Noob School - Taking Your Business to New Heights with Courtney Beasley

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

Today on Noob School, we're joined by a relatively new friend - Courtney Beasley. Courtney takes us on her journey that led to the creation of her own marketing agency: Cobe Marketing. From her life in Chicago, to her time spent working with FUEL in Greenville SC, tune in to hear her interesting story, and to learn more about what she can do to take your business to the next level. Be sure to check out Courtney's website for additional information: https://CobeMarketing.com Check out what the Noob School website has to offer: https://SchoolForNoobs.com I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #SalesTraining #B2BSales #SalesExcellence #SalesStrategy #BusinessGrowth #SalesLeadership #SalesSuccess #SalesCoaching #SalesSkills #SalesInnovation #SalesTips #SalesPerformance #SalesTransformation #SalesTeamDevelopment #SalesMotivation #SalesEnablement #SalesGoals #SalesExpertise #SalesInsights #SalesTrends

New School. All right, welcome back to the Noob School. John Sterling here, and today I've got a relatively new friend but a good friend, Courtney Beasley. Welcome. Welcome aboard. Thank you. Thanks for having me. A little southern hospitality for you.

Absolutely. That's perfect. What do you consider a new friend? Well, someone that I haven't known for like 25 years. Okay. We've known each other for over a year. Yeah, yeah. Most of my guests are people that I go back, you know, a long way with.

And so it's nice to meet a new friend. That's right. Well, it speaks volumes about the way that you're able to maintain friendships. So that's awesome. Well, I do like having friends. I'm sure you do too. It's important. Courtney, as you can tell, a relatively young age, she's achieved what most people are kind of shooting for, which is she's got our own business.

She's got the Kobe agency and she's become an expert at digital marketing, social media, marketing in general, at various. kind of stops along the way and she has parlayed that into her own business where she is a a part-time CMO or fractional CMO. Fractional CMO. So for somebody, let's just say like the Noob School, for example, who can't afford Courtney full time, I could get her for, you know, so many hours a month, you know, 10 hours a month or something to help me with my website and strategy, which is very important, right? Because we don't want just someone just to give me a new website. Someone's got to help me figure out what it is I'm trying to do. That's exactly right. Yeah. So we'll talk more about what a fractional CMO is as we go forward. But for the meantime,

we'll follow our normal format, which is to establish that you've already kind of at a good place. But let's back up, you know, to when you started and figure out the things you did to get to this point. Sure. Other people might follow. So I know this. I know you grew up all over the country. I did. Now, why was that? I have to ask my parents about that, but I grew up moving coast to coast. My parents both grew up moving around quite a bit. They actually met when they were 12 years old.

Wow. So I think that's part of like the foundations and then they moved away from each other or very early on just a couple of years after meeting. So yeah, they had moved back and forth between Ohio and Missouri. I was born in Missouri. My family lived mostly in Missouri in Ohio, but I've lived in Atlanta and I've lived in Atlanta and out in California a little bit. And then on my own, I spent some time in North Carolina.

And then they actually came down here to Greenville. I was living in Chicago. I graduated school, moved up to Chicago, 10 years there. And then I followed my family here to Greenville right at the very beginning of the pandemic. And so your family, your family, peripatetic family, moved to Greenville. Why did they pick Greenville? You know, they did a lot of research. They wanted a lifestyle that was a little bit more flexible than what you.

you can have in Ohio where you get like three to four months of nice weather per year. They love the mountains. We love the beach. We would always come down to the Carolinas to vacation as there are so many people from here from Ohio. So I think we're not alone in this by any means. They were clued into Greenville by a friend of one of my sisters, actually a family friend. And yeah, they came and visited a handful of times and decided that this is where they wanted to move our family. Well, I'm thankful. That's great. Yeah, likewise. That's awesome. So after this moving around, you end up going to the University of Dayton. That's right.

And what did you study there? I, so I graduated with the degree in communications, a triple minor in international business, marketing and political science. So does that require a lot more credits to get a triple? It does. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. So I actually started out in biochem, so I thought that I wanted to be a pediatrician. And then by way of multiple things occurring in college, I just decided that that wasn't going to be the right path for me.

So I wanted to still be able to graduate in four years. So I went into the School of Communication, which was in the Arts and Sciences program, so I could still graduate on time. So, yeah, I took some extra courses. I was on campus for a couple of summers. And then I did a study abroad program that helped me to pick up some things in political science, which was helpful. And where was that? Where did I study abroad? Yeah.

In Greece. In Greece. Yeah. Okay. I've spent a summer in Greece. Did you learn how to speak any Greek? F caristo and paracolo are pretty much all I have. What are those?

It's like please and thank you. Okay. You're welcome. You can say Uzo probably. Yeah, and Opa. Yeah. What's Opa mean more? Cheers.

Cheers. Yeah, that's like salute. Yeah. Uzo will give you a headache. It sure well. Yeah, I could stay away from that stuff. Good for you. I can't tell you how many college, well, people who went to college

and I'll say, where'd you go? And I said, I went to Dayton. I said, what was your favorite part of going to college and Dayton? Let's say, my study abroad. Oh, yeah. I'm like, why don't more kids just go study like University of Amsterdam? Absolutely. I wish I would have realized how much of an opportunity that could have been earlier in life.

And I think kids now, you know, if presented that as an opportunity, I think take it more often than not. There's actually a group I'm working with. and one of the guy's daughter is going to do her master's in Spain here in a couple of weeks. And I'm just like, oh, my gosh. I wish I would have considered those things because, yeah, study abroad was absolutely one of the most impactful things that I did while in school. Yeah. Really what my appetite, too, for travel that I would do later in life, which is really important to me. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of doing that. We did a podcast recently with someone who did the around the world. Yeah. He did a year, gap year. That would be awesome. Just all the people he met and the stories and, you know, you think about that person going to a job interview versus this person who didn't do it.

It's not even a close, not even close. Yeah. You know, this one has so much more knowledge of the world. Absolutely. Just the way you can learn things from different cultures that you can bring back to your own community to enrich the communities you're part of. That's the main reason that I'm.

I like to travel and yeah, you're totally right. I do wish I would have done a gap year. But it's so scary at that age. It's, you know, it's gosh, youth is wasted on the young, right. Yeah. Yeah, my daughter did it. And I worked on her for years to do it and she finally did it. But she was, I mean, she was before college. She was 17 or 18. And one of them was a pretty, it was outward bound. So you were kind of under supervision. Yeah. So that wasn't that. Dangerous. That's nice. The other was going to a big college in Salamanca, Spain.

Oh, wow. It was like just crazy party. Sure. She had a great time. I'm sure she had a blast. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

So let's keep moving. So you went to Dayton. You did some postgraduate work at Northwestern. You did. And then you made your, I would say, one of your most important decisions is you went in Chicago and you started working for Groupon. Yeah. And so you went to work for, you know, an Uber, an Apple, a Groupon.

You know, somebody who's like new and really growing fast, you're probably attracting the best and brightest people to try to make it work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that was, I was very early on, Groupon. So I started there in 2010 prior to their IPO. So I was there pre-during and post-IPO. And I was in the 600s of employee number there. So they were hiring intros.

I mean, they were really hiring. lot of people because they recognized the need for the sales base, which is really where I got my career start was in sales because I graduated mid-Pan, or not pandemic, but the recession, and no one was hiring people for marketing roles if you didn't already have experience. So it was a little bit of a catch-22. You really didn't have a lot of opportunity. So ended up going to Groupon, which at the time I truly thought was one of the worst things that I could have done for my career. I did. And it's crazy because I look back now and there's still not only experiences that are exceptionally relevant to the work that I do today,

because obviously the marketing and sales relationship is so intrinsically important to every size of an organization if you have both functions. But then you also have the people that I was able to interface with during that time who have gone on to be leaders in tech institutions across the country, across the globe, you know, that I've been able to maintain relationships with in some capacity. It really was an incredible experience. And I was there so early on that roles that then became divided up into several different individuals on a team. So from building prospect list to doing the dials to setting up the deals to writing some of the content, all of those things ended up being individual functions.

Whereas when I went in and launched the territory of Napa Sonoma, which another side note developed my love for wine. but I got the opportunity to really see the end-to-end function of how to get something like a promotion to work for a business. So, yeah, it was a really incredible experience very early on that I couldn't wait to get out of at the time, but couldn't be more grateful to have had the experience now. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I just can't tell you how important it is for what you did, but for any young person starting out, you know, if you can launch yourself with one of these really fast-growing, interesting companies

that's hiring a lot of smart people and trying to do. You're going to learn so much so fast. You're probably not getting paid that much. You're probably going to have to work too hard. It can be all kind of horrible things. Probably poor management, you know. Yeah. But you'll learn from it.

And the guy, you know, the guy who started Salesforce, Mark Benioff, you know, his early years, he was working for Larry Ellison and Oracle. And he worked for Steve Jobs at Apple. Exactly. And like it was no big deal for him to go start his own day. Because he saw it, you know. Very true. So that was like 10 years, 10 years of work.

How many years? Oh, I was only there for two years. Two years. Yeah, I was there for two years and then I was in an agency for almost nine years. And you went to a big agency called Walker Sands. Well, it was a very small agency when I started there. But now they're a very big agency. Okay.

Yeah. You made them big. I tried to, yeah. Now what did you do for them? Yeah. So really unique experience. from an agency life because usually you're account executive, you're kind of working with some of the clients,

you're either that or you're in some type of an expert track where you were specifically focused on one particular vertical within marketing. But I was incredibly lucky. I was hired originally there as a salesperson. So they got me out of Groupon and gave me the opportunity. And at the time, I really wanted to get into marketing. I knew that that was the path for me.

I just felt very passionate about it and driven towards it. And so I, I wasn't sure I was going to take the role. And I'll never forget I was on vacation with my family and I was talking to my dad and he was like, court, this at least gets you into a marketing environment where you have more opportunities to show the value that you could provide on a marketing side of the world.

So I was six months into the role still pounding the pavements, making, you know, smiling and dialing. And really wasn't going anywhere. We were an agency of 16 people in a, you know, crowded agency environment in Chicago. And we weren't really differentiating ourselves in a way that people understood why I would be calling them. So, yeah, I was six months in and a foot and a half out the door. And I just wanted to, I thought I was going to go back to school, finish all of my prerex for med school.

I had all of my programming set up to go and do that when I had an incredibly faithful conversation with the president at the time, now CEO, who he said, you know, we see potential in what you're attempting to do. But what is it that you actually want to do? I said, well, I want to do marketing, and I think it would really help us. And he said, well, what does that mean to you? And at the time, it was very tactical because I was, you know, young 20s and was like, whoa, our website. Like, we need to update that a little bit. It looks very antiquated. I'm sure antiquated is not the word I used at the time.

And we could use some case studies because people don't really understand what we do. And what about a newsletter? What could we do something like that? So that's really where it started. And it wasn't even four years later. I was starting to build a team around me that was focused specifically on the growth of the company. And the interesting thing there is because when I had started as a sales team member, there was a head of sales, but we didn't really have a sales process. So I was tasked with building out the sales funnel, the sales process.

I bought and implemented Salesforce and Pardot. That was right at the beginning of their partnership. So I was really doing like sales enablement, even though I was running sales and then starting to do marketing. at a very early stage of when I joined the organization. So handled all of that, transitioned into a full-time marketing role. A couple of years later, they let me hire my first person. And then when she ended up moving on to something else, it provided the opportunity for me to restructure the team.

And as of today, there are, I want to say they have four full-time marketers, two sales team members, and the company has achieved 20 to 40% growth year over year every year since. So 10 times on Inc. 5,000, fastest growing companies. I think they are now the fifth largest B2B tech agency in the U.S. So you helped them create a stronger effort to promote the company. And most of their people were out there working for clients. That's exactly right. Yep, that's exactly right. So I was on the corporate function. I sat internally, worked very closely with who then became like our heads of finance and operations, like all of those roles actually came later, which I just say complete hats off to, you know, Mike and Ken and the whole team

who recognized the need for bringing someone in for marketing, the agency itself. It was not me. It was just the fact that they actually dedicated resources and time to recognizing the importance of focusing internally because truly a lot of companies who do marketing don't do it well for themselves. And we would have conversations and get up at all the time with companies who said, we actually really like the marketing, the fact that you guys do these things. for yourselves. We did so many events. We did speaking engagements. We were involved.

We did so much content. Our content brought in millions of dollars in opportunities every single year. So there were a lot of things we were able to really brand ourselves around that built trust and credibility in the spaces where we were looking to grow. Okay. So so far you've got a pretty broad experience across the country, kind of moving around and seeing the country. You've got a communications degree from Dayton and some marketing stuff at Northwestern. You got the startup experience and Groupon. and the sales experience, which is important, because you understand a little bit about salespeople now. And now you've done this thing at Walker Sands.

How long was that job? Almost nine years. Nine years. Yeah. And then you moved down here. Here I am. Okay. Then I moved down here.

Then I moved here. And you moved down here. Your parents are down here. Yeah. Two cold in Chicago. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was in Chicago for 10 years, and I really wanted to be a part of a community that I felt like

I could make a real impact in. And when I came to visit Greenville, I was two days into my two week trip and I extended to six weeks and I left, you know, after those six weeks with an apartment signed downtown on Main Street. And I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna try this. I don't know what's going on with this pandemic thing.

Chicago is not itself right now. It will always be my home and the biggest part of me. It's lived there longer than I've ever lived anywhere else. But I, you know, really wanna try something different. And so Greenville just happened to really align with my values. at the time. Good. And still today.

And honestly, it's the biggest reason I've been able to go out on my own and really see that as an option for me at this time. Trying to remember when you came here, what was your first job here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So United, it was United Way? United Way. It was the chief marketing officer at United Way. Yep.

So you started interviewing? Absolutely fantastic. So it was really interesting because obviously it was the pandemic and people weren't really hiring. Leaving Walker Sands was obviously a really hard decision to make. I was on a fast-paced trajectory. We were approaching an M&A season. There were just a lot of opportunities ahead that I could continue to grow in that role,

in that capacity. But ultimately had a great conversation with them of my options were to come down here and maybe go to a Charlotte or Atlanta and open a satellite office and be a managing director of the office. And that didn't feel aligned to what I wanted at the time And even now, I mean, I'm very grateful that that was an option, but it just didn't feel like exactly what I wanted.

So, and I had been at the helm of marketing for the organization for almost nine years, eight and a half years. And so I, it didn't feel right to go into a different capacity. And so I was like, you know what? I think now is the time for me to step away. So I, you know, just started searching and just being like, okay, what's available in Greenville? And there was nothing. There was just nothing. Because I mean, nobody was really hiring at that point.

Everyone was like wait and see, right? Exactly right. It's like we're remote. How do we hire someone remote? Like, what do you do? I mean, we're still figuring so much out. I mean, this is like July 2020 is when I decided to move here. So everybody is still figuring it out.

So I, you know, was thinking, okay, maybe I actually just do this thing on my own. I had been supporting businesses on the side for several years. So I thought, okay, let me, let me try that. And then I thought to myself, no, you know what? I'm going to be a part of this community. And it's going to be really difficult for me to come in. with outside perspectives and opinions and all of these things and try to join this community and not really understand

and be more of an outsider in those ways. So I really wanted to find a role that would help me to assimilate to the area a little bit easier. And it was like I had made that decision. I woke up the next morning, didn't even get out of bed yet and did a quick Google search, and a VP of Marketing role had been posted at WACC, I'm sorry, at United Way, like 11 hours prior.

And I was like, well, Oh my gosh, I immediately reached out, found email addresses because they were available on the site, immediately reached out. And within a couple of weeks was having lunch and coffee with the CEO, Megan, Barb. And, you know, that was incredibly fateful for me in moving down here because she provided me the opportunity to meet so many people. That would ultimately be how I ended up meeting you and really my entire network that I've been really blessed to grow. It's a very strategic view, though. I mean, again, I want to just point that out to the listeners who are watching today.

This didn't happen accidentally. You know, it happened accidentally in my favor. I mean, I accidentally met you in my favor, but you met me on purpose, meaning that you took a job in a brand new town that would afford you to meet everyone in town. I mean, everyone will talk to United Way, right? Or the YMCA or whatever. Exactly. And so you immediately, because I'll say this, when I was looking for the Noob School,

when I was looking for someone to help with social media, you know, so it's like, I tried a few things, it wasn't working. I called, you know, somebody in town with, you know, the chamber or whatever next. And I said, tell me the person. I just want you to go ahead and tell me the person who can help me with my social media. I just want, you know, just not a company, a person. And he goes, well, that would be Courtney Beaslin. I'm like, all right, and I got your number, it was started talking, but, you know, you had kind of, I mean, how do you go from don't know a soul to you're the top recommendations from the Chamber of Commerce? It's crazy.

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure. Honestly, that is. Well, you're good at it for one thing, but, I mean, the fact that you got that job, I guess, is my point, is you figured out a way to get to know people. Yeah. And, you know, if I moved to San Diego, don't know a soul, and took a job with, you know, IBM selling soft. in Northern California, I wouldn't meet a soul in San Diego, right? But if I took a job working for the Padres, selling season tickets or something, I could talk to everybody. That's right. Maybe I should do that.

That's right. You'd be really good at selling tickets, I think. I think I would. I could live in San Diego, too. Yeah. Well, you could sell ice to an Eskimo, so I think you'll be good at it. I'll try. I'll try.

So you did the United Way. Mm-hmm. And then you went to fuel. I did get a fuel. I knew it. I knew it. So fuel is probably the best creative, little boutique creative company. I would agree completely.

They do such incredible branding and brand strategy work. Awesome group of people. One of the best groups. I mean, just like wholesome, holistic individuals that you can just have. create excellent work, you want to do great work with, just a really fun group of people. I absolutely loved working with them. I was there for a year and a half. And then, you know, it's so interesting because I, like I mentioned, loved the team, but I was feeling this poll. And it got to a point where I mean, I was just in this, you know,

internal turmoil for a little while of I'm feeling like I have to say no to people who are coming to me and asking me to help me with their businesses in a way that the agency wasn't gonna be able to service them. They really needed. They're too small, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, too small, not a right fit from an industry perspective, different services that they need.

They don't actually have someone to help, like from a marketing perspective is someone like you. You need a marketing arm to come in and help to support you individually. And at the time, that wasn't something that the agency was focused on. I can't speak to now if they're focused in that way. But I was starting,

I had this feeling, I'm like, okay, I'm either going to say no to these businesses that I'm so passionate about and really want to help, or I'm going to go all in on me and just see what's possible. Right. And so, yeah, I made that decision. You know, I was toying with it really for this entire year. And I made the decision finally in about April of this year, you know, gave a full two months. I was like, wanted to make sure that a replacement was in place. and they were really in good settings to go forward. So I just really believe in what they're doing. And did all of that and then stepped away and really wasn't sure at first. I was like, okay, maybe I'm going to test the waters, see what's available, see if there's a, you know, head of marketing somewhere in-house.

It's not agency side, but in-house that I could go to and had a couple interviews, had a couple conversations, still kept feeling this poll. Like, just do it. The network's there. Like, leap in the net will appear is ultimately something that, a mentor and, you know, idol of mine in the marketing space, Kip Knight told me. And so I did. And it has been exceptional.

So I think I met you right in the middle of that. I think you were at Fuel and you were kind of taking on stuff and thinking about leaving. That's right. You did. Did you have, I know you had my business, but did you have like enough other business where you felt comfortable, like financially leaving at that? moment or were you with a risk? Yeah, no, I did. There was definitely a risk involved, but I was working with you and I was working with one other company at the time and had a

couple of other people who were knocking on my door. And so it just felt like, you know, I'll figure it out regardless, you know, and I had saved up enough, you know, that if I completely fell on my face, I could go and find another job, take a little bit of time and and figure out what I wanted to do. So, yeah, I tried to put the guardrails in, which would be my recommendation to anyone looking to do this, is if you have the type of role that, of course, you don't want to be competitive,

you want to be transparent with your employer as much as needed, you know, in whatever capacity. But, you know, to really put some of those guardrails up for yourself before you leave because it makes it much more comfortable to go all in. Yeah, we recommend that all the time, Courtney, is that people, they're like, when do I know when I can go start my own thing? I'm like, well, first of all, you need to know what you're doing.

Okay, you have to be like you prepared yourself for this with multiple jobs and knowledge. But second of all, ideally you want that next business to already be preloaded. Yeah. You've already got the customers or you've got contracts or, you know, whatever. There was one thing a while back, my brother worked at a company that sold, they were all like selling direct, telecom contracts to businesses and the company decided the management said we're not going to be

direct anymore, we're going to be indirect. So all of you are fired, okay? But you can keep the customers and be our channel. Oh. So all of a sudden I'm fired and I got my own business and you got your own business. And I'm making four times the money.

Wow. Don't you love big business sometimes? That's incredible. So some of his friends had these wonderful situations. So that's what we're looking for. Like you say guardrails, I think, yeah, the definition of a guardrail is that you've got the next thing preloaded for you somehow. Exactly. You don't have nothing.

You're preparing the safety net for yourself. You've got to do, you know, you've got to do some of that leg work for us. Well, let's talk about what exactly, like your business now is fractional CMO. Of course, that's what you provide, the Noob School. In fact, you provided this logo. I did, yeah. As I recall. That's right.

Very nice. but if someone's looking for a fractional CMO, say what kind of company is your target and what kind of services they get for that? Yeah, absolutely. So admittedly, fractional work. Fractional wasn't necessarily a word that I understood in this context, really even prior to leaving the corporate world or, you know, the agency life. I knew that I was helping businesses, but it wasn't really consulting.

And originally I had called myself the Kobe agency, but I didn't want to be an agency. You know, I don't want to hire people, you know, full time in order to kind of fulfill all these different functions. I'll explain how that's how that's a little different. But where I realized that this world of fractional exists, and there are fractional everything, COOs, CFOs, your, you know, heads of HR, like all of those pieces, you can fractionalize for your company, which for a certain size of organization. And really, you know, even the larger organizations can, you know, exercise a use of a fractional for particular projects that your CMO doesn't have time to you to do to focus on.

So really, it's a strategic partner. It's like I am able to join these teams. I, you know, believe in the business. I come in to offer strategic oversight on variety of different areas within an organization from, you know, growth trajectory to sales enablement to you know brand strategy and the pieces that you need to actually show up in the marketplace so that's even where you know our relationships started as you mentioned you wanted to go on on social and I was like great I think that's absolutely where you need to be but we need to make sure that people understand

what you do what you provide so we backed all the way up we did some audience work we understood you know who your brand is designed the brands put the website together and you know then went to market with you know some more solid packaging around who it is that you are and what you do and really getting into some of those key activation pieces now which is ultimately what I'm able to do for companies so it can look like so many different things as it does for all of my companies but I think the main the main thing it's like how it's different from an agency is you know I'm truly one person and I'm joining your team but like an

agency or like you know another marketer that you would hire as a head of your marketing department and it's basically a hub and spoken model. I have several spokes that I can pull in. So from a social management perspective, there's people that I can work with to execute on the strategies that we've put together. Same thing with SEO, content development, video and podcasting, all of those other things. I have excellent partners that help to deliver on that. So depending on the size and scope of the strategy, we can get it done. Yeah. And speaking as one of your happy customers, you know, I didn't have a strategic marketing person helping me before.

I had just different people who would just do what I told them. New website or this or whatever. And so with you, one of the things I like is that we'll kind of brainstorm, here's all the ideas of things we need to improve, and then we rank them. And we kind of agree on what the ranking's going to be. And you tell me, John, I think we can bite off this much this month, you know, based on our fractional arrangement. So I think it works great.

And for anyone who doesn't have a full-time marketing person, I think it's a great thing to consider. So what's the best way to reach you? LinkedIn or my website. So my website is co-bemarketing.com or it's just Courtney Beasley on LinkedIn. C-O-B-E. That's right. Marketing, yeah. Marketing.com.

It stands for create, originate, build, and evolve. Okay. Even though it is my first and last name as well. Yeah, I was thinking it was Courtney Beasley. Okay. It is, but there's some other meaning there. Okay. Well, let me ask you.

a few more questions then we can close out. That's a wonderful, wonderful story. Thanks. You want to go with, tell us your favorite book? Oh, yeah. The Alchemist. The Alchemist. Okay. Tell me about that book. Well, it's an incredible story of life and learning and how different phases of your journey, you need different elements and different skill sets and different people to, to really make it a holistic experience.

You know, life is so short, and I think it just has so many incredible, it's one of the only books, there's only two books I've ever read twice. Not a big reader, I'm a big listener, but that is one of the only books I've read twice. And it just, at every time of life that I've re-read it, and I'm due, I'm due to read it again.

But every time that I've read it, I get something completely different out of it. Life does go by fast, and you don't really believe that until you get older. Oh, yeah. When you're younger people, tell you, like, old man, what he's talking about? Yeah, I remember, I mean, I remember like it was yesterday, you know, college graduation and leaving in your car and leaving the college, you know,

and now I've got six grandkids. What happened? Isn't that wild? I don't know what happened. It's crazy. It's crazy. It is. You blink in it. Yeah, I do have a huge appreciation that I've I've gained, I guess, in the last couple years of really looking at every day as a lifetime. Yeah. You know, this is the lifetime today. Yeah. Yesterday, it doesn't matter anymore. Tomorrow, who knows, but this is our lifetime.

Yeah. You know, it's so interesting you say that, and this is what we do. This is how we like to spin off on our tangent. We were supposed to cover the agenda. We always get back to the agenda. We do have that. As you know, I just got a puppy. Yes.

And I know this is. Theo. Theo. Yeah, my little English bulldog. Couldn't be cuter. But it's so interesting that you say that because, you know, I'm a little older in life to not yet be married and not have children, but having this puppy, it's so interesting because you consider every day of their life is like a week and hours from a timeline perspective.

And you think also about the concept that like they are a portion of our lives, but we are their whole lives. And it really helps you to, like for me it's been such a gift to slow down because, because, being someone who I have a phenomenal partner who's beyond supportive, could not do what I do honestly without him. But beyond that, like I don't have a lot of those functions that require my time outside of, you know, my clients and how I choose to spend that time. And so it's been really eye-opening, just being able to pause and roll around on the floor and play with a puppy for a little bit during the day. Yeah, that's wonderful. Like it really has, it's really changed things for me. That's wonderful. And I know what's a puppy is in. You're picking up on

this one day at a time thing faster than I did. Well, I have great people to learn from like you too. Okay, so someone, Chicago girl, what's your favorite band? Oh, no, yeah. My journey, is it? Listen, I do love me some journey. I did a cover of Don't Stop Believing. Really?

I'll sing college. I'll see if I can pull it up for you. Yeah, we worked it into a song that I was a part of a band in college. You know I sing. But, gosh, band. You know, I'm more of like a solo artist, gal myself, and my taste in music spans significantly. Yeah. But I would, I mean, Beyonce's my girl.

Okay. I just really love what she's done for music and for women and music. She's got a, she's got a toad. She does have a toad. Yeah. She does have a toad. But I do, I think she's incredibly talented. Good.

Well, I know we've got the Kobe, C-O-B-E agency.com. That's your website. People can talk to you about getting help in marketing, fractional marketing folks. It certainly worked for me. So is there anything else you want to promote? No. I think that's it.

Well, your business. The noob school. That's right. She knows a lot about the noob school. I'll say that. I sure do. Yeah. It's a great program for any business who's looking to grow.

Yeah. I guess I'm trying to do the same thing on the sales side. You're doing on the marketing side. That's right. You know, jump in there and help them. 100%. There's a lot of similarities in how you and I operate. We should merge. Listen.

I don't know if the world's ready. All right. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Okay, thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you.