The Type A+ Podcast Season 3 Episode 4: Rediscovering Your "Why," and Communicating it Effectively, with Fractional CMO Mallory Musante
Listen Now!
Episode Description:
Type A+ Entrepreneurship seems like a natural fit, but it can be a daunting journey—especially when it comes to marketing, and figuring out the balance between ‘shouting into the void and building an authentic brand. Today, Fractional CMO and marketing strategist Mallory Musante joins Beth to discuss her go-to marketing funnel strategy, the post-burnout road trip that helped her rediscover her passion, the ways that being Type A+ has fueled her career pursuits and the gut reactions that never betrayed her.
Mallory’s Bio:
Mallory Musante is a fractional CMO and marketing strategist focused on helping small businesses and online service providers build a marketing ecosystem that feels simple, sustainable, and actually drives growth.
During her career, she’s not only worked with hundreds of clients from large corporate brands to fast-growing businesses in their early stages and everyone in-between, but she’s also started seven vastly different businesses herself.
The one thing she’s noticed throughout her career is that the majority of business owners focus a lot on marketing tactics and not as much on the strategies driving those tactics leaving their marketing efforts feeling disjointed, unsustainable, and ultimately, less effective.
Now she’s on a mission to change that by making CMO-level support more accessible for small businesses through strategic, but simplified, marketing plans that will actually make a difference.
Links mentioned in the episode:
HOST:
Beth Lawrence & Company Instagram
The Type A Plus Podcast Instagram
Beth and other Type A+ Guests will be back each week, delivering bite-sized tips on how to optimize your work and life.
GUEST:
Episode Transcript can be found below:
Beth Lawrence: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Type A+ Podcast.
We have Mallory on the podcast today. I've kind of had an Instagram crush on Mallory for a long, a long time. I love the way that you approach marketing. I love the way that you approach your audience.
You have a great way of relating to your audience on something that can be extremely complicated, especially for Type A people. So without further ado Mallory, please introduce yourself and tell the listeners a little bit about yourself.
Mallory Musante: Well, thank you so much for having me! I'm Mallory.
I am a serial entrepreneur, I'm currently a fractional CMO for small businesses and service providers So essentially I'm a marketing consultant, bringing that strategic expertise to small businesses because what I found in my 15 years of experience is that most small business owners and freelancers actually focus a lot on the tactics.
You know the things you're supposed to do, like posting on social media, but you don't actually have a strategy fueling those tactics, which often makes Your marketing feel hard. It falls a little flat. My mission is to bring that CMO level strategy and approach to small businesses.
I'm also the co founder of bright beta co, which makes planners and other resources for Adventures to help them reach their goals as well.
Beth Lawrence: And that's exactly what I found with your Instagram presence, because especially when you're starting out as a freelancer or a small business owner, or you're just trying to figure out how to brand yourself online.
A lot of us, we'll think, "Oh, I have this great idea. I just took this great picture. I have this great song. You know, I could picture this real in my head," right? But we don't take the time to think, why we're posting it, who we're talking to. We just think, well, if I like this, my audience will like this.
So you are a small business owner yourself. Do you find that it's difficult as a type a person to apply those lessons that you teach your clients to your own marketing?
Mallory Musante: We all are too close to our own businesses a lot of the time to fully see clearly, but the thing that I constantly remind myself, sometimes I have to take a step back and treat myself like I'm my own client, essentially, and just be like, Mallory, you have all the frameworks, you have all of the strategy done, you just need to revisit that.
So my Instagram content, for me, I'm just like, oh, it feels like a little, eh, like I'm not really like into it right now. I will go back and revisit my content pillar is like what am I missing here?
And typically I'm forgetting to infuse more personal type content. So I'm not having that personal connection and starting those conversations with people. Cause that's what really gets me excited is having actual conversations with people on Instagram in particular.
So that's what's great about having the strategy and the frameworks is when you feel like something is off, you can actually just go back and reference it and say, okay, what am I missing? So you can re ground yourself and move forward from there.
Beth Lawrence: That's a great point.
And having that sort of North Star is super important for business owners, and I think especially for type a people, having that goal helps us focus because I don't know if you're like this, but I can be very multi hyphenate in my ambition where I'm like, I could do this and I could do that.
And we could do some of this over here. And if you're not having that strategic eye behind it, you're really just flailing. So talk to me a little bit about going through your career, how being type a has been a benefit to you and then also how it's been a detriment. You can talk about it from your perspective and also what you see with clients too.
I think that might be helpful.
Mallory Musante: Yeah. Well, my career starts like way back in college.
Beth Lawrence: As an ambitious person should.
Mallory Musante: Yeah. Right. So that's where I started my first business. I went to school for marketing that I was just going to go like work in corporate America.
And that was that. I had some friends, they were in this club called CEO, which is Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization, and I joined, because my friends were in it, and then they had a national conference in Chicago, and I was like, cool, I want to go, and went there, and one of the speakers was actually, he hand painted like Air Force Ones, For like Jay Z and like really cool people, and I was like, okay, I like to paint and I like shoes.
So I started hand painting women's heels. So that was my first business. Graduated from college, was doing that for a while, not full time....
Beth Lawrence: Wait so wait a minute. Take me through this. So like custom heels you like, Oh my gosh, that is so cool. What a great idea.
Mallory Musante: Yeah, it was awesome. I worked with a lot of brides because they all wanted things to match their bridesmaids colors or something along those lines So it was really fun, but also very hard to do the designing and running of the business so I get why a lot of Fashion companies have a separate CEO but I actually like the business so from there because I knew I liked the business side more, I ended up stopping that.
And then I moved into more of an online retailer where I wasn't designing anything. I was just like buying things and selling them. Accessories and things like that. So very, very much in the same vein. And I was doing that, had some of the products and stuff featured in magazines like red book.
Beth Lawrence: I know Redbook. My mom has read Redbook. Yes. And then I started reading it when I became a certain age.
Mallory Musante: I love it. And then I was working at a PR agency also in New York City at the time, doing their social media, myself and one other person. And that was a very, very toxic work environment. I basically knew I was going to get laid off. I was looking for other jobs and I just didn't find anything I liked. My co worker at the time was like, listen, like we can do this ourselves. So her and I were like, all right, let's do this. And I did eventually get laid off and luckily we had already set the wheels in motion and we got going on that.
I did that for five years and then, a little bit before the pandemic, I was like, I don't know, something feels off for me. I wasn't really sure what it was. And during the pandemic, I was just like, this brand is not representative of me. And there's two of us and it was very bright and colorful () the name is Bold and Pop,) which is not really very me at all either.
And I didn't really think about how having my own authentic self be represented is a big deal for me, especially since we are the faces of the company and everything. There was just a lot that I wanted to do outside of that, as well as I really wanted to do more consulting versus the done for you side of things. Cause we were doing brand design, web design and social media management.
Beth Lawrence: Oh, that's a lot to manage. Yeah. Yeah. It was very close to the client's heart, especially at the level that you would be hired at just from your expertise. That's a lot.
Mallory Musante: Yeah. Yeah. It was a lot.
I just like, wasn't fully in it anymore. And I think my business partner and I had different visions for what we wanted for the future. So, I ended up deciding that I should step away from that business and just move forward.
And to be honest, like I didn't fully have a plan.
Beth Lawrence: That's okay. We listen to our guts.
Mallory Musante: So I did kind of have a plan. I was doing a little bit of confidence coaching on the side, more in the personal development sphere, but for probably, like, seven months after we closed the company, I just was, like, flailing around, but now I know I was basically burnt out. So, I ended up Going on a month long road trip with one of my friends, who's also an entrepreneur, so she has the time to do that. Got back and I was like, all right, I actually, need to make some money now. My F. U. fund is dwindled. So, randomly, I had some old clients that had reached out or people that had referred me to other people for marketing.
And I was like, you know what? This is what I know how to do. let me dip my toe back in. And I was like, wait, I actually do like marketing still. And I can now shape this the way I want to shape it. And things just took off from there into my now current role.
Beth Lawrence: Wow. So I could definitely see where being type A helped you.
Especially when you say shaping it the way you want to shape it. Yes. Perfection. That is exactly why I am an entrepreneur as well. I also have had some toxic work environments. You talked about being burnt out, but not realizing it and thinking that you didn't like.
What you were doing. And I think that's such a type a thing because we think that if we love something, it means that we have to do it 24/7 all the time to a hundred percent. Every single thing we do is at a hundred percent. And if we feel that we don't want to or can't bring ourselves to, we then think this isn't for me because I'm not hustling and grinding for it.
Isn't that wild?
Mallory Musante: Yeah, it's it's so interesting to think back at all of that because it is true. And I really, I think I personally needed that space to just reset, struggle a little bit, honestly. Yes, here, here. Right? Like, oh man, as annoying as that is, I needed it.
To put things into perspective, because while I was on that month long road trip, I was like, you know what? This is what I want my life to feel like. I want to feel like this all the time, so I need to create a life and a business that allows for this to happen, and I think that was the perspective that I was missing a lot with the other company, there were so many factors, I didn't feel like it represented who I was as an individual, which obviously, I think that's a type A like thing too. We very much like to be like our own selves.
Beth Lawrence: Agree, we like to have control of our narrative.
Mallory Musante: Yes, yeah, and I just did not feel like I had that at all. Also just like, okay, I can make this work no matter what. Because I'm ambitious, I'm good at what I do, and I turned into a little bit of a workaholic and didn't realize, because I have this perspective of once we get to X, Y, Z revenue.
Then we can pull back and we can readjust from there and like that's not how it works.
Beth Lawrence: That's not how it works. It is unfortunate that's not how it works, but, yes, definitely. And the going with your gut is a huge theme also in your story, which I love. And I think that that is a type a thing as well.
What made you think or realize that you were in a toxic work environment? You don't have to give me like a story, but what, what led to that feeling? Cause I know that feeling.
Mallory Musante: I think mine was pretty obvious, our boss at the time was just a perfect example is my dad had to have open heart surgery and I was scared to ask for two days off to be at the hospital with him. But obviously I knew it was toxic even before that. And you know, we're all scared cause she's the boss and it's a small company. So it's not like there's HR to go to or anything.
Beth Lawrence: Yes. And type A people want to, we're rule followers. Yes. So we're like, this person is the person making the rules.
So we have to follow the rules.
Mallory Musante: Definitely. Yeah. And I kind of skipped over this part, but I lived in New York City for a year, and then I was like, no, thank you, this is not for me. So I actually moved back to Connecticut, where I'm originally from, I was working remotely for probably two to three years, and my boss did not like that.
So I was just like, okay, like this is ridiculous. I'm getting my work done. I don't know why you need to see all this. And you don't even talk to me ever.
Beth Lawrence: It seems like that's the way her type a manifested, you know? And I think some people that is an extreme of being type a, micromanaging.
If you are a manager. And on the flip side, hating being micromanaged if you're not a manager, because, when I was coming up as an employee, I definitely look back and I'm like, I was not a great employee because I am, I'm type a, I'm used to doing things on my own, you know, the way that I want to.
And I think that I was destined to be a freelancer. Do you think that there's any ways that being type a has been a detriment to you in your kind of career? Or do you really think it's just who you are and it's one of your superpowers?
Mallory Musante: So I think it definitely in moments has been detrimental, for instance, the previous business, I just kept going because I was ambitious and hardworking.
And didn't really take the full time to evaluate, is this fully working because it hadn't been for a long time. Um, also just generally being slightly less patient. and not necessarily with other people. It's more like with myself. I actually was just telling my mom the other day.
I was like, at the end of every month, I get really antsy. And it's because I'm waiting for the proposals I sent earlier in the month to come through. And I'm getting impatient. Like, why is it taking so long? What do these people need from me, and I'm putting it on myself. So then it's just like causing myself a lot of stress.
Beth Lawrence: Yeah, I am nodding along because I do the exact same thing. My husband's like, why are you worrying about stuff that hasn't happened yet? And in my mind, I'm preparing for it. I'm like, if a scenario happens, I just want to be prepared. And he's like, what you're doing is you're telling your body that it's happening right now and it's not happening right now.
And I think that can be a detriment to, especially if you own your own business, it can cause you to follow up too many times or it can cause you to offer a discount because you think they're not getting back to you for a certain reason. So I could definitely see how that could be a detriment.
Mallory Musante: Yeah. It's funny because I think my mom interprets that as, oh my gosh, Mallory needs money as moms do. Yes. And I'm like, oh, no, no, I'm having a great month. And she was like, what is your problem then ? I'm like, I don't know.
Beth Lawrence: I don't know. I just, I just need everything to be like wrapped in a bow.
I need to know what the future holds. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. . Um, and that's, that is also a tough thing about being a freelancer 'cause you don't know what the future holds a lot of the time, but. The great thing for type A people is you can kind of control it, or at least we tell ourselves we can, right? We can do the business development.
We can go above and beyond for our clients to get them to sign with us again. It's so funny the ways that our brain makes us feel safe in certain situations.
Mallory Musante: Yeah.
Beth Lawrence: Talk to me about marketing. Why are people so type a about marketing and why is the tendency then to either avoid it or treat it like art and separate it from the business side
Mallory Musante: I think a lot of that probably comes down to the perfectionist side of things. You're avoiding it because things aren't perfect yet. You don't want to put anything out there because things are perfect. I noticed that a lot of people are like, I'm ready to jump in and it's not necessarily the best use of their time and resources. When it comes to social media it doesn't need to be perfect.
It's actually been shown that if you have a typo in one of your posts, it's likely to get seen more. I don't know why. I do not know why, but
Beth Lawrence: maybe because your brain catches it, when you're scrolling your brain, you know,
Mallory Musante: yeah, I was going to say it's probably something along those lines with the algorithm, but yeah, so it actually could benefit you and also I think with marketing, a lot of us think it needs to be perfect you're missing the human element of it. We talk a lot about B2B or B2C, but it's really, I like to say H2H. It's human to human, so you really need to show that human side. And humans make mistakes. It's not a big deal. And I share all kinds of random stuff on the internet, the good, the bad, everything. And I find oftentimes like when I'm sharing some of the like hard things or when I did something and it was a fail, quote, unquote. A lot of people resonate with that and it creates a connection. And I think, we obviously want to be seen as professionals and experts but there is a lot of value in showing some of the journey and bringing your humanness out. And I find that to be the most effective piece of marketing that a lot of us forget about.
Beth Lawrence: Yeah. I'm hearing, I love human to human, I love connection and I'm also hearing authenticity. And it really does resonate, whether it's a small business, an individual, or even a big brand, you know, we like even when big brands, we see that glimpse of humanness.
Human to human connection is what it's about. And we sometimes can forget because we don't see a human on the other side. We see millions of humans and we think, how can I reach the most humans as opposed to how can I reach the human I'm trying to reach? And your authenticity and your post is what drew me in and made me want to start following you more and start talking with you.
I think that's a really great point. For someone who maybe doesn't know where to start in measuring, let's take Instagram for an example, if you're a personal brand, just trying to grow your reach and figure out who your ideal audience is.
Mallory Musante: I will say what conversations are you having? Are you actually having conversations with other people?
And if it's not happening on your account, then go out and find other people. Social media is meant to be social, right? So, we need to actually reciprocate. If you see a post that you really like, or a story or something along those lines, engage with it. The amount of times people message me about my dog on Instagram is insane.
Beth Lawrence: I am people.
Mallory Musante: I mean, she is exceptionally cute, but, you know, just actually having conversations I think is really great. So that's usually how I know that my social media is not quite connecting as much is because I'm seeing less comments on my posts or I'm getting less DMs and having less conversations.
So again, it's not something that you're going to go look at analytics and see. It's just an observation, which I think is a big part too of marketing is once you really start getting into it and you get a little bit into the flow, You actually feel when it clicks And, that's such a hard metric to give to clients, especially if they haven't felt it before.
But there is always a moment where you feel like, oh God, yeah, this is good. This is going to get like great engagement or this really resonates or this email is like awesome. Whatever that is, like you feel it and you know it. And your audience feels it and knows it too.
Beth Lawrence: Yeah, I, it's interesting.
I think there's a tendency on Instagram and Facebook to kind of treat it like a newsletter where you're just like, I'm going to tell you all the information and then.
That's it. Thanks for coming. And it's the equivalent of standing in the middle of uh, plenary stage and just screaming into the void while everyone's not paying attention to you, as opposed to being in a room of really qualified individuals, running a workshop where you get to hear from them and they get to hear from you.
That's how my brain works in the event way. But I think that really helped it make it click for me because I think so many people are having one way conversations and not understanding why those like. And comments aren't turning into conversions. But sometimes also every post can't be about getting a click on your website.
Right. So I also love the measurement of the conversations because if your job is to be social and you're not having conversations with anyone, then it's definitely time to change it up. Yeah.
Mallory Musante: And I look at content pillars in a slightly different way.
And I actually turn them into a funnel. The way I do content pillars is like, there's the same for everyone, and then we use your messaging to fill in that, so then it's unique to you. But the content pillars that I like to go off of, and picture this as like a funnel, and I can give you a link to like a blog post as well.
Beth Lawrence: Oh, perfect.
Mallory Musante: Top of funnel is your engagement post, so that's like the fun reels that you see, or a quote graphic that's related to your business, but it's not outwardly actually promoting anything. It's like getting people in your world. Those are the things that are highly shareable.
People are posting it to their stories, sending it to their friends, things like that. Then we'll go into educational content, where you're sharing your expertise with people, giving them a perspective shift or something that can give them a quick win on something connection content, which is a little bit more of that personal piece.
So, you know, me posting my dog or sharing a fail that I had in my business or something along those lines. Social proof and then promotional so you're funneling them all down into that promotional content. Engagement content most of the time that's going to be likes and shares that you're measuring that By, educational is going to be saves most of the time, Connection content is definitely comments , and then social proof and promotional, those typically get a little bit of less engagement.
I actually like to pair social proof with kind of connection or educational content to give it a little bit more juice behind it. Each of those is going to have a different measure of success. And your promotional content, then you're looking for how many clicks are going over.
And it doesn't mean that Those other content pillars aren't going to produce results for you. It's just thinking about it in a little bit more of a strategic way. So you can say, okay, I'm hitting all these points. So I'm getting new people into my world through the engagement content, but I'm also nurturing my existing clients or my existing audience to eventually funnel them down into purchasing as well.
Beth Lawrence: I love it. It's almost like five different ways of selling at the same time, because I think some people go straight to the promotional, right? Whether they're online or in person and you're just like, okay, relax.
Like I think the most stereotypical is like a car salesman. Right. And then when it comes to engagement content, It's just fun things that people can relate to you by. So you think of it as like the person that everyone gravitates toward just because they're creating such a great experience and having so much fun.
That's a really great way of looking at it. And I think it really probably helps your clients digest and understand it, the whole universe of it a little bit. Because I think that's also the challenge is that marketing is such a big blanket that sometimes people don't really understand what the nitty gritty of it means.
So they just like you said, either they develop a strategy that doesn't have the right customer in mind or they don't think strategically at all and they just experiment.
Mallory Musante: Yeah. And I like to do messaging pillars as well.
So, you know, what are some of the main topics that you can talk about? So one of mine is your business should support your life, not be your life. It's related to marketing, but it's just a more broad thing where I can then talk about a lot of different topics underneath that.
So I like to look at it like this is the umbrella. And then you have all of these experiences and stories that you can pull from and you can take one story and put it into Those different content pillars, so it's presented in different ways.
You're actually Repurposing and sharing a lot. So it gives you a little bit of framework, but also still allows you to have some creativity and playfulness in it as well.
Beth Lawrence: That is perfect. I love all of this advice. I have one last question for you as a type A person and someone who is an expert in marketing and social media, what is the number one cringy thing you see people do when they're trying to market themselves or their personal brand?
Mallory Musante: Cringy thing.
Oh my gosh. Or
Beth Lawrence: something where you're like, oh god, don't do that. Don't hop on that trend.
Mallory Musante: Honestly the second I see trends I personally, I'm not going to do that anymore because it's just not going to stand out. So unless you have a really specific take on that trend, that's going to be really cool and on brand for you.
I think that's a big thing is especially on social media. Everyone's like, Oh, you have to use trending audio. Oh, you have to follow these trends. So people are just doing stuff and it doesn't make sense for their business. So it's not actually doing anything for you. Cool. Maybe it's getting some eyes.
It's really understanding trend wise, is this going to serve me? But also the other thing that I see a lot of people doing is just straight selling.
So every post that they're doing or every email that they're sending is like a sales pitch, essentially. You need to warm people up a little bit. You can't just run up to someone and be like, will you marry me? And expect them to say, yes, it's the exact same thing.
You like got to get to know, you got to date each other a little bit.
Beth Lawrence: And if they do say yes, that's a red flag. Oh my God. Yes, that is. I, I love that. I cringe when people hop on trends as well. I mean, I I'm guilty of it when threads came out.
Great. I'm going. And then I, I, I think my third thread was like, it's weird here y'all. And then that's the last time I posted. Cause I'm like, this just doesn't resonate with me. And if I see that my audience heavily is going there, yes, I'll keep an eye on the trend.
The place that I think people yell, will you marry me in a business sense? The most is LinkedIn. Yeah. Yeah. I want you to give advice to the people who just put the one on one messaging on and then it's just robotic four paragraph messages with links.
Can you quick and dirty, what should these people do rather than that to establish those connections online?
Mallory Musante: Yeah, so I would say this goes across the board, for most social media. Instead of just sending a cold message, I would say take time. So if you connected with that person, don't just message them immediately.
Take time to get to know them. What are they posting? Interact with their posts. Leave thoughtful comments on them so your name starts popping up and then you recognize them. So then when you do potentially, like I, I'm personally never going to cold pitch anyone. That's just not how I operate.
I hate doing it. It's just not my thing at all. Probably cause I hate being cold pitched, but if you do want to like connect with that person in a private message or something along those lines, then they're at least already familiar with who you are. But I still probably wouldn't recommend pitching them immediately.
I would ask them if they want to grab like a virtual coffee or something, like again, relationships. I think that's the biggest thing is, would you act like this with people in real life? If the answer's no, don't do it online.
Beth Lawrence: That is a fantastic way to leave it.
Thank you so much, Mallory. This has been just as much fun, if not more, than I thought it would be. Please give the listeners ways they can get in touch with you.
Mallory Musante: Probably the best place to connect with me is Instagram cause that's where I'm hanging out most of the time. And it's @mallorymusante. You can also visit my website, www.mallorymusante.com and those are probably the two best places to connect.
Beth Lawrence: Easy peasy. Good marketing. Thank you so much for being on today. It's been really incredible and I can't wait to see what you continue to do and continue to follow your journey because you inspire me truly.
Mallory Musante: Thank you so much for having me.
Beth Lawrence: Thank you so much listeners and we'll be back next time with a new episode of the type a plus podcast. Take care.