If that’s my advice to business owners, then my advice to marketing agencies would be to be careful when recommending huge packages to startups. Just because they have the money doesn’t mean that’s what they should be doing. You could be burning your bridges and burning your relationships. You could be that agency that somebody comes to me after, complaining, “Yeah, they took $20,000 of my money and blah, blah, blah.” Really understand relationship building.

John SmallMtn (56:48)

I love that. Don’t shoot for the moon just because you think that you can. Don’t get too excited that they’ve got a big bucket of budget that they’re excited to pour into this thing. Stay the course, do the right thing.

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (57:05)

Yeah, because the more you really focus on what they really need versus just what they can afford, the better that relationship is going to be. That’s why I have clients for 10 years, you know?

John SmallMtn (57:10)

Yeah, for sure. Last question, Kathrine, and then I’ll let you get on with your day. Once again, really appreciate you coming on. You’ve been in this space for a long time, and you work in arguably a space that is very misunderstood: automations, process creation, and things like that. With everything that you’ve seen and all the changes that have come, what would be your advice to someone who’s starting up day one as a founder today?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (57:45)

A founder of any business? Test your concepts before you put a ton of effort into them. The old elevator speech adage where you’re supposed to try 10 of them and see which one lands, right? Before you print your business cards, before you put your website out, go out and just talk to people about your idea.

Today, with “speed to lead” and “speed to launch,” it can feel a little scary to do that, because if you put your idea out there, you’re risking somebody else copying it. So there is a fine line there.

I’m actually working on something new right now that I’ve been working on for a couple of weeks. By the time this comes out, it will already be live, so I think I can talk about it. I’ve been building an AI clone of myself, but I built it in two ways: I built a realistic version, and then I built the evil version.

John SmallMtn (58:44)

My questions have questions! Can you talk a little bit more about the differences between these two?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (58:58)

Sure! Basically, it’s going to be so that I can turn out more YouTube videos without always having to get in front of a camera. I can give a script to my AI clone and build out videos to do more content creation. It’s still my ideas, it’s just not me having to film, which sometimes can take extra time. It means my team could now make videos of me to put on YouTube, taking me out of the mix if I’m comfortable with the people doing the content creation. So there’s that.

Now, the evil twin idea is because I’m looking for something that will be entertainment value as I build my YouTube channel. I’ve got tutorials, I’m talking about tech, I’m talking about marketing, but recently I’ve had a couple people come at me with some terrible marketing ideas or strategies. I’ll put something out there on Facebook, and I’ll get a lot of comments like, “Oh my gosh, yeah, somebody did that to me and it’s so bad.”

So I’m doing something with this: I have made an evil, unethical marketer who is going to have YouTube videos of what not to do.

John SmallMtn (1:00:11)

I can’t wait for that! Please send me some links as soon as that thing is live, because I can’t wait to go check it out.

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (1:00:30)

By me talking about it now, I risk somebody copying me before I get it out there, right? But this is a new idea. The more you talk about it and gauge people’s reactions, you get to see: is it a good idea? You have to gauge that a little bit. I love your reaction to this, and that’s been a similar reaction to everybody so far. So we’ll see when it actually goes live if it does what I think it’s going to do. That’s kicking off in January.

John SmallMtn (1:00:54)

That is awesome. Please send me a link to that as soon as it is live, I can’t wait to check that out.

Kathrine, I really appreciate you coming on and being so open, honest, and transparent about it. The founder’s path is difficult. There’s a lot of shiny stuff, a lot of opportunities to get stuck, and a lot of opportunities to maroon yourself in solitude and not have any community or ways of getting help. So I really appreciate you coming on here. If people want to learn more about what you’re working on, or if they want to check you out on YouTube and everything else like that, where’s the easiest place to connect with you?

Kathrine Farris | Marketecs (1:01:48)

Marketecs.com is our website—you’re going to find pretty much everything there. On YouTube, it is Marketecs as well. Thank you for having me, this was fun!

John SmallMtn (1:01:57)

Awesome. All right, Kathrine, thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it. I really think this is going to help some people out. I really appreciate you coming in and laying it all out. Have a great day. Cheers!