Melissa Rosenthal, Co-Founder at Outlever: Disrupting Marketing, Leadership, and Building Outlever

Joe Martin: Hey I am really excited to have Melissa with me today. Melissa and I go way back in connect for a long time. She has such a great career journey and I’m really excited to chat with her today, learn about her latest venture and also just a few other things she’s worked on in the past. And I think it’ll be a really great insight into building a company and just kind of like building yourself and…

Joe Martin: connecting with Melissa, thanks for joining inside the workflow today.

Melissa Rosenthal: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Melissa Rosenthal: Excited to be here.

Joe Martin: So I want to just start out, with your history.

Joe Martin: you’ve got a great path and pedigree and obviously I want you to talk about out lever a little bit in your latest venture but tell us about your moves from we first connected when you were at Cheddar and I was at Adobe and then Buzzrout ClickUp tell us kind of how you started those things and any pivotal moments that kind of shaped your path or made you realize you wanted to do something different or where you’re kind of at  Now,

Melissa Rosenthal: me throughout everything I’ve done. So, what got me into marketing wasn’t just a need to be a marketer. It was really a need to disrupt and change the status quo and challenge. and that’s why I joined BuzzFeed early on. I just believed in the vision of disruption of digital publishers and the fact that, a linear method of distribution wasn’t going to be the future of how content and, social and things were shared forever. when I started at BuzzFeed, it was basically like you either go to a website you go to a magazine stand or you have a newspaper delivered to your door. distribution was completely linear. And obviously we are very far from that now. But back then that was really it. And advertising was not social, it wasn’t content, it was just static banner ads. And I just believe that the future was probably brighter than that and had a lot more to offer.

Melissa Rosenthal: and I wanted to be leading on the cusp of whatever that change was. And I’ve kind of just followed that journey throughout everything. at Cheddar, I went to Cheddar because I believed in the fact that people would cut the cord with cable, which again now like I say that and it’s like, of course, who has a cable subscription? But that was a huge bet. one had cut the cord with cable. Stream people weren’t, subscribed to 10 different streaming services and none of the ones that we have today really existed back then.  So, I say the things that now seem very obvious, but when I took the bet on them, they weren’t at all. and I always like to be kind of ahead of that and take that bet on the things I believe in. And it’s really led me in to every next chapter that I’ve been in.

Joe Martin: I’ve definitely respected you going on those different paths and I think it’s great when it works out right in that you’ve been able to learn some really cool stuff I think back on I happen to be at Adobe when they were moving from selling box products to SAS and that was just such a journey fits in line with Buzzfeed was such a first mover and digital content creation and SEO  and those types of things. I’m sure it’s been really great and inspired, a lot of what you’re doing now.

Melissa Rosenthal: Yeah, absolutely. and it is always great when at least it works out to a point, I mean, I think everything has a window in time in which it can thrive and, obviously the future exists on where it’s headed next and it leaves some of those pieces in its dust and things evolve and obviously Cheddar isn’t what it was when I was there and same thing with BuzzFeed, which is now, not doing very well. But, I think being on the cusp when it is the future of what it should be is really where I am, where I see myself best.

Joe Martin: infrastructure of a big tech company growing fast.

Melissa Rosenthal: Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Martin: How has that kind of helped you transition to what you’re doing now?

Melissa Rosenthal: I mean, I feel like I’ve also always tried to be a very well-rounded individual in craft and I think when at Cheddar I was running sales for the maj majority of it and the real realization there was I don’t know if I’m as wellrounded as I think I am as just a marketer purely marketing and I wanted to be on the sales side of it and I think doing that and then sort of having the experience in marketing and sales on the consumer side and then going over to SAS

00:05:00

Melissa Rosenthal: just kind of made me dangerous in a way that I needed to ever be out on my own. I definitely believed in the fact that SAS was the future of where a lot of innovation was headed and I knew I needed to be a part of it but I think you only know in hindsight how much it really impacted everything about or every reason why I am where I am today. It’s is because I learned it from ClickUp. just having that understanding of growing a SAS company to series C and what that entails and the infrastructure and how you have to build it out and product growth and just a million things I had no idea about. being kind of thrown into the driver’s seat of that so fast and…

Melissa Rosenthal: and having to learn so quickly and build that. yeah, I couldn’t obviously do what I’m doing today without my knowledge and the skills and just the experience that I had at ClickUp.

Joe Martin: I love that you said that…

Joe Martin: because I think looking back on my own career and we’re in similar parts of our journeys but I think I would suggest that to a lot of kids coming up is hey spend some time that is good, right? But how complex operations are. See how you have to work with lots of different teams and then take that and start your own thing right eventually or…

Joe Martin: go to a startup and you have all this wealth of knowledge. I think it’s such a really cool thing to learn from. Sure.

Melissa Rosenthal: Yeah. or…

Melissa Rosenthal: or the reverse honestly or just go to a startup and learn it from the ground up and go to a company where you have to wear a thousand hats because there isn’t that infra There isn’t that bureaucracy and there isn’t that we’ve done it this way. So you just have to figure everything else out for yourself. I think I entered into the perfect SAS company at the perfect time because my lack of knowledge of SAS was actually really good because I never had a playbook to go back to and our founders weren’t SAS veterans either. they had started companies but not in SAS and they weren’t, beholden to this Silicon Valley SAS playbook.

Melissa Rosenthal: And I think that made for the perfect environment for me to be able to, flex my own skills and learn and also just kind of steer the ship in a direction where I probably wouldn’t have had that opportunity had it been a larger company with more experienced veterans from, titans of industry, Yeah, I mean it’s unparalleled focus on the three core principles that matter within every company,

Joe Martin: founding this company, there’s a million things to do. you’ve worn a lot of different hats, worked with a lot of different teams. How do you stay focused, ensure you’re driving the results that actually matter, and really growing from the ground up?

Melissa Rosenthal: it’s growth and  it’s customer happiness and satisfaction and it’s data and making sure the motion actually works. And I think the obsession on these three things, you can’t really deviate much from them. and I think if everything points back to those three things and you can direct your team to just ruthlessly focus on those priorities, you’re going to be in a good spot. So, I think there might be a little bit of and there is a reason we didn’t take money.  So, we were self-funded and there’s a couple reasons we did that. One, I don’t know if I believe in that model anymore that much. I think I do for specific types of companies and for companies where you have to disrupt a billion dollar category and that’s what you’re trying to do, or multi-billion dollar category, you have to raise money.

Melissa Rosenthal: But for us, there’s an opportunity for us to be able to really focus and…

Joe Martin: Yeah. Sure.

Melissa Rosenthal: prioritize and make sure we’re thinking about things correctly. And I think the constraints of being self-funded actually allow us to do that better. the creativity that we have to have to be able to grow and build this. And I mean, it’s really interesting. we see companies raising $50 million that are doing less than 1% of what we’re doing, which is exciting.  I think it’s also intimidating for sure, but I think it makes us be a little bit more creative with what we have to do. So, yeah, there’s definitely a kind of ruthless prioritization. I think the lack of external funding makes us have that even more where we have to stay focused on these three kind of core pillars and tenants of our company. And if these are working like we will succeed.

Melissa Rosenthal: So it really just comes down to you have to redirect people a lot because their thinking can be really great but their thinking too far kind of outside the scope of …

00:10:00

Melissa Rosenthal: what actually matters. and it’s normal people get excited but it’s like we have to if nothing else matters if these things don’t work.

Joe Martin: I love that.

Joe Martin: So, yeah, have the big goal in the distance, but you’ve got to come up with the process to actually get there. what is kind of your workflow habit you’ve implemented thats had a big impact on productivity or…

Joe Martin: really hey by end of the year we want to have this here’s what we need to do each month to get

Joe Martin: There.

Melissa Rosenthal: Yeah, that’s a great question.

Melissa Rosenthal: A project management I will shout out ClickUp again it keeps us completely organized. It gives us our goals, our tasks daily, weekly, monthly. it’s definitely like the organization of that is very important to be able to follow and then have other people understand what’s important and core. but in terms of just workflow, it’s me and my co-founder and I think we’re a team of six now. So, it’s four other people that are full-time and then we have a team of freelancers and journalists that work with us as well.  But, I am sales and marketing and I have my mandates and I have my workflow and I have exactly what I focus on and It’s just me and then the rest of the team is tech and editorial and the tech team they know what the mandate is at any given time. there is just we have to build this by end of month.

Melissa Rosenthal: we have hard deadlines, hard dates, and I think it’s such a small, lean team that there’s not a lot of blo there’s not a lot of people sitting around wondering what they need to do. again I think it’s a function of we didn’t overhire because we can’t overhire and we’re hiring because we know exactly what we need to build and who we need to build it with.  And I think that just keeps us ultimately focused. I think there’s not an issue with a lack of focus. I think the biggest challenge for us is that there’s a lot there’s a lot of exciting pieces of our product. And I think we’ve realized maybe less than 10% of the entire vision of it. But that 10% will allow us to do whatever we want. But it’s hard not to get distracted when there’s a lot of things you can build.

Melissa Rosenthal: the other thing I’ll say is, I don’t know, this is hard to say because it sucks, but you can’t build for one customer. And, I think you can kind of get into the trap of you have a customer that’s very needy or they want you to build in a different way or they have different needs. And the real reality is 99% of your other customer base, they don’t need what they need. And you kind of get to a point where you kind of have to fire, your customers at some point because it doesn’t allow for scale.  it doesn’t allow for the vision to be fully realized if that’s the one customer that’s kind of holding you down, holding you back. So, I think it’s understanding where the ball is going and kind of, skating to that puck and understanding that and cutting where you need to and making decisions fast and making them quick and just having an understanding.

Melissa Rosenthal: But yeah, I’ve always heard that too and we experienced at ClickUp as well sometimes you’ll have this big bohemoth of a customer come in and they’ll say hey they’ll dangle the 5,000 seat number in front of you and they’re like if you just build these 10 different things for us we’ll sign on and that’s like a lot of ARR and everyone gets kind of swept up in this my god what does that mean for our company and our business and we have to refocus and prioritize all of our end resources on this one customer because that’s going to set the precedent for our entire enterprise business or so on, right? And just always the wrong move.

Melissa Rosenthal: It’s always the wrong move. And I think we’re seeing it less than that, but we see it a little bit. And we’ve made a lot of conscious decisions to not go down that path because I just see how it ends every time. Just doesn’t work. Yeah.

Joe Martin: I love that you brought up not being a custom dev shop.

Joe Martin: early in a startup I feel especially early on I mean pretty much always but for sure there’s always that customer that comes in as a lead they love it and they have 10 requests and you suddenly aren’t able to actually help your other customers and your resources are focused on someone who may or may not actually join you.

Joe Martin: Can you share a time when you face a bottleneck in the process?

Melissa Rosenthal: And in reality, 99% of your customers don’t want that feature, but one does. And you have to prioritize. It’s a ruthless prioritization. It’s like which path are you going to pick?

00:15:00

Joe Martin: So, I mean, it sounds like you’ve created a really great workflow. you have tools to help you with productivity. What do you do when you kind of hit some friction?

Melissa Rosenthal: Yeah, friction happens every day. And I think this will be an unpopular one as well. I think that we’ve tried to solve things with humans sometimes that AI is actually the answer for. And we’ve thought against it a lot because we want to believe that there’s a human touch that is needed in certain areas where the reality is that that’s not true anymore. and I think sometimes you’re fighting against this the thing that really is what actually makes sense for scalability for long term because you don’t want to believe that that’s the answer. But I think sometimes you just have to lean into it. And if you fight something 10 different ways and it still doesn’t work, …

Joe Martin: Yep.

Melissa Rosenthal: I think you lead yourself into the answer.  So, I think it’s basically like you got to be flexible enough to have put work into something and completely pivot and think about it a completely different way and do that three or four times and if you’re still hitting bottlenecks, maybe that’s not the answer at all. and I think the ability to throw thinking out completely is the most freeing and it’s the most freeing and beneficial thing that you can do in a company. which really you get emotionally tied to things. It’s hard. You put a lot of work into them. You put a lot of manh hours and equity into them and sweat equity into them.

Melissa Rosenthal: to be able to throw something out and say scrap that month of work because we figured out a new way and a better way to do something is really the way that you need to think about it as a startup,…

Melissa Rosenthal: a lean startup specifically.

Joe Martin: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Joe Martin: I love that you brought that up and I think it’s really important to just understand that you said it happens every day which is so true. and…

Joe Martin: when you run into those things, what do you think you’ve got a team of six now, or a company of six, what do you think makes a great leader, either in a fast-paced, high growth company like you’ve been at or when you’re starting things up and really people are looking at you as the visionary and how do you kind of navigate those things?

Melissa Rosenthal: directness, transparency,…

Melissa Rosenthal: quick decision-making, explanation of decision-m but not over justification. I think there’s just b*******, no bureaucracy, no politics. We make decisions that make sense that are logical because that’s sort of where we see it going. and I think that communication down to the team of why the decisions are being made the way they are and sort of that high up like this is how you work with me and how I work and how I think just breeds a kind of a healthy healthy culture, way of working, a healthy team camaraderie, a healthy view into the future.

Melissa Rosenthal: I think it’s, highest level is how we view the future and what that looks like and why we’re doing what we do and what the motion is and how we believe in it and then, how we work too, like layer that down how my co-founder thinks. So, we’re different people. We have different working styles. We have different communication styles. And I think for our team that’s important for them to understand we’re different people. and this is how we work collectively and how we work separately. And then the third is just communication and over being overly transparent about hey we’re scrapping this because of X Y and Z. This is how we’re moving in the direction. I think the worst thing that happens is sometimes I mean I’ve seen it mostly at VC funded companies…

Joe Martin: Yep.

Melissa Rosenthal: but you see a lot of pivots made very fast where there’s no communication or transparency down to the layers of the people that are actually executing that.  And that breeds just a ton of frustration. And a lot of times like those are coming so high up they’re coming from the investors. They’re not even coming from the executives. So you’re getting layers and layers of decisions that are then going down to the people that are executing and then it’s changing every day. And that just breeds to frustration, poor morale, but when it’s, us making the decisions and there’s very straightforward of why we’re making them and we communicate them directly to our team, there’s less of that.

Melissa Rosenthal: But, we’re also not beholden to investors, impulsively pulling strings based on,…

Melissa Rosenthal: a month of data. So, I think it’s just a lot simpler when you don’t have a board behind you. not that we won’t ever have a board, it’s just right now we’re able to make decisions based on what we’re seeing and kind of really quickly.

00:20:00

Joe Martin: So I’d love to dig in on that a teeny bit.

Joe Martin: So what is let’s say you become a company. every thousand person company or larger wants to pretend they’re a startup, it’s a really fun time. you’re all working together all day. You’ve got some really clear goals. how do you think about keeping this culture that you have now with six people and…

Joe Martin: keeping that collaboration going as the company grows and scaling the culture with the growth of the company?

Melissa Rosenthal: Two things.

Melissa Rosenthal: One, if we become a thousand person company, we should never become a thousand person company. I think we can max out at 30 people. there this company should never be more than 30 people.  And that’s because of basically AI and ML and everything that we have now available to us is I mean 5 years ago I would say yeah we need to be more than a thousand people but we don’t anymore. And I think that’s just the reality of it. So if we ever get past that we lose because the model wouldn’t work. but the reality is just scaling culture is it comes down to who do you hire? I don’t

Melissa Rosenthal: I mean, I think hiring is the most important thing that you can do. you either hire people that add to your culture or additive and are net positive detractors, right? And I think if you hire the right type of people that are all in it for the right reasons, then there’s belief and there’s passion and…

Joe Martin: Yep.

Melissa Rosenthal: there’s growth and there’s that growth mentality of people that just want to learn and get better and build and be on the cusp of what the future is, you have that there. and then you can continue doing what you’re doing as a leader.  I think that works but I think hiring is just the single most important thing that you could do and it’s hire fast fire fast really I think people are hire slowly fire fast but I think the reality is when it’s right and when it’s not right and I think waiting to make those decisions just delays it for both the person where it’s not a good fit for them and it’s not a good fit for you and it’s just better to

Melissa Rosenthal: to kind of cut it when it’s not working. and I think, we’ve made our mistakes and we’ve learned a lot in the past year that we’ve been building this. And I think that it’s really all about Comes down to getting the right people in the right seats and getting the right mentalities and the right people and mindsets. I think, people are at a big crossroads with their own work, and you see a lot of people that are hungry for jobs.

Melissa Rosenthal: and hungry for work and I’ve interviewed a ton of people. And listen, we’re like people that are open to work, different industries, backgrounds. I actually don’t care about resumes at all. I care a lot more about how does that person think and How do they think about go to market? How do they think about what they’re interested in? where they collide and what they’ve experienced. I care much more about that than a resume.  But along a lot of job interviews you find a lot of people that are just so hungry to find a job that they’re not talking enough about their unique viewpoints. and I think that’s really like where we hire people that are special that believe in see the world that we see the way that we see it.

Melissa Rosenthal: But my advice would be think a little bit about where you stand on things because everything is changing and it’s a very exciting time and if you see the future the unique way that a lot of other companies do, you’ll land a job. But, we see a lot of people in market that are just so hungry for something that they don’t stand for anything. which is, …

Melissa Rosenthal: it’s an interesting time to be hiring.

Joe Martin: And …

Joe Martin: you brought up AI.

Joe Martin: We’re definitely in a contraction piece of tech where things got really fat with remote work and COVID and forcing these new functions. what are some other ways you mentioned AI, which can be a part of the answer, too, but what are some other ways you’re seeing companies, you’ve got a lot of experience in media and tech and all that, but what are some other ways pe companies are evaluating their strategies and future growth?

Melissa Rosenthal: Yeah. Yeah,…

Melissa Rosenthal: I mean I think the mandate it’s so interesting. It’s like we are still seeing that whole growth at all costs. We’re seeing the same bubble with AI which is actually really interesting. But I think we have to do more with less. the age of just growth at all costs is forever over. we have to do more with less. The old playbook is just not working anymore. So I think at least the brave marketers are cutting the things that really have not worked historically and that are just not working and are not scalable and they’re trying to figure out what’s next. I think there’s a lot on the cusp of being able to change marketing forever. And I think a lot of it also goes back to relationships and I think the people that are going to thrive and the bold marketers are the ones that are thinking about what’s next.

00:25:00

Melissa Rosenthal: there’s a lot of people that are and there’s a lot that aren’t and they’re just s sort of like sitting there maybe we’ll go back to the age in which budget just comes back and it’s fluid and it’s flowing and we have as much money as we need. But yeah I think companies are just evaluating their marketing spend overall it’s harder than it’s ever been to market.

Melissa Rosenthal: It’s harder than it’s ever been to reach people. There’s definitely bloat in every category. there’s a lack of differentiation. People are competing on price. And I think, it requires just bold ways of thinking to kind of evolve and move forward. And I do think you can do more with less. I just think it just requires a different way of thinking.

Joe Martin: on a book I’ve been producing and…

Joe Martin: and it’s done, but should have talking about burnout and balance. you and I were talking briefly about what you did over the holidays. what are some things that you do to kind of manage priorities, find some time for yourself, not let being a founder just completely consume you?

Melissa Rosenthal: The interesting thing about what I think about this a lot actually and burnout for me in my past roles was actually not burnout in the work itself. I loved the work I could work 24/7. I’m that type of person. It was more the anxiety about the work and the slack anxiety and the communication anxiety and it was everything that wasn’t actually important to the work. And it’s so funny to see that now…

Melissa Rosenthal: 

Joe Martin: Yeah. Sure.

Melissa Rosenthal: because it doesn’t matter. I mean my co-founder is actually my husband and we spend the weekends talking about work and we go out to dinner and we talk about work and we’re in the car and we talk about work and it doesn’t matter. it’s exciting. It fuels us. We’re motivated.  we obviously chose this path together and none of that burns me out but the slack the anxiety the not knowing so I think what I’m not in that place anymore luckily but I try to just make sure that I always think about that as it pertains to the people that work with us and our team and that they’re not feeling that from us because it’s definitely hard work it’s hard mental thinking it’s like a lot of loops

Melissa Rosenthal: that you’re kind of constantly putting your brain through. But I think as long as there’s not this slack anxiety, there’s not this he didn’t respond to me anxiety.

Melissa Rosenthal: I wrote this whole thing and there’s no emoji on it anxiety, I mean, these are all real things that I dealt with.

Joe Martin: It’s really interesting.

Melissa Rosenthal: And I think that really contributed to my burnout more than the work. I think it’s less about the work and it’s more about just the nature of the social politics around the work.

Joe Martin: I like how you said you put it down to the team level of almost like if you feel like you can remove it from the culture or from the team below you then it almost helps you overall. So it’s almost like putting it on yourself from a leader delegation side versus I can control that piece of it and…

Melissa Rosenthal: Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Martin: that will help reduce what I’m feeling.

Melissa Rosenthal: And listen, certain founders would probably disagree with me and I think what they do is they purposely burn people out. They get as much as they possibly can out of them and they rinse and repeat and then they make the next hire. there’s definitely a method to that madness and I just don’t want to subscribe to that. that’s not a healthy culture that I want to build at our company and I don’t think we need to do that to be able to be successful. But certainly it does work for other people and I don’t want to discount that that is definitely a playbook.

00:30:00

Melissa Rosenthal: It’s just not my playbook.

Joe Martin: So, if you go back to the start of your career,…

Joe Martin: what’s one thing you would tell yourself process-wise that would have helped you a little bit more than when you’re just starting out? What?

Melissa Rosenthal: process-wise. I think one thing which is a weird thing though it’s all the small decisions really add up and they really matter and it’s the things where every single day you make a hundred decisions and you feel like those decisions go nowhere but in them in a year you look at all those decisions that you’ve made and they meant a lot  One thing that I wish I did since day one of my career, which I’m doing now, is the things I learned this week. my god, I wish I started that years ago. I started it midway through ClickUp and it’s a wealth of knowledge and I can go back to it any time and see how I was feeling, something I did, something that went right, something went wrong, and my god, literally it’s a little triggering honestly like going back to that stuff, but it’s so valuable.

Melissa Rosenthal: I wish I had that because putting sometimes your brain almost blocks you from going back to periods of time that high were highly stress inducing kind of contributed to burnout or something bad, but they actually are very very beneficial to go back to those. And this notebook that I created just allows me to go back to frames of reference that I might not be able to go back to myself. and it really helps me unlock a lot. I was thinking about this this way. I mean, the parallels between our business now and the things I’ve learned and the things I’m able to pull from are incredible.

Melissa Rosenthal: It’s just I have to unlock myself to be able to get there.

Joe Martin: That makes a lot of sense.

Joe Martin: I like that. Yeah, I remember you talking about journaling in our first conversation years ago. I think that’s really cool and valuable intel. I want to give you a chance as we’re kind of closing things out.

Joe Martin: Share your vision behind your new company. What inspired you to launch it? How does it differ? what are some things that you’ve learned from that those types of things. Yeah.

Melissa Rosenthal: Yeah, absolutely.

Melissa Rosenthal: So it’s really the culmination of my entire career over the past, 13 plus years. and my co-founder is my husband and feel like having your partner as your founder and sort of the background of your career is almost like a secret weapon and he’s been kind of productizing my brain and the way that I think about things for a long time and now it’s kind of come to fruition.  But effectively, at BuzzFeed and at Cheddar, we were building these media companies and these news corporations to have an authoritative voice within, news media. And really why we were doing that is to sell advertising to B2B advertisers so that we could lend our voice to them so they could establish their own credibility and authority but through us.

Melissa Rosenthal: And at ClickUp, I had a very, very large marketing budget and I was able to do a lot of cool things, Super Bowl ads, billboards, SEO, everything. But our TAM was so big that to be able to have the conversations that mattered to our entire customer set in a way that we could own those conversations, it just didn’t exist.  So, at Out Lever, we turn companies into their own dream trade publications, and we allow them to own all of the news that matters to both them and their customers on a daily basis. So, it’s really like owning conversations at scale and being able to have conversations at scale with the people talking to their ICPs about the things that matter in their day-to-day.

Melissa Rosenthal: I think there’s just a huge gap and sort of where marketing and outbound sales has led us. And we’re really good at talking about ourselves as companies, but talking and having those conversations about the things that matter to our customers on those 364 days a year where they’re not buying software is equally as important. You get in their heads, you’re able to think about how they think about the world, and you’re able to own that narrative and build your own credibility without having to borrow it from a Forbes or a Cheddar. you’re able to actually build that and create an asset that can grow in value over time for you. So, there’s a lot of reasons why I created it, but it’s really that culmination of I don’t believe that media companies have the legacy and the credibility that they once did anymore. And it opens up the door for companies to be able to own that and be able to have that credibility and build that credibility themselves and have those conversations with the people that they want to have them with.

Melissa Rosenthal: And also, I think, relationshipbased selling is going to be the future of selling. And, outbound sequences from AI are just going to die because it’s a race to the bottom. I mean, I don’t know about you, but the sequences I get daily they’re unhinged. They’re unhinged, So,…

00:35:00

Melissa Rosenthal: I think it’s just taking it back to how do we start a conversation? how do we talk to people? how do we build credibility for companies? How do we allow them to own the narratives that they care about and kind of really build themselves as a thought leadership platform?

Joe Martin: I love it.

Joe Martin: Yeah, I think it’s such a great idea and you guys are doing a good job building it and I’m really excited about what you’re putting together. Melissa, you’re a legend.

Melissa Rosenthal: Thank you.

Joe Martin: Thanks so much for your time today and glad you could join us.

Melissa Rosenthal: Thanks so much for having me.