Podcast appearances and mentions of paul cowan

Brady Corbet's epic Academy Award-nominated film, The Brutalist, traces the career and personal life of fictional architect and Holocaust survivor László Toth, played by Adrien Brody, as he seeks to find his place in the United States after World War II. In this episode of On the Nose, contributing writer Rebecca Pierce, associate editor Mari Cohen, contributing editor Siddhartha Mahanta, and contributor Noah Kulwin unpack the film's symbolic use of Israel and Zionism as an apparent solution to the racialized antisemitism faced by its Jewish characters upon their arrival in the US. The conversation delves into the film's explorations of post-Holocaust Jewish life and American racialized white supremacy, as well as the contrast between its clear artistic vision and ambiguous politics. This episode includes spoilers for the film and discussions of its onscreen depictions of sexual violence.Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”Texts Mentioned and Further Resources:“About the Destination: The Brutalist and Israel,” Noah Kulwin, Screen Slate“Adrien Brody Addresses Backlash Over Halle Berry Oscars Kiss—but Stops Short Of Apologizing,” Kelby Vera, Huffington Post“The Suppressed Lineage of American Jewish Dissent on Israel,” Emma Saltzberg, Jewish CurrentsThe Tribes of America by Paul Cowan

In de tweede aflevering gaan we terug naar 1988. Deze zomer was de Palestijnse opstand op de Westelijke Jordaanoever en de Gazastrook in volle gang. Het woord intifada betekent letterlijk ‘beving' of ‘opschudding'. Al snel kreeg het de naam van de Palestijnse opstand tegen de Israëlische bezetting. In deze periode gaan Palestijnen, jong en oud, de straat op en protesteren tegen de bezetting. Ook mijn neven en nichten demonstreren voor vrijheid.Op 1 augustus 1989 werd mijn neef opgepakt door het Israëlische leger en tijdens zijn verhoor gemarteld. Na zijn vrijlating werd hij in 1992 opnieuw opgepakt, verhoord en gefolterd. Tijdens die periode overleed een Palestijn in dezelfde gevangenis waar zijn neef werd verhoord. Advocaten brengen de illegaliteit van deze praktijk naar de Hoge Raad.Bronnen en citaten: NOS Jaaroverzichten, CBS, RTL Nieuws, AP, Freeze Frame, Ha'aretz, 14 januari 2011 en UN Audiovisual LibraryRapporten: A Nation Under Siege, Al Haq, 1989; The Interrogation of Palestinians During the Intifada, B'Tselem, 1992; Israeli Interrogation Methods under Fire after Death of Detained Palestinian, Human Rights Watch, 1994.Artikelen: Critics Decry Israeli Prison Abuses, CSM, 18 maart 1992; The First Intifada, IPS - The Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question; Fear of torture or ill-treatment, Amnesty, March 1992 (MDE 15/05/92).Documentaires: Advocate, Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaïche (2019); Naila and the Uprising, Julia Bacha (2017); The Wanted 18, Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan (2014); Days of Rage: The Young Palestinians, Jo Franklin-Trout (1989)_____________ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I am truly done tolerating what these motherfuckers have done and continue to do to my life. I am angry. That's not only gong to piss me off to the extent I will guarantee the snake or shit box. Most likely, I will combine the two. I am winning the game now and have been for quite some time. Fuck You Tessa, Jimbo and the remaining shit stains. You will not win so fuck off. Oh and I know as sure as day follows night most of the populace has the wrong idea about my character and my corr values. Tessa go fuck yourself with a herpes infested rotting dick. You piece of shit retarded bitch. Why is your fucking melon, cranium so gargantuosly massive but the contents inside are negligible.....nature is a cruel mistress. Kinda like you Tessa. You lying, cheating, lazy, arrogant but also not limited in any other way to an entire host of other adjectives that plaque and rot the core of your humanity. I doubt there is any left. Anyway, I digress, I try to always destroy Tessa that piece of shit pig fucking bitch whenever I can. So, the tactics Jimbo and the shit stains et al-quida (they are modern domestic fucking terrorists).... Have employed are of such a pernicious and vile nature it makes me extremely uncomfortable to even mention it because they are acta that are so contradictory to what I cherish, value and seek, hopefully someday, in this world. Those insidious lies have no validity and are meant only to incite a riot against me or at least some level of physical violence and excommunication from some aspect of civilized society. Tessa, you stupid bitch,I know I used several multi-syllabalic words that make the very limited number of brain cells you have left go into a fuckin spastic seizure or whatever but fuck you, cunt. Let me crack an egg of knowledge on you all, that was a quote from the great Charlie Day from Sunny amongst many others. So cunt is not specific to any gender rather it is an acronym for Can't Understand Normal Thinking. Well that's what my buddies, both named Paul, may you both be happy and at peace in the next life, told me one day after sitting around drinking and possibly using other substances for a few hours. I don't give shout outs to often but I believe the time is right, my eyes still sweat as I write this, but two plus years ago I became friends with Paul Cowan and Paul Follis . Both most recently residents of San Diego aged 69 when they passed. Both are survived by daughters and me. I thought as Paul Cowan as a dad and Paul Follis as an uncle. I lived with and did everything I could to be of service and help because they were my best friends and had become my family as I have none. I have Bella and Oso and they are the only things that truly matter to me and why I fight so aggressively to keep them safe. I loved both Paul's as family. They are missed and never forgotten. In this life or the next.....I know where we will meet. Good light...

Are you wasting time and resources on "Brand"? Brand is what happens when your busy doing other things. This week on the If You Market podcast we talk with Paul Cowan about Brand, and why it probably isn't something you should worry about. Paul believes most if not all companies should focus on providing a great customer experience and be obsessive about serving their customers. The brand will come naturally, as long as you have a good product and solve a problem you don't need a megaphone to tell people what they should think about you. Paul Cowan is not your run-of-the-mill marketing guy. Over a 20+ year career, he's held leadership positions at large corporations, then left them to launch startups from scratch. He's marketed phones, food, booze, toys, and SaaS products and he's created award-winning viral ad campaigns. Now as CMO of FreshBooks, he's using his unique skill set to help over 30 million people save time billing, and collect billions of dollars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to this special SaaS Breakthrough episode with our host, Ashley Levesque, covering the 7 Best Marketing Campaigns we observed in 2021.From LinkedIn to email marketing, you'll learn how to replicate these results-driven campaigns. Enjoy!Notes:- 01:45 Paul Cowan at FreshBooks- 05:15 Thomas Peham at Storyblok- 09:40 Alan Silvestri at Growth Gorilla- 17:15 Camille Trent at Dooly- 24:10 Breezy Beaumont at Correlated- 31:15 Thomas Paris at Hoppier- 39:25 Christi Williams at HubSpot

A big hello from Raleigh, North Carolina. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. My guest is Paul Cowan, CMO of FreshBooks, a SaaS-based platform, accounting software used by many small businesses and freelancers. Today we talk about how to bridge the gap between marketing and product experience. In this episode: Why is there a gap between marketing and product experience? What happens when the user experience doesn't live up to the marketing hype? How to provide value for the customers? How can businesses ensure that the product experience addresses their target audience's biggest painpoint? What does it take to bring features into a product in real-time? How to gather feedback and perform testing? How to differentiate from the competition What defines a good customer support process? How can a business carve out a unique market area? What is the role of the marketing team in product experience? Quotes from the episode: "I think the last thing within the tech world is the return to the creative messaging. I think in this kind of race for features and promoting features, we've lost sight of what a brand represents and making sure that's articulated to customers." "One of the guys on our web team went and helped daycare-hang drywall in his local area. It's things like this that we have focused on as an organization. Focus on these grassroots ways to help owners, whether through those initiatives or the philanthropic type of activity or just core-support services. " ————— If you want to chat, reach out to any social media channels or email me at hello@pamdidner.com. You can also join my Facebook community: Build Your Marketing Skills to Get Ahead. When you join, you get a free Starbucks on me. You can go to the Announcement tab and click on the barcode of the gift card.

advertising agencies before opening his own agency.  As a psychotherapist, Paul has worked with individuals and couples & also consulted with teams and organizations. Specialising in client relationships, he now works internationally to facilitate change between agencies and their clients. Key Takeaways.  Staying in control when it comes to direct relations with your customers. Becoming aware of the power of your negative voice and how to negate itProductivity tips. Managing the system and managing the self  for better performance in the new virtual world.  Optimism bias and how it blinds people from seeing what the real problem is Rating your performance as a company.  Connect with Paul  Website - https://paulcowan.com/  LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-cowan-154208/  Book - https://www.amazon.com/Connecting-Clients-rewarding-longer-lasting-relationships/dp/0857198599 

Paul Cowan is a relationship specialist who had a successful career in leading international advertising agencies, then opened his own agency. As a psychotherapist he worked with individuals and couples and consulted with teams and organizations. Specializing in client relationships, he works internationally to facilitate change between agencies and their clients. He cofounded the Client Relationship Consultancy and the Customer Relationship Consultancy. His new book is Connecting with Clients — For stronger, more rewarding and longer-lasting client relationships. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/tboc/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/tboc/support

Paul Cowan, Chief Marketing Officer at FreshBooks joins the podcast. The startup recently achieved unicorn status after obtaining $130 million in funding.Cowan shares that the product must be aligned with the customer experience. He thinks marketing should be more actively involved in this. Being able to connect the customer insights with the product ensures a better experience. It also allows you to stay the course to develop raving fans.On a personal note, Cowan shares his career journey. Moving from employee to founder and exploring startups and enterprises was the path he took. Whilst not setting out to do so, he has expanded his skills by going through this cycle. He recommends that you choose a company that you feel passionate about because that can fuel you to go further. It makes it seem less like work and more like doing what you love. Cowan believes that sales and marketing should work together on telling the story of the company and the product. Sales delivers the story while marketing helps create that story. He talks about the case study of the Dollar Shave Club in a market where product innovation is practically absent. With tight pricing, the differentiator was ads that spoke to the audience in a way they could identify with. Gain a clearer understanding of the importance of marketing and a marketing career from a unicorn marketing leader's perspective.This episode is brought to you by Content Allies.Content Allies helps B2B tech companies launch revenue-generating podcasts. Build relationships that drive revenue through podcast networking. We schedule interviews with your ideal prospects and strategic partners so that you can build relationships and grow your business. You show up and have conversations, we handle everything else. Learn more at  ContentAllies.com

There's a notion among marketers that the way to provide the best customer experience is to have the richest data. After all, to CMOs and most modern marketers, data is basically the key to unlocking customer success. But to provide those marquee customer experiences, there's a myth swirling around that the only way to have success is if all your data sets live in one place. You need the mythical “single source of truth.” But is a single source of truth actually attainable in today's oversaturated martech ecosystem? Paul Cowan is the CMO of FreshBooks, and he isn't so sure.“Having a single source of truth is next to impossible. I haven't been in any organization where anybody said, ‘Man, our data is in a perfect state. Here it is. Here's our 360 view of the customer. We're done, clap your hands and walk away.' That doesn't exist. You need to have your single source of truth in terms of what you believe success looks like, and everybody's aligned to that...But I think being able to have that 360 view of the customer is the hard part.”Having a better understanding of who your customers are is something all marketers are striving for today, and it's something that Paul and his team are working toward. But while a single source of truth might not be attainable, there are avenues to create a clearer picture to work with. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Paul joined me for a fun conversation covering a host of topics, including what it will mean to build FreshBooks' data strategy to target an SMB market in dire need of reliable insights. Paul and I also discussed how FreshBooks reorganized its marketing department to eliminate siloed segments, and why the best marketers need to have an understanding of their sales counterparts. Enjoy! Main TakeawaysDo you Understand Where I'm Coming From?: In order for marketing and sales to have true alignment, both departments must have a clear understanding of the pain points that the other is experiencing. When marketing is under the direction of sales, it does not work. And when marketers don't have a clear understanding of the sales process, there tends to be miscommunication. If you want true alignment between both, marketers and sales individuals must understand the roles of the other.Tension Builds Success: Healthy tension between sales and marketing is okay, as long as that tension is focused on building the overall relationship and strength of the brand. When there is tension between the two departments, it keeps both parties on their toes and responsive to the other. When those lines of communication are closed, there's more room for complacency.Sources Say: The idea of a single source of truth for your data might be unrealistic, but it doesn't mean that you can't harness your first-party data to create a clearer picture of your target audience. A single source of truth should be about understanding the value of your datasets, but also understanding the best way to use your data.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world's number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

Whether you are a Business to Business company or a Business to Consumer company the fact is we all need clients.  And that means that connecting with prospective or current clients becomes  priority one.  The problem is that connecting with others is not easy.  In fact, connecting and staying connected will be one of the most difficult tasks that you will undertake in your business.  Thankfully for all of us therapist, counselor, and marketing company owner Paul Cowan helps us connect with our clients more powerfully on this episode of A New Direction. Paul Cowan's book "Connecting with Clients: For stronger, more rewarding and longer-lasting client relationships" is a series of short vignettes that quickly explores through stories, research, and psychology how connecting with our clients can be achieved with much greater success.  Let's be honest during every step of the sales process from beginning to nurturing being connected is a business lifeline.  The fact is the client can hold many of the cards, but if you do the things necessary to truly build into the relationship it can be a beautiful thing.  Paul Cowan uses his wisdom in "Connecting with Clients" by understanding that like any relationship counseling session staying connect, and re-connecting is not always easy but it is worth it! Please thank the sponsors of A New Direction for their financial support by LIKING their business pages and or send them a note of appreciation.  Of course the best way thank them is to use their services and tell them you heard them on A New Direction. Epic Physical Therapy, certified, and with cutting edge technology and therapeutic equipment.  They treat you as a whole person helping you reach the goals you have to be the best physical person you can be from every day aches and pains, to surgery recovery, to professional athletes, Epic Physical Therapy provides, EPIC relief.  EPIC recovery.  and EPIC Results!  Check them out by clicking on over to www.EPICpt.com Linda Craft & Team, Realtors, fully locally owned and operated, and unaffiliated with an national brand for 35 years has developed relationships with the worlds best real estate professionals to help people like you have an amazing experience when it come to selling their home or buying a new one.  So if you are looking to connect with the best person in your area…why not start with Linda Craft & Team, Realtors drive on over to www.LindaCraft.com    

For the latest Marketing Society 'starter for ten' talk we hear from the Founding Partner at The Client Relationship Consultancy and author of the book Connecting With Clients, Paul Cowan, who shares one of the key themes from the book. About Paul... Paul Cowan, co-founder of the Client Relationship Consultancy draws our attention to the two levels in any client – agency or other professional services relationship and draws one idea from his book Connecting with Clients as an example model to take away and use. Paul's book draws on thinking from the world's leading relationship experts in couple therapy, teamwork, communication, organisational change and personal development.  The result is over 300 pages of unique, practical ideas that can be used immediately. It is the only book it its field to focus on the skills required today for effective inter-personal and inter-team relationships with clients.  “Paul Cowan's book is an essential contribution to non-fiction business literature and well worth your time …” Jason Hillenburg Goodreads https://paulcowan.com/ (https://paulcowan.com/) https://www.clientrelationship.com/ (https://www.clientrelationship.com/)

In season two of SBBS Radio, Eaon chats with former agency suit, agency owner, and then co-founder the Client Relationship Consultancy Paul Cowan. They mostly talk about Paul's fantastic new book 'Connecting With Clients', a must-read for anyone in an agency and probably on the client-side too. More info about Paul, his work and the book at paulcowan.com and the book itself is available pretty much wherever books are sold.

Paul Cowan is the CMO at FreshBooks, one of the top accounting software in the cloud for Owners, self-employed professionals, and their teams.  Paul, with his 20+ year career, has held leadership positions at large corporations such as Shutterstock, Feast (where he was the co-founder), DIVE Networks, and Spin Master.  He's marketed phones, food, booze, toys, and more recently,  SaaS products. He's creativity and experience has allowed him to create award-winning marketing campaigns. When he's not brainstorming new ways to transform the ad industry with the Freshbooks global marketing team, you might find him building things at his cabin in Toronto or sliding down the side of a mountain on some fresh snow.  During this interview we cover: 00:00 The Financial Due Diligence Framework Course (CODE: SAASDISTRICT For $100 off) 01:02 - Intro 01:30 -  Slacktivism, the Myth of Purpose Driven Consumerism 06:33 - Disruptive Marketing, The Future of AI Advertising 11:01 -  Is Ai Ready to Overtake The Market? 12:05 - Paul's Background & FreshBooks on Terms of Size Today 13:26 - How Does Paul Measure His Own Success  15:00 - Advice Paul Would Tell His 25 Years Old Self 16:17 - Biggest Challenges Paul's Facing Right Now? 17:57 - Instrumental Resources for Paul  Success 19:36 - What does Success Mean to Paul Today 21:09 - Get in Touch With Paul Mentions: https://www.freshbooks.com/ (FreshBooks) https://www.shutterstock.com/ (Shutterstock) https://www.cincmarketing.com/ (cinc.co) Get In Touch With Paul: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulcowan/?originalSubdomain=ca (Paul's Linkedin) Tag us & follow: https://www.facebook.com/HorizenCapitalOfficial/ (Facebook)  https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizen-capital (LinkedIn)  https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/ (Instagram)  More about Akeel: Twitter - https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber (https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber) LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar (https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar) More Podcast Sessions - https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast (https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast) 

Paul Cowan is the CMO at FreshBooks, one of the top accounting software in the cloud for Owners, self-employed professionals and their teams.  Paul, with his 20+ year career, has held leadership positions at large corporations such as Shutterstock, Feast (where he was the co-founder), DIVE Networks and Spin Master.  He's marketed phones, food, booze, toys, and more recently,  SaaS products. He's creativity and experience has allowed him to create award-winning marketing campaigns. When he's not brainstorming new ways to transform the ad industry with the Freshbooks global marketing team, you might find him building things at his cabin in Toronto or sliding down the side of a mountain on some fresh snow.  During this interview we cover: 00:00 Contentfy, your On-Demand Content Editing & Repurposing Team 01:02 - Intro 02:25 -  Customer Experience & Product Experience 04:28 - Branding byCreating Experiences 10:04 - Why Companies Focus on Ads & Not on Customer Experience 12:48 - Timeframe for Ads 15:42 - Adapt Product Development to Customer Expectations 18:00 - Who Really Owns Product Experience? 20:05 -  ROI on Product Experience as a Growth lever 22:51 - Product-led GTM Strategy Mentions: https://www.freshbooks.com/ (FreshBooks) People: Get In Touch With Paul: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulcowan/?originalSubdomain=ca (Paul's Linkedin) Tag us & follow: https://www.facebook.com/HorizenCapitalOfficial/ (Facebook)  https://www.facebook.com/HorizenCapitalOfficial/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizen-capital (LinkedIn)  https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizen-capital https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/ (Instagram)  https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/ (https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/) More about Akeel: Twitter - https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber (https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber) LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar (https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar) More Podcast Sessions - https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast (https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast) 

Paul Cowan, former leading ad-man in the UK, now turned client-agency consultant, joins the Mumbrellacast to talk about some of the mistakes still being made in the account relationship, and how to fix them.Over the course of the interview, Cowan touches on several chapters covered in his new book, 'Connecting with Clients', such as the optimism bias with which 'problem accounts' are viewed, as well as 'the forced relationship' which can be the cause of tension in the client-agency relationship.Cowan's time within agencies, and then working externally to pinpoint and solve some of the internal issues that crop up within these volatile relationships, gives him a unique perspective on how the industry has changed over the past few decades.The conversation also covers Cowan's views on how Covid has changed the momentum of the industry, whether creativity can be sparked from remote working, and what he would tell himself, were he starting out now.

The one where Ted interviews Paul from Freshbooks.Sign up for the Marketing News Canada e-newsletter at www.marketingnewscanada.com.Follow Marketing News Canada:Twitter - twitter.com/MarketingNewsC2Facebook - facebook.com/MarketingNewsCanadaLinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/marketing-news-canadaYouTube - youtube.com/channel/UCM8sS33Jyj0xwbnBtRqJdNwWebsite - marketingnewscanada.com Follow Ted Lau: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ballisticarts/Website - https://www.ballisticarts.com/ Follow Paul Cowan:LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/paulcowanTwitter: https://twitter.com/cowanpkcFollow FreshBooks:Twitter: https://twitter.com/freshbooksInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshbooks/LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/company/freshbooksAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Brave New Work special | Episode 3 of 3 Vass Bednar takes over as host of Policy Speaking, for a special Brave New Work discussion on new data policymakers can use in this digital era. Joining the podcast is Paul Cowan, Chief Marketing Officer at FreshBooks who talks about the birds-eye-view insights his accounting company gleaned during the COVID economic crisis, and how sharing those trends helped Canada's policymakers. We also have Caitlin Stanley, Regional Manager at GoFundMe who talks about the early data points her company sees like rises in GoFundMes for medical expenses – even in Canada – and for other basic necessities like food through the pandemic. Finally we sit down with Murad Hemmadi, the Ottawa correspondent at The Logic to talk about the shift in public opinion on data sharing, from controversies of the past to the historic credit and debit card debt info sharing agreement begun by VISA and Interac with Canada's government. Follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Subscribe to Public Policy Forum updates and be first to know about new events, reports and projects. -- Music: Raro Bueno by Chuzausen under a creative commons license

Brave New Work special | Episode 3 of 3 Vass Bednar takes over as host of Policy Speaking, for a special Brave New Work discussion on new data policymakers can use in this digital era. Joining the podcast is Paul Cowan, Chief Marketing Officer at FreshBooks who talks about the birds-eye-view insights his accounting company gleaned during the COVID economic crisis, and how sharing those trends helped Canada's policymakers. We also have Caitlin Stanley, Regional Manager at GoFundMe who talks about the early data points her company sees like rises in GoFundMes for medical expenses – even in Canada – and for other basic necessities like food through the pandemic. Finally we sit down with Murad Hemmadi, the Ottawa correspondent at The Logic to talk about the shift in public opinion on data sharing, from controversies of the past to the historic credit and debit card debt info sharing agreement begun by VISA and Interac with Canada's government. Follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Subscribe to Public Policy Forum updates and be first to know about new events, reports and projects. -- Music: Raro Bueno by Chuzausen under a creative commons license

In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Paul Cowan, CMO of Freshbooks, about marketing software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to small businesses. SaaS marketers tend to move more quickly than other B2B tech marketers, and that's especially true of those targeting SMBs. Small businesses move fast, make decisions more quickly and look for ways to easily research and compare technology solutions before making a purchase decision. They lean heavily on experiences, from the buying experience to the product experience, when evaluating vendors. And small businesses tend to grow, which means some SaaS vendors have a built-in level of churn, as their customers sometimes outgrow their platform. Episode Guide 2:08: How do SaaS marketers think differently about tech marketing? 5:00: The connection between your product experience and your marketing 8:17: How can SaaS vendors protect against customer churn? 12:59: Are your SaaS users aware of all of the features available in your product? 15:23: What happens when your SMB customers outgrow your SaaS application? 17:41: How much does brand value still matter in the modern buyer's journey? 21:27: Which business strategy is right for your SaaS application? 24:00: Where do you think is the next disruption SaaS marketers need to prepare for?

In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Paul Cowan, CMO of Freshbooks, about marketing software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to small businesses. SaaS marketers tend to move more quickly than other B2B tech marketers, and that's especially true of those targeting SMBs. Small businesses move fast, make decisions more quickly and look for ways to easily research and compare technology solutions before making a purchase decision. They lean heavily on experiences, from the buying experience to the product experience, when evaluating vendors. And small businesses tend to grow, which means some SaaS vendors have a built-in level of churn, as their customers sometimes outgrow their platform. Episode Guide 2:08: How do SaaS marketers think differently about tech marketing? 5:00: The connection between your product experience and your marketing 8:17: How can SaaS vendors protect against customer churn? 12:59: Are your SaaS users aware of all of the features available in your product? 15:23: What happens when your SMB customers outgrow your SaaS application? 17:41: How much does brand value still matter in the modern buyer's journey? 21:27: Which business strategy is right for your SaaS application? 24:00: Where do you think is the next disruption SaaS marketers need to prepare for?

Early in his career, Paul Cowan led international advertising agencies. Later, he transitioned to working as a psychotherapist. He cofounded the Client Relationship Consultancy and the Customer Relationship Consultancy, where he consults for individuals, couples, teams and organizations.During the interview we discuss…why Paul specializes in optimizing relationships between clients and their agencieswhat makes a good client facing executivewhat training a client facing executive should receivecommon problems in client-agency and client-supplier relationshipshow the agency-client relationship has become more transactionalthe different Paul hopes to make with his bookAfter the interview…Visit Paul’s website https://paulcowan.com/Visit the Client Relationship Consultancy https://www.clientrelationship.com/Connect with Paul on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-cowan-154208Read “Connecting with Clients” https://www.amazon.com/Connecting-Clients-rewarding-longer-lasting-relationships/dp/0857198599Get in touch with Paul paul@paulcowan.com=============Jennifer DreanSuccess StrategistDeliberate Directions + Executive Business Coaching + Training Center3003 W Main Street, Suite 110, Boise ID 83702(208) 350-6551Website https://www.deliberatedirections.comLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-drean-86003a19/Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deliberate-leaders-podcast-with-allison-dunn/id1500464675

Episode 142 of the Business Bookshelf - Paul Cowan - Author of "Connecting with Clients" Paul is a relationship specialist who had a successful career in leading international advertising agencies, then opened his own agency. As a psychotherapist he worked with individuals and couples and consulted with teams and organizations. Specializing in client relationships, he works internationally to facilitate change between agencies and their clients. He cofounded the Client Relationship Consultancy and the Customer Relationship Consultancy. He is the author of the book “Connecting with Clients: For stronger, more rewarding and longer-lasting client relationships”. There are two kinds of problems: task-oriented and underlying. Before a company fixes an issue with a deliverable or a task, it needs to trace the issue to its root — the relationship with the client. The book can be purchased here - https://amzn.to/2SJDW1M. Paul's companies are Client Relationship Consultancy - www.clientrelationship.com, the Customer Relationship Consultancy - www.clientrelationship.com - and his personal website is www.paulcowan.com. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/businessbookshelf/support

• Leaders can learn from the fish that would fly • “That will make the world a much better place” Total Recorded Time is 17:40 The humble Exocoetidae – the biological name for the family of fish that seemingly fly out of the water for short distances -- has a lesson for business leaders, says relationship specialist Paul Cowan, who works internationally to facilitate change between advertising agencies and their clients. As they “fly,” the fish are observing what's hidden in the waters below them, he says. It's those hidden threats when not discovered that derail business efforts – and can turn the flying fish into dinner. “All of us, whether we're in a personal relationship or a professional relationship, are becoming more expert, more dexterous, more knowledgeable” at seeing underlying issues, he says. And as that develops, “that will make the world a much better place.” Mr. Cowan talks about tackling hidden issues in this Bizgnus Podcast. Please click here to watch the interview: https://youtu.be/0zoU86ULSwM

The subject of today's podcast is the importance of building strong and meaningful relationships at work and in life.Easier said than done, you may say, for human beings are complex machines and all wired differently.There is always a Problem A and a Problem B in every relationship, says my guest of today Paul Cowan, the author of the book “ “Connecting with Clients: For stronger, more rewarding and longer-lasting client relationships”Problem A is the task at hand, the very issue or subject which needs to be addressed with a particular client whereas Problem B is the relationship or even better, the client's experience of the relationship.To focus entirely on problem A, on the delivery of a product or a service,on the output neglecting to invest time and resources in the relationship so as to enhance the customer experience of the delivery, is a mistake.And relationship is such a dynamic concept which first and foremost requires commitment and an understanding of what makes human beings connect and trust each other.Paul Cowan is a psychotherapist,  and also a successful entrepreneur in the fields of marketing and advertising. He runs CRS Customer Relationship Consultancy, a global firm which helps businesses strengthen the relationships with their clientele, and in the incredibly informative and inspiring interview that follows you will learn strategies that will help you grow your business, and also principles like the Ego State, the Jahary window, like Already Listening that will make you think about the way you and other people make decisions and communicate.And then you'll be inspired to nurture and grow your relationships with your clients, stakeholders, and the people around you.

How will Apple's upcoming iOS 14 privacy updates impact your ability to use paid media to achieve your marketing goals? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Loop Club Co-Founder and CEO Tim Keen explains what will happen when Apple rolls out iOS 14, how it will impact Facebook specifically, what it will mean for marketers' ability to use retargeting, and what brands should be doing now to prepare for it. From simple steps like verifying your domain in Facebook ads manager and doing more testing on ad creative, to advanced solutions like server side tracking, Tim shares actionable steps that marketers can take to ensure their paid media strategies continue to deliver value. Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to hear what Tim has to say. Resources from this episode: Visit the Loop Club website Connect with Tim on LinkedIn Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Paul Cowan, who is the COO of FreshBooks. Welcome to the podcast, Paul. Paul (00:23): Hi, Kathleen. Great to be here. Kathleen (00:25): Yeah. I'm excited to talk with you. You have an interesting story and you've been at FreshBooks for about a year and a half, and a lot has happened in that time. Before we dive into it though, can you tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and how you wound up doing what you're doing now, and what FreshBooks does? Paul (00:41): Yeah, for sure. So firstly FreshBooks. We're a cloud accounting software platform. So we focus on helping small business owners manage their business, really managing their finances for non-financial managers. So, you know, the key differentiator between us and other folks in this space that you've probably heard of is that we really focus on the small business owner. So others have built their platforms for accountants. We were started by an owner from a pain point that owner had. So, we kind of started on a point solution 15 years ago and then have grown into being an accounting platform for business owners. Kathleen (01:19): I so needed this when I owned my business. I owned a digital marketing agency for 11 years and I don't know how other marketers are, but the reason I became a marketer is I was terrible at things like accounting, which I did study in business school. Paul (01:36): It's funny. Marketers are one of our strongest verticals. So we kind of target service-based businesses or people who kind of their invoice and their client relationship is kind of the core pieces of how they operate. And so our software is really kind of built around that. And I was actually a FreshBooks customer in 2013 and 2014 when I was doing some consulting. So I do know the space and the need to actually arrange your books appropriately as well. Kathleen (02:07): Yeah, it's a big deal. I mean, it's funny. They always joke. There's that running joke about how doctors make terrible business managers, business owners, but I, for me, the same was true of me as a marketer. I, again, cannot speak for all marketers, but I was just not good at the money side so I can see the need for the product for sure. Now you came in about a year and a half ago and you've done quite a bit of work on the brand and, and on the marketing strategy, let's start by just talking about that. When you, when you got there, what did you find and what path did you start to chart for yourself as CMO? Paul (02:46): For sure. So, so like most when most companies are looking for a CMO, it's generally indicating that some sort of change is going on. So, you know, I was, I was running enterprise and SMB marketing for Shutterstock and, and so I was selling stock imagery and videos and custom content to marketers. And I was having a grand old time doing it. I really liked it. And then FreshBooks came calling and, and, and they were really looking to go through some growth. And so they'd been investing a lot in product. They've been investing a lot into new channel activation and, and they were, they'd been on a hunt for a CFO for a little while, and hadn't really been able to find the right kind of person. And, and I think part of it was like the founder, Mike, he, you know, it was the founders CEO of a, of a company he wants to make sure you're getting people in there who get the pain points, get the problem. Paul (03:40): And, and I kinda came in with like, I'd had B2C experience. I had B2B experience. I'd been an owner of three different companies in the past. I'd gone through all the trials and tribulations of what an owner had. So he was like, great. Like you, you know it, so, we got along very well and, and I joined the company cause they're like, you know, we need to, we need to go through this time of growth. So you know, I came on board to, to, to help kind of get a couple of things right. It, in terms of the, the organization that, you know, there was just some, some, some structural challenges that were there. So, you know, I came in and did the two things that every cliche CMO does. I reorganized the team and I rebranded. Paul (04:23): And so, you know, the reorg I knew was something that I needed to do. So there was just a lot of challenges within the company in terms of like, not all the marketing kind of disciplines were together as a, as a full marketing function. There were some, some things that the company was doing in terms of like investing into a direct Salesforce, which it really hadn't had, it made a significant investment there before, and most of our business was done through self-service channels. So we needed to have self-serve, we needed to have demand generation. We needed to make sure we were kind of managing those two types of customers differently. And get the structure, the right structure in place. So I came in and did that stuff fairly, fairly early on in my tenure there. The brand stuff was kind of interesting because the company had been going through a two-year process, like re-evaluating who it was and insuring and reaffirming its commitment to its customer. Paul (05:20): So I kinda came in at the tail end of that, like all the logo and the design elements and all that stuff was done, but they just hadn't been pushed over kind of the finish line. And so so my role there, like, I didn't come in and say, Hey, we need to rebrand. I came in and said, man, we've done all this work. Or you guys have done all this work. You really just need to kind of move this forward and progress things so that we're making an indication to the market that we're changing as an organization. And, we're representing something slightly different in the eyes of our customer. Kathleen (05:52): I have so many questions. In no particular order, let's start with the team, because that's kind of where you started. How big was the team when you got there? Paul (06:03): Yeah, so I think it was, we were probably 45-ish type of people within the marketing group and in the companies around you know, right now we're at about like just over 400 people globally in a couple of different offices. Kathleen (06:17): And talk me through how you restructured it. You mentioned not all of the different disciplines work together. So what did that look like the before and after? Paul (06:26): So really it was kind of a tale of a couple of different departments. So you know, we had an acquisition team that was, was doing a great job in terms of driving top of funnel activity, but they weren't really too accountable to the conversion metric. Within that attrition funnel, we drive a lot of free trials and then those trials convert into paid users. But, but that team was really kind of focused on like optimizing that front end of the funnel. So we needed to do some changes and bring in some folks who weren't just going to be performance marketing oriented. We needed to bring in marketing strategy, the people who got demand, build the actual B2B capabilities. And then get that kind of funnel activity structured right then we had a pretty functioning customer marketing team or life cycle marketing or CRM. Paul (07:18): However, you want to kind of frame it. The one area that we needed to just get in order was the marketing operation. So we just needed to kind of centralize that and make sure that that team was all together, that we built out like a capability in terms of how we managed our MarTech stack and centralized all that underneath our customer marketing lead product marketing wasn't in marketing, it was in product. So we said, Hey, let's shift this back over. Comms wasn't in marketing. Kind of critical. So it was sitting within our strategy group. We had an event team that was doing event activity that was not tied to any of our lead generation activities. And they were just kind of off like running more of what I would call brand or community oriented activities. Paul (08:01): And that was underneath our BD team. So, there was just a lot of like weird stuff going on, but just how the company had, had kind of structured a grown up and done things. So, just first needed to get everybody together and align under, under one marketing strategy, understanding what the goals were that we were trying to drive to and and just bring it all together. And, really, it was like a game of efficiencies in terms of content generation. And in terms of all the types of things that we could, we could generate by just like optimizing against like that, that customer journey. Kathleen (08:32): Yeah. Wow. That that's a lot of moving parts, but I also am very curious to hear how you navigated just from a relationship standpoint and coming in as the new guy and, and looking at these different marketing functions that are sitting under BD and under strategy and under all these other places, how you navigated the relationships with the leaders of those parts of the company to I'm going to take these people and move them under me. Paul (08:58): Yeah. I mean, thankfully we had a lot of adults at the table and there wasn't a lot of territory issues. I think most of the folks there were like, Hey, you know, I know that this really shouldn't be under me, but I've been shepherding it. Well, we haven't had someone who's seen the full picture. So I think just like previous regimes of leadership within the marketing group, either leaned maybe towards like direct marketing only, or performance marketing or, or, or in other areas. So they really didn't kind of bring all the activities together. So, so the organization knew it needed someone to kind of do it part of it. Half of like, yes, just like putting it down on a page and doing it. But I think, you know, you're alluding to the whole change management exercise and, you know, it was really more about like, how do we get you know, how do we get all the different people to then work together and make sure that, you know, because we're taking things that they may have built up and it's great within the, their, their portfolio, but it wasn't because it wasn't tied to like a demand gen activity. Paul (10:02): And we weren't really kind of assessing the ROI of some of these action that we were running. It's like, you know, they were a little bit more under scrutiny, but, but really we're just like, how do we take these things and dose everything with, with gas so that we could just light this whole thing up on fire and, and, and get way more efficient with everything that we were doing. Kathleen (10:20): Yeah. And you mentioned one of the key areas for kind of reorganization or, or streamlining being around your top of funnel content efforts, it sounded like your inbound efforts really aligning those with your strategy to pull prospects down the funnel. Can you dig into that a little bit more? Paul (10:41): Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of things that were going on really well when I got there was like our, our SEO game was off the hook. Like we had a huge amount of volume and the team had some real solid SEO experts and, and they just were, were focused on, on what we needed to do to build out and to, to just like, make our site magnetic and make sure that we're covering off, like all of the terms within the invoicing accounting payment space that, that we needed to be in. So, so like all of that activity was going, going really, really well. You know, we have like this performance machine, right. So we needed to, we need to make sure we're filling that machine. One of the things that I think we're ignoring the most previous immediate to me coming in was really the messaging we were putting into that performance machine. Paul (11:27): So, you know, we had some great kind of stuff going on in the, in the SEO space where, where, you know, we're, we're getting people in our performance media and our ads. We are great in SEM, but not great in any other channels. Mainly I attribute that to just being like the creative felt like everything else in the space. So like everybody's out there saying all in one accounting solutions and you could rip the logo off and it would be for any other company. So we tried to pivot that and just be more focused on like appealing to the owner and the mindset of the owner. So that was a big portion of what we were doing purely from like a top of funnel ad content space, get our differentiation rolling and tie it into everything that we were doing from a branding and brand strategy standpoint. Paul (12:09): The content game, like underneath there was, was pretty good. Like our blog is, is, is great. You know, we, we get some good traction. We just weren't doing things like webinars or, or, or other types of layers to our content strategy. So we could build a big piece in and you set apart. Or we weren't like taking research reports that we were doing and turning them into smaller blog posts. So a lot of the effort was like, Hey, let's look at all these assets that we currently have, that all these different teams are doing. And then how do we just like, get smarter with them so that we're not going to, we don't have to keep reproducing more and more and more and more. And so a lot of the effort, even now that our blog team does is just like repurposing old posts and just making sure that they're optimized and, and kind of rinse repeat. And now we're, we're taking a slightly different approach to how we really look at the content that we're going to generate and, and kind of put across the whole funnel off of some of the stuff that we really know about our customers. Kathleen (13:05): So when you say you're taking a different approach, is it just shifting topic-wise or audience-wise, or is there something else to that? Paul (13:11): Yeah, so a couple of things. So one area that I'm a huge believer in is like, you know, I think every company has some under-resourced assets or some sort of like gold or oil around that it's just not tapping into. And so, you know, one area that I see is like, Hey, we've got like a whole bunch of customers that are using our, you know, doing, entering their expenses and invoicing within our platform. And we have a big opportunity to start to reveal that to our customers or to the market as a whole. And, and, you know, there's, there's some gold within there. So it was actually interesting because through the whole pandemic and when the first, when the first downturn kind of happened in, in March of last year, what we found was like there was a lot of different government agencies that were looking to understand what was actually happening within the small business sector. Paul (14:03): And so we said, we've got all this data on the small business sector, and we were able to see how much small businesses were actually impacted. And in terms of the revenue that they were, they were they were producing over that timeframe and when they actually recovered and, and so the government was like, Oh, great. We'd have to wait for like a census next year tax time to, to really understand what's going on and to inform stimulus packages and things of that effect. So we're like, Hey, you know, this is really valuable yes. To the government also to businesses, just for them to kind of be able to understand how they're performing versus their sectors, the industry as a whole, and that kind of thing. So what we're really kind of focused on is like, how do we take our data and use that as like a big magnet to bring people in? Paul (14:48): So let's like publish this data back to the, to to our audiences and to owners, so they can understand different things that are happening within their verticals, within their sectors and that kind of stuff. And, and there's tons of like lots and lots of examples of, of, of companies who do this, like, you know, MailChimp or HubSpot. They do a lot of great stuff like that, where they'll, they'll publish like benchmarks in terms of email, open rates and these kinds of things, but we've got like what might be much more harder to get data. Kathleen (15:16): Yeah. Now what does that look like for you? So, because I've worked on this too, we have lots of data in our platform, and we do a quarterly report where we sum up, in our case, what's happening with malvertising attack patterns and threat levels. It's very nerdy to the ad tech world. And, and that's something I think a lot about is it's one thing to say, we're going to share our data. It's entirely another to really conceptualize the right way to share it where it's not just digestible, but it's, it's kind of like set up for vitality. And then the question is, do you do it in one big report or do you chunk it out? And so I'm curious how you guys are approaching that. Paul (15:54): Yeah. So like, I'm a huge fan of, of just like doing indexes, like being able to give someone a tool that they can, they can use and, and be able to understand what's actually going on. So, you know, we've, we, of course first started with reports because that helps us be able to build the different types of things that we would need to build, whether they're indexes or otherwise. And then, and then kind of piques our curiosity around where do we want to go deep and where do we want, not, where do we want to be very kind of general? So, so the first thing we did was we produced like a women's report and, and how women were, were negatively impact or women-owned businesses were negatively impacted by COVID and still are having a hard time performing at the, at the pace of, of their male counterparts. And, and so we were finding really some interesting findings there. We have our general report, we started going into trades and construction. That industry has actually fared really, really well through the pandemic. Like it had a big downturn, but then they're exceeding historical patterns in terms of revenue generation. And, and, you know, I think the obvious is obvious, like around things like, Hey, there, you know, people are at home or disposable income, they're, you know, trying to improve their home office and all of that kind of stuff. Kathleen (17:09): We sit around all day staring at all the things that are wrong with our houses and that we want to fix. My husband would tell you that our project list has grown exponentially since COVID started. Paul (17:20): Yeah, absolutely. So I think from there, it's like, Hey, do we want to do quarterly reports? Or do we want to build a tool that people can just access all the time? And so we're, we're building a tool right now so that people can get there. We have a bunch of reports. But you know, I've looked at other companies that I really like, you know, there's companies in the lending space, like borrow well. And they've like, they have, like, from an inbound perspective, they've got a credit there, so do loans and borrowing and and so they have a credit score calculator and that thing doesn't matter what else they do. Their credit score calculator is their magnet. It just brings everybody to their site. They fill it out, they use Facebook and lots of other places it's become such a lead engine for those guys that they sell leads to other creditors or people that they would not want to ever loan to. Paul (18:12): So they've created this like revenue machine that they can go in and refer people to other places. So, you know, I see that as is, you know, that'd be a great outcome for us if we able to bring people in. But I also think like beyond even just our market that we're servicing today, like there's lots of people in the VC space, like who would be really in the investment space, who are really interested in this data as well. So, so I'm also interested in like, Hey, is there other markets that we could actually be servicing with this, the state of two that we could potentially monetize down the road as well. Kathleen (18:44): Now, do you foresee the tool that you're building as really kind of destined to be a lead magnet like you described, or, or do you foresee at some point that the data or the tool you're building with the data could become a product in and of itself that you sell access to? Paul (18:58): Yeah, absolutely. Both. So it's, you know, we're, we're kind of the sharp end of the spear to say, Hey, like, let's just show that there's demand for this in market. And we've seen it already. So, you know, both from, yes, the government's interested, but just purely from a PR standpoint, we have like a huge amount of hits on, on just like that woman's report to say to, for us to just talk about it and, and, and go deeper into what's actually what people are, what we're seeing in the data. And, and so, yeah, and then I think that there's kind of two places. One is like, Hey, is there a place that we can actually take this and turn it into an actual product? And whether it's via API or otherwise, like, do we want to sell this data, or also, how do we bring this back into our platform and go a little bit deeper into it? Paul (19:42): So, you know, if example of like you being a, a marketing services person, and you're kind of saying, Hey you know, what should my billable rate be? And, and us being able to surface those types of things, because we have that like all anonymized of course, but if we're able to say, you know, if you're up in North Dakota and you're doing graphic design work, here's what all the graphic designers are actually charging from a an hourly rate standpoint. And so here's where you kind of should, should really be thinking about it based on, on your business. Kathleen (20:13): That is awesome. And you sort of answered one of the next questions I was going to have, which is around PR because whenever I think of original data and research, it's like, you know, candy for organic press coverage or earned PR press coverage. So have you, have you, have you done any specific pitching to the press around it or is it just getting picked up? Like, do you have a strategy to support that? Paul (20:38): Yeah, we're, we're absolutely. So we're, we're absolutely tying it into our PR activity where we're just really kind of getting the ball go in there, but we, we took like, our women's report, for example, is one of the lead things that we wanted to see if there would be some, some market interest in and through January, we got a ton of pickup on it. So lots of people leading into obviously leading into international women's day. Like, so January, February, where some big months for us in terms of getting a lot, a lot of interests really across North America in terms of pickup for it. But yeah,  I think where we want to go with this is then turn this in and also, you know, use, use the media as, as a as a partner with us to also help, like, where do we want to interrogate the data and what's next? Paul (21:23): And, you know, there's some obvious things like, you know, as vaccines start to roll out and travel restrictions get lifted, there's going to be like an uptick in travel. And so we'll be able to look at like the travel expenses within small businesses that they're logging and say, look at like, how are they actually increasing their travel expenditures and where are they actually spending their money? So are they spending money on Airbnb? Are they going to the chains? Are they spending on airlines? Like trains, like how travel patterns changed at all since, since in the past as well, Kathleen (21:57): This is the clearest indication that I'm a huge marketing nerd, but like, I get so excited when I hear this stuff like, Oh, fun to dig into that data and turn it into things. Paul (22:07): I think it's one of those things where, you know, we could have easily just kept going down the route of like buying a bunch of buying a bunch of units competing for keywords, doing all that kind of stuff, or, you know, which we still do, but we can also look at other ways that we can, can really kind of create and drive like this organic activity, which all marketers need to be really trying to figure out. Kathleen (22:28): Yeah, absolutely. All right. Shifting gears a little bit, let's talk about the branding, because you mentioned that you came in and there was a rebrand and you specifically explained that like, logo and a lot of that was already done when I hear that, I feel like, Hmm, that could be a double-edged sword, because if you literally have just come in as a CMO and somebody says, guess what? We just redid the logo and the colors and this and that. I knew that it could be like, Oh, great. Yeah, no, cause then you're stuck with the new one and you can't be like, let's change it again. But it sounds like in your situation, it was not that way. Paul (23:05): Yeah. It was the greatest way to come into a company. The biggest, the hardest part of it, any kind of rebrand or branding activity is getting, doing the change management and getting organizational buy-in. Yeah. That was done. So the entire brand effort was built up from the ground up. There was a brand council that brand council was like working on like what were the things that we needed to do and represent in the minds of our customers. So we had an agency called son and sons that was, was helping kind of, really kind of do that inward look. And also then, you know, what's what's role, what's the customer's role and how do those things, two things come together and, and getting down into like the, the challenges that every small business owner faces and in their journey of growth. Paul (23:57): And then what our role is within that, when I came in and the first month it was this big brand fair, where there was the entire company was mobilized and to generate ideas and around, and it could be anything, product marketing, M&A, anything in terms of like, how do we action this for our customers? And it was just basically like a huge kind of session that where people were pitching their ideas. And so you know, I came into that and so people were bought into it. They had already knew what was the place that we were going to occupy from a brand standpoint and a positioning standpoint. So I'm like, Hey, this is great. All I need to do is like, choose a logo. Kathleen (24:39): I feel like that's sort of a risky move on the part of the company and it paid off in this case. But like, yeah, when I think about that, it's like, Oh, we're going to hire a CMO. I would be like, we got to put the brakes on all of this branding stuff, because we don't want to do it and then have them walk in and be like, here you go. Paul (24:55): Well, I think there was part of that, like what I needed to do was like, you know, a lot of the work had been done in terms of crafting a story. But then we needed to get it down into like a strategy. So, so, you know, people got it and got what we doing now. We needed to make it tight and, and, and really just make sure that we can kind of bring it down so that once we engage other partners in, in trying to make this thing come to life, that once we kind of build up our story again, in terms of what we are doing externally, it, it made sense. So like, it was, it was really about like, you know, my it a great thing too, with the company is that like, it's very, very customer-oriented in terms of, of, of being able to when you like, so for example, when you come into the company, you have to do four weeks of customer service training and product knowledge. Paul (25:41): So you spend basically two weeks doing classroom sessions and then two weeks doing ticket and, and customer support. So you get to know the product in and out and you get to know the customers in and out. And whether it's their pain points, their joys, their hates, it's like everything about their experience with the product. So you kind of exit when you go into your seat, like you, you get it, like you get what these people are trying to do and how they think of FreshBooks in their day in day in and day out lives. And so, so that part of it is like such an interesting dynamic, but I've never been in an organization that is so customer-focused like this. So so, so all of this stuff is like, how do we now take this in and externalize it and make sure people understand that, that we get them. Paul (26:26): And we get them at a, at an emotional level that not a lot of other companies do. And so that's where, where it was like, for me, it's like, how do we now take that and, and tell that story to our customers. And that's the journey that we're on right now. So we've done a ton of stuff there. Like we launched a campaign before, right before the pandemic hit in, in Texas, where we took a bunch of markets and we were looking at the lift that we would generate through a bunch of different media plan media that we had in market. And we had like a big coordinated, integrated campaign and with OTT and performance media and some traditional media. And, and then of course, like everything got shut down. So it's like plans. So it's like, Hey, now we have to pivot on everything. But it was great. Like all the early warning kind of early warning indicators are coming in very, very positively. So it kind of told us like, Hey, everything's right. Like we need to launch this thing and just get it out in to prime time. But when, cause the you know, COVID, so, yeah. Kathleen (27:30): So when you, when you think about that, you know, you talked about, like, we had the, we had the, the story, we had the brand, it just like really, wasn't kind of like delivered to the market. When you think, when you came in and you were thinking about how do we take, what we've, this, this baby we've developed and like, put it out there into the world. What does that look like? I mean, obviously you had a lot of balls in the air and you talked about an integrated campaign. Can you give me sort of a high level overview of how you think about taking a new brand to market? Paul (28:00): Yeah, sure. So you know, I think you know, most people don't care is like customers don't care whether or not you created a new logo or not. And, and, you know, I come in you know, I came in really with that type of mindset that like, we can go into market. This is more about us than it is our customers. So you know, this was about us just confirming a commitment as a company to what we're doing and, and moving forward. You know, we sure we got some feedback from customers when we launched the logo and things like that, but, but really the feedback that we wanted to get was, you know, if we're saying that we're in, we understand the, you know, the feelings that customers have, the isolation of being a business owner, and if not, we're here to help them through those times. Paul (28:50): Like, are we credible in saying that? So it was really just testing that, making sure that, that, that message resonated well, that, that, like, it, it ticked off all the kind of key things that we needed to do from a brand tracking standpoint. And, and just go with it and really, you know, we got that feedback. We tried to line it up more with like, you know, kind of market moments and, and the things that we do, because we're a small business, we're, you know, we're a mid-market business, but we have lots of learnings. So everything we do, we try to then help tell our customers why we're doing it and give them a little bit of of an insight into you know, why are we changing our logo and what that actually means to us. So we wrote a big, long blog post about not just like why we're changing our logo, but how we did it. Paul (29:35): And, and just like, so if you're thinking of changing your logo, here's like the playbook that we did. So everything we do, we try to like, then kind of turn it and take a little bit of a different slant on it. So it's not like, you know, bang the drums. We have a new logo, everybody come here and you'd be amazed with it's with this design. It was really a very like, Hey, we did this. And if you're thinking of doing it, here's like the thought process that you could go through. Here's like the tools and the, the different types of things you can read on, on doing that. So, so we always try to take that from the lens of, like, why would an owner really care about this? Well, maybe they're thinking of doing this type of effort to, Kathleen (30:11): So it's been about a year and a half, and I'm, I'm sitting here feeling kind of blown away by how much you've done in that time. It's a lot, and a lot has happened in that time, because we've had COVID and all these changes, as you indicated, like, and it was funny listening to you talk about it too, because I started not this job. I started a new job a little over a year ago, January as head of marketing at a company did my whole, like after 30 days, I had my whole plan, my whole marketing plan mapped out, and then the pandemic hit. I was like, well, throw that out the window. You know, and it's, it is, it's incredibly disruptive. And so it's amazing what you've accomplished. I would love it. If you could speak a little bit to, you know, what, what that has done in terms of transformation of your marketing, you know, and I know there's only certain things you can and cannot share, but like, can you, can you get into a little bit of like before and after for me, or, Paul (31:06): Oh, of course. I mean, as I kind of mentioned before, we're going through this, like a growth phase. So, you know, we were built out like, you know, we're building out our B2B capability and capacity and building up that, that whole kind of ability to just do demand gen do a lot more kind of intent-based marketing, building up our capabilities in that space, along with keeping our, this kind of a tree, this big funnel kind of going on our self-serve side. But, but really it's like it, I mean that the pandemic just like blew everything up because all of the assumptions that we had didn't know if any of them were gonna keep going. So we did three different models in terms of where we thought the year would end up, that we took to our board. We got feedback, like there was people coming with nine, 10, 13 different types of bottles for like, well, you might as well, why not? Paul (31:56): If you're at 13, why not 20? Right. But, but it's, it's so we, we just said, Hey, let's take this case scenario. And then be very, very, very flexible with our cash. So, you know, like most companies, we can track that a bit, like in terms of we thoughtfully just like, let's like remove some costs from the equation. We think we're going to go through a bit of a downturn. Let's you know, pull back on our spending, but be really, really ready to just like open the flood Gates if seeing what happens. And, and really, we didn't see a tremendous down downward impact on our business. We saw some cancels. I think we were kind of pulling forward what may have been some cancels or some churn that that would have happened regardless. But then we stabilized very, very quickly. And then saw like the summer, like last summer was a very good time to be spending cause a lot of people exited the market. Paul (32:45): The economies in terms of driving CAC were great. And, and so, you know, of course we're then doing re-forecasting. And, you know, our August re forecast was then our 2021 reforecast, but then as new people entered the market in the fall, then, then the economy's changed around hot day. Yeah. And so, and so, you know, and so a lot of the assumptions that we made even in our, in our 21 plan are not coming true because we were doing them in a time when, when we were seeing some real, when a lot of people that just exited the market. So so it, you know, right now we're just in this continuous cycle we reforecast a lot now just within the marketing team. Paul (33:28): I think the main thing that we're doing is really just trying to make sure that, that you know, we're hitting the core metrics that any SaaS company we really mindful of our LTV to CAC. So we look at our costs. We just look at all, all our early warning indicators in terms of people engaging in trials and making sure like our pipeline is healthy and all of those types of things. And it's right now, it's just being really, really ready to shift, to turn, to pivot, to pull back to. And it's, it's at a very, very like a channel by channel level now, like is mobile is our mobile channel working is, do we need to pull that back mobile web versus desktop versus, you know, it's so it's, it's a very it's w the, the folks who are on the controls right now, they're very hands on the controls. Kathleen (34:11): Nice. Well, I mean, unbelievable. And, and I would love, I know I can't, but I would love to get a look at like how you guys do forecasting and modeling. I feel like that's something that we're grappling with. I'm at a, I'm at a series, a startup, and we're constantly re-evaluating and we've new products launching, and you come up with your kind of, back of the envelope forecast, and then you have to re forecast as soon as you start to see a little bit of traction. And so I'm always fascinated by that process, but that's for another podcast, right? Paul (34:39): Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'd love it. It's such a fascinating area that I think a lot of people just don't really understand how much marketers spend on, on that and how much are our, you know, database assumptions, how much are WAGs or wild-ass guesses and what it takes to actually make all this stuff come true. Kathleen (34:58): Yeah. You know, we go into marketing thinking, we're not going to be stuck in spreadsheets and jokes on us. Paul (35:03): Yeah. That's why I, I love our FP and a team and having some good marketing, finance people are always a, a valuable thing to have within any, any department. Kathleen (35:11): Amen. let's change gears now because we're kind of coming up to the end of our time. No problem. So there are two questions. I always ask all of my guests. And I'm curious to hear what you have to say. The first is, of course, we talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really kind of setting the bar for what it means to be a great inbound marketer? Paul (35:33): Yeah, so one company that I can really appreciate today is Clear, but, and particularly because they're all over my social feeds promoting their social targeting capabilities. So when we talk about does the practitioner or the subcontractor have a really nice home, it's nice to see a company that's actually promoting its own product through the channels that it's actually promoting. So I'm like good, good for them. I give them a big round of applause. Companies that I kind of, I look at, like, there's a couple of folks you know, within this data space, there's a company. I look to a company called drop loyalty. They they're like kind of a millennial money. It's a little like a latent loyalty and rewards program for millennials. And they built out this product called Cartify, which takes the data. And then they've been able to build out some awesome types of insights there. So I think those guys are, are, are absolutely killing it in that space as well. Kathleen (36:34): Oh, I can't wait to check those out. Second question. All the marketers, I talked to say that one of the greatest challenges they face is just keeping pace with the incredibly, you know, fast changing world of digital marketing. And so how do you personally keep yourself educated and up? Paul (36:49): Yeah. so I will never recommend a book because I find books are generally out of date. I've in my career path, I've done a lot of different things. Like if you, if you look at it, you might say, Hey, there's some sort of rhyme or reason to that, but I've just gone into areas that I've been interested in, whether it's programmatic or whether it's data science or machine learning. And so I just find like, I get really obsessed with something and just read everything I can about it, and just try to target subject matter experts in that space. So, you know, I think nowadays, there's, there's so many different forums whether they're different Slack groups or, you know, I haven't spent a lot of time in clubhouse, but, you know, I hear it's the place to be if you want to go and learn some stuff. So there's, there's just like so many places that you could find those subject matter experts. Now, I think it's just like immerse yourself. And in that topic, I find personally, it's hard to do multiple topics at the same time. So I just, I just try to do one thing at a time. Kathleen (37:46): Yeah. And it's funny, you mentioned clubhouse because I can't get sucked into it. Because for me, LinkedIn is the place. I feel like what I always say is you have to pick your platform and like go deep in the platform that you're going to commit to. And maybe, maybe you can have two, I don't know. But like, I, there are people I see who are on, who are everywhere and I'm just like, when do you actually get your real work done? Paul (38:07): I know, I know it's a lot. Yeah. And I spent a lot of time doing social media consulting in like the late two thousands or working in a SAS company in the social media space. So I've I've, I've, I've let that all become very lax after like 2012. Kathleen (38:23): Yeah. It's nice to be able to do that every now and then just say, you know what, we're going to turn that one off. Great. Well, speaking of social media and the web if somebody is listening and they to learn more about what you've talked about here today, or connect with you online, what is the best way for them to do that? Paul (38:41): Yeah, they could just, if they Google CowanPKC, all of my socials will show up or I'm just Paul K Cowan on LinkedIn. And people can shoot me a note and just make sure you mention the podcast. Kathleen (38:57): All right. Great. And I will put these links in the show notes so that they're easy to find. And any other resources you want to direct folks to. Paul (39:05): If you're interested in finding any information about like the small business resource stuff and what we're doing, you can just go to our website. If you could just go to freshbooks.com, just head over to the resources or press area, and you'll find all that stuff. Kathleen (39:20): I'm definitely going to check that out because I'm working on data stuff. So awesome. I love seeing what other people are doing. All right. Well, Paul, it was great having you here today for those who are listening, if you learn something new or you enjoyed this episode, I would love it. If you would head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast a review, that's how other folks find us. And if you know someone doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Paul. Paul (39:49): Thank you, Kathleen. It was awesome.  

How do you make marketing lemonade out of a pandemic? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, FreshBooks CMO Paul Cowan explains how the company pivoted when COVID hit, and made use of its proprietary data to create content and insights that drove a new marketing strategy. When Paul joined FreshBooks, he inherited a 45 person marketing team with a strong SEO game. After reorganizing the team, he built on that foundation by adjusting the company's messaging to target an owner/CEO audience, while unearthing new content opportunities within FreshBooks' customer data. Fast forward to 2020, and when COVID hit, the company was ready to launch a massive new original research series focusing on the financial health of various industry sectors based on their invoicing behavior. In this interview, Paul talks about navigating an internal restructuring, revamping the company's brand and tech stack, and how its new content efforts have fueled significant increases in brand awareness for FreshBooks. Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to hear Paul's story. Resources from this episode: Visit the FreshBooks website Connect with Paul on LinkedIn Follow Paul on Twitter Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Paul Cowan, who is the COO of FreshBooks. Welcome to the podcast, Paul. Paul (00:23): Hi, Kathleen. Great to be here. Kathleen (00:25): Yeah. I'm excited to talk with you. You have an interesting story and you've been at FreshBooks for about a year and a half, and a lot has happened in that time. Before we dive into it though, can you tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and how you wound up doing what you're doing now, and what FreshBooks does? Paul (00:41): Yeah, for sure. So firstly FreshBooks. We're a cloud accounting software platform. So we focus on helping small business owners manage their business, really managing their finances for non-financial managers. So, you know, the key differentiator between us and other folks in this space that you you've probably heard of is that we really focus on the small business owner. So others have built their platforms for accountants. We were started by an owner from a pain point that owner had. So, we kind of started on a point solution 15 years ago and then have grown into being an accounting platform for business owners. Kathleen (01:19): I so needed this when I owned my business. I owned a digital marketing agency for 11 years and I don't know how other marketers are, but the reason I became a marketer is I was terrible at things like accounting, which I did study in business school. Paul (01:36): It's funny. Marketers are one of our strongest verticals. So we kind of target service-based businesses or people who kind of their invoice and their client relationship is kind of the core pieces of, of, of of how they operate. And so our software is really kind of built around that. And I was actually a FreshBooks customer in 2013 and 2014 when I was doing some consulting. So I do know the space and the need to actually arrange your books appropriately as well. Kathleen (02:07): Yeah, it's a big deal. I mean, it's funny. They always joke. There's that running joke about how doctors make terrible business managers, business owners, but I, for me, the same was true of me as a marketer. I, again, I cannot speak for all marketers, but I was just not good at the money side so I can see the need for the product for sure. Now you came in about a year and a half ago and you've done quite a bit of work on the brand and, and on the marketing strategy, let's start by just talking about that. When you, when you got there, what did you find and what path did you start to chart for yourself as CMO? Paul (02:46): For sure. So, so like most when most companies are looking for a CMO, it's generally indicating that some sort of change is going on. So, you know, I was, I was running enterprise and SMB marketing for Shutterstock and, and so I was selling stock imagery and videos and custom content to marketers. And I was having a grand old time doing it. I really liked it. And then FreshBooks came calling and, and, and they were really looking to go through some growth. And so they'd been investing a lot in product. They've been investing a lot into new channel activation and, and they were, they'd been on a hunt for a CFO for a little while, and hadn't really been able to find the right kind of person. And, and I think part of it was like the founder, Mike, he, you know, it was the founders CEO of a, of a company he wants to make sure you're getting people in there who get the pain points, get the problem. Paul (03:40): And, and I kinda came in with like, I'd had B2C experience. I had B2B experience. I'd been an owner of three different companies in the past. I'd gone through all the trials and tribulations of what an owner had. So he was like, great. Like you, you know it, so, we got along very well and, and I joined the company cause they're like, you know, we need to, we need to go through this, this, this time of growth. So you know, I came on board to, to, to help kind of get a couple of things right. It, in terms of the, the organization that, you know, there was just some, some, some structural challenges that were there. So, you know, I came in and did the two things that every cliche CMO does. I reorganized the team and I rebranded. Paul (04:23): And so, you know, the reorg I knew was something that I needed to do. So there was just a lot of challenges within the company in terms of like, not all the marketing kind of disciplines were together as a, as a full marketing function. There were some, some things that the company was doing in terms of like investing into a direct Salesforce, which it really hadn't had, it made a significant investment there before, and most of our business was done through self-service channels. So we needed to have self-serve, we needed to have demand generation. We needed to make sure we were kind of managing those two types of customers differently. And get the structure, the right structure in place. So I came in and did that stuff fairly, fairly early on in my tenure there. The brand stuff was kind of interesting because the company had been going through a two year process, like re-evaluating who it was and insuring and reaffirming its commitment to its customer. Paul (05:20): So I kinda came in at the tail end of that, like all the logo and the design elements and all that stuff was done, but they just hadn't been pushed over kind of the finish line. And so so my role there, like, I didn't come in and say, Hey, we need to rebrand. I came in and said, man, we've done all this work. Or you guys have done all this work. You really just need to kind of move this forward and progress things so that we're making an indication to the market that we're changing as an organization. And, we're representing something slightly different in the eyes of our customer. Kathleen (05:52): I have so many questions. In no particular order, let's start with the team, because that's kind of where you started. How big was the team when you got there? Paul (06:03): Yeah, so I think it was, we were probably 45-ish type of people within the marketing group and in the companies around you know, right now we're at about like just over 400 people globally in a couple of different offices. Kathleen (06:17): And talk me through how you restructured it. You mentioned not all of the different disciplines work together. So what did that look like the before and after? Paul (06:26): So really it was kind of a tale of a couple of different departments. So you know, we had an acquisition team that was, was doing a great job in terms of driving top of funnel activity, but they weren't really too accountable to the conversion metric. Within that attrition funnel, we drive a lot of free trials and then those trials convert into paid users. But, but that team was really kind of focused on like optimizing that front end of the funnel. So we needed to do some changes and bring in some folks who weren't just going to be performance marketing oriented. We needed to bring in marketing strategy, the people who got demand, build the actual B2B capabilities. And then get that kind of funnel activity structured right then we had a pretty functioning customer marketing team or life cycle marketing or CRM. Paul (07:18): However, you want to kind of frame it. The one area that we needed to just get in order was the marketing operation. So we just needed to kind of centralize that and make sure that that team was all together, that we built out like a capability in terms of how we managed our MarTech stack and centralized all that underneath our our customer marketing lead product marketing wasn't in marketing, it was in product. So we said, Hey, let's shift this back over. Comms wasn't in marketing. Kind of critical. So it was sitting within our strategy group. We had an event team that was doing event activity that was not tied to any of our lead generation activities. And they were just kind of off like running more of what I would call brand or community oriented activities. Paul (08:01): And that was underneath our BD team. So, there was just a lot of like weird stuff going on, but just how the company had, had kind of structured a grown up and done things. So, just first needed to get everybody together and align under, under one marketing strategy, understanding what the goals were that we were trying to drive to and and just bring it all together. And, really, it was like a game of efficiencies in terms of content generation. And in terms of all the types of things that we could, we could generate by just like optimizing against like that, that customer journey. Kathleen (08:32): Yeah. Wow. That that's a lot of moving parts, but I also am very curious to hear how you navigated just from a relationship standpoint and coming in as the new guy and, and looking at these different marketing functions that are sitting under BD and under strategy and under all these other places, how you navigated the relationships with the leaders of those parts of the company to I'm going to take these people and move them under me. Paul (08:58): Yeah. I mean, thankfully we had a lot of adults at the table and there wasn't a lot of territory issues. I think most of the folks there were like, Hey, you know, I know that this really shouldn't be under me, but I've been shepherding it. Well, we haven't had someone who's seen the full picture. So I think just like previous regimes of leadership within the marketing group, either leaned maybe towards like direct marketing only, or performance marketing or, or, or in other areas. So they really didn't kind of bring all the activities together. So, so the organization knew it needed someone to kind of do it part of it. Half of like, yes, just like putting it down on a page and doing it. But I think, you know, you're alluding to the whole change management exercise and, you know, it was really more about like, how do we get you know, how do we get all the different people to then work together and make sure that, you know, because we're taking things that they may have built up and it's great within the, their, their portfolio, but it wasn't because it wasn't tied to like a demand gen activity. Paul (10:02): And we weren't really kind of assessing the ROI of some of these action that we were running. It's like, you know, they were a little bit more under scrutiny, but, but really we're just like, how do we take these things and dose everything with, with gas so that we could just light this whole thing up on fire and, and, and get way more efficient with everything that we were doing. Kathleen (10:20): Yeah. And you mentioned one of the key areas for kind of reorganization or, or streamlining being around your top of funnel content efforts, it sounded like your inbound efforts really aligning those with your strategy to pull prospects down the funnel. Can you dig into that a little bit more? Paul (10:41): Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of things that were going on really well when I got there was like our, our SEO game was off the hook. Like we had a huge amount of volume and the team had some real solid SEO experts and, and they just were, were focused on, on what we needed to do to build out and to, to just like, make our site magnetic and and make sure that we're covering off, like all of the terms within the invoicing accounting payment space that, that we needed to be in. So, so like all of that activity was going, going really, really well. You know, we have like this performance machine, right. So we needed to, we need to make sure we're filling that machine. One of the things that I think we're ignoring the most previous immediate to me coming in was really the messaging we were putting into that performance machine. Paul (11:27): So, you know, we had some great kind of stuff going on in the, in the SEO space where, where, you know, we're, we're getting people in our performance media and our ads. We are great in SEM, but not great in any other channels. Mainly I attribute that to just being like the creative felt like everything else in the space. So like everybody's out there saying all in one accounting solutions and you could rip the logo off and it would be for any other company. So we tried to pivot that and just be more focused on like appealing to the owner and the mindset of the owner. So that was a big portion of what we were doing purely from like a top of funnel ad content space, get our differentiation rolling and tie it into everything that we were doing from a branding and brand strategy standpoint. Paul (12:09): The content game, like underneath there was, was pretty good. Like our blog is, is, is great. You know, we, we get some good traction. We just weren't doing things like webinars or, or, or other types of layers to our content strategy. So we could build a big piece in and you set apart. Or we weren't like taking research reports that we were doing and turning them into smaller blog posts. So a lot of the effort was like, Hey, let's look at all these assets that we currently have, that all these different teams are doing. And then how do we just like, get smarter with them so that we're not going to, we don't have to keep reproducing more and more and more and more. And so a lot of the effort, even now that our blog team does is just like repurposing old posts and just making sure that they're optimized and, and kind of rinse repeat. And now we're, we're taking a slightly different approach to how we really look at the content that we're going to generate and, and kind of put across the whole funnel off of some of the stuff that we really know about our customers. Kathleen (13:05): So when you say you're taking a different approach, is it just shifting topic-wise or audience-wise, or is there something else to that? Paul (13:11): Yeah, so a couple of things. So one area that I'm a huge believer in is like, you know, I think every company has some under-resourced assets or some sort of like gold or oil around that it's just not tapping into. And so, you know, one area that I see is like, Hey, we've got like a whole bunch of customers that are using our, you know, doing, entering their expenses and invoicing within our platform. And we have a big opportunity to start to reveal that to our customers or to the market as a whole. And, and, you know, there's, there's some gold within there. So it was actually interesting because through the whole pandemic and when the first, when the first downturn kind of happened in, in March of last year, what we found was like there was a lot of different government agencies that were looking to understand what was actually happening within the small business sector. Paul (14:03): And so we said, we've got all this data on the small business sector, and we were able to see how much small businesses were actually impacted. And in terms of the revenue that they were, they were they were producing over that timeframe and when they actually recovered and, and so the government was like, Oh, great. We'd have to wait for like a census next year tax time to, to really understand what's going on and to inform stimulus packages and things of that effect. So we're like, Hey, you know, this is really valuable yes. To the government also to businesses, just for them to kind of be able to understand how they're performing versus their sectors, the industry as a whole, and that kind of thing. So what we're really kind of focused on is like, how do we take our data and use that as like a big magnet to bring people in? Paul (14:48): So let's like publish this data back to the, to to our audiences and to owners, so they can understand different things that are happening within their verticals, within their sectors and that kind of stuff. And, and there's tons of like lots and lots of examples of, of, of companies who do this, like, you know, MailChimp or HubSpot. They do a lot of great stuff like that, where they'll, they'll publish like benchmarks in terms of email, open rates and these kinds of things, but we've got like what might be much more harder to get data. Kathleen (15:16): Yeah. Now what does that look like for you? So, because I've worked on this too, we have lots of data in our platform, and we do a quarterly report where we sum up, in our case, what's happening with malvertising attack patterns and threat levels. It's very nerdy to the ad tech world. And, and that's something I think a lot about is it's one thing to say, we're going to share our data. It's entirely another to really conceptualize the right way to share it where it's not just digestible, but it's, it's kind of like set up for vitality. And then the question is, do you do it in one big report or do you chunk it out? And so I'm curious how you guys are approaching that. Paul (15:54): Yeah. So like, I'm a huge fan of, of just like doing indexes, like being able to give someone a tool that they can, they can use and, and be able to understand what's actually going on. So, you know, we've, we, of course first started with reports because that helps us be able to build the different types of things that we would need to build, whether they're indexes or otherwise. And then, and then kind of piques our curiosity around where do we want to go deep and where do we want, not, where do we want to be very kind of general? So, so the first thing we did was we produced like a women's report and, and how how women were, were negatively impact or women owned businesses were negatively impacted by COVID and still are having a hard time performing at the, at the pace of, of their male counterparts. And, and so we were finding really some interesting findings there. We have our general report, we started going into trades and construction. That industry has actually fared really, really well through the pandemic. Like it had a big downturn, but then they've like, they're, they're exceeding historical patterns in terms of revenue generation. And, and, you know, I think the obvious is obvious, like around things like, Hey, there, you know, people are at home or disposable income, they're, you know, trying to improve their home office and all of that kind of stuff. Kathleen (17:09): We sit around all day staring at all the things that are wrong with our houses and that we want to fix. My husband would tell you that our project list has grown exponentially since COVID started. Paul (17:20): Yeah, absolutely. So I think from there, it's like, Hey, do we want to do quarterly reports? Or do we want to build a tool that people can just access all the time? And so we're, we're building a tool right now so that people can get there. We have a bunch of reports. But you know, I've looked at other companies that I really like, you know, there's companies in the lending space, like borrow well. And and they've like, they have, like, from an inbound perspective, they've got a credit there, so do loans and borrowing and and so they have a credit score calculator and that thing doesn't matter what else they do. Their credit score calculator is their magnet. It just brings everybody to their site. They fill it out, they use Facebook and lots of other places it's become such a lead engine for those guys that they sell leads to other creditors or people that they would not want to ever loan to. Paul (18:12): So they've created this like revenue machine that they can go in and refer people to other places. So, you know, I see that as is, you know, that'd be a great outcome for us if we able to bring people in. But I also think like beyond even just our market that we're servicing today, like there's lots of people in the VC space, like who would be really in the investment space, who are really interested in this data as well. So, so I'm also interested in like, Hey, is there other markets that we could actually be servicing with this, the state of two that we could potentially monetize down the road as well. Kathleen (18:44): Now, do you foresee the tool that you're building as really kind of destined to be a lead magnet like you described, or, or do you foresee at some point that the data or the tool you're building with the data could become a product in and of itself that you sell access to? Paul (18:58): Yeah, absolutely. Both. So it's, you know, we're, we're kind of the sharp end of the spear to say, Hey, like, let's just show that there's demand for this in market. And and, and we've seen it already. So, you know, both from, yes, the government's interested, but just purely from a PR standpoint, we have like a huge amount of hits on, on just like that woman's report to say to, for us to just talk about it and, and, and go deeper into what's actually what people are, what we're seeing in the data. And, and so, yeah, and then I think that there's kind of two places. One is like, Hey, is there a place that we can actually take this and turn it into an actual product? And whether it's via API or otherwise, like, do we want to sell this data, or also, how do we bring this back into our platform and go a little bit deeper into it? Paul (19:42): So, you know, if example of like you being a, a marketing services person, and you're kind of saying, Hey you know, what should my billable rate be? And, and us being able to surface those types of things, because we have that like all anonymized of course, but if we're able to say, you know, if you're up in North Dakota and you're doing graphic design work, here's what all the graphic designers are actually charging from a an hourly rate standpoint. And so here's where you kind of should, should really be thinking about it based on, on your business. Kathleen (20:13): That is awesome. And you sort of answered one of the next questions I was going to have, which is around PR because whenever I think of original data and research, it's like, you know, candy for organic press coverage or earned PR press coverage. So have you, have you, have you done any specific pitching to the press around it or is it just getting picked up? Like, do you have a strategy to support that? Paul (20:38): Yeah, we're, we're absolutely. So we're, we're absolutely tying it into our PR activity where we're just really kind of getting the ball go in there, but we, we took like, our women's report, for example, is one of the lead things that we wanted to see if there would be some, some market interest in and through January, we got a ton of pickup on it. So lots of people leading into obviously leading into international women's day. Like, so January, February, where some big months for us in terms of getting a lot, a lot of interests really across North America in terms of pickup for it. But yeah, I think, I think where we want to go with this is then turn this in and also, you know, use, use the media as, as a as a partner with us to also help, like, where do we want to interrogate the data and what's next? Paul (21:23): And, you know, there's some obvious things like, you know, as vaccines start to roll out and travel restrictions get lifted, there's going to be like an uptick in travel. And so we'll be able to look at like the travel expenses within small businesses that they're logging and say, look at like, how are they actually increasing their travel expenditures and where are they actually spending their money? So are they spending money on Airbnb? Are they going to the chains? Are they spending on airlines? Like trains, like how travel patterns changed at all since, since in the past as well, Kathleen (21:57): This is the clearest indication that I'm a huge marketing nerd, but like, I get so excited when I hear this stuff like, Oh, fun to dig into that data and turn it into things. Paul (22:07): I think it's one of those things where, you know, we could have easily just kept going down the route of like buying a bunch of buying a bunch of units competing for keywords, doing all that kind of stuff, or, you know, which we still do, but we can also look at other ways that we can, can really kind of create and drive like this organic activity, which all marketers need to be really trying to figure out. Kathleen (22:28): Yeah, absolutely. All right. Shifting gears a little bit, let's talk about the branding, because you mentioned that you came in and there was a rebrand and you specifically explained that like, logo and a lot of that was already done when I hear that, I feel like, Hmm, that could be a double-edged sword, because if you literally have just come in as a CMO and somebody says, guess what? We just redid the logo and the colors and this and that. I knew that it could be like, Oh, great. Yeah, no, cause then you're stuck with the new one and you can't be like, let's change it again. But it sounds like in your situation, it was not that way. Paul (23:05): Yeah. It was the greatest way to come into a company. The biggest, the hardest part of it, any kind of rebrand or branding activity is getting, doing the change management and getting organizational buy-in. Yeah. That was done. So the entire brand effort was built up from the ground up. There was a brand council that brand council was like working on like what were the things that we needed to do and represent in the minds of our customers. So we had an agency called son and sons that was, was helping kind of, really kind of do that inward look. And also then, you know, what's what's role, what's the customer's role and how do those things, two things come together and, and getting down into like the, the challenges that every small business owner faces and in their journey of growth. Paul (23:57): And then what our role is within that, when I came in and the first month it was this big brand fair, where there was the entire company was mobilized and to generate ideas and around, and it could be anything, product marketing, M&A, anything in terms of like, how do we action this for our customers? And it was just basically like a a huge kind of session that where people were pitching their ideas. And so you know, I came into that and so people were bought into it. They had already knew what was the place that we were going to occupy from a brand standpoint and a positioning standpoint. So I'm like, Hey, this is great. All I need to do is like, choose a logo. Kathleen (24:39): I feel like that's sort of a risky move on the part of the company and it paid off in this case. But like, yeah, when I think about that, it's like, Oh, we're going to hire a CMO. I would be like, we got to put the brakes on all of this branding stuff, because we don't want to do it and then have them walk in and be like, here you go. Paul (24:55): Well, I think there was part of that, like what I needed to do was like, you know, a lot of the work had been done in terms of crafting a story. But then we needed to get it down into like a strategy. So, so, you know, people got it and got what we doing now. We needed to make it tight and, and, and really just make sure that we can kind of bring it down so that once we engage other partners in, in trying to make this thing come to life, that once we kind of build up our story again, in terms of what we are doing externally, it, it made sense. So like, it was, it was really about like, you know, my it a great thing too, with the company is that like, it's very, very customer oriented in terms of, of, of being able to when you like, so for example, when you come into the company, you have to do four weeks of customer service training and product knowledge. Paul (25:41): So you you spend basically two weeks doing classroom sessions and then two weeks doing ticket and, and customer support. So you get to know the product in and out and you get to know the customers in and out. And whether it's their pain points, their joys, their hates, it's like everything about their experience with the product. So you kind of exit when you go into your seat, like you, you get it, like you get what these people are trying to do and how they think of FreshBooks in their day in day in and day out lives. And so, so that part of it is like such an interesting dynamic, but I've never been in an organization that is so customer focused like this. So so, so all of this stuff is like, how do we now take this in and externalize it and make sure people understand that, that we get them. Paul (26:26): And we get them at a, at an emotional level that not a lot of other companies do. And so that's where, where it was like, for me, it's like, how do we now take that and, and tell that story to our customers. And that's the journey that we're on right now. So we've done a ton of stuff there. Like we launched a campaign before, right before the pandemic hit in, in Texas, where we took a bunch of markets and we were looking at the lift that we would generate through through a bunch of different media plan media that we had in market. And we had like a big coordinated, integrated campaign and with OTT and performance media and some traditional media. And, and then of course, like everything got shut down. So it's like plans. So it's like, Hey, now we have to pivot on everything. But but it was great. Like all the early warning kind of early warning indicators are coming in very, very positively. So it kind of told us like, Hey, everything's right. Like we need to launch this thing and just get it out in to prime time. But when, cause the you know, COVID, so, yeah. Kathleen (27:30): So when you, when you think about that, you know, you talked about, like, we had the, we had the, the story, we had the brand, it just like really, wasn't kind of like delivered to the market. When you think, when you came in and you were thinking about how do we take, what we've, this, this baby we've developed and like, put it out there into the world. What does that look like? I mean, obviously you had a lot of balls in the air and you talked about an integrated campaign. Can you give me sort of a high level overview of how you think about taking a new brand to market? Paul (28:00): Yeah, sure. So you know, I think you know, most people don't care is like customers don't care whether or not you created a new logo or not. And, and, you know, I come in you know, I came in really with that type of mindset that like, we can go into market. This is more about us than it is our customers. So you know, this was about us just confirming a commitment as a company to what we're doing and, and moving forward. You know, we sure we got some feedback from customers when we launched the logo and things like that, but, but really the feedback that we wanted to get was, you know, if we're saying that we're in, we understand the, you know, the feelings that customers have, the isolation of being a business owner, and if not, we're here to help them through those times. Paul (28:50): Like, are we credible in saying that? So it was really just testing that, making sure that, that, that message resonated well, that, that, like, it, it ticked off all the kind of key things that we needed to do from a brand tracking standpoint. And, and just go with it and really, you know, we got that feedback. We tried to line it up more with like, you know, kind of market moments and, and the things that we do, because we're a small business, we're, you know, we're a mid-market business, but we have lots of learnings. So everything we do, we try to then help tell our customers why we're doing it and give them a little bit of of an insight into you know, why are we changing our logo and what that actually means to us. So we wrote a big, long blog post about not just like why we're changing our logo, but how we did it. Paul (29:35): And, and just like, so if you're thinking of changing your logo, here's like the playbook that we did. So everything we do, we try to like, then kind of turn it and take a little bit of a different slant on it. So it's not like, you know, bang the drums. We have a new logo, everybody come here and you'd be amazed with it's with this design. It was really a very like, Hey, we did this. And if you're thinking of doing it, here's like the thought process that you could go through. Here's like the tools and the, the different types of things you can read on, on doing that. So, so we always try to take that from the lens of, like, why would an owner really care about this? Well, maybe they're thinking of doing this type of effort to, Kathleen (30:11): So it's been about a year and a half, and I'm, I'm sitting here feeling kind of blown away by how much you've done in that time. It's a lot, and a lot has happened in that time, because we've had COVID and all these changes, as you indicated, like, and it was funny listening to you talk about it too, because I started not this job. I started a new job a little over a year ago, January as head of marketing at a company did my whole, like after 30 days, I had my whole plan, my whole marketing plan mapped out, and then the pandemic hit. I was like, well, throw that out the window. You know, and it's, it is, it's incredibly disruptive. And so it's amazing what you've accomplished. I would love it. If you could speak a little bit to, you know, what, what that has done in terms of transformation of your marketing, you know, and I know there's only certain things you can and cannot share, but like, can you, can you get into a little bit of like before and after for me, or, Paul (31:06): Oh, of course. I mean, as I kind of mentioned before, we're going through this, like a growth phase. So, you know, we were built out like, you know, we're building out our B2B capability and capacity and building up that, that whole kind of ability to just do demand gen do a lot more kind of intent-based marketing, building up our capabilities in that space, along with keeping our, this kind of a tree, this big funnel kind of going on our self-serve side. But, but really it's like it, I mean that the pandemic just like blew everything up because all of the assumptions that we had didn't know if any of them were gonna keep going. So, so we did three different models in terms of where we thought the year would end up, that we took to our board. We got feedback, like there was people coming with nine, 10, 13 different types of bottles for like, well, you might as well, why not? Paul (31:56): If you're at 13, why not 20? Right. But, but it's, it's so we, we just said, Hey, let's take this case scenario. And then be very, very, very flexible with our cash. So, you know, like most companies, we can track that a bit, like in terms of we thoughtfully just like, let's like remove some costs from the equation. We think we're going to go through a bit of a downturn. Let's you know, pull back on our spending, but be really, really ready to just like open the flood Gates if seeing what happens. And, and really, we didn't see a tremendous down downward impact on our business. We saw some cancels. I think we were kind of pulling forward what may have been some cancels or some churn that that would have happened regardless. But then we stabilized very, very quickly. And then saw like the summer, like last summer was a very good time to be spending cause a lot of people exited the market. Paul (32:45): The economies in terms of driving CAC were great. And, and so, you know, of course we're then doing re forecasting. And, you know, our August re forecast was then our 2021 reforecast, but then as new people entered the market in the fall, then, then the economy's changed around hot day. Yeah. And so, and so, you know, and so a lot of the assumptions that we made even in our, in our 21 plan are not coming true because we were doing them in a time when, when we were seeing some real, when a lot of people that just exited the market. So so it, you know, right now we're just in this continuous cycle we reforecast a lot now just within the marketing team. Paul (33:28): I think the main thing that we're doing is really just trying to make sure that, that you know, we're hitting the core metrics that any SaaS company we really mindful of our LTV to CAC. So we look at our costs. We just look at all, all our early warning indicators in terms of people engaging in trials and making sure like our pipeline is healthy and all of those types of things. And it's right now, it's just being really, really ready to shift, to turn, to pivot, to pull back to. And it's, it's at a very, very like a channel by channel level now, like is mobile is our mobile channel working is, do we need to pull that back mobile web versus desktop versus, you know, it's so it's, it's a very it's w the, the folks who are on the controls right now, they're very hands on the controls. Kathleen (34:11): Nice. Well, I mean, unbelievable. And, and I would love, I know I can't, but I would love to get a look at like how you guys do forecasting and modeling. I feel like that's something that we're grappling with. I'm at a, I'm at a series, a startup, and we're constantly re-evaluating and we've new products launching, and you come up with your kind of, back of the envelope forecast, and then you have to re forecast as soon as you start to see a little bit of traction. And so I'm always fascinated by that process, but that's for another podcast, right? Paul (34:39): Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'd love it. It's such a fascinating area that I think a lot of people just don't really understand how much marketers spend on, on that and how much are our, you know, database assumptions, how much are WAGs or wild-ass guesses and what it takes to actually make all this stuff come true. Kathleen (34:58): Yeah. You know, we go into marketing thinking, we're not going to be stuck in spreadsheets and jokes on us. Paul (35:03): Yeah. That's why I, I love our FP and a team and having some good marketing, finance people are always a, a valuable thing to have within any, any department. Kathleen (35:11): Amen. let's change gears now because we're kind of coming up to the end of our time. No problem. So there are two questions. I always ask all of my guests. And I'm curious to hear what you have to say. The first is, of course, we talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really kind of setting the bar for what it means to be a great inbound marketer? Paul (35:33): Yeah, so one company that I can really appreciate today is Clear, but, and particularly because they're all over my social feeds promoting their social targeting capabilities. So when we talk about does the practitioner or the subcontractor have a really nice home, it's nice to see a company that's actually promoting its own product through the channels that it's actually promoting. So I'm like good, good for them. I give them a big round of applause. Companies that I kind of, I look at, like, there's a couple of folks you know, within this data space, there's a company. I look to a company called drop loyalty. They they're like kind of a millennial money. It's a little like a latent loyalty and rewards program for millennials. And they built out this product called Cartify, which takes the data. And then they've been able to build out some awesome types of insights there. So I think those guys are, are, are absolutely killing it in that space as well. Kathleen (36:34): Oh, I can't wait to check those out. Second question. All the marketers, I talked to say that one of the greatest challenges they face is just keeping pace with the incredibly, you know, fast changing world of digital marketing. And so how do you personally keep yourself educated and up? Paul (36:49): Yeah. so I will never recommend a book because I find books are generally out of date. I've in my career path, I've done a lot of different things. Like if you, if you look at it, you might say, Hey, there's some sort of rhyme or reason to that, but I've just gone into areas that I've been interested in, whether it's programmatic or whether it's data science or machine learning. And so I just find like, I get really obsessed with something and just read everything I can about it, and just try to target subject matter experts in that space. So, you know, I think nowadays, there's, there's so many different forums whether they're different Slack groups or, you know, I haven't spent a lot of time in clubhouse, but, you know, I hear it's the place to be if you want to go and learn some stuff. So there's, there's just like so many places that you could find those subject matter experts. Now, I think it's just like immerse yourself. And in that topic, I find personally, it's hard to do multiple topics at the same time. So I just, I just try to do one thing at a time. Kathleen (37:46): Yeah. And it's funny, you mentioned clubhouse because I can't get sucked into it. Because for me, LinkedIn is the place. I feel like what I always say is you have to pick your platform and like go deep in the platform that you're going to commit to. And maybe, maybe you can have two, I don't know. But like, I, there are people I see who are on, who are everywhere and I'm just like, when do you actually get your real work done? Paul (38:07): I know, I know it's a lot. Yeah. And I spent a lot of time doing social media consulting in like the late two thousands or working in a SAS company in the social media space. So I've I've, I've, I've let that all become very lax after like 2012. Kathleen (38:23): Yeah. It's nice to be able to do that every now and then just say, you know what, we're going to turn that one off. Great. Well, speaking of social media and the web if somebody is listening and they to learn more about what you've talked about here today, or connect with you online, what is the best way for them to do that? Paul (38:41): Yeah, they could just, if they Google CowanPKC, all of my socials will show up or I'm just Paul K Cowan on LinkedIn. And people can shoot me a note and just make sure you mention the podcast. Kathleen (38:57): All right. Great. And I will put these links in the show notes so that they're easy to find. And any other resources you want to direct folks to. Paul (39:05): If you're interested in finding any information about like the small business resource stuff and what we're doing, you can just go to our website. If you could just go to freshbooks.com, just head over to the resources or press area, and you'll find all that stuff. Kathleen (39:20): I'm definitely going to check that out because I'm working on data stuff. So awesome. I love seeing what other people are doing. All right. Well, Paul, it was great having you here today for those who are listening, if you learn something new or you enjoyed this episode, I would love it. If you would head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast a review, that's how other folks find us. And if you know someone doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Paul. Paul (39:49): Thank you, Kathleen. It was awesome.

Paul is CMO at the cloud-accounting platform, FreshBooks. Paul has spent his career building, growing and promoting products and has the distinct experience of working in product, marketing and product marketing roles. In this episode we discuss: What happens in the intersection of product and marketing at FreshBooksExamples of marketing that's built-in to productsWhat SaaS product marketers can learn from the gaming sectorWhat can marketing teams learn from product teams and vice versaWhen to target broad audiences vs. when to go feature-specific Referenced on this episode:https://looker.com/ https://trello.com/ CONNECT WITH PAUL / FRESHBOOKShttps://www.linkedin.com/in/paulcowan/ https://twitter.com/cowanpkc https://www.freshbooks.com/ CONNECT WITH SCOTT:scott.colenutt@sitevisibility.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/scottcolenutt CONNECT WITH SITEVISIBILITY:https://www.sitevisibility.co.uk/ https://www.youtube.com/user/SiteVisibilityhttps://twitter.com/sitevisibilityhttps://www.facebook.com/SiteVisibilityhttp://instagram.com/sitevisibility For all show ideas, guest recommendations and feedback email marketing@sitevisibility.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hosted by multiple iTunes Top 10 podcaster James Burtt, Building The Brand is in-depth conversations with the entrepreneurs, founders, marketing and brand experts, PR specialists, CEO’s and CMO’s who have built some of the countries most successful companies and brands. On today’s show we chat to marketing expert Paul Cowan, CMO of FreshBooks. FreshBooks is an online cloud-based accounting software, with over 24 million clients.  Paul has been in and around the marketing game for 20 plus years, and has marketed everything from booze to SaaS products. He is also the creator of many viral ads.  Paul believes it’s important for entrepreneurs to understand their pain and drive that pain point where it makes them more productive.  In this episode you will hear:  How Paul stepped into his CMO role during a company rebrand. How Freshbooks takes away bookkeeping pains  The biggest mistakes small business owners make How to keep up latest marketing trends Why small details in business matter  Social media platform that works for marketing your business Why you need to support small businesses Connect with Paul via  https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulcowan/ and https://twitter.com/cowanpkc Plus check out how Freshbooks are supporting SME's via: https://twitter.com/freshbooks ——————————————— If you’re an entrepreneur or business owner that is interested in blowing up your brand using the power of audio, check out the ULTIMATE PODCAST GROUP, the team that make this very podcast via http://bit.ly/ultimatepodcastgroup

“I’m constantly coaching my team on how we market the marketing.” As CMO of FreshBooks, Paul Cowan has a lot on his plate—even marketing the marketing! However, this is important as it helps everyone internally find the brand’s “true north.” We discussed all of this and more this week on the On Brand podcast. About Paul Cowan Paul Cowan is the CMO at FreshBooks, leading its global marketing team. Over the past 20 years, Paul has marketed phones, food, alcohol, toys, and SaaS products at big companies and start-ups, with an expertise in driving sustainable customer growth and retention strategies. He’s built brands through the appropriate application of data and insights and is always focused on driving results. He’s even won some awards that sit on a shelf somewhere and has written things for various publications that his mom is extremely proud of.   Episode Highlights What drew Paul to FreshBooks? After a storied career on the agency side of things, Paul was drawn to the iconic global SaaS brand by their growth mandate. He was also eager to decode this and figure out the best way to manage that growth. It pays to know your people. FreshBooks has worked to define who their customer is—the small business owner vs. the corporate accountant who may be drawn to their competitors. “We wanted to understand the owner. To solve their pain.” Consider forming a Brand Council. At FreshBooks, a cross-functional team called the Brand Council oversees branding. This group has been critical in maintaining the voice of the customer and on new initiatives like branding. This group recently helped launch a “Roll Up Your Sleeves” program aimed at helping small businesses impacted by COVID-19. What brand has made Paul smile recently? Paul pointed to Nike for their powerful, emotion-invoking advertising around International Women’s Day. To learn more, check out FreshBooks and connect with Paul on LinkedIn and Twitter. As We Wrap … Did you hear something you liked on this episode or another? Do you have a question you’d like our guests to answer? Let me know on Twitter using the hashtag #OnBrandPodcast and you may just hear your thoughts here on the show. On Brand is sponsored by my book Brand Now. Discover the seven dynamics to help your brand stand out in our crowded, distracted world. Order now and get special digital extras. Learn more. Subscribe to the podcast – You can subscribe to the show via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn, and RSS. Rate and review the show – If you like what you’re hearing, head over to Apple Podcasts and click that 5-star button to rate the show. And, if you have a few extra seconds, write a couple of sentences and submit a review. This helps others find the podcast. OK. How do you rate and review a podcast? Need a quick tutorial on leaving a rating/review in iTunes? Check this out. Until next week, I’ll see you on the Internet!

A marketing career path to a CMO role requires you to be aware of your strengths and to have a strong T-Shape. Paul Cowan discusses his experiences with a solution mindset, following curiosity, and leveraging his network to advance his marketing career to CMO of FreshBooks.Paul's Interview Tips:- Get the customer- Understand the product- Tell the truth/be honestConnect with Paul Cowan: via Linkedin:  linkedin.com/in/paulcowanvia Twitter: @cowanpkcLearn more about jobs @ Freshbooks here -  freshbooks.com/careers Resources from this episode:Find the right Marketing Course for you: - themarketinghelp.co/linkedinlearningStart your FREE TMH Membership account:- access new resources and community here - themarketinghelp.co/subscribe

On this 250th episode of "Marketing Today," host Alan Hart speaks with Paul Cowan, the CMO of FreshBooks, a cloud-based accounting solution for small businesses and self-employed professionals. Over the past 20 years, Paul has marketed everything from booze to SaaS products, learning that product experience and marketing go hand-in-hand. In this episode, Alan and Paul discuss the symbiotic relationship between product experience and marketing while touching on the intersection between marketing and community. They even talk of activism — or really slacktivism — and what it means for businesses. The conversation begins with an overview of how FreshBooks came to be and how Paul stepped into his CMO role during a company rebrand. Like any good CMO, Paul believes it's important for your customers to understand the pain you address, but it's even more essential for them to understand what makes you different. From a brand standpoint, Paul says marketers need to look internally and find what he calls the "bits of goodness" that exist within the product experience and communicate that to customers. Paul goes on to explain how to use that pain to build a community, what slacktivism means, and how it impacts business, for better or worse.   In this episode, you'll learn: How to take a pain point and use marketing to exploit it How to find your company magic and use it as your superpower What the symbiotic relationship is between product, customers, marketing, and community What role slacktivism plays in marketing and in pushing companies to be purpose-driven   Key Highlights: [01:33] Why Paul isn't allowed around chainsaws [03:01] What is FreshBooks and Paul's path to becoming CMO [05:38] The pain FreshBooks set out to solve [07:06] The FreshBooks rebrand [11:42] The overlap of product experience and marketing [13:27] Using pain points to build network and community [19:15] What is slacktivism, and how it applies to purpose-driven companies [27:51] An experience that defines Paul, made him who he is today [29:31] Paul's advice for his younger self [30:17] A recent impactful purchase Paul made [31:22] The brands, companies, and causes Paul follows [33:03] What Paul says is the biggest opportunity for marketers today   Resources Mentioned: com Paul Cowan FreshBooks Rebrand (Glossy Inc) Mike McDerment, founder of FreshBooks Slacktivism (Wikipedia) #DeleteUber (NY Times) Casper, DoorDash SEC Filings   Subscribe to the podcast: Listen in iTunes (link: http://apple.co/2dbdAhV) Listen in Google Podcasts (link: http://bit.ly/2Rc2kVa) Listen in Spotify (Link: http://spoti.fi/2mCUGnC ) Connect with the Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulcowan/ https://twitter.com/cowanpkc https://twitter.com/freshbooks Connect with Marketing Today and Alan Hart: http://twitter.com/abhart https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanhart http://twitter.com/themktgtoday https://www.facebook.com/themktgtoday/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketing-today-with-alan-hart/   Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/marketingtoday See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marketing professionals need to have a strong grip on data. These uncertain times have inspired marketers to rely less on qualitative insights and more on data-driven insights.  This is what my guest realized during 2020. Paul Cowan, CMO at FreshBooks, joins me in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast to talk about why they are doubling down on customer data marketing in 2021. FreshBooks serves mainly the small business owner segment with easy-to-use accounting software. As many organizations, the pandemic affected their business initially but it then bounced back and they started to experience growth in 2020. So, they decided to invest in a direct sales force, target international markets and focus on demand generation to accelerate growth. Join our conversation to discover how you can use customer data in your own marketing organization. Leveraging Customer Data Marketing Paul says that after 15 years of operations, FreshBooks realized they were sitting on a lot of data they had not previously leveraged. For instance, they had a tremendous amount of invoice and expense data within the SMB universe ― 15 years of historical data on how small businesses have either created revenue or spent their money.  For example, looking at the data, they discovered some interesting trends and published a report on the impact that Covid had on women business owners and how it took them longer to recover than their male counterparts in many different industries. “When we talk about the opportunity in data marketing,” Paul says, “we're sitting on this huge resource to be able to turn that to our customers or to prospects in the industry in general and say hey, here's how your business should be performing, here are all the historical norms that you should be expecting your business to do.”  Besides reports on specific trends, FreshBooks has created gated microsites with specific information related to particular verticals and industries. “People can go through and see how their vertical looks, how it has changed and be able to drive insights into their business so it helps them with their planning and then eventually, we all assume that it's going to then help drive activity back to us and convert through the funnel.” This focus on content marketing using data has been driving leads for FreshBooks. Furthermore, data on their engagement with the content brings even more insights on their customers that then they can use to improve their marketing efforts. “The cool thing is that it's like this virtuous data circle where it all started with knowing something about our customer and then bringing other people in and then progressively knowing more about them because they engage with customer data. We'll bring them all through and then at the end of it all it helps us improve our overall funnel efficacy and in our conversion rates overall.” We also discussed the dynamics of the current marketing team and why it is important for marketers to understand data analytics and the sales process.  Listen to this episode to learn more about how FreshBooks is using customer data to improve marketing and how they incorporate the feedback from their sales teams.

Today we are spotlighting Paul Cowan, CMO of FreshBooks. FreshBooks is the best cloud-based small business accounting software having served over 24 million people. Paul has over 15 years of experience in brand marketing, working in both large matrix corporations and small start-up environments. He has a unique skill set that blends technical knowledge, creative marketing and lateral problem-solving. All with the focus to build business for sustaining success, IPO or acquisition. Paul shared a case study about how FreshBooks doubled their organic reach and increased sales after firing their agency. Paul has marketed phones, food, booze, toys, and SaaS products over the years at both big companies and start-ups. He likes results, and he’s even won a few awards that are sitting on a shelf somewhere. More importantly, he’s written entries for various publications that his mom is extremely proud of. Outside of work, Paul likes to be outside of work—building things at his cabin or sliding down the sides of mountains.  Find Paul  on LinkedIn Check out Freshbooks    The Podcast Lab Is Coming Soon! Let's Build Your Podcasting Empire Step-by-Awesome-Step.  Want to get updates about when we'll launch? Register here How can Google Ads Help My Business? A few of the benefits of Google Ads include: Immediate exposure – Your ad can show in the top 5 results on a Google search results page. Reach – Show your potential customers relevant, targeted ads in a timely manner when they search Google for your products, services or business. Learn How To Easily Create and Build Your Google Ads Campaigns Like a Pro [FREE] Google Ads Video Training Workshop “The Perfect Google Ad Formula”  Get Instant Access Now! https://www.philadairtraining.com/free-google-ads-video-training-series   P.S. Please subscribe on iTunes. It really does help the podcast to grow! Drop me a note in the comments section over at PhilAdairTraining.com and let me know your thoughts. Suite 12, 5th Floor, Dymocks Building 428 George Street, Sydney 2000, NSW, Australia   W: www.PhilAdairTraining.com E: support@philadairtraining.com I’m a huge fan of connecting on social media. If you’re on these social networks, then let’s follow each other:  Facebook YouTube Pinterest Instagram My Best-Loved Online Marketing Tools: Check Them Out Now! 

Iowa Business Report Wednesday EditionFebruary 10, 2021 Paul Cowan of Freshbooks talks about their new survey showing that women-owned businesses are taking three times longer to recover from COVID-related issues than male-owned businesses in the U.S.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Paul Cowan, the CMO of Freshbooks. By listening to this show, you'll learn: - How to think about building a 12 to 18-month plan as a new CMO of a fast-growth company. - Understand how to test brand messaging by focusing on specific cities - What channels to prioritize for growth - With the cost to acquire a customer increasing across all marketing channels, what it means for the future of marketing. Make sure you subscribe to hear future shows. Happy Growing!

Product and marketing have always gone hand in hand. In most cases, product exists to address pain points that your customers are feeling, and marketing helps you communicate these solutions to your market. In this episode, I interview Paul Cowan, CMO at Freshbooks about understanding your addressable market and using your marketing toolkit to refine your product strategy. Key takeaways from this episode: Growth is a mindset. You need to focus on scale, find new avenues for your business and be constantly figuring out new revenue streams in order to remain relevant.Stick to what you know and love but look for waves! If your roots are in tech, don't be afraid to explore a wide range of tech companies in your career from startups to tech giants.Face-to-face interaction with your customers can transform the way you understand your product.Check out this and other episodes of The Marketer's Journey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play! 

Join Mae Elise Cannon as she discusses the 70 year conflict between Palestine and Israel. That's where Combatants of Peace comes in - a group of Palestinians and Israelis, urging the region to seek peace. Mae talks with Sulaiman Khatib and Tuly Flint of Combatants of Peace about what those of us across the world can do to aid those most affected by this ongoing conflict. RESOURCES: Guests for the episode:  Palestinian peace activist - Sulaiman (or Suli) Khatib Israeli peace activist - Tuly Flint Organizations: Combatants for Peace (CFP) Memorial Day Information CFP Twitter CFP Facebook Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) Global Immersion Project The Parents Circle - Families Forum (PCFF) Background Information/Articles: The Palestinian Faction Fatah: A Primer - NPR Military Detention - Defense for Children International - Palestine Second Lebanon War - Israeli Defense Forces Timeline: Lebanon Conflict - Al Jazeera Operation Protective Edge - Israeli Defense Forces Gaza: The Last Picture - Al Jazeera Gaza conflict 2014: 'War crimes by both sides' - UN - BBC News Films/TV/Webinars: Disturbing the Peace - The “Combatants for Peace,” a group of Palestinians and Israelis working together to promote human rights and peace for all, are the only bi-partisan, nonviolent activist group of enemy combatants working together in an ongoing armed conflict in the world today. They are an inspiring modern day example of the importance of using nonviolent solutions to our conflicts.  Faith and Activism. Freedom or Oppression. A Pilgrimage to Peace (P2P) Event. - Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) Our Boys - Filmed in Israel, the HBO series, Our Boys is based on the true events which led to the outbreak of war in Gaza. The series follows the investigation of Mohammed Abu Khdeir's murder and tells the story of all those involved, Jews and Arabs alike, whose lives were forever changed by these events. Schindler's List - Based on the true story of Oskar Schindler who managed to save about 1100 Jews from being gassed at the Auschwitz concentration camp.  Just Vision Increasing the power and reach of Palestinians and Israelis working to end the occupation and build a future of freedom, dignity, and equality for all.  The Wanted 18 - In the award-winning documentary The Wanted 18, directors Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan bring to life a remarkable story of nonviolent resistance during the First Intifada.

Paul Cowan, CMO of FreshBooks on how they doubled their organic reach and increased sales after firing their agency: Marketing Scoop Podcast by SEMrush Today we are spotlighting Paul Cowan, CMO of FreshBooks. FreshBooks is the best cloud-based small business accounting software having served over 24 million people. Paul has over 15 years of experience in brand marketing, working in both large matrix corporations and small start-up environments. He has a unique skill set that blends technical knowledge, creative marketing and lateral problem-solving. All with the focus to build business for sustaining success, IPO or acquisition. Paul shared a case study about how FreshBooks doubled their organic reach and increased sales after firing their agency. Key Topics Discussed: - How to build an effective internal SEO team - How long it takes to see results in increased site traffic - How to create a community for customers Listen on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher Links Mentioned: “I Make a Living” events - https://www.imakealiving.com/ “I Make a Living” podcast - https://www.freshbooks.com/podcast Author Geoffrey A. Moore - “Crossing the Chasm” http://www.geoffreyamoore.com/ SEMrush - http://semrush.com/ Guest, Paul Cowan, CMO of FreshBooks https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulcowan/ https://twitter.com/cowanpkc  FreshBooks - http://freshooks.com/ FreshBooks Twitter  - https://twitter.com/freshbooks Host, Espree Devora https://twitter.com/espreedevora https://www.linkedin.com/in/espree http://espreedevora.com/ Marketing Scoop Podcast by SEMrush is a WeAreTech.fm production. Credits: Produced by SEMrush and WeAreTech.fm * Hosted by Espree Devora* Story produced, Edited and Mastered by Adam Carroll * Editing by Stan Rosario * Team Support by Janice Geronimo * music by Epidemic Sound

My JavaScript Story this week welcomes Paul Cowan. Paul works as a consultant in front end development. He learned how to program at a really early age but didn't own an email address until he was 30 years old. When he was 30 years old he wanted to change his lifestyle and attended a course in London and took a job as a software developer. Paul was interested in React because, for him, much of programming didn’t make a whole lot of sense until he read about the flux model and React Redux was one of the few frameworks that followed the flux model. Spending most of his life outside of the programming world has granted him a unique perspective framework like React.   Host: Charles Max Wood Joined By Special Guest: Paul Cowan Sponsors G2i CacheFly ______________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood is now available on Amazon. Get Your Copy Today! ______________________________________ Links RRU 088: Frustrations with React Hooks with Paul Cowan Paul's Twitter Paul's Blog Picks Paul Cowan: https://blog.logrocket.com/ Fitness and MMA Fight Charles Max Wood: "#100daysofvue" Vue Learning Challenge @ Devchat.tv YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCABJEQ57MIn6X3TIHIebJUw/videos Devchat.tv Upcoming Workshops: "How To Stay Current" "How to Find Your Dream Developer Job" "How to Start a Podcast" Sign up for the newsletter @ https://devchat.tv/subscribe/ to receive information about our upcoming workshops

My JavaScript Story this week welcomes Paul Cowan. Paul works as a consultant in front end development. He learned how to program at a really early age but didn't own an email address until he was 30 years old. When he was 30 years old he wanted to change his lifestyle and attended a course in London and took a job as a software developer. Paul was interested in React because, for him, much of programming didn’t make a whole lot of sense until he read about the flux model and React Redux was one of the few frameworks that followed the flux model. Spending most of his life outside of the programming world has granted him a unique perspective framework like React.   Host: Charles Max Wood Joined By Special Guest: Paul Cowan Sponsors G2i CacheFly ______________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood is now available on Amazon. Get Your Copy Today! ______________________________________ Links RRU 088: Frustrations with React Hooks with Paul Cowan Paul's Twitter Paul's Blog Picks Paul Cowan: https://blog.logrocket.com/ Fitness and MMA Fight Charles Max Wood: "#100daysofvue" Vue Learning Challenge @ Devchat.tv YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCABJEQ57MIn6X3TIHIebJUw/videos Devchat.tv Upcoming Workshops: "How To Stay Current" "How to Find Your Dream Developer Job" "How to Start a Podcast" Sign up for the newsletter @ https://devchat.tv/subscribe/ to receive information about our upcoming workshops

My JavaScript Story this week welcomes Paul Cowan. Paul works as a consultant in front end development. He learned how to program at a really early age but didn't own an email address until he was 30 years old. When he was 30 years old he wanted to change his lifestyle and attended a course in London and took a job as a software developer. Paul was interested in React because, for him, much of programming didn’t make a whole lot of sense until he read about the flux model and React Redux was one of the few frameworks that followed the flux model. Spending most of his life outside of the programming world has granted him a unique perspective framework like React.   Host: Charles Max Wood Joined By Special Guest: Paul Cowan Sponsors G2i CacheFly ______________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood is now available on Amazon. Get Your Copy Today! ______________________________________ Links RRU 088: Frustrations with React Hooks with Paul Cowan Paul's Twitter Paul's Blog Picks Paul Cowan: https://blog.logrocket.com/ Fitness and MMA Fight Charles Max Wood: "#100daysofvue" Vue Learning Challenge @ Devchat.tv YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCABJEQ57MIn6X3TIHIebJUw/videos Devchat.tv Upcoming Workshops: "How To Stay Current" "How to Find Your Dream Developer Job" "How to Start a Podcast" Sign up for the newsletter @ https://devchat.tv/subscribe/ to receive information about our upcoming workshops

Paul Cowan was a painter and decorator for 30 years until he switched to front end development. He got into React because for him, much of programming didn’t make a whole lot of sense until he read about the flux model, and React Redux was one of the few frameworks that followed the flux model. Spending most of his life outside of the programming world has granted him a unique perspective frameworks like React. He talks about some of his frustrations with React hooks. Hooks can be frustrating because it’s a new paradigm to learn JS, the dependencies array can get bungled, React relies on the order in which hooks are called, and closures can be difficult. Overall, hooks come off at deceptively simple. Paul believes that we shouldn’t need external tooling to keep the dependency array on the right track. To avoid these frustrations, Paul reminds listeners that hooks have to be called in the same order each time at the beginning of your functional components. You also cannot have a hook in an if statement or event handler. It’s also important to remember the declarative nature of React. In production code, updating states is the best way to go.  The panel agrees that it’s good that react has clarified their position on what hooks are supposed to be used for, and how we are beginning to see the limitations of React hooks. They discuss unit testing with hooks and how to determine when the React framework becomes too big. They talk about some of the new features that are coming out and how they benefit new developers. When mistakes do happen, Paul talks about how he determines what went wrong. If you want to get advice from other humans, they suggest consulting StackOverflow, ReactiveFlux, and IRC chat. When you do consult these sources, it’s important that your problem is reproducible so that it’s easier for people to help you out. It’s also important that you learn how to ask questions.  The show finishes with them discussing how they handle changes in the industry. They have found that reusing components is difficult across Angular and React. They talk about the positive ways that React went version to version. They discuss complexity management in apps. The panel talks about some ways to do things in React without hooks, but also caution that avoiding the popular thing can also get you into trouble.  Panelists Thomas Aylott Charles Max Wood Chris Reyes Guest Paul Cowan Sponsors Nrwl |  Nx.Dev/React Sentry | Use the code “devchat” for $100 credit   _______________________________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood will be out on November 20th on Amazon. Get your copy on that date only for $1. _______________________________________________________ Links Flux model React Redux useReducer Frustrations with React Hooks Solutions to Frustrations with React Hooks ESLint Next.js Relay Selenium StackOverflow ReactiveFlux Picks Thomas Aylott Shada Charles Max Wood The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job It’s A Wonderful Life Mr. Kreuger’s Christmas Chris Reyes Netlify React Hooks deep dive AirPods Pro Paul Cowan Solutions to Frustrations with React Hooks Stay fit

Paul Cowan was a painter and decorator for 30 years until he switched to front end development. He got into React because for him, much of programming didn’t make a whole lot of sense until he read about the flux model, and React Redux was one of the few frameworks that followed the flux model. Spending most of his life outside of the programming world has granted him a unique perspective frameworks like React. He talks about some of his frustrations with React hooks. Hooks can be frustrating because it’s a new paradigm to learn JS, the dependencies array can get bungled, React relies on the order in which hooks are called, and closures can be difficult. Overall, hooks come off at deceptively simple. Paul believes that we shouldn’t need external tooling to keep the dependency array on the right track. To avoid these frustrations, Paul reminds listeners that hooks have to be called in the same order each time at the beginning of your functional components. You also cannot have a hook in an if statement or event handler. It’s also important to remember the declarative nature of React. In production code, updating states is the best way to go.  The panel agrees that it’s good that react has clarified their position on what hooks are supposed to be used for, and how we are beginning to see the limitations of React hooks. They discuss unit testing with hooks and how to determine when the React framework becomes too big. They talk about some of the new features that are coming out and how they benefit new developers. When mistakes do happen, Paul talks about how he determines what went wrong. If you want to get advice from other humans, they suggest consulting StackOverflow, ReactiveFlux, and IRC chat. When you do consult these sources, it’s important that your problem is reproducible so that it’s easier for people to help you out. It’s also important that you learn how to ask questions.  The show finishes with them discussing how they handle changes in the industry. They have found that reusing components is difficult across Angular and React. They talk about the positive ways that React went version to version. They discuss complexity management in apps. The panel talks about some ways to do things in React without hooks, but also caution that avoiding the popular thing can also get you into trouble.  Panelists Thomas Aylott Charles Max Wood Chris Reyes Guest Paul Cowan Sponsors Nrwl |  Nx.Dev/React Sentry | Use the code “devchat” for $100 credit   _______________________________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood will be out on November 20th on Amazon. Get your copy on that date only for $1. _______________________________________________________ Links Flux model React Redux useReducer Frustrations with React Hooks Solutions to Frustrations with React Hooks ESLint Next.js Relay Selenium StackOverflow ReactiveFlux Picks Thomas Aylott Shada Charles Max Wood The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job It’s A Wonderful Life Mr. Kreuger’s Christmas Chris Reyes Netlify React Hooks deep dive AirPods Pro Paul Cowan Solutions to Frustrations with React Hooks Stay fit

Spotlight on Shutterstock with Paul Cowan by DMN One-on-One

This podcast is a great example of why I love going to live events. It gave us an opportunity to catch up with Paul Cowan who is the VP of Enterprise and SMB Marketing at Shutterstock. He was also one of my panelists at #DMWF Digital Marketing Conference at the Javits Center in November 2018. Shutterstock recently recreated the infamous Fyre Festival ad using its own stock footage as part of its new global campaign "It's Not Stock." The founders of the festival focused heavily on marketing, spending a lot of money on content creation and visuals (including creating their own clips for the promo video) While Fyre Festival spent hundreds of thousands to create their video collateral, Shuttershock CMO Lou Weiss said the clip, which was a compilation of 18 different bits of footage licensed through Shuttershock, cost just $2062 to create.

Stories of objects, ghosts and histories lost and found recorded on location in Portsmouth's most haunted house, the site of a sacrifice in Canterbury and at the TfL Lost Luggage Office. Presenter Matthew Sweet meets academics taking part in Being Human which showcases research from universities around the UK.How can the reflections of a warrior-poet from the distant past and the adventures of an Iron Age tribesman from the far future help us rethink our relationship with a city centre in the Britain of today? Matthew Sweet travels to Canterbury to find out. The Transport for London lost property office is a labyrinthine cornucopia hidden away under the streets of central London. A visit there leads to reflections on our complicated relationships with things in a consumer society dominated by mass-produced goods, and the history of the concept of lost property casts a revealing light on the development of the city as an ordered space. And, some say that Wymering Manor in Portsmouth is one of the most haunted houses in the country. Whether that's true or not, Matthew goes there to examine the ways in which the past of a building intrudes into its present. Matthew's guests include: Michael Bintley and Sonia Overall in Canterbury Kate Smith and Paul Cowan at the TFL Lost Property Office Karen Fielder and Benjamin Ffrench in PortsmouthProducer Luke Mulhall.

Rabbi Rachel Cowan Wise Aging: Living with Joy, Resilience and Spirit ~Co-presented with Point Reyes Books~ Join TNS Host Michael Lerner for an exploration of spiritual biography with Rabbi Rachel Cowan, known nationally as a pioneer of contemplative practice in Judaism. Her latest book is Wise Aging: Living with Joy, Resilience and Spirit. Rabbi Rachel Cowan Rabbi Rachel Cowan, formerly the executive director of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, is working on a special project on aging with wisdom. She was named by Newsweek Magazine in 2007 and in 2010 as one of the 50 leading rabbis in the United States, and by the Forward in 2010 as one of the 50 leading women rabbis. She was featured in the PBS series The Jewish Americans. She received her ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1989. From 1990-2003 she was program director for Jewish Life and Values at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Her work has been included in Moment and Sh’ma as well as in anthologies, including Illness and Health in the Jewish Tradition: Writings from the Bible to Today, and The Torah: A Women’s Commentary. She is the author, with her late husband Paul Cowan, of Mixed Blessings: Untangling the Knots in an Interfaith Marriage. Her most recent book, co-authored with Dr. Linda Thal and called Wise Aging: Living with Joy, Resilience and Spirit, was published in June 2015. She lives in New York City, near her two children Lisa and Matt, and four grandchildren – Jacob and Tessa, and Dante and Miles Moses. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.