Hosted By

Rabah Rahil
CMO at Triple Whale

Guests

Amy Madonia
Ecommerce and digital marketing expert

How to Grow Your Ecom Business By Turning Numbers Into Narratives

In this episode of ROAS, we go over how to take numbers and turn them into narratives to help grow you ecom business in an effective manner.  #ROAS

Notes & Links

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Transcription

Amy Madonia (00:00):

You know, that's, that's also kind of a recipe for disaster too, right? Because some, those two people might not agree on something. Well, what are they gonna do? They're not gonna talk, they're gonna use you. And what are you gonna do? You have two different bosses telling you different things and you know, neither of them feels a hundred percent accountable for you, your career development, your workload, or, or know what it is. Um, and to me, so it's, to me that just seems like, you know, a little bit of a management cop out, like make a decision who does this per person report to who has this responsibility. Okay. Moving

Rabah Rahil (00:39):

It's incredible. All right. 3, 2, 1. So I gotta tell you, I was a little nervous when I saw this one on my calendar. I, I did a little bit of research on the CV, but you know, we had to do it. We have our first Ivy leaguer, everyone, Amy Madonia. Thank you so much for joining us on the you or not your as podcast. How are you today?

Amy Madonia (00:59):

I I'm great. Thanks for having me. I'm honored to be here. Absolutely. And don't be, don't be intimidated by the Ivy league. I, I, I got told I would never get in. So I had the, uh, inferiority complex the full four years. I was there.

Rabah Rahil (01:11):

<laugh> but now you got in and you, and you graduated four year. I graduat, I had a couple victory laps and, and I was not Ivy league. So we'll leave that for another day. <laugh> all right. Um, where does this podcast find you? Amy?

Amy Madonia (01:23):

I'm in New York city.

Rabah Rahil (01:25):

Oh, beautiful. Beautiful. I am in Austin, Texas as always in the, uh, marketing hub. Have you lived in New York, your whole life?

Amy Madonia (01:33):

Uh, the state, most of my life. Um, I'm from upstate New York originally. I'm from Syracuse.

Rabah Rahil (01:38):

Yeah. Yeah,

Amy Madonia (01:39):

Yeah. They're, they're unfortunately out of the tournament this year, which is bummer, but

Rabah Rahil (01:43):

Yeah.

Amy Madonia (01:44):

Um, but I've, I've lived in Manhattan twice in my life and this is, you know, my second tour and, and not going anywhere else here to stay. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (01:51):

I mean, there is, uh, I've been to the city a few times and, uh, I gotta tell you, Manhattan is probably my favorite part of the city, but I have just this huge addictive personality and I, I there's just so much energy there. It would eat me up. I would, I'd be a week and I would just be gone in some drain pool somewhere is just, there is, uh, we actually got to, when I was at university, a friend of ours, um, he, he was Greek and his, uh, fraternity brother, um, actually got transferred to the NYU dorms, which are not even like dorms. There's like, it was like this incredible Highrise, like

Amy Madonia (02:26):

Very nice. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (02:27):

Super nice. Yeah. And then we got to go to, or Columbia, which is a beautiful campus, but it is in the hood. It is not in a great area to walk around. Yeah,

Amy Madonia (02:36):

It's up, it's up, it's up. Which, you know, parts of parts of those neighborhoods are really, really nice, you know, and that's one of the things I love about Manhattan is you walk like 10 blocks and it's like a completely different world than 10 blocks east or 10 blocks west or south or whatever. Um, every neighborhood has its own kind of distinct feel and flavor and, you know, know the energy you mentioned, you know, people either love it or hate it. I, I personally love it. You know,

Rabah Rahil (03:05):

I love it too.

Amy Madonia (03:06):

I, I, I just, you know, even just walking around and riding the subway, seeing what people are doing, what they're wearing, uh, you know, overhearing conversations as somebody who's just interested in people. It's, it's a great environment to, to be in constantly.

Rabah Rahil (03:22):

I couldn't agree more. I, I absolutely loved it, like I said, but I just don't. I have the zero personality for it. And quite frankly, so I came from the Midwest and the Midwest kind of has like a two arm bubble where, uh, that, that shrinks very quickly. I, in the city where

Amy Madonia (03:38):

What's, what's the two arm bubble, I'm not

Rabah Rahil (03:39):

Familiar with that. It's about like two arms length away from somebody is kind of like an acceptable space that you would give somebody in the city, in the city. It's like a hand, if that like, people are well, there's a to you.

Amy Madonia (03:51):

Yeah. There's a couple places. It completely disappears. Subway during rush hour, completely disappears elevators completely disappears. Like you would think that, you know, 16 people is too many. We can get too more in because we got places to go. So,

Rabah Rahil (04:05):

Oh, absolutely. We, uh, when I did do the visit there, um, especially in the business district, uh, with Manhattan, me and people are getting to where they're going and there is not, uh, again, coming from the Midwest, uh, cordial of like you bump somebody or, oh, you're you get where you need to go and you get there as fast as you can. And, uh, yes, no judgment on that. It was just a, uh, <laugh> a different part of the world, but I, I do think it is probably the greatest city in the world. It's, it's, it's really, uh, sight to see. And it's one of our oldest where people don't re re like the us is fairly young, especially in relative to Europe and stuff like that. So it's, it's one of the few places you can actually see some, some really cool history there. Um, and the museums are sensational. Yeah. Which you

Amy Madonia (04:49):

Can't be. And even architecture, walking down the street, I was walking down a street near my apartment and I passed a church and it's got, you know, 1892 on it, you know, through 1912. And I'm looking at the thing, wondering is this how long it took to build this, this thing, and it's still here and it's just, you know, it's totally fascinating. Yeah. Never, never bored here. That's for sure.

Rabah Rahil (05:12):

That's another one where, uh, yeah, if you, if you enjoy entertainment or, uh, a lot of liveliness, uh, New York is the place to be. Um, so from Cornell, what did you study at Cornell?

Amy Madonia (05:24):

Uh, it's an interesting story. So I, I was very into art in high school. Yeah. Like I wanted to, you know, I got the, you know, being an upstate New York, I got the Parsons mailer, like with this cool, like design and art stuff on it. Oh, cool. And I was like, mom, I wanna go here. I wanna go to Parsons. And I can remember this moment. Very distinctly. I was sitting on my yellow shag carpet as a child of the seventies, looking up at her saying, you know, holding the Parsons flyer. I wanna go here. And she looked at me and she said, we're not paying for you to go to school and be a starving artist. <laugh>. So that was the end of Parsons. However, there you go. This comes back to Cornell because they had an interior design program. Okay. So I was kind of like, all right, well, if I can't go to Parsons, you know, my grades are good.

Amy Madonia (06:11):

My parents, you know, you know, think, believe in me cuz my guidance counselor was like, you'll never get in there. And um, so my parents and I kind of compromise like, you know, this is an interior design program, you know? So there's a little art there. Yeah. Um, so I, you know, I, I got in, I'd love to prove that guidance counselor wrong because he was one of these guys that like the, the boys in the class could, could go all the way. It could go Ivy, it could go Penn brown and the women it's like, no, you know, you'd be lucky to get into to one crummy, SUNY. Um <laugh> and like, I, you know, I, the whole, it had such an impact on me. It's funny when you're a kid, once you hear somebody say something, it has such an impact on you.

Amy Madonia (06:54):

Yes. So the entire time I was in Cornell, I thought I was like an imposter. Right. Like I was like, I don't really belong here. Uh, someone's gonna find me out, you know? So I studied really hard and I, you know, got really good grades and, um, was doing really well in the entire interior design program. They have like competitions and I was like, you know, placing in the awards and stuff like that. And just, you know, I got to the point where, um, there wasn't enough art in it for me. Right. Yeah. Like we're up with, they'd run it like an architecture studio. So you're up at three in the morning with an Exacto and knife trying to cut, not cut your own fingers off making models and stuff. Yep. And you know, I also found out what's starting interior designers making the city and that was not ain't the path motivating at all. <laugh> so, um, so I didn't stay in interior design. I think, you know, half of my undergrad was in that. And then, um, I studied, uh, believe it or not facilities planning, which is like HVAC systems and buildings and stuff.

Rabah Rahil (07:53):

Interesting.

Amy Madonia (07:54):

Very bizarre, very circuitous path. I'm I was never one of those people that was like, I wanna be a doctor. I wanna be a, you know, whatever. Yeah. Like I just never had that. Um, actually I did, I tried that. I was like, I wanna be an artist. My mom was like, no, so that, you know, <laugh>, that was, that was the end of that. Um, but yeah, that was my, you know, that was how I got into interior design and how I essentially got out while I was still in school.

Rabah Rahil (08:19):

So that's incredible. So how did connect the dots now to

Amy Madonia (08:22):

Marketing? Yeah. So it's really interesting. I'll connect them to e-commerce actually because okay. Yeah, yeah. Even better. Here's here's the part that, you know, really made me crazy about interior design. Like I was always figuring out how to do the projects, so they were beautiful and efficient. Right. Like, you know, one of the models we had to build, we did the, the, the CAD, the CAD drawing and then the model and, you know, I made something beautiful, but I also made it. So when I had to make the model, I could do it in like three hours and get the hell outta studio. Yeah, yeah. Yep. You know, my counterparts are like, you know, doing these precise things up all night long. Um, and then we got to the point we like, you know, picking furniture and, and, and stuff. And you know, you're drawing window millions in a very specific, precise way over and over again. And I was like, it's like the parts of window that hold the glass in.

Rabah Rahil (09:14):

Oh, like the, the molding or framing or something like that. A Moen.

Amy Madonia (09:17):

Yeah. Oh, wow. Mulian yeah. I don't have to spell it, but uh, yeah. Mulian so you'll need to spell it for Scrabble. I can't help you there I'm out. Uh, so when I got to that point of like chairs and stuff, and I was like, this is, this is making me crazy. This is stupid because who am I to say that that share should be pink and not blue. There's no data to support this decision. Yeah. Right. I can make it look good. No question. There no issue, but why blue? Why not red? Like, I have no information to really guide this decision. It feels random. I don't like this as stupid. Right. So many years later when I found myself in an e-commerce job, I didn't know it at the time, but I took to it like, you know, at duck and water, I was like, okay, cuz there's an Arti artistic, um, you know, consumer insights, marketing aspects to everything.

Amy Madonia (10:10):

And then there's the data part. Yep. So finally like, okay, I can make, uh, good decisions that might be efficient from a traffic standpoint or whatever, but I also have a little data that I can use as a springboard to tie those two things together and do something awesome. That works. Right. So that's just one of the, one of the, you know, kind of lucky things, I guess, that, that worked out about how my brain works, you know, leaving interior design and then finding myself in eCommerce many, many years later and finding that it really, really suits me. Well,

Rabah Rahil (10:42):

I love that. And I'm kind of getting the vibe too, where, um, you, when I encounter very high level marketers, there's usually a mix of system builder, but also this kind of creative, empathetic aspect of like, uh, this ethereal, right? Like there's these intangible things of like, how, how do you delight the customer? That's really challenging to get on a spreadsheet. Um, but at the same time, it's so necessary. But on the other hand, having this hardcore data, and if you just swing into that, it can be kind of, you end up being cold and the experience just comes across insincere. And so living at the confluence of data and creativity and systems is kind of really the show for me, in my opinion, it sounds like your, your HVACs and your muons paid off. Huh <laugh>

Amy Madonia (11:29):

Yeah. Maybe a little bit, maybe a little bit. And you know, my father's an engineer, so I probably have a little bit of his sure, sure. You know, you know, brain structure or logical critical thinking, um, you know, kind of hard wired into me, but it is true about our industry in that, you know, and I I've taught analytics internally, externally, whatever, and it's an important thing to remember that it's not, it's never, uh, all about just the numbers. Yep. There's uh, kind of four parts to analysis. And I, I went over this in somebody's review just yesterday, who's on my team. So I'm trying to get this person to kind of grow and develop, like there's the pulling of the numbers. Right. There's the looking at the numbers and saying, this is bigger than this. Right. And then, and, and then there's the part where you're, uh, not just talking about the highlights, you're talking about, um, the takeaways.

Amy Madonia (12:24):

Yeah. Well, sales are up, um, primarily because of conversion, you know, traffic was down, but that was offset by the conversion rate and that's why sales are up. Right. So then there's the kind of the, the highlights. Right. But then at the end of the day, kind of the last part of analysis, that's important, it takes kind of a more sophisticated, uh, analytic mind and somebody who really knows their business is to create a story. Yes. Right. Like you have to create the story about what's happening with the consumer, with the interface, with the buying process, with the consideration of the purchase and all of that stuff. Um, and that's, I think in many ways kind of where the rubber meets meets the road, um, because that's how you determine the appropriate next steps for, for growing sales or for driving, um, a response marketing element and driving consumer demand. So, you know, they, they are kind of two, two sides of a coin in that they're, they need to kind of live harmoniously together, kind of that ability to find the story and analyze the data at the same time.

Rabah Rahil (13:25):

I, uh, man get that tattooed on me. I absolutely love that. I I'm a big one of my, these is that, uh, people experience the world and in stories. And so the more, and it is kind of to your point a, a bit of a, you know, double edged sword where you wanna make sure that narrative is rooted in data where you're just not this charismatic person. <laugh>, it's just making up this incredibly nonsensical thing that like to you make sense. Exactly. But there, there needs to be some, some data that exactly supports that narrative, but I, I couldn't agree more. And I think ultimately, so I mean kind of triple well plug that's kind of the ultimate for us is one of the kind of tenants we have is like, we never want to do data for data's sake, right? Like the only reason you want to use data or even further more visualizations is so you can look at the patterns and then those patterns can then inform to your point, what is the narrative like, what is this customer actually experiencing?

Rabah Rahil (14:18):

Cuz that's another kind of big tenet of ours is like, yes, numbers and data is incredibly important, but at the end of the day, like numbers aren't buying your product, people are. And so you need to make sure that you still again have that, that empathetic vector where like you can get really caught in, in some unique things where data can tell you these things, that it, it, it's more of an informing and kind of taking you down this path and then you can put together this whole totality of experience versus um, to your 0.0, conversion rates up and traffic's down. So we're doing something right. Or whatever, whatever, like, yeah, that that's helpful. But there that's the like to your point, the first stage in the analysis, but what you to kind of drill down to it. I, I love that little four stages. That's really cool.

Amy Madonia (15:01):

Yeah. And I can give you an example too. Like, you know, we have, um, a virtual Tryon technology on our site that does all sorts of cool things. And if we look at the numbers where, you know, we look at users and non-users the users of a virtual Tryon have a much higher conversion rate. So we see that lift and conversion rate and they have a two to three times engagement rate versus non-users with just, you know, the site and pages, procession, et cetera. So, okay. So that's like, all right, we pulled the numbers and we looked at it and those are some of the takeaways and that's like, okay, great. And then as we're going through those, those KPIs, we're like really weird. The, a average order value is lower than, than, than, right. So you're like, okay, hold the phone. There's a story here.

Amy Madonia (15:42):

There's something going on here. We need to look a little deeper. Right. So then you'd look at, um, that the hypothesis that I had in my head was okay if I'm coming to the site and I don't know which, because you know, maxilla is primarily lipstick, right? Yep. I don't know which lipstick shade I want or if I wanna buy anything. Right. I am self-selecting to use the virtual Tryon for that tool. It is very likely, I am at least more probable, I am a new consumer or new visitor if I am using so, so, so then, so there's your story, right? So there's your hypothesis. So you test that out. So then you do another, you know, another round to look at, okay, what's my percent of new versus returning visitors that are using U VTO versus not using, uh, VTO or virtual Tryon. And then you say to yourself, okay, the, the, the average order value of my VTO users is actually, if I look at my new people is still higher than my new people hitting the rest of the site.

Rabah Rahil (16:41):

Yep.

Amy Madonia (16:42):

So virtual Tryon is, is good for both new and returning. And even though the overall AOV is, is, is, uh, is shifted downward because I have a high percent of new consumers using it. Those new consumers still perform better than the rest of the new consumers on my site because their AOV is higher. Yeah. So then the next steps part is, okay, great. How do I get my new users to use the virtual trying? Right. So, so then that turns into an action that you can take to grow and drive, 'em optimize your business. So that's where, that's where I think it gets really sexy and exciting and fun because you're like, now I can do something with this. I understand what's going on with the consumer, why they're using this, what they're trying to do. And I can leverage that knowledge and insights to drive my business.

Rabah Rahil (17:24):

Oh, I, I absolutely love that. And that's one of the things that I think is really important for not only every marketer, really, no matter where you're at on your marketing journey is to get away from beliefs and to get into more of that thesis driven framework of like, this is what I think I is happening. Here's how I can falsify it. And here's how I can validate it. And then you just, you, you do that and then you can kind of keep churning and burning, cuz I've found that sometimes, um, when you get into the belief framework, the biases can get really, really challenging to overcome because it's my idea, this is my like beliefs get emotional, emotional can kind of start to abstract the logical way. So the way you kind of just took a little data point and then extrapolated that into a thesis that then you could either falsify or validate, I mean, right. That's that's high level.

Amy Madonia (18:09):

Yeah. And you know what, it's just as exciting when you're wrong actually. Yes. You know, I think a hundred percent, I think, because like you never know, like I've been doing e-commerce for more than 16 years now. I'm still surprised. Not as often as I used to be, but you know, and then, then, then it's like, okay, wow, this is a brain teaser. You know, this is not what I expected, or this is not as good as I would've hoped or this should have been good and it's terrible or whatever the surprise might be. Then it becomes like a little brain tease and a puzzle. And I'm like, okay, all right. Let's all right. Let's figure this out. You know? Totally. So, you know, that's the fun part, uh, to me is, is making that story, figuring out what's going on and then figuring out how to leverage that, to grow the business and then seeing the business grow. Yeah. Like that's super, super fun. Yeah. And kinda like, you know, people say their results driven. I like, that's, that's really how I get my jollies when I, when I'm, you know, talking about my work is actually seeing it happen.

Rabah Rahil (19:06):

Yep. I, I couldn't agree more. And I think that, um, and it's also psychologically way easier to have this scientific framework versus like trying to be right and wrong where it's just like, yeah, never gonna be right. All the time. It just, even the best, most sophisticated marketers aren't right. All the time. Like it just is what it is. And quite frankly, if you are right all the time, you're probably not taking enough risk where you're, you're not trying enough things to push the boundaries to find that 10 X kind of result versus just these little incremental wins. So, uh, I think that's sensational.

Amy Madonia (19:35):

Yeah. And, and a lot of companies in places talk about, oh, you know, you shouldn't be afraid to fail, but I think there is still in many places that kind of, you know, you know, you, you, you don't want to kind of advertise or publicize something internally that didn't go well. But you know, I try to create a culture, at least within my team where it's, you know, and when I have my company, we're not always gonna be right all the time. Like, you know, and that's okay. The important thing is like, are we learning from it and doing something different as a result, right? Yes. That's the important part. Right? Yep. Um, and you know, we're gonna have a lot of, to, to borrow like a baseball analogy. We're gonna have a lot of at bats here. So this is not, you know, this is not one and done, so we're not gonna, you know, worry about something, not going the way that we thought or we wanted it.

Rabah Rahil (20:25):

Yeah. And even just to build off that one little bit too, if you're hitting like point like 300 or over 300, like you're a baseball God. Right. But like, if you think about the percentages of that, you're missing 70% of pitches, like yeah. That's insanity. Right? Yeah. And so it's like, I think that's such a perfect way to put it with that baseball analogy. I, I should have known you. Are, are you you a Mets or Yankee Yankees?

Amy Madonia (20:50):

Well, you know, I should say I'm not a true baseball fan. I'm I'm, you know, I watch Syracuse basketball and that's really pretty much it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but I am Yankees cuz my husband is Yankees.

Rabah Rahil (21:00):

Yeah. Insane stadium. Yeah.

Amy Madonia (21:02):

I kind don't have choice there, which is fine, you know, that's

Rabah Rahil (21:05):

Nice. It could be, it could be worse. It could be worse. I I'm, I'm stuck with the Cowboys here and we haven't done anything since the nineties. So it is what it is sometimes.

Amy Madonia (21:13):

It's alright. You gotta be, you gotta be true to your team. You gotta be true to your team.

Rabah Rahil (21:16):

It happens. Okay. Let's wrap up this, uh, main segment with one last question. What piece of advice would you give to, uh, aspiring marketers that you wish you received when you were on the come up?

Amy Madonia (21:27):

Um, I would say kind of follow your passion, right? Like if some area interests you like go deep, you know, like read articles, follow people that work in that, in that sub segment of eCommerce or marketing, um, you can very quickly believe it or not become an expert in something either within a company or ex externally with just, you know, good old fashioned, hard work elbow grease time. Um, you know, and it's, it's, it's an industry where you can learn a lot in a short period of time. Oh, well. Um, so, you know, take advantage of that, advance yourself. You, you don't need an Ivy league and you do not need an MBA, uh, to do well in this industry at all. You need, you know, a lot of the same things that you need in other industries, you need, you know, resourcefulness and grit and smarts, but you also have to have kind of persistence, um, and the, the innate kind of desire to, to push yourself and, and learn about things. So whatever your passion area is, go do that.

Rabah Rahil (22:32):

I love that. Go find your passion people and bet on yourself. Uh, yeah. Fantastic. You made it to the value add segment. Amazing. Let's let's get a little nerdy. Okay. So what are some of like the best parts and what are some of the most challenging parts kind of running, running your team and, um, kind of running that big team that you have and, uh, having all this responsibility and things like that. Can you get, gimme a little color there?

Amy Madonia (22:56):

Yeah, sure. So, you know, as far as I'll answer this question in two ways, like, you know, working internally for a company and having a team and particularly in, in digital marketing, like the, you know, also in e-commerce the, sky's the limit on what you can do mm-hmm <affirmative> so the challenge is balancing the priorities with the reality of your resources and, and getting your leadership to believe that that's the right thing and that they're along with you. Um, and I've unfortunately, or fortunately came up in that cohort when e-commerce was super new. Yep. Like when I started doing e-com in, in oh six, it was like paid search was new. Yeah. It, you know, affiliate was new email was like, whoa, this is exciting. So they're gonna buy online. You know? So my boss is, I, I probably only had one boss, my very first boss who was very, very good.

Amy Madonia (23:53):

Her name's Carol Davis. She's probably still at Haynes brands. And she, she taught me everything. Every boss I had after that I knew more than they did as far as e-commerce is concerned. So there's always a kind of discomfort slash initially when you work with somebody as a leader, like lack of trust, like, are you really doing the right six things or 10 things and are you sure we can't do 400 things. Right. Right. Like, so, so that's the challenge internally. I, you know, when I had my own company and externally the challenge was, uh, uh, getting paid, which is odd. Like you wouldn't think people wouldn't pay you, but very, very strangely. And I,

Rabah Rahil (24:31):

I learned a darn invoice. Oh, I,

Amy Madonia (24:34):

People just don't pay. It's crazy. I, I pay all my bills. It's really weird. So, um, so that was one challenge. And the other challenge was kind of balancing the work and the hustle at the same time. Yep. It's like, you always have to hustle to be getting more work, but you also have to do the work you have right now. God goodness. And because it was just me for those four years, I, I hired somebody right at the end. You know, there was always that tension of doing those two things at the exact same point in time. Yep. So, you know, I think about my corporate life and my, my life as an entrepreneur, as a CEO of my own business, you know, as my corporate life, it's I feel a little more stress in terms of there's 4,000 things. Let's do 400 of them.

Amy Madonia (25:16):

No, no, no, no, no. Let's just do 10 and do them well. Exactly. Yeah. These are the 10 important. Right. And so there's the, the stress of trying to manage that and retain a team, et cetera. Versus when I had my own company, I'd call it pressure. Yep. Which, you know, took me a while to realize those are very different things like stress and pressure, like stress from resources limited and time limited pressure from you've gotta get more work and you've gotta do this work right now. Yeah. I like that a lot. And you know, I'm one of these people that like, you know, when I'm anxious about something, I just don't sleep. I'll wake up at like two and that's a thing I'm up. You know, when I do that now as a, as somebody within a company, I have a lot less kind of power to influence and change things with, you know, big organization, a lot of cooks in the kitchen when I felt that pressure, you know, my own company, it was easy. I woke up at two Bing, ready to go for the day. I would just start hustling. It was very easy, like sending emails and, or doing work either one. Um, so just really interesting to kind of think back about the differences in those two scenarios and how they, you know, put, put, put, uh, pressure on you in different ways.

Rabah Rahil (26:25):

I love that stress and pressure bifurcation. That's a really fascinating, they're

Amy Madonia (26:29):

Actually different. Like they're actually different.

Rabah Rahil (26:32):

Yeah, absolutely. Right there. Anyway. I've never, I've never heard that before. That's a really interesting way to put it because I, I, I, that was, um, when I was running my own shop, I was similar kind of basically like a one man team, big brain had some PERMA answers, but it was more so to, you know, do the things that

Amy Madonia (26:48):

PERMA answers. I like that.

Rabah Rahil (26:49):

Yeah. Where like their freelancers were kinda in my network. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but there was definitely a lot of, um, I ended up lucky out where I had a, a few clients that were just at really high retainer, so I didn't really have to, uh, pound the pavement too much. But before that, uh, uh, so I ran my own shop a few times and, uh, having to hunt and cook at the same time is really challenging. <laugh> it is, it's a lot, a lot going on. And so you're sitting there pitching, you're sourcing. Oh, but at the same time, the clients, you do have, you gotta be shipping the deliverables and like, it is a lot, uh, uh, it's a lot going on. And then, um, being able to, you know, show up in relationships as well on top of your business. Right. Because there's just, there's a lot of plate spinning and sometimes, you know, it's, uh, it can be prioritization can be challenging and sometimes like, you know, you're, again, you're, you're cutting things that you probably necessarily like looking back, you shouldn't have cut kind of stuff where it just, uh, it is what it is though.

Rabah Rahil (27:48):

You know, sometimes there is a aspect of, uh, if you do make it out, it'll help you kind of shape the, the decisions you make in your future. But, uh, going back to integrating the learnings, trying not to make the same mistakes over and over again, but, uh, yeah, the stress and the pressure and in a weird way, the I'm trying to think if I liked, I don't know if I like,

Amy Madonia (28:11):

Sorry, if you can hear my cat he's back here. Complaining wants food.

Rabah Rahil (28:15):

Oh no, no, no. We loved, we loved the pets. Um, I don't know if I liked for the pressure. Yeah. Which one was more desirable. I think they were, they equally the same amount of toll on the system. Just kind of different vectors, right?

Amy Madonia (28:30):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's discomfort. No question. And I think when you have your own company, you kind of never stop churning.

Rabah Rahil (28:39):

Yes.

Amy Madonia (28:40):

Yeah. All right. Like there's, there's like a good third of your brain that if you have your own company that is 24 7 dedicated to cooking up how to get your business, you know, bigger, keep it going, et cetera, keep everybody busy, whatever. Um, and it, you know, it makes it hard to enjoy downtime. Yes. You know, to make room for relationships that are important. Uh, and this, one of the, the seasons that one of the reasons I decided to sell my company to Estee Lauder when they wanted to bring me on as a permanent employee is because I felt like I was just giving my husband kind of the short end of the stick all the time. Yeah. For sure. And I adore him. He's like, you know, I always tell him he's my most important thing. So, you know, so it's, you know, I have to show up for him. So it's one of the reasons that I, I, I, I sold my company.

Rabah Rahil (29:28):

Um, that's fantastic. I, I love that. And I think that that's something that for me, at the end of the day, this life's about deep relationships with people you care about. And so like, you know, resources can help enable that, but at the same time, you don't wanna, um, you know, lose people or push people away if you're not showing up cuz you know, it's not, it's not fair to them and you have to make sure that, I mean, again, it's hard decisions in your life, but, um, that's a fantastic, I love the stress pressure. I'm gonna steal that for me. I love it. Yeah. Go for it.

Amy Madonia (29:55):

Um, go for it's yours.

Rabah Rahil (29:57):

When you talked about culture, how do you keep culture? How do you create culture? What, what are your kind of thoughts there? Cause so for, to give you, this is a little bit of a selfish question, but um, for me, I'm trying to figure it out now cuz I actually moved. I've pretty much been like just a high level. I see my whole life and then I finally stepped into C-suite of CMO and uh, it's just, just totally different. Um, how you generate value? Like it's, it's a bit of a nightmare right now in terms of like I'm on meetings most of the day, whereas I don't have deep work. I don't have these things that used to really fire me up. And so it's not that I don't like it. It's just, uh, it's a different, uh, value generative activity than when I was, uh, an IC or individual contributor.

Rabah Rahil (30:41):

Um right. But one of the things is I wanna make sure that I keep this kind of very, not only fun but transparent, but as well as, um, I'm not a big positivity, positivity guy. I'm more of like an optimism guy because like when crap goes wrong, like I want people to know like, Hey, we're not where we need to be. And like, sometimes I can see when people talk about, oh positivity, yada, Y it can kind of almost get into the realm of toxic positivity where it's like the room's on fire and this is fine. Kind of the dog meme. It's just like, this is not fine. Like you need to be able to tell your team like, Hey, we're not in the place we need to be. We need to get it together. Yes. Let's go, go here. I'm not saying that you guys aren't capable of it, but I'm trying to give you the reality. So kind of gimme some color there in terms of some tips, tricks or, uh, activities. That, that was another joke that I was talking to my buddy, who's a, a president of a, uh, another size company in town. And I was like, who am I, dude? I was literally driving home the other day, thinking of tilling building activities. Like I never thought I'd be

Amy Madonia (31:39):

That. Yeah. You're like, who am I?

Rabah Rahil (31:41):

What am I doing with my wife? Yeah.

Amy Madonia (31:43):

Who am I? What happened

Rabah Rahil (31:44):

There? Yeah, exactly.

Amy Madonia (31:46):

Am I what happened in my life? Am I really doing this right now? <laugh> um, yeah. So this is, you know, you made the point, like as you progress in your career, you move away from being an IC or individual contributed to, to, to more of a leader and you wind up doing less work and doing more people management yep. And doing more communication. Yep. So your people management skills and your communication skills, just get all the more important. Um, especially also in a big org, like, like mine, you know, the political navigation is something I struggled with. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (32:21):

A hundred percent.

Amy Madonia (32:22):

Um, so you know, as far as culture, you know, you really culture comes from above, right. So you, you know, you really only can, in my instance, I can really only impact my team. Yep. You know, everything that's coming in at us from, from, from outside, above, you know, whatever I can mitigate that I can provide an angle or point of view on that. But, um, I can only, you know, influence the culture on, on my, my team and my direct reports and their direct reports. So, you know, culture is basically, you know, built on a foundation of kind of values. So like what your values are and how you model those values, people watch. Um, so, you know, silly example, but like <laugh>, I was, I was in a, I was in a doctor's office and um, for like cat scan and this guy was drinking that nasty, you know, stuff you have to drink for the contrast before you get a cat scan.

Amy Madonia (33:22):

Okay. Yep. Like, and he spilled some of it on the carpet and I'm watching him outta the corner and he like, you know, just took his foot and like mashed it into the park carpet. I'm like, really, dude, really do you do that in your house? I bet you don't like, you know, so I guess my point is like, if you're a, you know, if you're a leader, like you have to be a role model. And if you did that at work, your team would be watching you and they would draw some conclusions. Right? Yep. Like this person doesn't care about the office space or what, or their slob or whatever their conclusions are, cuz everyone's perception is different. So not to sit here and say, as a leader, you have to be a perfect human being. There's no, no such thing. But you do want to be conscious of the fact that like, you know, heavy lies the crown kind of thing.

Amy Madonia (34:08):

Mm-hmm, <affirmative> like you do, you, you know, you are a role model. You, you are charged with, um, leading the team in terms of direction. And when it comes to, you know, the example you gave where like the numbers are just not up to snuff or like, you know, there needs to be a reality check on, you know, this is not where it needs to be. It needs to be over here. You know, the role of the leader is to kind of motivate, assess, and communicate and also provide a vision and hope for everybody and a vision about, okay, we might be here, but this is where we need to be is over here. And this is what this looks like. Yep. And this is the path how to get there and communicated in a way that resonates with your people and their wishes and desires.

Amy Madonia (34:55):

One of the things I always try to do with my team is understand, you know, as much about them as I can, you know, cause not everybody brings their full 360 degrees self to work. Right. You can't obviously. Yep. Um, uh, as much as I'd love to, right? Like, you know, can't be swearing at work and stuff much as I love swearing. Um, so you know, the, the, the part that you can learn about people and their motivations is the important part that you need to speak to as you craft that vision. And then you talk to them one on one about the pieces of their work and what needs to change. And it's, it's much, it's amazing how powerful it is to instead of asking for something like, I need you to do da da uh, you know, having a conversation and getting input about what it is that that needs to happen. Um, and also giving the person kind of a role in shaping what that looks like, because then they have ownership.

Rabah Rahil (35:56):

Yep.

Amy Madonia (35:56):

I totally love that. I mean, these are all the, just little things that, you know, I've, I've learned. And I think the most important thing is, you know, treating people well. Yep. You know, as human beings sounds, sounds silly.

Rabah Rahil (36:08):

Right.

Amy Madonia (36:09):

It's Ugh, God, I can't even tell you. I mean, I basically learned how to be a good boss from every other boss I had, you know, they were all horrible in their own special way. <laugh> um, it, it's just, you know, it's unbelievable the stuff I've been subjected to and witnessed over the years. Um, and it just makes me all the more determined to never do that to anybody that I, that I, that I work with for, you know, who works for me, cuz some of the behavior I've seen and lived with is just cuckoo crazy. Um, you know, I can't even watch the show office space because like it it's too PTSD for me. Like when that stuff really happens, when that messed up stuff really happens and you're actually there, it's really not comfortable at all. You know, the show is funny, I'm sure, but I can't even watch it.

Amy Madonia (37:01):

And one of the things I wanna do when I, when no one needs to hire me anymore is like write a book about, you know, or a series of like short stories about all this crazy stuff. Cause if I told you no one believed me like that didn't really happen. Yeah. Oh yes it did. And lemme tell you about that other time when this, you know, so, uh, someday, someday when no one needs to hire me, I'll tell all those stories and put those down in print and then like I won't change the names because the guilty should go to hell.

Rabah Rahil (37:27):

There you go. Little YouTube series coming, coming soon from Amy MC down here. Just

Amy Madonia (37:31):

Kidding. Just kidding.

Rabah Rahil (37:32):

Just kidding. I, I love that. I mean, and I, I couldn't agree more first off little small digression, uh, office space. Uh, the majority of it was filmed in Austin, Texas. What

Amy Madonia (37:40):

Was this? Oh, office

Rabah Rahil (37:41):

Space. Really? Office space. Yeah. Yeah. It was film here in Austin, Texas, which is kind of cool. Yeah. Um,

Amy Madonia (37:45):

I'm hoping someday I can watch it cuz you know, it's,

Rabah Rahil (37:48):

It's challenging. You can't be done. There's a kind of like a corollary with, uh, I don't know if you've ever heard of the movie waiting, but waiting is kind of the same, same but different for if you've ever worked in a restaurant where it's basically this, this huge just lens of reality of what it's like to work at. Like Applebee's or something like that.

Amy Madonia (38:06):

I love stuff. You do. I have been a server before, so yes I

Rabah Rahil (38:09):

Would probably. Yeah. So you might enjoy. Yeah. I would

Amy Madonia (38:11):

Probably love that

Rabah Rahil (38:12):

Brian Reynolds and uh, it's, it's a good one, but

Amy Madonia (38:14):

I did it in business school and it was a really good experience. I'm glad that I did it. It's always, you know, it's definitely more enjoyable to be sitting on at the table and eating the meal, but oh yeah, it was, it was a good

Rabah Rahil (38:23):

Job. Yeah. It's a good game. Um, I love that though. And I think there's something to being, so with my directs right now, I actually make them answer three questions before we actually start our one on ones. What, what was your biggest win? What's your biggest opportunity? And then what are you looking forward to most? And the third thing doesn't even need to be a work related thing to your point. I think like having that connection with your, especially your direct reports, like obviously you wanna be connected with everybody, but like when or your size it's like, it's not just physically, mentally the done bar number. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's just very hard to have deep relationships with all these people, but especially direct reports. Um, because you touched on something else that was really important for me is that understanding their motivations and kind of what they want to be and where they want to go.

Rabah Rahil (39:09):

Yeah. And like, is this a springboard job for them or not? And if it is, you know, a, should we skill them up in a different way where it's like, Hey, I need to make sure that I'm prepared for you to leave because you don't want to be here in a year or two. And not because you don't like it, but because you wanna move into a different role or something like that. And that is a much more productive place to be than getting blindsided by like, Hey, here's my two weeks I'm moving into this new role. You're like, oh, well I thought you liked it here. Well, you never actually asked me if I liked it or not or what want to do with my job or, you know what I mean? Like these assumptions. And then the other thing that I love about how you building your culture and creating a culture is I'm a huge believer in responsibility and, and silos of responsibility and ownership.

Rabah Rahil (39:48):

I think when you have like co-ownership and stuff like that, it just perverts things. It really disincentivizes people because like does Amy owner does Rob own it? Then this sound, this is gonna sound harsh to like, who gets the credit? You know what I mean? Right. And then like, and so it's like people wanna own things and people wanna move, move stuff forward. That's their ideas they're, they're exciting about. And like, this is my project or like, and you can see people really get fired up with ownership. Whereas when you start to spread that out, it gets really, uh, into like the OG doing the, uh, project at university when like two people outta the seven group is like driving the whole thing forward. And then everybody gets the credit and stuff. It's like, that's just a terrible, in my opinion, terrible culture to cultivate or nobody wins in that.

Amy Madonia (40:30):

Yeah. A lot of companies believe in this dotted line structure too, for reporting the standpoint. So you might, you know, you might direct line into somebody and then you have like a dotted line to this person over here. Yep. Yeah. You know, that's, that's also kind of a recipe for disaster too. Right. Because agree, some, those two people might not agree on something. Well, what are they gonna do? They're not gonna talk, they're gonna use you. And what are you gonna do? You have two different bosses telling you different things and you know, neither of them feels a hundred percent accountable for you, your career development, your workload, or, or know what it is. Um, and to me, so it's, to me that just seems like, you know, a little bit of a management cop out, like make a decision who does per person report to who, who has this responsibility. Okay. Moving on,

Rabah Rahil (41:15):

You know, a degree more. Yeah. And actually, um, I mean, we're still small. We're still, we're about 55 people now, but, um, basically that's decided by like, who fires this person? <laugh> <laugh> like, if you, it sounds harsh, but like, it was, it was actually a very easy mental model where it's like, okay, cool. If somebody's gonna terminate this person who is terminated. Okay, cool. That's who they report to like yeah. Simple as that. Like yeah. It works. Get it done. And cuz I agree that dotted line stuff is, uh, it seems like just another way to add a, a class to the MBA curriculum <laugh> in my opinion.

Amy Madonia (41:47):

<laugh> yeah. And MBAs too. Like, you know, they, they, at least when I went, which is God, like a long time ago now, like they used to do everything in groups. So you have like a study group that you did, like all of your projects with. Well, that was also a nightmare because we had one guy whose MBA was paid for by bank of country. I won't name. But like that guy couldn't care less. He, he talk about like, you know, we would sit down to do a project and he was out getting a Snapp for three hours and we're like, dude, what? You know? And we all got pissed enough. At one point he was like an economics guy that when we got to, we got to economics, we were like, you're writing this whole paper. Like we don't wanna even see it. We don't even, our names are on it, but dude, we don't wanna know nothing from this paper and you better get us an a <laugh> and he did the paper and he got us an a <laugh>

Rabah Rahil (42:38):

Amazing. Oh wow.

Amy Madonia (42:40):

But anyway, yeah. Like, you know, they do that in business school to set you up and get you ready for having to work in groups like that. Yeah. Cause it happens in, in large orgs, like constantly. Yeah. And it it's tough. It's tough. There's always personalities. There's always, you know, the question of who gets credit, you know, and, and that's tough. That's

Rabah Rahil (43:02):

Tough. It is tough. And, and I think too, and we'll wrap this up is, uh, I think it can be really challenging on kind of meritocratic people where they just want to build and they just want to do. And then like, then now you're throwing in like these political layers and all these things that like, it just, doesn't fire 'em up. It's like I wanna build and get into the data and extract insights and then build a plan and then execute that plan. And now I have to like, it, it, it just, it's uh, different value vectors that, uh, a lot of times kind of higher level ICS, just their brain explodes where it's just like, why am I wasting my time on this? Can I be doing something value generative versus this, this, this can't do the way can't do the

Amy Madonia (43:41):

Path. Yeah. And two other things I'll add on the culture point, um, you know, to the, and motivation, I guess, to the extent that I can craft people's jobs, to give them more of what they like and want to do and are motivated to love that. Like that's killer when, when you have a little bit of leeway to do that. Um, so that's, that's one thing. And then the other thing is that like, because you're setting the culture for, for your team or your company, depending on your position, you do have license to decide when things are relaxed and when you can shoot the bowl and people are gonna follow your lead. Yep. So, you know, it doesn't have to be this, oh, we're gonna spend a day on team building and you know, or, you know, Saturday night I want you to come to this work event.

Amy Madonia (44:23):

Like really great, you know, who's thrilled about that. Nobody, you know, we all have to go obviously, but like, you know, there's ways to, you know, there's ways you can set a tone to create the opportunity for just relaxed conversation, human beings, talking to human beings in the context of other meetings. Um, and I'm always a big fan of like, you know, doing something relaxed, either on a regular cadence. That's either in the office or very close by and convenient to the office at the end of the day. So people aren't traveling or taking time away from their weekend. Yep. For, you know, just, I mean, you get to know everybody as human beings. I mean, that's what we're on the planet for to be human beings. So super important.

Rabah Rahil (45:08):

I love that. Well, Amy, you've been such a gem, but now I gotta take you through the ringer. It's rapid fire. Let's time. Are you ready?

Amy Madonia (45:15):

Let's do it. I am ready more than ready.

Rabah Rahil (45:18):

Okay. Overrated, underrated, horseback riding.

Amy Madonia (45:21):

Oh my God. Over it's underrated. Underrated. I got so spazzed out by like that, that, that, that was the first thing you came with. I said the wrong thing. Totally underrated.

Rabah Rahil (45:30):

Okay. Be the question gal. Right?

Amy Madonia (45:32):

Everybody that has kids. Yeah. I am a questioning questioning person. Everybody that has kids have your kids ride horses. It's the best. Like their teammate outweighs of them. And the teammate does not speak English. What is cooler than that? Like I

Rabah Rahil (45:49):

Love it.

Amy Madonia (45:49):

Talk about learning a lot about life from being on a horse. If you have kids, consider it please.

Rabah Rahil (45:56):

Underrated, uh, makeup, overrated, underrated.

Amy Madonia (46:00):

Ooh, underrated.

Rabah Rahil (46:04):

Ooh. I like it. Yeah. Um, the history of natural. Yeah. History of natural science, right? It's natural science. I forget what the, the order is. The one with the big whale. The history of the history of natural science. Yeah. The big, the big whale. One in New York. It's the history. Natural

Amy Madonia (46:21):

Science. Right? The museum of museum of natural history.

Rabah Rahil (46:23):

That's the one. Sorry. I knew I, I man, I a live here. Move in. That's alright. That overrated. Underrated.

Amy Madonia (46:30):

God, I haven't been there in so long. I'm gonna say underrated.

Rabah Rahil (46:33):

Okay. Oh, three underrated in a row. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Times square. Overrated. Underrated.

Amy Madonia (46:39):

Ooh, overrated.

Rabah Rahil (46:41):

Ooh. Have you done? Um, new year's ether. I've

Amy Madonia (46:44):

Overrated.

Rabah Rahil (46:45):

Oh, it's terrible.

Amy Madonia (46:47):

Oh dude. I, I can't imagine like they corral you off's you can't go to the bathroom. That's

Rabah Rahil (46:53):

Heard too.

Amy Madonia (46:54):

Got like diaper stories. Talk about your, your double arm space. You're not gonna have it. It's cool. It's freezing. It's always freezing. Yeah. You're, you're stuck in there for at least four hours. No bath. I mean, that's just, I mean, no Uhuh. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (47:07):

Not the past, uh, U GC user generated content overrated, underrated.

Amy Madonia (47:13):

Completely underrated.

Rabah Rahil (47:15):

I love it. TikTok, overrated. Underrated.

Amy Madonia (47:18):

Ooh. Gosh. I might go with a little bit overrated.

Rabah Rahil (47:25):

Okay.

Amy Madonia (47:26):

Huh. But you know, I might wanna revisit that another six months

Rabah Rahil (47:30):

Slightly underrated. Yeah. We'll we'll have you back on in six months and we'll get we'll get you. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds great. Rating

Amy Madonia (47:35):

Again. I'm down. I'm down.

Rabah Rahil (47:37):

Fashion shows overrated, underrated.

Amy Madonia (47:40):

Ooh, underrated.

Rabah Rahil (47:41):

Oh really? Even, even the high level ones where they're wearing the wonky stuff. You love that.

Amy Madonia (47:48):

Interesting. And the, the inner artist in me just comes out and I'm just like, this is cool.

Rabah Rahil (47:52):

What is fascinating to me about that is in the, the weirdest way, like the, the lay people can't see it, but those high end fashion shows actually trickle down to what you wear. Yeah. Like they, they inform, which is kind, kind of blows my mind as like, wow, like that is actually gonna inform what shirt I'm gonna buy in a year from now or something like that. Exactly. It's like the edge of the, the edge of the sword. It's just so interesting.

Amy Madonia (48:15):

And it's actually kind of like horseback riding too, because like a show lasts however many minutes. I don't even know, say, say, say, say it lasts six minutes or something. It's very short. All the prep and work that goes into that season massive right. Is just massive. Even the picking of the accessories and the one element of a belt that somebody's wearing or whatever, you know, horseback riding is the same way you're on that horse. A very small percentage of the time that it took to get there, get the horse, you know, taken care of. He's got the farrier, he's got the dead, he's got the bed, the dead of he's got a shots and is warming and is all that. And then you gotta get 'em ready and you gotta cool. 'em out. And da, da, da, da. And then you're actually on the horse or showing for a very, like, you're riding over fences for two minutes and it's over, you know, that, that

Rabah Rahil (48:59):

Is interesting. Super interest. What an interest analogy, high fashion and a H in a question only you, Amy, you could make that connection. Oh

Amy Madonia (49:06):

My God. Two of my favorite things ever. I didn't even know we would be getting there.

Rabah Rahil (49:10):

<laugh> favorite thing to do at New York.

Amy Madonia (49:14):

Ooh. Observing people.

Rabah Rahil (49:17):

Hmm. People watching love it.

Amy Madonia (49:19):

Yeah. Like just, you know, even at, I mentioned this earlier, like even on the subway, because you're so close to people, like you can see what they're wearing. You can see what they're looking at on their phones. It's just like a fascinating, I guess it's cuz I'm a marketer. It's like a fascinating psychological piece of information about like, you know, I, I don't know. I can't, you know, I can't, I can't articulate it very well, but like watching people and trying to understand them and their motivations is just really, really interesting. I'll never get tired of it.

Rabah Rahil (49:48):

I love it. And a great place that people watch and fantastic parks to people watch at as well. Yeah. Yeah. Completely across Brooklyn and Manhattan and everywhere. Yeah. Beautiful. Yep. Yep. Favorite place travel to and why?

Amy Madonia (49:59):

Oh God. Uh, we, we went on a trip in 2017 to Turks and CAOs. Ooh. Um, that was lovely. And so I I'll probably say that my, my husband knows I love horses and he actually took me on like a, a beach horse ride thing. Oh wow. And we actually took the horses in

Rabah Rahil (50:23):

The that's, which that's cool

Amy Madonia (50:26):

Was, you know, like my head exploded cuz I love the ocean. So I was like, you know, and the food really good beach, you know? So that's kind of all I need on a, on a, on a vacation

Rabah Rahil (50:36):

That's yeah. The beautiful water there too. Right?

Amy Madonia (50:38):

Crystal. Yeah. It was like this beautiful, you know, crystal clear Aqua blue color, just that you know, just unbelievable.

Rabah Rahil (50:46):

I love it. Nature. Swimming pool. Favorite way to spend your time

Amy Madonia (50:50):

Riding horses.

Rabah Rahil (50:52):

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I love

Amy Madonia (50:53):

It. Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (50:58):

If you could have, so this is the last one, so yeah. Yeah. Bulk up. If you could have dinner with three people dead or live fiction on a non fictional, who would they be? You're at a four person table. You're sitting at the head. You get to invite three people who are they?

Amy Madonia (51:10):

I was hoping you'd ask me this. Cuz I, I actually like I watched your other pod. You

Rabah Rahil (51:14):

Cheated. Oh you, you look at the league. You're coming out on you.

Amy Madonia (51:18):

Yeah, I know. I'm a nerd. I can't help it. So I I'm gonna name Stephen Colbert.

Rabah Rahil (51:24):

Yep.

Amy Madonia (51:26):

Um, comedian named Louis Black. I know if you're familiar with him. Yep. He's hilarious. And super strong.

Rabah Rahil (51:31):

Very dry, very dry glasses, but hilarious.

Amy Madonia (51:34):

Yeah. And he gets like all worked up and yes. Crazed about like stupidity happening in the world. And that's exactly how I am. <laugh> um, if you can picture it and then, um, the third seat, I can't decide if it should go to bill Burr. Who's another comedian. I absolutely comedian love he's hilarious. Or my husband or my husband, cuz I adore him. Like they might have to flip for it. I don't know. You know, there you

Rabah Rahil (51:56):

Go. Not that they, there all comedians is Colbert's comedian ish journalist. Exactly. We'll put it in like the journalist category in two comedians. I love that. Exactly.

Amy Madonia (52:05):

It's a great thing. Humor is definitely underrated. Like everybody needs to laugh, like life's too short.

Rabah Rahil (52:11):

So I totally agree. And not only that it's such a, um, disarm where like people that are like, oh, and if you can make them laugh. So that's one of the things that we really try to do where um, we want to convey high level content. But at the same time, if you have this condescending kind of, you know, very Hoy toy vibe makes people really tighten up. Whereas you tell a joke or we do a lot of memes and that really can make people vulnerable. And when people are vulnerable, they learn the most. Absolutely. Whether they're okay. They're like, oh I can be wrong. It's okay. There's not all this judgment that's coming on me. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Amy, you're such a gem. Thank you so much for coming

Amy Madonia (52:45):

On. This was super fun. This time flew by this was the fastest hour ever.

Rabah Rahil (52:49):

I know it was fantastic. How can people find you? How can people connect with you? What, what this time is yours?

Amy Madonia (52:55):

Yeah. LinkedIn. Amy Madonia. Um, my email is my first name, last [email protected]. So perfect. You know, hit me up. I love to talk shop. I love to talk about e-com and digital marketing type stuff, so yeah. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (53:07):

Or if you have any tips on the, the horses or some, some oh yeah. Tickets to some, some high highfalutin fashion shows. I

Amy Madonia (53:13):

Wish I've only been to two. I I've only been to two. If I could find a way weasel my way into a third, I would.

Rabah Rahil (53:19):

There we go. There we go. We're gonna we're we're gonna get the Twitter verse. We're gonna get you into some more fashion shows. Amy. Thanks so much again, you are an absolute, incredible guest. Thank you for all your thoughtful eloquent responses. If you do wanna get more involved with triple whale, we're try triple well.com. You can sign up there. We are also on the Twitters at triple whale and then I would be remissed not to mention. We have a fantastic newsletter that you can sign up for called whale mail goes out every Tuesday, Thursday, Amy. Thanks so much. Get on the horse. Thank you doing for having me. I really appreciate the time. Um, again, one of my favorite pods, you were, you were absolutely incredible if you're ever in Austin, gimme a shout. And uh, that's 29 of the books folks we'll see on the flip.

Podcast

How to Grow Your Ecom Business By Turning Numbers Into Narratives

March 18, 2024

54:11

Hosted By

Rabah Rahil
CMO at Triple Whale

Guests

Amy Madonia
Ecommerce and digital marketing expert

Episode Description

In this episode of ROAS, we go over how to take numbers and turn them into narratives to help grow you ecom business in an effective manner.  #ROAS

Notes & Links

📧Subscribe to Whale Mail for exclusive industry insights and in-depth marketing breakdowns: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/tripl...

🐦 Follow us on Twitter for Industry insights https://twitter.com/triplewhale

Follow the people featured in this episode here:

- Rabah's Twitter: https://twitter.com/rabahrahil
- Amy's Twitter: https://twitter.com/amymadonia

Transcription

Amy Madonia (00:00):

You know, that's, that's also kind of a recipe for disaster too, right? Because some, those two people might not agree on something. Well, what are they gonna do? They're not gonna talk, they're gonna use you. And what are you gonna do? You have two different bosses telling you different things and you know, neither of them feels a hundred percent accountable for you, your career development, your workload, or, or know what it is. Um, and to me, so it's, to me that just seems like, you know, a little bit of a management cop out, like make a decision who does this per person report to who has this responsibility. Okay. Moving

Rabah Rahil (00:39):

It's incredible. All right. 3, 2, 1. So I gotta tell you, I was a little nervous when I saw this one on my calendar. I, I did a little bit of research on the CV, but you know, we had to do it. We have our first Ivy leaguer, everyone, Amy Madonia. Thank you so much for joining us on the you or not your as podcast. How are you today?

Amy Madonia (00:59):

I I'm great. Thanks for having me. I'm honored to be here. Absolutely. And don't be, don't be intimidated by the Ivy league. I, I, I got told I would never get in. So I had the, uh, inferiority complex the full four years. I was there.

Rabah Rahil (01:11):

<laugh> but now you got in and you, and you graduated four year. I graduat, I had a couple victory laps and, and I was not Ivy league. So we'll leave that for another day. <laugh> all right. Um, where does this podcast find you? Amy?

Amy Madonia (01:23):

I'm in New York city.

Rabah Rahil (01:25):

Oh, beautiful. Beautiful. I am in Austin, Texas as always in the, uh, marketing hub. Have you lived in New York, your whole life?

Amy Madonia (01:33):

Uh, the state, most of my life. Um, I'm from upstate New York originally. I'm from Syracuse.

Rabah Rahil (01:38):

Yeah. Yeah,

Amy Madonia (01:39):

Yeah. They're, they're unfortunately out of the tournament this year, which is bummer, but

Rabah Rahil (01:43):

Yeah.

Amy Madonia (01:44):

Um, but I've, I've lived in Manhattan twice in my life and this is, you know, my second tour and, and not going anywhere else here to stay. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (01:51):

I mean, there is, uh, I've been to the city a few times and, uh, I gotta tell you, Manhattan is probably my favorite part of the city, but I have just this huge addictive personality and I, I there's just so much energy there. It would eat me up. I would, I'd be a week and I would just be gone in some drain pool somewhere is just, there is, uh, we actually got to, when I was at university, a friend of ours, um, he, he was Greek and his, uh, fraternity brother, um, actually got transferred to the NYU dorms, which are not even like dorms. There's like, it was like this incredible Highrise, like

Amy Madonia (02:26):

Very nice. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (02:27):

Super nice. Yeah. And then we got to go to, or Columbia, which is a beautiful campus, but it is in the hood. It is not in a great area to walk around. Yeah,

Amy Madonia (02:36):

It's up, it's up, it's up. Which, you know, parts of parts of those neighborhoods are really, really nice, you know, and that's one of the things I love about Manhattan is you walk like 10 blocks and it's like a completely different world than 10 blocks east or 10 blocks west or south or whatever. Um, every neighborhood has its own kind of distinct feel and flavor and, you know, know the energy you mentioned, you know, people either love it or hate it. I, I personally love it. You know,

Rabah Rahil (03:05):

I love it too.

Amy Madonia (03:06):

I, I, I just, you know, even just walking around and riding the subway, seeing what people are doing, what they're wearing, uh, you know, overhearing conversations as somebody who's just interested in people. It's, it's a great environment to, to be in constantly.

Rabah Rahil (03:22):

I couldn't agree more. I, I absolutely loved it, like I said, but I just don't. I have the zero personality for it. And quite frankly, so I came from the Midwest and the Midwest kind of has like a two arm bubble where, uh, that, that shrinks very quickly. I, in the city where

Amy Madonia (03:38):

What's, what's the two arm bubble, I'm not

Rabah Rahil (03:39):

Familiar with that. It's about like two arms length away from somebody is kind of like an acceptable space that you would give somebody in the city, in the city. It's like a hand, if that like, people are well, there's a to you.

Amy Madonia (03:51):

Yeah. There's a couple places. It completely disappears. Subway during rush hour, completely disappears elevators completely disappears. Like you would think that, you know, 16 people is too many. We can get too more in because we got places to go. So,

Rabah Rahil (04:05):

Oh, absolutely. We, uh, when I did do the visit there, um, especially in the business district, uh, with Manhattan, me and people are getting to where they're going and there is not, uh, again, coming from the Midwest, uh, cordial of like you bump somebody or, oh, you're you get where you need to go and you get there as fast as you can. And, uh, yes, no judgment on that. It was just a, uh, <laugh> a different part of the world, but I, I do think it is probably the greatest city in the world. It's, it's, it's really, uh, sight to see. And it's one of our oldest where people don't re re like the us is fairly young, especially in relative to Europe and stuff like that. So it's, it's one of the few places you can actually see some, some really cool history there. Um, and the museums are sensational. Yeah. Which you

Amy Madonia (04:49):

Can't be. And even architecture, walking down the street, I was walking down a street near my apartment and I passed a church and it's got, you know, 1892 on it, you know, through 1912. And I'm looking at the thing, wondering is this how long it took to build this, this thing, and it's still here and it's just, you know, it's totally fascinating. Yeah. Never, never bored here. That's for sure.

Rabah Rahil (05:12):

That's another one where, uh, yeah, if you, if you enjoy entertainment or, uh, a lot of liveliness, uh, New York is the place to be. Um, so from Cornell, what did you study at Cornell?

Amy Madonia (05:24):

Uh, it's an interesting story. So I, I was very into art in high school. Yeah. Like I wanted to, you know, I got the, you know, being an upstate New York, I got the Parsons mailer, like with this cool, like design and art stuff on it. Oh, cool. And I was like, mom, I wanna go here. I wanna go to Parsons. And I can remember this moment. Very distinctly. I was sitting on my yellow shag carpet as a child of the seventies, looking up at her saying, you know, holding the Parsons flyer. I wanna go here. And she looked at me and she said, we're not paying for you to go to school and be a starving artist. <laugh>. So that was the end of Parsons. However, there you go. This comes back to Cornell because they had an interior design program. Okay. So I was kind of like, all right, well, if I can't go to Parsons, you know, my grades are good.

Amy Madonia (06:11):

My parents, you know, you know, think, believe in me cuz my guidance counselor was like, you'll never get in there. And um, so my parents and I kind of compromise like, you know, this is an interior design program, you know? So there's a little art there. Yeah. Um, so I, you know, I, I got in, I'd love to prove that guidance counselor wrong because he was one of these guys that like the, the boys in the class could, could go all the way. It could go Ivy, it could go Penn brown and the women it's like, no, you know, you'd be lucky to get into to one crummy, SUNY. Um <laugh> and like, I, you know, I, the whole, it had such an impact on me. It's funny when you're a kid, once you hear somebody say something, it has such an impact on you.

Amy Madonia (06:54):

Yes. So the entire time I was in Cornell, I thought I was like an imposter. Right. Like I was like, I don't really belong here. Uh, someone's gonna find me out, you know? So I studied really hard and I, you know, got really good grades and, um, was doing really well in the entire interior design program. They have like competitions and I was like, you know, placing in the awards and stuff like that. And just, you know, I got to the point where, um, there wasn't enough art in it for me. Right. Yeah. Like we're up with, they'd run it like an architecture studio. So you're up at three in the morning with an Exacto and knife trying to cut, not cut your own fingers off making models and stuff. Yep. And you know, I also found out what's starting interior designers making the city and that was not ain't the path motivating at all. <laugh> so, um, so I didn't stay in interior design. I think, you know, half of my undergrad was in that. And then, um, I studied, uh, believe it or not facilities planning, which is like HVAC systems and buildings and stuff.

Rabah Rahil (07:53):

Interesting.

Amy Madonia (07:54):

Very bizarre, very circuitous path. I'm I was never one of those people that was like, I wanna be a doctor. I wanna be a, you know, whatever. Yeah. Like I just never had that. Um, actually I did, I tried that. I was like, I wanna be an artist. My mom was like, no, so that, you know, <laugh>, that was, that was the end of that. Um, but yeah, that was my, you know, that was how I got into interior design and how I essentially got out while I was still in school.

Rabah Rahil (08:19):

So that's incredible. So how did connect the dots now to

Amy Madonia (08:22):

Marketing? Yeah. So it's really interesting. I'll connect them to e-commerce actually because okay. Yeah, yeah. Even better. Here's here's the part that, you know, really made me crazy about interior design. Like I was always figuring out how to do the projects, so they were beautiful and efficient. Right. Like, you know, one of the models we had to build, we did the, the, the CAD, the CAD drawing and then the model and, you know, I made something beautiful, but I also made it. So when I had to make the model, I could do it in like three hours and get the hell outta studio. Yeah, yeah. Yep. You know, my counterparts are like, you know, doing these precise things up all night long. Um, and then we got to the point we like, you know, picking furniture and, and, and stuff. And you know, you're drawing window millions in a very specific, precise way over and over again. And I was like, it's like the parts of window that hold the glass in.

Rabah Rahil (09:14):

Oh, like the, the molding or framing or something like that. A Moen.

Amy Madonia (09:17):

Yeah. Oh, wow. Mulian yeah. I don't have to spell it, but uh, yeah. Mulian so you'll need to spell it for Scrabble. I can't help you there I'm out. Uh, so when I got to that point of like chairs and stuff, and I was like, this is, this is making me crazy. This is stupid because who am I to say that that share should be pink and not blue. There's no data to support this decision. Yeah. Right. I can make it look good. No question. There no issue, but why blue? Why not red? Like, I have no information to really guide this decision. It feels random. I don't like this as stupid. Right. So many years later when I found myself in an e-commerce job, I didn't know it at the time, but I took to it like, you know, at duck and water, I was like, okay, cuz there's an Arti artistic, um, you know, consumer insights, marketing aspects to everything.

Amy Madonia (10:10):

And then there's the data part. Yep. So finally like, okay, I can make, uh, good decisions that might be efficient from a traffic standpoint or whatever, but I also have a little data that I can use as a springboard to tie those two things together and do something awesome. That works. Right. So that's just one of the, one of the, you know, kind of lucky things, I guess, that, that worked out about how my brain works, you know, leaving interior design and then finding myself in eCommerce many, many years later and finding that it really, really suits me. Well,

Rabah Rahil (10:42):

I love that. And I'm kind of getting the vibe too, where, um, you, when I encounter very high level marketers, there's usually a mix of system builder, but also this kind of creative, empathetic aspect of like, uh, this ethereal, right? Like there's these intangible things of like, how, how do you delight the customer? That's really challenging to get on a spreadsheet. Um, but at the same time, it's so necessary. But on the other hand, having this hardcore data, and if you just swing into that, it can be kind of, you end up being cold and the experience just comes across insincere. And so living at the confluence of data and creativity and systems is kind of really the show for me, in my opinion, it sounds like your, your HVACs and your muons paid off. Huh <laugh>

Amy Madonia (11:29):

Yeah. Maybe a little bit, maybe a little bit. And you know, my father's an engineer, so I probably have a little bit of his sure, sure. You know, you know, brain structure or logical critical thinking, um, you know, kind of hard wired into me, but it is true about our industry in that, you know, and I I've taught analytics internally, externally, whatever, and it's an important thing to remember that it's not, it's never, uh, all about just the numbers. Yep. There's uh, kind of four parts to analysis. And I, I went over this in somebody's review just yesterday, who's on my team. So I'm trying to get this person to kind of grow and develop, like there's the pulling of the numbers. Right. There's the looking at the numbers and saying, this is bigger than this. Right. And then, and, and then there's the part where you're, uh, not just talking about the highlights, you're talking about, um, the takeaways.

Amy Madonia (12:24):

Yeah. Well, sales are up, um, primarily because of conversion, you know, traffic was down, but that was offset by the conversion rate and that's why sales are up. Right. So then there's the kind of the, the highlights. Right. But then at the end of the day, kind of the last part of analysis, that's important, it takes kind of a more sophisticated, uh, analytic mind and somebody who really knows their business is to create a story. Yes. Right. Like you have to create the story about what's happening with the consumer, with the interface, with the buying process, with the consideration of the purchase and all of that stuff. Um, and that's, I think in many ways kind of where the rubber meets meets the road, um, because that's how you determine the appropriate next steps for, for growing sales or for driving, um, a response marketing element and driving consumer demand. So, you know, they, they are kind of two, two sides of a coin in that they're, they need to kind of live harmoniously together, kind of that ability to find the story and analyze the data at the same time.

Rabah Rahil (13:25):

I, uh, man get that tattooed on me. I absolutely love that. I I'm a big one of my, these is that, uh, people experience the world and in stories. And so the more, and it is kind of to your point a, a bit of a, you know, double edged sword where you wanna make sure that narrative is rooted in data where you're just not this charismatic person. <laugh>, it's just making up this incredibly nonsensical thing that like to you make sense. Exactly. But there, there needs to be some, some data that exactly supports that narrative, but I, I couldn't agree more. And I think ultimately, so I mean kind of triple well plug that's kind of the ultimate for us is one of the kind of tenants we have is like, we never want to do data for data's sake, right? Like the only reason you want to use data or even further more visualizations is so you can look at the patterns and then those patterns can then inform to your point, what is the narrative like, what is this customer actually experiencing?

Rabah Rahil (14:18):

Cuz that's another kind of big tenet of ours is like, yes, numbers and data is incredibly important, but at the end of the day, like numbers aren't buying your product, people are. And so you need to make sure that you still again have that, that empathetic vector where like you can get really caught in, in some unique things where data can tell you these things, that it, it, it's more of an informing and kind of taking you down this path and then you can put together this whole totality of experience versus um, to your 0.0, conversion rates up and traffic's down. So we're doing something right. Or whatever, whatever, like, yeah, that that's helpful. But there that's the like to your point, the first stage in the analysis, but what you to kind of drill down to it. I, I love that little four stages. That's really cool.

Amy Madonia (15:01):

Yeah. And I can give you an example too. Like, you know, we have, um, a virtual Tryon technology on our site that does all sorts of cool things. And if we look at the numbers where, you know, we look at users and non-users the users of a virtual Tryon have a much higher conversion rate. So we see that lift and conversion rate and they have a two to three times engagement rate versus non-users with just, you know, the site and pages, procession, et cetera. So, okay. So that's like, all right, we pulled the numbers and we looked at it and those are some of the takeaways and that's like, okay, great. And then as we're going through those, those KPIs, we're like really weird. The, a average order value is lower than, than, than, right. So you're like, okay, hold the phone. There's a story here.

Amy Madonia (15:42):

There's something going on here. We need to look a little deeper. Right. So then you'd look at, um, that the hypothesis that I had in my head was okay if I'm coming to the site and I don't know which, because you know, maxilla is primarily lipstick, right? Yep. I don't know which lipstick shade I want or if I wanna buy anything. Right. I am self-selecting to use the virtual Tryon for that tool. It is very likely, I am at least more probable, I am a new consumer or new visitor if I am using so, so, so then, so there's your story, right? So there's your hypothesis. So you test that out. So then you do another, you know, another round to look at, okay, what's my percent of new versus returning visitors that are using U VTO versus not using, uh, VTO or virtual Tryon. And then you say to yourself, okay, the, the, the average order value of my VTO users is actually, if I look at my new people is still higher than my new people hitting the rest of the site.

Rabah Rahil (16:41):

Yep.

Amy Madonia (16:42):

So virtual Tryon is, is good for both new and returning. And even though the overall AOV is, is, is, uh, is shifted downward because I have a high percent of new consumers using it. Those new consumers still perform better than the rest of the new consumers on my site because their AOV is higher. Yeah. So then the next steps part is, okay, great. How do I get my new users to use the virtual trying? Right. So, so then that turns into an action that you can take to grow and drive, 'em optimize your business. So that's where, that's where I think it gets really sexy and exciting and fun because you're like, now I can do something with this. I understand what's going on with the consumer, why they're using this, what they're trying to do. And I can leverage that knowledge and insights to drive my business.

Rabah Rahil (17:24):

Oh, I, I absolutely love that. And that's one of the things that I think is really important for not only every marketer, really, no matter where you're at on your marketing journey is to get away from beliefs and to get into more of that thesis driven framework of like, this is what I think I is happening. Here's how I can falsify it. And here's how I can validate it. And then you just, you, you do that and then you can kind of keep churning and burning, cuz I've found that sometimes, um, when you get into the belief framework, the biases can get really, really challenging to overcome because it's my idea, this is my like beliefs get emotional, emotional can kind of start to abstract the logical way. So the way you kind of just took a little data point and then extrapolated that into a thesis that then you could either falsify or validate, I mean, right. That's that's high level.

Amy Madonia (18:09):

Yeah. And you know what, it's just as exciting when you're wrong actually. Yes. You know, I think a hundred percent, I think, because like you never know, like I've been doing e-commerce for more than 16 years now. I'm still surprised. Not as often as I used to be, but you know, and then, then, then it's like, okay, wow, this is a brain teaser. You know, this is not what I expected, or this is not as good as I would've hoped or this should have been good and it's terrible or whatever the surprise might be. Then it becomes like a little brain tease and a puzzle. And I'm like, okay, all right. Let's all right. Let's figure this out. You know? Totally. So, you know, that's the fun part, uh, to me is, is making that story, figuring out what's going on and then figuring out how to leverage that, to grow the business and then seeing the business grow. Yeah. Like that's super, super fun. Yeah. And kinda like, you know, people say their results driven. I like, that's, that's really how I get my jollies when I, when I'm, you know, talking about my work is actually seeing it happen.

Rabah Rahil (19:06):

Yep. I, I couldn't agree more. And I think that, um, and it's also psychologically way easier to have this scientific framework versus like trying to be right and wrong where it's just like, yeah, never gonna be right. All the time. It just, even the best, most sophisticated marketers aren't right. All the time. Like it just is what it is. And quite frankly, if you are right all the time, you're probably not taking enough risk where you're, you're not trying enough things to push the boundaries to find that 10 X kind of result versus just these little incremental wins. So, uh, I think that's sensational.

Amy Madonia (19:35):

Yeah. And, and a lot of companies in places talk about, oh, you know, you shouldn't be afraid to fail, but I think there is still in many places that kind of, you know, you know, you, you, you don't want to kind of advertise or publicize something internally that didn't go well. But you know, I try to create a culture, at least within my team where it's, you know, and when I have my company, we're not always gonna be right all the time. Like, you know, and that's okay. The important thing is like, are we learning from it and doing something different as a result, right? Yes. That's the important part. Right? Yep. Um, and you know, we're gonna have a lot of, to, to borrow like a baseball analogy. We're gonna have a lot of at bats here. So this is not, you know, this is not one and done, so we're not gonna, you know, worry about something, not going the way that we thought or we wanted it.

Rabah Rahil (20:25):

Yeah. And even just to build off that one little bit too, if you're hitting like point like 300 or over 300, like you're a baseball God. Right. But like, if you think about the percentages of that, you're missing 70% of pitches, like yeah. That's insanity. Right? Yeah. And so it's like, I think that's such a perfect way to put it with that baseball analogy. I, I should have known you. Are, are you you a Mets or Yankee Yankees?

Amy Madonia (20:50):

Well, you know, I should say I'm not a true baseball fan. I'm I'm, you know, I watch Syracuse basketball and that's really pretty much it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but I am Yankees cuz my husband is Yankees.

Rabah Rahil (21:00):

Yeah. Insane stadium. Yeah.

Amy Madonia (21:02):

I kind don't have choice there, which is fine, you know, that's

Rabah Rahil (21:05):

Nice. It could be, it could be worse. It could be worse. I I'm, I'm stuck with the Cowboys here and we haven't done anything since the nineties. So it is what it is sometimes.

Amy Madonia (21:13):

It's alright. You gotta be, you gotta be true to your team. You gotta be true to your team.

Rabah Rahil (21:16):

It happens. Okay. Let's wrap up this, uh, main segment with one last question. What piece of advice would you give to, uh, aspiring marketers that you wish you received when you were on the come up?

Amy Madonia (21:27):

Um, I would say kind of follow your passion, right? Like if some area interests you like go deep, you know, like read articles, follow people that work in that, in that sub segment of eCommerce or marketing, um, you can very quickly believe it or not become an expert in something either within a company or ex externally with just, you know, good old fashioned, hard work elbow grease time. Um, you know, and it's, it's, it's an industry where you can learn a lot in a short period of time. Oh, well. Um, so, you know, take advantage of that, advance yourself. You, you don't need an Ivy league and you do not need an MBA, uh, to do well in this industry at all. You need, you know, a lot of the same things that you need in other industries, you need, you know, resourcefulness and grit and smarts, but you also have to have kind of persistence, um, and the, the innate kind of desire to, to push yourself and, and learn about things. So whatever your passion area is, go do that.

Rabah Rahil (22:32):

I love that. Go find your passion people and bet on yourself. Uh, yeah. Fantastic. You made it to the value add segment. Amazing. Let's let's get a little nerdy. Okay. So what are some of like the best parts and what are some of the most challenging parts kind of running, running your team and, um, kind of running that big team that you have and, uh, having all this responsibility and things like that. Can you get, gimme a little color there?

Amy Madonia (22:56):

Yeah, sure. So, you know, as far as I'll answer this question in two ways, like, you know, working internally for a company and having a team and particularly in, in digital marketing, like the, you know, also in e-commerce the, sky's the limit on what you can do mm-hmm <affirmative> so the challenge is balancing the priorities with the reality of your resources and, and getting your leadership to believe that that's the right thing and that they're along with you. Um, and I've unfortunately, or fortunately came up in that cohort when e-commerce was super new. Yep. Like when I started doing e-com in, in oh six, it was like paid search was new. Yeah. It, you know, affiliate was new email was like, whoa, this is exciting. So they're gonna buy online. You know? So my boss is, I, I probably only had one boss, my very first boss who was very, very good.

Amy Madonia (23:53):

Her name's Carol Davis. She's probably still at Haynes brands. And she, she taught me everything. Every boss I had after that I knew more than they did as far as e-commerce is concerned. So there's always a kind of discomfort slash initially when you work with somebody as a leader, like lack of trust, like, are you really doing the right six things or 10 things and are you sure we can't do 400 things. Right. Right. Like, so, so that's the challenge internally. I, you know, when I had my own company and externally the challenge was, uh, uh, getting paid, which is odd. Like you wouldn't think people wouldn't pay you, but very, very strangely. And I,

Rabah Rahil (24:31):

I learned a darn invoice. Oh, I,

Amy Madonia (24:34):

People just don't pay. It's crazy. I, I pay all my bills. It's really weird. So, um, so that was one challenge. And the other challenge was kind of balancing the work and the hustle at the same time. Yep. It's like, you always have to hustle to be getting more work, but you also have to do the work you have right now. God goodness. And because it was just me for those four years, I, I hired somebody right at the end. You know, there was always that tension of doing those two things at the exact same point in time. Yep. So, you know, I think about my corporate life and my, my life as an entrepreneur, as a CEO of my own business, you know, as my corporate life, it's I feel a little more stress in terms of there's 4,000 things. Let's do 400 of them.

Amy Madonia (25:16):

No, no, no, no, no. Let's just do 10 and do them well. Exactly. Yeah. These are the 10 important. Right. And so there's the, the stress of trying to manage that and retain a team, et cetera. Versus when I had my own company, I'd call it pressure. Yep. Which, you know, took me a while to realize those are very different things like stress and pressure, like stress from resources limited and time limited pressure from you've gotta get more work and you've gotta do this work right now. Yeah. I like that a lot. And you know, I'm one of these people that like, you know, when I'm anxious about something, I just don't sleep. I'll wake up at like two and that's a thing I'm up. You know, when I do that now as a, as somebody within a company, I have a lot less kind of power to influence and change things with, you know, big organization, a lot of cooks in the kitchen when I felt that pressure, you know, my own company, it was easy. I woke up at two Bing, ready to go for the day. I would just start hustling. It was very easy, like sending emails and, or doing work either one. Um, so just really interesting to kind of think back about the differences in those two scenarios and how they, you know, put, put, put, uh, pressure on you in different ways.

Rabah Rahil (26:25):

I love that stress and pressure bifurcation. That's a really fascinating, they're

Amy Madonia (26:29):

Actually different. Like they're actually different.

Rabah Rahil (26:32):

Yeah, absolutely. Right there. Anyway. I've never, I've never heard that before. That's a really interesting way to put it because I, I, I, that was, um, when I was running my own shop, I was similar kind of basically like a one man team, big brain had some PERMA answers, but it was more so to, you know, do the things that

Amy Madonia (26:48):

PERMA answers. I like that.

Rabah Rahil (26:49):

Yeah. Where like their freelancers were kinda in my network. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but there was definitely a lot of, um, I ended up lucky out where I had a, a few clients that were just at really high retainer, so I didn't really have to, uh, pound the pavement too much. But before that, uh, uh, so I ran my own shop a few times and, uh, having to hunt and cook at the same time is really challenging. <laugh> it is, it's a lot, a lot going on. And so you're sitting there pitching, you're sourcing. Oh, but at the same time, the clients, you do have, you gotta be shipping the deliverables and like, it is a lot, uh, uh, it's a lot going on. And then, um, being able to, you know, show up in relationships as well on top of your business. Right. Because there's just, there's a lot of plate spinning and sometimes, you know, it's, uh, it can be prioritization can be challenging and sometimes like, you know, you're, again, you're, you're cutting things that you probably necessarily like looking back, you shouldn't have cut kind of stuff where it just, uh, it is what it is though.

Rabah Rahil (27:48):

You know, sometimes there is a aspect of, uh, if you do make it out, it'll help you kind of shape the, the decisions you make in your future. But, uh, going back to integrating the learnings, trying not to make the same mistakes over and over again, but, uh, yeah, the stress and the pressure and in a weird way, the I'm trying to think if I liked, I don't know if I like,

Amy Madonia (28:11):

Sorry, if you can hear my cat he's back here. Complaining wants food.

Rabah Rahil (28:15):

Oh no, no, no. We loved, we loved the pets. Um, I don't know if I liked for the pressure. Yeah. Which one was more desirable. I think they were, they equally the same amount of toll on the system. Just kind of different vectors, right?

Amy Madonia (28:30):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's discomfort. No question. And I think when you have your own company, you kind of never stop churning.

Rabah Rahil (28:39):

Yes.

Amy Madonia (28:40):

Yeah. All right. Like there's, there's like a good third of your brain that if you have your own company that is 24 7 dedicated to cooking up how to get your business, you know, bigger, keep it going, et cetera, keep everybody busy, whatever. Um, and it, you know, it makes it hard to enjoy downtime. Yes. You know, to make room for relationships that are important. Uh, and this, one of the, the seasons that one of the reasons I decided to sell my company to Estee Lauder when they wanted to bring me on as a permanent employee is because I felt like I was just giving my husband kind of the short end of the stick all the time. Yeah. For sure. And I adore him. He's like, you know, I always tell him he's my most important thing. So, you know, so it's, you know, I have to show up for him. So it's one of the reasons that I, I, I, I sold my company.

Rabah Rahil (29:28):

Um, that's fantastic. I, I love that. And I think that that's something that for me, at the end of the day, this life's about deep relationships with people you care about. And so like, you know, resources can help enable that, but at the same time, you don't wanna, um, you know, lose people or push people away if you're not showing up cuz you know, it's not, it's not fair to them and you have to make sure that, I mean, again, it's hard decisions in your life, but, um, that's a fantastic, I love the stress pressure. I'm gonna steal that for me. I love it. Yeah. Go for it.

Amy Madonia (29:55):

Um, go for it's yours.

Rabah Rahil (29:57):

When you talked about culture, how do you keep culture? How do you create culture? What, what are your kind of thoughts there? Cause so for, to give you, this is a little bit of a selfish question, but um, for me, I'm trying to figure it out now cuz I actually moved. I've pretty much been like just a high level. I see my whole life and then I finally stepped into C-suite of CMO and uh, it's just, just totally different. Um, how you generate value? Like it's, it's a bit of a nightmare right now in terms of like I'm on meetings most of the day, whereas I don't have deep work. I don't have these things that used to really fire me up. And so it's not that I don't like it. It's just, uh, it's a different, uh, value generative activity than when I was, uh, an IC or individual contributor.

Rabah Rahil (30:41):

Um right. But one of the things is I wanna make sure that I keep this kind of very, not only fun but transparent, but as well as, um, I'm not a big positivity, positivity guy. I'm more of like an optimism guy because like when crap goes wrong, like I want people to know like, Hey, we're not where we need to be. And like, sometimes I can see when people talk about, oh positivity, yada, Y it can kind of almost get into the realm of toxic positivity where it's like the room's on fire and this is fine. Kind of the dog meme. It's just like, this is not fine. Like you need to be able to tell your team like, Hey, we're not in the place we need to be. We need to get it together. Yes. Let's go, go here. I'm not saying that you guys aren't capable of it, but I'm trying to give you the reality. So kind of gimme some color there in terms of some tips, tricks or, uh, activities. That, that was another joke that I was talking to my buddy, who's a, a president of a, uh, another size company in town. And I was like, who am I, dude? I was literally driving home the other day, thinking of tilling building activities. Like I never thought I'd be

Amy Madonia (31:39):

That. Yeah. You're like, who am I?

Rabah Rahil (31:41):

What am I doing with my wife? Yeah.

Amy Madonia (31:43):

Who am I? What happened

Rabah Rahil (31:44):

There? Yeah, exactly.

Amy Madonia (31:46):

Am I what happened in my life? Am I really doing this right now? <laugh> um, yeah. So this is, you know, you made the point, like as you progress in your career, you move away from being an IC or individual contributed to, to, to more of a leader and you wind up doing less work and doing more people management yep. And doing more communication. Yep. So your people management skills and your communication skills, just get all the more important. Um, especially also in a big org, like, like mine, you know, the political navigation is something I struggled with. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (32:21):

A hundred percent.

Amy Madonia (32:22):

Um, so you know, as far as culture, you know, you really culture comes from above, right. So you, you know, you really only can, in my instance, I can really only impact my team. Yep. You know, everything that's coming in at us from, from, from outside, above, you know, whatever I can mitigate that I can provide an angle or point of view on that. But, um, I can only, you know, influence the culture on, on my, my team and my direct reports and their direct reports. So, you know, culture is basically, you know, built on a foundation of kind of values. So like what your values are and how you model those values, people watch. Um, so, you know, silly example, but like <laugh>, I was, I was in a, I was in a doctor's office and um, for like cat scan and this guy was drinking that nasty, you know, stuff you have to drink for the contrast before you get a cat scan.

Amy Madonia (33:22):

Okay. Yep. Like, and he spilled some of it on the carpet and I'm watching him outta the corner and he like, you know, just took his foot and like mashed it into the park carpet. I'm like, really, dude, really do you do that in your house? I bet you don't like, you know, so I guess my point is like, if you're a, you know, if you're a leader, like you have to be a role model. And if you did that at work, your team would be watching you and they would draw some conclusions. Right? Yep. Like this person doesn't care about the office space or what, or their slob or whatever their conclusions are, cuz everyone's perception is different. So not to sit here and say, as a leader, you have to be a perfect human being. There's no, no such thing. But you do want to be conscious of the fact that like, you know, heavy lies the crown kind of thing.

Amy Madonia (34:08):

Mm-hmm, <affirmative> like you do, you, you know, you are a role model. You, you are charged with, um, leading the team in terms of direction. And when it comes to, you know, the example you gave where like the numbers are just not up to snuff or like, you know, there needs to be a reality check on, you know, this is not where it needs to be. It needs to be over here. You know, the role of the leader is to kind of motivate, assess, and communicate and also provide a vision and hope for everybody and a vision about, okay, we might be here, but this is where we need to be is over here. And this is what this looks like. Yep. And this is the path how to get there and communicated in a way that resonates with your people and their wishes and desires.

Amy Madonia (34:55):

One of the things I always try to do with my team is understand, you know, as much about them as I can, you know, cause not everybody brings their full 360 degrees self to work. Right. You can't obviously. Yep. Um, uh, as much as I'd love to, right? Like, you know, can't be swearing at work and stuff much as I love swearing. Um, so you know, the, the, the part that you can learn about people and their motivations is the important part that you need to speak to as you craft that vision. And then you talk to them one on one about the pieces of their work and what needs to change. And it's, it's much, it's amazing how powerful it is to instead of asking for something like, I need you to do da da uh, you know, having a conversation and getting input about what it is that that needs to happen. Um, and also giving the person kind of a role in shaping what that looks like, because then they have ownership.

Rabah Rahil (35:56):

Yep.

Amy Madonia (35:56):

I totally love that. I mean, these are all the, just little things that, you know, I've, I've learned. And I think the most important thing is, you know, treating people well. Yep. You know, as human beings sounds, sounds silly.

Rabah Rahil (36:08):

Right.

Amy Madonia (36:09):

It's Ugh, God, I can't even tell you. I mean, I basically learned how to be a good boss from every other boss I had, you know, they were all horrible in their own special way. <laugh> um, it, it's just, you know, it's unbelievable the stuff I've been subjected to and witnessed over the years. Um, and it just makes me all the more determined to never do that to anybody that I, that I, that I work with for, you know, who works for me, cuz some of the behavior I've seen and lived with is just cuckoo crazy. Um, you know, I can't even watch the show office space because like it it's too PTSD for me. Like when that stuff really happens, when that messed up stuff really happens and you're actually there, it's really not comfortable at all. You know, the show is funny, I'm sure, but I can't even watch it.

Amy Madonia (37:01):

And one of the things I wanna do when I, when no one needs to hire me anymore is like write a book about, you know, or a series of like short stories about all this crazy stuff. Cause if I told you no one believed me like that didn't really happen. Yeah. Oh yes it did. And lemme tell you about that other time when this, you know, so, uh, someday, someday when no one needs to hire me, I'll tell all those stories and put those down in print and then like I won't change the names because the guilty should go to hell.

Rabah Rahil (37:27):

There you go. Little YouTube series coming, coming soon from Amy MC down here. Just

Amy Madonia (37:31):

Kidding. Just kidding.

Rabah Rahil (37:32):

Just kidding. I, I love that. I mean, and I, I couldn't agree more first off little small digression, uh, office space. Uh, the majority of it was filmed in Austin, Texas. What

Amy Madonia (37:40):

Was this? Oh, office

Rabah Rahil (37:41):

Space. Really? Office space. Yeah. Yeah. It was film here in Austin, Texas, which is kind of cool. Yeah. Um,

Amy Madonia (37:45):

I'm hoping someday I can watch it cuz you know, it's,

Rabah Rahil (37:48):

It's challenging. You can't be done. There's a kind of like a corollary with, uh, I don't know if you've ever heard of the movie waiting, but waiting is kind of the same, same but different for if you've ever worked in a restaurant where it's basically this, this huge just lens of reality of what it's like to work at. Like Applebee's or something like that.

Amy Madonia (38:06):

I love stuff. You do. I have been a server before, so yes I

Rabah Rahil (38:09):

Would probably. Yeah. So you might enjoy. Yeah. I would

Amy Madonia (38:11):

Probably love that

Rabah Rahil (38:12):

Brian Reynolds and uh, it's, it's a good one, but

Amy Madonia (38:14):

I did it in business school and it was a really good experience. I'm glad that I did it. It's always, you know, it's definitely more enjoyable to be sitting on at the table and eating the meal, but oh yeah, it was, it was a good

Rabah Rahil (38:23):

Job. Yeah. It's a good game. Um, I love that though. And I think there's something to being, so with my directs right now, I actually make them answer three questions before we actually start our one on ones. What, what was your biggest win? What's your biggest opportunity? And then what are you looking forward to most? And the third thing doesn't even need to be a work related thing to your point. I think like having that connection with your, especially your direct reports, like obviously you wanna be connected with everybody, but like when or your size it's like, it's not just physically, mentally the done bar number. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's just very hard to have deep relationships with all these people, but especially direct reports. Um, because you touched on something else that was really important for me is that understanding their motivations and kind of what they want to be and where they want to go.

Rabah Rahil (39:09):

Yeah. And like, is this a springboard job for them or not? And if it is, you know, a, should we skill them up in a different way where it's like, Hey, I need to make sure that I'm prepared for you to leave because you don't want to be here in a year or two. And not because you don't like it, but because you wanna move into a different role or something like that. And that is a much more productive place to be than getting blindsided by like, Hey, here's my two weeks I'm moving into this new role. You're like, oh, well I thought you liked it here. Well, you never actually asked me if I liked it or not or what want to do with my job or, you know what I mean? Like these assumptions. And then the other thing that I love about how you building your culture and creating a culture is I'm a huge believer in responsibility and, and silos of responsibility and ownership.

Rabah Rahil (39:48):

I think when you have like co-ownership and stuff like that, it just perverts things. It really disincentivizes people because like does Amy owner does Rob own it? Then this sound, this is gonna sound harsh to like, who gets the credit? You know what I mean? Right. And then like, and so it's like people wanna own things and people wanna move, move stuff forward. That's their ideas they're, they're exciting about. And like, this is my project or like, and you can see people really get fired up with ownership. Whereas when you start to spread that out, it gets really, uh, into like the OG doing the, uh, project at university when like two people outta the seven group is like driving the whole thing forward. And then everybody gets the credit and stuff. It's like, that's just a terrible, in my opinion, terrible culture to cultivate or nobody wins in that.

Amy Madonia (40:30):

Yeah. A lot of companies believe in this dotted line structure too, for reporting the standpoint. So you might, you know, you might direct line into somebody and then you have like a dotted line to this person over here. Yep. Yeah. You know, that's, that's also kind of a recipe for disaster too. Right. Because agree, some, those two people might not agree on something. Well, what are they gonna do? They're not gonna talk, they're gonna use you. And what are you gonna do? You have two different bosses telling you different things and you know, neither of them feels a hundred percent accountable for you, your career development, your workload, or, or know what it is. Um, and to me, so it's, to me that just seems like, you know, a little bit of a management cop out, like make a decision who does per person report to who, who has this responsibility. Okay. Moving on,

Rabah Rahil (41:15):

You know, a degree more. Yeah. And actually, um, I mean, we're still small. We're still, we're about 55 people now, but, um, basically that's decided by like, who fires this person? <laugh> <laugh> like, if you, it sounds harsh, but like, it was, it was actually a very easy mental model where it's like, okay, cool. If somebody's gonna terminate this person who is terminated. Okay, cool. That's who they report to like yeah. Simple as that. Like yeah. It works. Get it done. And cuz I agree that dotted line stuff is, uh, it seems like just another way to add a, a class to the MBA curriculum <laugh> in my opinion.

Amy Madonia (41:47):

<laugh> yeah. And MBAs too. Like, you know, they, they, at least when I went, which is God, like a long time ago now, like they used to do everything in groups. So you have like a study group that you did, like all of your projects with. Well, that was also a nightmare because we had one guy whose MBA was paid for by bank of country. I won't name. But like that guy couldn't care less. He, he talk about like, you know, we would sit down to do a project and he was out getting a Snapp for three hours and we're like, dude, what? You know? And we all got pissed enough. At one point he was like an economics guy that when we got to, we got to economics, we were like, you're writing this whole paper. Like we don't wanna even see it. We don't even, our names are on it, but dude, we don't wanna know nothing from this paper and you better get us an a <laugh> and he did the paper and he got us an a <laugh>

Rabah Rahil (42:38):

Amazing. Oh wow.

Amy Madonia (42:40):

But anyway, yeah. Like, you know, they do that in business school to set you up and get you ready for having to work in groups like that. Yeah. Cause it happens in, in large orgs, like constantly. Yeah. And it it's tough. It's tough. There's always personalities. There's always, you know, the question of who gets credit, you know, and, and that's tough. That's

Rabah Rahil (43:02):

Tough. It is tough. And, and I think too, and we'll wrap this up is, uh, I think it can be really challenging on kind of meritocratic people where they just want to build and they just want to do. And then like, then now you're throwing in like these political layers and all these things that like, it just, doesn't fire 'em up. It's like I wanna build and get into the data and extract insights and then build a plan and then execute that plan. And now I have to like, it, it, it just, it's uh, different value vectors that, uh, a lot of times kind of higher level ICS, just their brain explodes where it's just like, why am I wasting my time on this? Can I be doing something value generative versus this, this, this can't do the way can't do the

Amy Madonia (43:41):

Path. Yeah. And two other things I'll add on the culture point, um, you know, to the, and motivation, I guess, to the extent that I can craft people's jobs, to give them more of what they like and want to do and are motivated to love that. Like that's killer when, when you have a little bit of leeway to do that. Um, so that's, that's one thing. And then the other thing is that like, because you're setting the culture for, for your team or your company, depending on your position, you do have license to decide when things are relaxed and when you can shoot the bowl and people are gonna follow your lead. Yep. So, you know, it doesn't have to be this, oh, we're gonna spend a day on team building and you know, or, you know, Saturday night I want you to come to this work event.

Amy Madonia (44:23):

Like really great, you know, who's thrilled about that. Nobody, you know, we all have to go obviously, but like, you know, there's ways to, you know, there's ways you can set a tone to create the opportunity for just relaxed conversation, human beings, talking to human beings in the context of other meetings. Um, and I'm always a big fan of like, you know, doing something relaxed, either on a regular cadence. That's either in the office or very close by and convenient to the office at the end of the day. So people aren't traveling or taking time away from their weekend. Yep. For, you know, just, I mean, you get to know everybody as human beings. I mean, that's what we're on the planet for to be human beings. So super important.

Rabah Rahil (45:08):

I love that. Well, Amy, you've been such a gem, but now I gotta take you through the ringer. It's rapid fire. Let's time. Are you ready?

Amy Madonia (45:15):

Let's do it. I am ready more than ready.

Rabah Rahil (45:18):

Okay. Overrated, underrated, horseback riding.

Amy Madonia (45:21):

Oh my God. Over it's underrated. Underrated. I got so spazzed out by like that, that, that, that was the first thing you came with. I said the wrong thing. Totally underrated.

Rabah Rahil (45:30):

Okay. Be the question gal. Right?

Amy Madonia (45:32):

Everybody that has kids. Yeah. I am a questioning questioning person. Everybody that has kids have your kids ride horses. It's the best. Like their teammate outweighs of them. And the teammate does not speak English. What is cooler than that? Like I

Rabah Rahil (45:49):

Love it.

Amy Madonia (45:49):

Talk about learning a lot about life from being on a horse. If you have kids, consider it please.

Rabah Rahil (45:56):

Underrated, uh, makeup, overrated, underrated.

Amy Madonia (46:00):

Ooh, underrated.

Rabah Rahil (46:04):

Ooh. I like it. Yeah. Um, the history of natural. Yeah. History of natural science, right? It's natural science. I forget what the, the order is. The one with the big whale. The history of the history of natural science. Yeah. The big, the big whale. One in New York. It's the history. Natural

Amy Madonia (46:21):

Science. Right? The museum of museum of natural history.

Rabah Rahil (46:23):

That's the one. Sorry. I knew I, I man, I a live here. Move in. That's alright. That overrated. Underrated.

Amy Madonia (46:30):

God, I haven't been there in so long. I'm gonna say underrated.

Rabah Rahil (46:33):

Okay. Oh, three underrated in a row. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Times square. Overrated. Underrated.

Amy Madonia (46:39):

Ooh, overrated.

Rabah Rahil (46:41):

Ooh. Have you done? Um, new year's ether. I've

Amy Madonia (46:44):

Overrated.

Rabah Rahil (46:45):

Oh, it's terrible.

Amy Madonia (46:47):

Oh dude. I, I can't imagine like they corral you off's you can't go to the bathroom. That's

Rabah Rahil (46:53):

Heard too.

Amy Madonia (46:54):

Got like diaper stories. Talk about your, your double arm space. You're not gonna have it. It's cool. It's freezing. It's always freezing. Yeah. You're, you're stuck in there for at least four hours. No bath. I mean, that's just, I mean, no Uhuh. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (47:07):

Not the past, uh, U GC user generated content overrated, underrated.

Amy Madonia (47:13):

Completely underrated.

Rabah Rahil (47:15):

I love it. TikTok, overrated. Underrated.

Amy Madonia (47:18):

Ooh. Gosh. I might go with a little bit overrated.

Rabah Rahil (47:25):

Okay.

Amy Madonia (47:26):

Huh. But you know, I might wanna revisit that another six months

Rabah Rahil (47:30):

Slightly underrated. Yeah. We'll we'll have you back on in six months and we'll get we'll get you. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds great. Rating

Amy Madonia (47:35):

Again. I'm down. I'm down.

Rabah Rahil (47:37):

Fashion shows overrated, underrated.

Amy Madonia (47:40):

Ooh, underrated.

Rabah Rahil (47:41):

Oh really? Even, even the high level ones where they're wearing the wonky stuff. You love that.

Amy Madonia (47:48):

Interesting. And the, the inner artist in me just comes out and I'm just like, this is cool.

Rabah Rahil (47:52):

What is fascinating to me about that is in the, the weirdest way, like the, the lay people can't see it, but those high end fashion shows actually trickle down to what you wear. Yeah. Like they, they inform, which is kind, kind of blows my mind as like, wow, like that is actually gonna inform what shirt I'm gonna buy in a year from now or something like that. Exactly. It's like the edge of the, the edge of the sword. It's just so interesting.

Amy Madonia (48:15):

And it's actually kind of like horseback riding too, because like a show lasts however many minutes. I don't even know, say, say, say, say it lasts six minutes or something. It's very short. All the prep and work that goes into that season massive right. Is just massive. Even the picking of the accessories and the one element of a belt that somebody's wearing or whatever, you know, horseback riding is the same way you're on that horse. A very small percentage of the time that it took to get there, get the horse, you know, taken care of. He's got the farrier, he's got the dead, he's got the bed, the dead of he's got a shots and is warming and is all that. And then you gotta get 'em ready and you gotta cool. 'em out. And da, da, da, da. And then you're actually on the horse or showing for a very, like, you're riding over fences for two minutes and it's over, you know, that, that

Rabah Rahil (48:59):

Is interesting. Super interest. What an interest analogy, high fashion and a H in a question only you, Amy, you could make that connection. Oh

Amy Madonia (49:06):

My God. Two of my favorite things ever. I didn't even know we would be getting there.

Rabah Rahil (49:10):

<laugh> favorite thing to do at New York.

Amy Madonia (49:14):

Ooh. Observing people.

Rabah Rahil (49:17):

Hmm. People watching love it.

Amy Madonia (49:19):

Yeah. Like just, you know, even at, I mentioned this earlier, like even on the subway, because you're so close to people, like you can see what they're wearing. You can see what they're looking at on their phones. It's just like a fascinating, I guess it's cuz I'm a marketer. It's like a fascinating psychological piece of information about like, you know, I, I don't know. I can't, you know, I can't, I can't articulate it very well, but like watching people and trying to understand them and their motivations is just really, really interesting. I'll never get tired of it.

Rabah Rahil (49:48):

I love it. And a great place that people watch and fantastic parks to people watch at as well. Yeah. Yeah. Completely across Brooklyn and Manhattan and everywhere. Yeah. Beautiful. Yep. Yep. Favorite place travel to and why?

Amy Madonia (49:59):

Oh God. Uh, we, we went on a trip in 2017 to Turks and CAOs. Ooh. Um, that was lovely. And so I I'll probably say that my, my husband knows I love horses and he actually took me on like a, a beach horse ride thing. Oh wow. And we actually took the horses in

Rabah Rahil (50:23):

The that's, which that's cool

Amy Madonia (50:26):

Was, you know, like my head exploded cuz I love the ocean. So I was like, you know, and the food really good beach, you know? So that's kind of all I need on a, on a, on a vacation

Rabah Rahil (50:36):

That's yeah. The beautiful water there too. Right?

Amy Madonia (50:38):

Crystal. Yeah. It was like this beautiful, you know, crystal clear Aqua blue color, just that you know, just unbelievable.

Rabah Rahil (50:46):

I love it. Nature. Swimming pool. Favorite way to spend your time

Amy Madonia (50:50):

Riding horses.

Rabah Rahil (50:52):

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I love

Amy Madonia (50:53):

It. Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (50:58):

If you could have, so this is the last one, so yeah. Yeah. Bulk up. If you could have dinner with three people dead or live fiction on a non fictional, who would they be? You're at a four person table. You're sitting at the head. You get to invite three people who are they?

Amy Madonia (51:10):

I was hoping you'd ask me this. Cuz I, I actually like I watched your other pod. You

Rabah Rahil (51:14):

Cheated. Oh you, you look at the league. You're coming out on you.

Amy Madonia (51:18):

Yeah, I know. I'm a nerd. I can't help it. So I I'm gonna name Stephen Colbert.

Rabah Rahil (51:24):

Yep.

Amy Madonia (51:26):

Um, comedian named Louis Black. I know if you're familiar with him. Yep. He's hilarious. And super strong.

Rabah Rahil (51:31):

Very dry, very dry glasses, but hilarious.

Amy Madonia (51:34):

Yeah. And he gets like all worked up and yes. Crazed about like stupidity happening in the world. And that's exactly how I am. <laugh> um, if you can picture it and then, um, the third seat, I can't decide if it should go to bill Burr. Who's another comedian. I absolutely comedian love he's hilarious. Or my husband or my husband, cuz I adore him. Like they might have to flip for it. I don't know. You know, there you

Rabah Rahil (51:56):

Go. Not that they, there all comedians is Colbert's comedian ish journalist. Exactly. We'll put it in like the journalist category in two comedians. I love that. Exactly.

Amy Madonia (52:05):

It's a great thing. Humor is definitely underrated. Like everybody needs to laugh, like life's too short.

Rabah Rahil (52:11):

So I totally agree. And not only that it's such a, um, disarm where like people that are like, oh, and if you can make them laugh. So that's one of the things that we really try to do where um, we want to convey high level content. But at the same time, if you have this condescending kind of, you know, very Hoy toy vibe makes people really tighten up. Whereas you tell a joke or we do a lot of memes and that really can make people vulnerable. And when people are vulnerable, they learn the most. Absolutely. Whether they're okay. They're like, oh I can be wrong. It's okay. There's not all this judgment that's coming on me. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Amy, you're such a gem. Thank you so much for coming

Amy Madonia (52:45):

On. This was super fun. This time flew by this was the fastest hour ever.

Rabah Rahil (52:49):

I know it was fantastic. How can people find you? How can people connect with you? What, what this time is yours?

Amy Madonia (52:55):

Yeah. LinkedIn. Amy Madonia. Um, my email is my first name, last [email protected]. So perfect. You know, hit me up. I love to talk shop. I love to talk about e-com and digital marketing type stuff, so yeah. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (53:07):

Or if you have any tips on the, the horses or some, some oh yeah. Tickets to some, some high highfalutin fashion shows. I

Amy Madonia (53:13):

Wish I've only been to two. I I've only been to two. If I could find a way weasel my way into a third, I would.

Rabah Rahil (53:19):

There we go. There we go. We're gonna we're we're gonna get the Twitter verse. We're gonna get you into some more fashion shows. Amy. Thanks so much again, you are an absolute, incredible guest. Thank you for all your thoughtful eloquent responses. If you do wanna get more involved with triple whale, we're try triple well.com. You can sign up there. We are also on the Twitters at triple whale and then I would be remissed not to mention. We have a fantastic newsletter that you can sign up for called whale mail goes out every Tuesday, Thursday, Amy. Thanks so much. Get on the horse. Thank you doing for having me. I really appreciate the time. Um, again, one of my favorite pods, you were, you were absolutely incredible if you're ever in Austin, gimme a shout. And uh, that's 29 of the books folks we'll see on the flip.

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