#273: Leading Through Change: Recognition, Retention & Culture for Marketing Teams with Rachel Weeks

#273 Leadership | Matt is joined by , a veteran B2B marketing leader with over 20 years of experience guiding companies through acquisitions, layoffs, and tech disruption. Rachel has led both corporate and field marketing teams and is passionate about recognition-driven team cultures that retain and empower top talent.

Matt and Rachel cover:

• How to build a recognition strategy that actually improves retention (without needing a big budget or fancy platform)
• Why employee motivation dips during times of stress, layoffs, or AI disruption and what great leaders do differently
• The role of marketing in internal culture: from branding the program to building peer-driven engagement

Whether you’re managing a small team or leading an entire department, this episode is packed with practical insights to help you build a culture where marketers feel valued, motivated, and ready to stay.

Timestamps

• (00:00) - – Intro
  
• (03:48) - – Rachel’s background and leadership lens
  
• (06:18) - – What actually makes a recognition program work
  
• (08:48) - – How marketing supports internal culture building
  
• (11:48) - – Recognition during org changes, stress, and funding rounds
  
• (14:48) - – The impact of AI on morale and motivation
  
• (18:18) - – What happens when recognition disappears
  
• (20:18) - – The “10 minutes by Friday” habit
  
• (22:48) - – Easy, no-budget ways to recognize team members
  
• (25:48) - – Performance-driven vs. values-driven recognition
  
• (30:53) - – Monetary vs. non-monetary rewards (and what people really want)
  
• (34:23) - – Recognition vs. pay raises: what the data says
  
• (38:23) - – Why people leave even when they’re paid well
  
• (42:23) - – How to ask for (and give) better feedback
  
• (47:23) - – Using AI to create space for strategic work
  
• (54:23) - – Final thoughts on leadership, retention, and culture

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Dave Gerhardt [00:00:00]:
You're listening to B2B marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt.

Matt Carnevale [00:00:17]:
Hey. So on this episode of the Exit Five podcast, I was talking to Rachel Weeks, who's the fractional CMO at a company called DAWGS Vacant Property Security. And we talked about something that typically we don't. On the Exit Five podcast, we're typically talking about marketing, what it's like to be a marketing leader. We're talking about specific tactics and channels and all that good stuff. But this topic, we usually don't, which is how employee recognition actually plays a role in a more productive marketing team. And if you're a marketing leader and you're thinking, I don't really have a system to recognize my employees as often as I want to or as formally as I want to, this is a great episode for you to listen to.

Matt Carnevale [00:01:00]:
I think you'll get a lot out of it. So we'll see you inside. All right. I'm here with Rachel Weeks. Rachel, how's it going?

Rachel Weeks [00:01:07]:
Great, Matt. Thank you so much for having me. I'm glad to be here.

Matt Carnevale [00:01:10]:
Yeah, of course. Of course. Well, Rachel is. How long have you been part of the Exit Five community? I feel like I've seen you everywhere now, but I don't know how long it's actually been.

Rachel Weeks [00:01:18]:
It's been about a year.

Matt Carnevale [00:01:20]:
Okay. About a year. Okay, cool. Yeah. You've been to Drive. Last year, you were at a Boston event. You're a member of our CMO club, so really ingrained in the community. It's really great to finally have you here.

Matt Carnevale [00:01:31]:
And a couple weeks ago, we were chatting and we talked about some potential things that you can talk about on our podcast. And you brought up this topic that I feel on our podcast and in general just does not really get talked about, a lot of which is employee appreciation and the impact that has on productivity of marketing teams. And we're in this era and time right now where so much is changing. Some of the biggest changes since the beginning of the Internet and within all that, a huge piece of it is like, well, how do you keep people focused and on the right tasks and happy and feeling productive? And that's something that you have some experience in with the industries you've worked in. So I'm excited to get into that topic today. But before we get into the nitty gritty, would love if you just gave a quick background on who you are, what you've worked on, and what you're working on right now, today.

Rachel Weeks [00:02:24]:
Absolutely. Thank you so much again. I really appreciate being here. It's Nice to see you again. Virtually, I have been in marketing my entire career. I have over 20 years leadership experience. And when you've been around that long, you've led companies through lots of different types of transformations. So I've led companies through successful exits by PE firms.

Rachel Weeks [00:02:45]:
I've led companies through acquisitions, through other companies. I've been on the company that has acquired other companies and so lots of understanding of how employees feel when they're going through these transformations. I'm currently the interim CMO at DAWGS Vacant Property Security, which is the first go around I've had outside of technology, which is new and exciting. But I've also had great runs at Healthcare Source and Reward Gateway that really informed how I feel about recognition and appreciation and how important it is to ingrain it in your culture and support growth.

Matt Carnevale [00:03:21]:
Nice. Nice. Okay, cool. Yeah, just very first, it's, it's interesting. This is your first time leading marketing outside of tech. Just like I know that this is like a bit of an aside, but I'm just curious, like what are some big differences that you've seen on your end to start there?

Rachel Weeks [00:03:36]:
Well, it's definitely our employee population and I mean, it's great that you asked me this, Matt, because it's particularly relevant in our environment. Right now we are a vacant property security company, which means we keep vacant properties safe from intruders and it helps keep property values up, it helps keep communities safer. So we've got field teams that are actually doing the installation and then of course, we have our corporate teams. So when you work in companies that have a different types of workforce, you want to make sure that everyone understands what their role is towards, like the ultimate goal. It's not just about putting up the door and window guards. It's about securing the community and the value that you as an employee are providing toward that end. So we're talking about a reward and recognition program right now. So it's not just about the corporate in office people, whether you work remotely or not, but it's also about the field teams.

Matt Carnevale [00:04:30]:
All right, so that actually I think that's a good segue. You talked about a reward recognition program. I feel like I've had these, a couple of these at companies in the past and I don't know if they were makeshift or powered by some kind of software, but I never really felt like they always felt kind of corny and cheesy. They probably just weren't designed properly. So I guess like just backing up what is a reward recognition program and like from your experience, how have you seen companies build one that actually works?

Rachel Weeks [00:05:01]:
Yeah, absolutely. The most important thing about any type of recognition program is that it comes directly from executive leadership. Like, they have to believe in the program, they have to support the program by putting resources behind it, which, you know, may just be one person or maybe a budget to invest in a platform and invest in financial rewards. But you don't need a platform to launch a recognition strategy within your company. You just have to have a team that believes in it and people who are dedicated to making it happen. So some of the ways you do that is by building a team who are the key stakeholders that are going to represent the employees across the organization so that they can provide input into what type of recognition they actually want. Not everybody wants the same type of recognition. Some people want it privately, some people really thrive on it publicly.

Rachel Weeks [00:05:54]:
And so if you can build little task force that would typically include someone from HR and someone from marketing and then a few representatives from across the company that can speak for their members of their teams and what employees want. And so like at DAWGS, for example, we would definitely want to have at least one person from our field leadership team on the committee as well as having someone from the corporate team. And then you talk about, well, what types of behavior do we want to recognize? What are the things that we want our employees to emulate to be their best selves so that they can show other employees how you want them to behave. And there's a lot of different ways to do that.

Matt Carnevale [00:06:37]:
Yeah, okay, cool. Cool. Yeah, so I think it's a smart point around like needs to come from executive leadership. I've seen where it's essentially just something that is rolled out by hr. And leadership is also treating it as like a secondary thing. And the buy in across the company is low because it just seems like this stinky little thing that HR is rolling out that doesn't have an impact on my day to day. So that's a good point. And also the point about like building a team of people that are part of the recognition program.

Matt Carnevale [00:07:05]:
Again, like, you've probably seen this too. It's usually just HR in isolation. Who's rolling this stuff out? There aren't representatives from each team that are part of this committee that's helping build out the recognition. But yeah, you talked about behaviors that we want to recognize. Like I guess walk me through maybe an example that you've seen like on the marketing side, like where are marketing leaders? What are they rewarding and how are they rewarding it? How have you seen Some successful examples of that, Sure.

Rachel Weeks [00:07:32]:
I mean, typically it's not necessarily a department that would be recognizing their employees one way or the other. You really want it to be a corporate program. And so again, that's why you want to have executive leadership, like fully supporting it. You want to have HR involved and then other leaders across the company. And you want to, like I said, decide on the behaviors that you want to recognize. So where I've seen it be most successful is companies that recognize their values. So it's important to me to work at a company that is values driven. And so that's something that I've had great experiences with in my past, and then I'm always looking towards in my next roles.

Rachel Weeks [00:08:09]:
And if you really live your values and demonstrate them, that's the type of culture that's going to be most successful. There's lots of data behind recognition and engagement programs that really support the investment in the resources. And like I said before, there are lots of platforms and solutions out there, but you don't necessarily need to invest in a platform or a solution, but you do need people who are going to actually run the program. And the data shows when people feel recognized and appreciated, you see improved retention, you see higher productivity, you see greater job satisfaction and motivation, and it reduces stress and burnout. So if you're a company that really believes in its values and believes in supporting your employees, you want to recognize that behavior. And again, in my experience, we've had public recognition. And so whether you're recognizing it, maybe you have a weekly or a monthly newsletter that goes out to employees from executive leadership. Maybe you have town hall meetings, maybe you have a Slack channel specifically for recognition.

Rachel Weeks [00:09:13]:
So there's lots of different ways to distribute the information about people being recognized. And then other people across the company can say, oh, wow, number one, I'm really proud of this person for exhibiting these behaviors and for being publicly recognized for it. And I want that too. And that's how organizations create engagement that people want to participate and where marketing can get involved. Specifically to get back to your initial question, and obviously for this audience, is you want to put a brand around your program. So one of the things that you might want to do when you first get your committee together is like, let's come up with a name, and let's come up with a name. Maybe it aligns with our company name, or maybe it aligns with something else having to do with our culture or our location. Just like you would name an event.

Rachel Weeks [00:10:00]:
Right. Just like you name drive. And then once you have a name, you need a brand, and so you need a logo, and you need a look and feel. And when you start talking about the ways to recognize people, there are lots of visual elements that you can develop. You could develop a webpage or a microsite within your corporate intranet that's specifically a rekognition site. And it looks like a social wall. And you could post messages to people. Many of the platforms out there have what they call E cards.

Rachel Weeks [00:10:30]:
And, I mean, we all know what E cards are. You can send them and get them for birthdays and anniversaries. So marketing would help create the E cards and the visual elements that go along with the program. And then you could post the E cards on the social wall or on the Slack channel, or maybe they get sent via email or in a newsletter. And so when you combine the power of leadership, wanting to recognize employees and the behaviors that they want to see, people with hr, which should be the team that is doing the internal communications, you know, across the company and reaching out to employees directly, and then the power of marketing and building all the brand and the assets, you can really build something powerful. And then to get employees engaged, you designate ambassadors. And so you designate an ambassador, for example, on every team in the company and say, okay, I want to challenge you to send recognition. Send two E cards every Friday.

Rachel Weeks [00:11:29]:
And then once people start seeing them, oh, I want to get in on that too. You can create a gamification component to it with departments maybe competing against each other for either giving recognition or receiving recognition. And so there are lots of ways to turn this into an internal marketing program, but it supports growth because it's building your employment brand. It's helping with retention and employee engagement. And all of those things, when you put it together, ends up leading to higher productivity.

Matt Carnevale [00:12:02]:
Cool. Okay. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Definitely have been on the receiving end of that. Like, sometimes you're in a company that is, like you said, going back to the beginning, like a transformational period. For a lot of us, that may look like one of two things. It's either maybe the company is gearing up to get acquired to acquire another company or even raise money.

Matt Carnevale [00:12:23]:
That's a big one that we've all been through where it's like we're gearing up to raise our Series A. And. But every marketer knows when that happens. Things get a little crazy for a while. You have to work more. Everyone's under more stress. Pipeline targets become really strict. Right.

Matt Carnevale [00:12:39]:
Because you need to hit them in order to get your raise or get the company to raise the money. So that's a big one. And I've definitely been through the period of going through all those tough times and receiving no recognition. Almost like it flips the other way in those periods where it's like all of a sudden everyone's coming down harder on you and recognizing the things that you do less and less. And I find those are a lot of the transformational periods where they either lose a lot of their employees or retain them and, and ensure they're more loyal and productive than ever. Especially like, they may not lose the person right away, but, like, you've probably been like me, where it's like in those periods when you're doing so much and not getting recognized, you make the decision that you're not going to stay here for too much longer, and maybe you don't look that day, but it. The seed of doubt has been planted in your head, and that's really all it takes to, to make that decision, to make a move onto another company.

Rachel Weeks [00:13:37]:
Right? Yeah. And I think especially just with AI, I mean, AI, like we said, is the biggest technology transformation that we've seen probably since the beginning of the Internet. And we know that it's impacting marketers so significantly, if not more significantly than, than other industries, I mean, or other sectors. But we're all adapting to integrating AI into our teams to increase productivity and increase output and increase our strategic capabilities. But we don't want to do that at the expense of diminishing the value of the employees that we already have. And so, like a couple of examples that I know, people have come to me with that when their boss says, oh, just do it in ChatGPT. And it's like, okay, but I actually can add value as a person. Like, yes, I can work with ChatGPT or any other tool.

Rachel Weeks [00:14:29]:
And, and that is going to help me be more productive and maybe give me some more ideas. We're all capitalizing on all these great ways that AI can have an impact, but again, you don't want to use that as a crutch and diminish the fact that you have someone who's really smart and really productive and doing a great job. Oh, just rely on the technology. Well, how about if we combine the power of everything that I bring to the table with the technology and then execute from there? And so that's where leaders have to think, really think about what they're saying as it comes, when it comes down to these transformations in their teams that they're supporting people in the right way. And also another example is when you have layoffs and whether it's AI driven or not, but you have fewer people on your team and now all of a sudden you have to do the same amount of work, if not more, but you have fewer people and fewer resources to, to do it. Don't just say, oh well, chatgpt can do it. And diminish the fact that you had a productive, smart human on your team that you think you can just decide to replace with a technology. The technology is designed to make us more powerful.

Rachel Weeks [00:15:38]:
And so that's something I feel really strongly about. And that's where just coming back to the showing appreciation, it's really important to tell your teams, number one, you know, the people who are working, I love what you do. We really want to integrate AI into our production and into our day to day capabilities. Let's look at some tools that can help us do that. If it's chat, if it's Claude, if it's Perplexity, you know, if it's Clay, like whatever it is, and empower your people to leverage the technologies to make them more powerful and they will feel appreciated. It's when you talk about, oh, the technology can just replace you, then they don't feel appreciated. And that's when they decide, I'm going to leave this place. Or if you have a riff and the people who are left behind, it's like, okay, well, you don't appreciate them.

Rachel Weeks [00:16:31]:
You don't appreciate me either. Am I going to be the next one, you know, that gets let go? And so a lot of it has to do with the positioning and, and if you have a formal recognition program in your company and you keep it going, even through the tough times, even through the transformational times, people will stick to that and that will continue to give them that extra just support that you feel when you know that you're appreciated. And then you're gonna go the extra mile. Because a person who feels appreciated and recognized is always gonna do more and go above and beyond.

Matt Carnevale [00:17:07]:
Totally. Yeah. I mean, I feel it too. Definitely. Yeah. One thing I wanted to ask is like, let's say you're marketing leader listening to this right now and you want to implement some of this, some kind of program. Maybe, maybe you don't have the budget or the buy in to do this formal program across the board, but instead use an individual want to say, okay, I want to do better job at recognizing my employees for the work that they're doing so that they feel loyal to me and Want to stay. What are some, like, lightweight things that somebody could do tomorrow to help with that?

Rachel Weeks [00:17:43]:
Well, certainly as a leader, you could just create some discipline for yourself to ensure that you're recognizing not only everybody on your team, but really anyone in the company that is doing things to support you. Right. And so there's a great book out there, it's called Crave. And so I'm going to plug this. The author's name is Greg Lederman, and it's got a concept in it called 10 minutes by Friday. And it just says set aside 10 minutes by Friday every week to recognize people. That is something that every single person listening to this podcast can do. You put it in your calendar, you say recognition time, and you take that 10 or 15 minute block and you send a few emails.

Rachel Weeks [00:18:26]:
I really appreciate what you did for me this week with regard to this particular project. That person doesn't have to be a direct report or on your team. That person can be anywhere in the organization. And I guarantee you when that person gets that email, it's going to make them feel good and it's going to provide that little extra chemical boost in their brain that tells them you did something right and you did something good. And then they're going to want to do more of that because then they're going to want to seek more of that. So you can do that on a manager to peer level. You can encourage members of your team to do it on a peer to peer level. And then of course, it can be on a leadership to employee level.

Rachel Weeks [00:19:11]:
So the more structure you want to put around the program, there are lots of different ways that you can scope out sort of the different types of recognition. But specifically, you have no program, you have no structure. You have an email, you have a text message. It makes people feel good and it ends up working towards these goals of engagement, improving productivity, improving output, improving retention, you know, all of those good things.

Matt Carnevale [00:19:36]:
Yeah, that's such a good point. I. So I have a funny little story in my, my first job, I was there for about three years. And you know, your first job at a school, you're kind of like your heart and soul is into it. It was a great experience. Had a good relationship with a lot of my coworkers, and we had a great culture at that company and team. And we often would tell each other when we're doing a good and bad job. And that was just part of the company culture and I loved it.

Matt Carnevale [00:20:02]:
And then my second company was very different. My boss, who was the CEO at the Time, smaller company. In my first, I was there for. I didn't even last a year there. I ended up leaving. But within that year, maybe like once, maybe twice. Did he say good job? I like what you did. Like almost zero recognition for my work.

Matt Carnevale [00:20:23]:
Even though I had like really great numbers and performance, it was just not being recognized whatsoever. And that really taught me how important at least it was for me. And I don't know if I was alone, but at least it was for me. Just to hear like, you're doing a good job or I appreciated what you did or thanks for helping our team with X, Y and Z. Like you said, it provides that little chemical boost that just keeps you going. It's like if you work out or let's say you go for runs, like when you get the feedback from your running that you're doing better, you're able to run longer and faster. It makes you want to keep going. It's like you need to see that progress or know it's happening.

Matt Carnevale [00:20:58]:
And I'm lucky with Exit five because Dave, Dan, they're like the opposite of that is they recognize every little thing you do and are always making comments and saying good job. And it really keeps me motivated and, and lets me know that, hey, I am doing a good job and I'm making an impact. Like I'm going to keep going and keep pushing because the more I push, the more of this I get. So I think that's such a great point. And then like, let's keep on the same theme of like, you don't have some kind of formal program yet. Now you've implemented this way to at least through Slack or in video calls to recognize other people on your team and in the company. So we have that, let's say we have that down packed. Now.

Matt Carnevale [00:21:39]:
What are some bigger things that somebody could do maybe on a quarterly or yearly basis? Again, they don't have a program but they want to implement something that's going to help their employees feel more recognized. Like what are some things?

Rachel Weeks [00:21:52]:
Yeah, absolutely. There's lots of type of ways that you can recognize people. Right. One example that I gave is values driven recognition. So you see somebody living the values of the company and whether you have an E card for that or not, you can just send them an email and then maybe that gets announced in an employee newsletter. Right. Or at an employee company meeting. There's performance driven recognition.

Rachel Weeks [00:22:15]:
We all have specific goals. What's very common in sales for sales performance to be recognized, you know, at Presidents Club or whatever. But you could do that same type of recognition. Maybe not sending people on a tropical vacation, but you can do that same type of recognition for performance based goals. You know, the person on their marketing team achieved their pipeline goal. Like let's recognize that publicly because you don't see that as much. You definitely see it's all about sales. And sales close this many deals and generated this much revenue, which is great.

Rachel Weeks [00:22:46]:
None of us would be here, you know, without it. But there's also a lot of things that go into achieving those goals. And maybe for talent acquisition it's the goal of filling X number of jobs per quarter. And maybe for marketing it's pipeline and maybe for operations or support, it's limiting the number of support calls. So there's lots of performance driven and activity driven things that can be recognized. I've said this already in a newsletter at a company meeting. But another thing that companies can do is they can do an awards program. They could do awards once a year that maybe employees vote on them.

Rachel Weeks [00:23:24]:
Maybe it's vote for your teammates that you've seen exhibiting their values and they get recognized in a big way because it's an annual, you know, an annual type of recognition. So I've seen that we did that successfully. At my last company at mp, we called them the Core Value Awards. And so every year, you know, we launched a program on our company call and we set up a website that you just, you know, voted for who you wanted to vote for, what value they were exhibiting and why. And you know, I think it was like all on Google forms. So you know, you don't need an expensive technology platform that somebody needs to manage and administer. You just need an internal champion who's going to own the program. And then working, like I said, with marketing and HR collaboratively to develop the assets, develop the brand and then the internal comms around it.

Rachel Weeks [00:24:17]:
Those can be really powerful and that's something that can be really fun.

Matt Carnevale [00:24:20]:
Nice, nice. I like that one. Yeah. This kind of reminds me of a story. At a first company I was at, we did a quarterly all hands, which a lot of companies do. And in the quarterly all hands, I remember there was like four awards that were given out for the quarter and we were a startup. So like one of them as an example was like the best Double Hatter, which at the company meant like the person who wore two hats. Like, and at the time I was actually in sales, I wasn't in marketing and I was doing marketing and sales because I was really interested in marketing.

Matt Carnevale [00:24:54]:
And I got the double hatter award that month. And I was just like, oh, wow. Like, the CEO actually recognized that I am going above and beyond and like doing like wearing two hats. And that actually was like a big reason why I wanted to continue and go into marketing. Was like. I was like, okay. I'm actually like, sales is cool, but I like this marketing thing and I'm getting recognized for it. And it motivated me to want to get into marketing and go the extra mile.

Matt Carnevale [00:25:19]:
And it also motivated me to wear that core value in the company, which was like to take on multiple hats within the company. Like a startup, you kind of need your hands everywhere. Right. So it motivated me to, like, live through that value of the company through the recognition. So that's a really, really cool piece that you made.

Rachel Weeks [00:25:36]:
Yeah. And that's a perfect example that it totally validates what I'm saying.

Matt Carnevale [00:25:41]:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. How about like, so you talked about, like E cards and stuff like that. What size should those E cards be? Like, how much money should people be giving their employees? Like, what, from an award or a reward perspective, what type of things have you seen these companies do?

Rachel Weeks [00:26:00]:
Well, that's a really good question. And I should definitely clarify that an E card isn't necessarily like Visa gift card. It literally could just be like a visual card. You know, thanks for living the value that you attach to the email message or the slack message or whatever. But specific to reward. The most important thing that you want is to give employees their choice. And you give employees their choice by first asking them what they would actually like. And that's part of the committee that you put together for the program.

Rachel Weeks [00:26:29]:
Right. First of all, I know people who've worked at a company that they got a $5 Starbucks gift card for their holiday bonus. And it's like, you know what? Thanks for nothing, literally. Because you can't even buy coffee with $5. And I don't even like coffee anyway. So what am I going to do with this? That was not either giving employees a choice or even soliciting what they might want. Right. So that's somewhat.

Rachel Weeks [00:26:56]:
And it's cheap.

Matt Carnevale [00:26:57]:
Yeah.

Rachel Weeks [00:26:58]:
Seriously, five bucks. But I'm not kidding. That's real. So you get your committee together and you ask people what they want. Do they want an extra day, a pto, do they want a front row parking space if they have to go into a big office? Do they want a $25Amazon gift card or something that might have at least some. Some value that they could take advantage of? And so there are a lot of things that you can do that are what we call non monetary recognition. The PTO day, the parking space, the whatever. And then the monetary recognition which depending on kind of the scale, like if it's a peer to peer, I want to recognize you, Matt, for being a great co worker, teammate and living this value, et cetera.

Rachel Weeks [00:27:42]:
That's of the part. Probably a non monetary recognition because that could get your budget going skyrocketing like pretty quickly. But I've seen in some companies where managers have a budget and so if I have a x dollar budget every quarter to give away to my employees for the really above and beyond, then maybe that becomes a $50 reward or something like that. I also worked at a company that recognized employees for tenure and when they achieved a certain milestone, I forget what it was, they actually got a cash reward to go on vacation.

Matt Carnevale [00:28:16]:
Nice.

Rachel Weeks [00:28:17]:
And so that became very rich. And you know, you can only potentially do that for so long. A lot of companies give unpaid sabbaticals once you reach particular milestone. So this is also another reason why it's really important to have executive leadership buy in. Because you need to know, what type of program are we building? Are we building a non monetary recognition program that is going to have visual assets, whether it's an electronic card or like if you have a facility like we do at DAWGS? You know, maybe there's a poster. Maybe you get something that you stick on the poster so that everybody in the plant, the warehouse can see it. Or is this something that we want to put money up against, in which case we really have to decide, well, what are the different levels of monetary recognition and what's that going to cost and how are we going to budget it and all of that. And that's also where marketing can really add a lot of value.

Rachel Weeks [00:29:10]:
Just because we know what it's like to work with vendors and negotiate on giveaways and prizes and stuff. So that's one idea.

Matt Carnevale [00:29:18]:
Okay, cool. Very cool. Yeah, I think that's a great point because you know, a lot of people are thinking about this. A lot of people are going to hear this and think, oh, I need to somehow carve out a couple thousand a quarter just to give out rewards. But they don't need to always be monetary. I really like the idea of giving some paid time off. Even if it's like, hey, you did a great job this last month. We are working super hard in this thing.

Matt Carnevale [00:29:45]:
Take next Friday off and go enjoy the day. Or hey, team, Friday is going to be a beautiful day if you all live in the same city. As an example, everyone take a half day Friday and just enjoy the rest of your afternoon. Like those little things, even if it's just like surprise and delight goes such a long way. So I really like that one. So do you think there's like some kind of balance between. I know there's like non monetary and monetary, but do you think there's some balance between the two? Like for example, I'm thinking about like, even the impact like a pay raise or promotion has on somebody's happiness. So there's only, only up until a certain point can non monetary satisfy somebody until they're like, okay, this is great, but like, I need, I want to progress my career and grow.

Matt Carnevale [00:30:32]:
So how does that career progression, how do you think it plays into this whole rewards program, if it does at all?

Rachel Weeks [00:30:38]:
Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question. Anybody who says they don't want to raise is lying, right? I mean, come on. Anybody who says that is lying. But I'm going to read you some stats from a survey that was done by percepts company called Perceptics that I have no affiliation with whatsoever. But the survey said, well, recognized employees were seven times more likely to be fully engaged in their jobs than employees who were not recognized. In contrast, employees receiving a raise were only 30% more likely to be engaged than those who did not. So it doesn't mean that you don't want a raise. It doesn't mean that a raise isn't going to improve your performance.

Rachel Weeks [00:31:18]:
But if you get a raise and you still don't feel recognized, you're not going to be performing as at high of a level or be as engaged as if you are. And so that's something very inexpensive, just being human and showing people why they should stick around. And here's one more. Employees not receiving a recent raise were slightly more likely to have engaged in job seeking behaviors such as browsing ads or applying for a new role than those who had had a raise. So, and then it jumps to 75 for employees without regular recognition. So, I mean, the data is there and I mean, you've said it. You know, you've been in situations where you felt recognized, you've been motivated by that, you've been places where you haven't been recognized. You didn't want to stick around.

Rachel Weeks [00:32:06]:
And I know that Exit Five does a great job of recognizing its employees because they do it publicly. Dave and Dan do it publicly all the time on LinkedIn. And I think that that's, that's terrific because that's embedded in your culture. And it doesn't have to be public on LinkedIn. I mean, that's just the example of the way Exit Five does it. But what Exit Five is doing such a great job at is leading by example. And that's supporting you all to continue to recognize each other, whether it's on LinkedIn or more privately. And that's going to continue to be more important as you grow, because obviously, you're a small team.

Rachel Weeks [00:32:41]:
You're very, very tight. None of you would be there if you didn't appreciate each other, because you're such a cohesive unit that you have to lean on and rely on each other. But, you know, as companies get bigger and teams get more fragmented and people spread out a little bit more, that's where you can start to see things fray a little bit. And if the recognition brings people back together and brings them tighter, tighter in, you're always going to be more productive there.

Matt Carnevale [00:33:09]:
Yeah, totally. Yeah. It's really, really interesting, those stats, hearing them, it's like, whoa, that. That's a little shocking. But then you think about it and you're like, oh, that makes a ton of sense. Like, every single day, day in and day out, you're not necessarily thinking about, oh, I'm making an extra 30 grand this year versus last year, so I'm going to keep pushing. You're kind of in the weeds of things, and what really keeps you going is, like, is my work meaningful? And are people recognizing that I'm doing a good job, and how's that helping me progress in my career? Like, that's what you feel every day. A lot of us have been in situations where maybe you switch companies and go to a new one and they're paying you 25% more than your last company, but you're not as happy.

Matt Carnevale [00:33:53]:
If anything, you're less happy because the culture of the company sucks. And it could be down to recognition or something else. But I think the point is, like, everybody wants a certain amount of baseline money to do the job they're doing, and everyone wants to be paid well. There's no doubt about it. But feeling recognized, feeling like you are doing a good job and people appreciate you is worth the extra 10, 20,000 that you may get in another environment that you're not getting. Right?

Rachel Weeks [00:34:18]:
Yeah, it. A hundred percent is. I mean, you've been around long enough. You've been in a company with a bad culture, and I have one specifically, that was really challenging and difficult. And, I mean, there was no recognition, but, I mean, it wasn't just that. It was just a not great culture. And having previously come from a company that had a strong culture and had some informal recognition going there, I said I didn't realize how important to me it was. And so then I was lucky enough in my next role to go to Reward Gateway, which actually has a reward and recognition platform for their product.

Rachel Weeks [00:34:56]:
But we also just really lived and breathed it from a cultural perspective. And some additional data that we collected during my time There was that 75% of US employees say that morale and motivation would improve if managers would simply say thank you more often. How easy is that? We shouldn't need to be reminded of that. But if you need to put 10 minutes in your calendar every day as a reminder, say thank you. You know, that's what you gotta do because it'll work. And of the top 10 non financial rewards to motivate employees, number one is public recognition and communication. So, yeah, you know, some people feel shy and don't necessarily want to be recognized publicly, but at the end of the day, it's motivating. So I know I rattled off a bunch of data points there, but I think it's important and it's relevant because it's not just this nice flavor, fluffy, nice to have thing.

Rachel Weeks [00:35:51]:
And if you can figure out how to do it, because you have the leadership that's dedicated to it and you have marketing and HR who can partner together on the program and engage other employees, you can make it happen internally. And then if you really want to put some fuel on the fire and crank it up, you get a. You purchase a reward recognition platform of which there are many, many, many out there to choose.

Matt Carnevale [00:36:17]:
Right? Okay. No, this is. Those are great points, great stats. The one about saying thank you more often is like, it sounds so simple, but I'm not gonna laugh at anyone who maybe doesn't do it as much. I could see why if you're stressed and, or if you're just doing a lot all the time, it may be a second thought to actually just say thank you more often. So I think it's such a great reminder and how powerful it is. We both talk from personal anecdotes of how much that helps us. I know for me, it helps me a ton to keep me going.

Matt Carnevale [00:36:49]:
So, yeah, I really like the point of like just saying thank you more often and then the public recognition one. Like you said, people might be shy and maybe they don't like being the center of attention, but there's no doubt about it that when the most senior People in your company are telling others, hey, this person has done a great job the last month or two. It just makes them happy and fuels them and wants them to keep going. And another interesting point, something else that I thought of is I've talked to other people in marketing before, and I've talked to them about, how are you liking this new job? Or, how's your relationship with your manager? And they would tell me, everything is great, but I still don't really know where I'm at with my manager. Like, they're not really telling me whether I'm doing a good job or bad job. They're just kind of keeping me in limbo. And that's a tough situation to be in because you can't really shake it out of somebody. They just kind of need to tell you.

Matt Carnevale [00:37:44]:
But one thing that I think you can do, let's say you're a marketer in that situation. So putting, you know, ourselves on the other side of it, you're a marketer in that situation who's not really receiving that verbal feedback, but you want to. What I always tell people is, like, just tell your manager, like, hey, one piece of feedback, or, like, one thing I'd love is, like, to know, like, where do you think I'm at? Like, do you think I'm doing a good job? Do you not think I'm doing a good job? And then most of the time, people will tell you, you are doing a good job, because if you were doing a bad job, they would have already told you that. So they'll say, yeah, no, you're doing great. Yada, yada. And then at that point, you can just say, great. Like, for me, like, what really keeps me motivated is just, like, hearing that often and just knowing, like, when I'm doing a good job, when I'm not that consistent. Weekly feedback is really important to me.

Matt Carnevale [00:38:29]:
So we really appreciate if we can just get a more regular cadence of that going.

Rachel Weeks [00:38:33]:
Yeah, it's really important for employees to speak up for themselves. And that's hard. I mean, it's hard when you're just getting started in your career. You don't necessarily know what the appropriate boundaries are of what you can and cannot ask for from your manager. But at the end of the day, it's always okay to ask for clarification of what can I be doing better? So then they can say, you're doing this really well and you can do this to do better. But it's really incumbent upon managers to not let their employees feel like they have to Ask.

Matt Carnevale [00:39:08]:
Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Rachel Weeks [00:39:10]:
We shouldn't be putting them in a position that they don't know where they stand. It's our responsibility as leaders and as managers to make sure that we are regularly communicating where they stand, giving both positive and constructive feedback, and then recognizing them appropriately, especially when they respond to that feedback. There's nothing better than being told, like, you could really do better in this particular area if you did this. And it might be discouraging at first to hear, like, oh, I'm not doing a great job. But then you respond to that feedback, and then you get told, you did a really great job. You responded to the feedback that I gave you, and I'm really proud of you. And that's incumbent upon managers to make sure that we're doing that.

Matt Carnevale [00:39:54]:
Totally. Yeah, Yeah, I agree. I agree. It's. The onus is definitely on. On the manager. Like, Dave talks about this a lot, but he said when he worked his way up from the marketer to the leader, your job actually becomes more about leading people than it is doing the marketing, which probably kind of sucks. I haven't been in that situation, but I love doing marketing, so I'd rather just do that.

Matt Carnevale [00:40:18]:
But, yeah, it's like you said, it's on the manager to learn the skills of managing people and implement those. And you may be a really good marketer, but even something as simple as when you start managing people, not only being able to direct them, that part probably comes easier because you know the marketing stuff, it's more about, like, how do I keep them motivated and happy and how do I make sure that they want to keep doing good work for me and my company.

Rachel Weeks [00:40:42]:
Yeah. And I mean, there could be a whole entire other podcast on leadership development and leadership training and all of that. But I think that we all know that a lot of people get promoted to leadership positions because they're really good at their function, but they don't necessarily get the training on how to be a good leader. And if you've had good leaders who've led by example and you're following their lead, then more likely you're going to become a good leader, too. But you might not know that they're the good leaders, because there also might be bad leaders and people exhibiting not great behavior that you see as the leading. By example that you may or may not know whether or not you should be doing it. I certainly know throughout my career, I've had leaders who've behaved in ways, and I don't mean, like bad ways, but just behaved in ways that I've said, you know what, that's not my way. I'm not going to do it like that when I'm in that position.

Rachel Weeks [00:41:37]:
But if you don't have any type of guidance on effective leadership, it's really hard to just figure it out yourself based on all these examples out there. But it's the examples that make you feel good that you're going to adopt and then carry forward in your career.

Matt Carnevale [00:41:56]:
Yeah, such a great point. It's part of like, the reason I like that is in the first six years of my career, I've worked for four different companies. Exit Five being the fourth, which somebody looking at my resume may be like, oh, wow, this guy bounced around a lot. But one thing that I'm so grateful for is within that I've been able to see a lot of different types of industries and marketing, et cetera, but I've been able to see a lot of different leadership styles. Three very distinct leadership styles. Before Exit Five. At my first company, there was a lot of camaraderie, like I said, a lot of good recognition. But there was also really harsh feedback at times, and I just thought that was normal.

Matt Carnevale [00:42:36]:
I was like, I just need to get tough skin and harsh feedback is part of what I do, and I just need to take it and improve. And that came with like months of getting drilled by your manager before they'd finally ease off. And it was really tough and super stressful. And when I went to my second company, that's just what I expected to happen again. I was like, that's just what it's like to work in this industry and to be in tech. You just, your managers will chew you up sometimes. And then in my second company, that never happened. And I was like, okay, this is totally different.

Matt Carnevale [00:43:07]:
And then when I went to my third company, I was like, okay, maybe this is the time when I'll get. Start getting chewed out again. And it never happened. And then it still hasn't happened since then. So what I learned through that is like, oh, like there's, there's actually like very different ways to do the same thing. And through that you get to learn, okay, if I were to do it, or when it's my turn, this is how I'm going to do it. You get to pick and pull from every little experience that you have. So I find that like just a huge underrated benefit of working in multiple companies throughout your career is just seeing.

Rachel Weeks [00:43:39]:
The different styles of leadership a hundred percent. And I don't think I wouldn't look at have looked at your resume in three jobs in five years. I mean, that's not alarming. Especially, especially when you're just first getting started because number one, you might not like where you are and then it's good to move on. But also it's easier to move up and advance faster earlier in your career than when you get to a certain level. You're going to stay there for a little while probably before you get to the next level. Right. And your story just made me kind of think of Goldilocks because you were giving three examples that it's like this one didn't work and this one didn't work, but now you can find what's just right and that's what's always the benefit.

Rachel Weeks [00:44:18]:
And I've worked with people who have spent their entire careers at one company and they've been really successful within that one company. But there is definitely a sense of they've never worked anywhere else. They don't have the experience. Whether good, bad or indifferent, it's just more. And we all benefit through that from that throughout our careers for sure.

Matt Carnevale [00:44:43]:
Totally awesome. Okay, well this has been a great conversation so far. I guess just like one thing that I wanted to end off with one of the hottest topics right now a little bit different than we talked a bit about AI, but I just want to like drill down on that a bit. You were in an in house marketing leadership prior to the role you're in in now. You're still in a marketing leadership role now, but it's on a fractional basis, is that right? Yeah, yeah, fractional basis. So in this time period, obviously AI has been knocking at your door as a marketing leader. What are some things that like you've been doing? Maybe what are some like unlocks that you've had with AI? And then also some things of like how have you been helping your teammates adopt it and use it more?

Rachel Weeks [00:45:29]:
Yeah, that's a really good question. So I'm going to speak to my last role where you know, I was full time and I had a team and we started to use AI just as almost everybody did in the content part of the team. Right. How can we light a fire under the amount of content that we can produce from a given source? So we experimented with ChatGPT and we experimented with Claude. You know, here's a webinar. We need to turn it into a blog and to three LinkedIn posts and an email campaign. And I think that's where a lot of marketers are getting started. And that's been very effective and it's absolutely increased productivity.

Rachel Weeks [00:46:08]:
But the person there still needs to be a content marketing manager who's running the content strategy and who's deciding what you're going to do with all those assets. So AI isn't taking her job, it's complimenting her and it's making her more powerful. And so that's certainly where I felt we got started and also really just built it into our engine and got more of a rhythm. Where I am now is a less mature organization and that I'm there specifically to help outline the strategy for marketing automation and CRM and get that stood up. So I'm not using AI in our tech stack yet, but we certainly will need to explore it. But where I have been using AI is with a lot of the data crunching and the number crunching because we've got all these distributed platforms and all these distributed data sources that we're going to need to consolidate into Salesforce for our new CRM. And so I'm using ChatGPT to help me sort data. Hey, here's a spreadsheet, tell me this.

Rachel Weeks [00:47:07]:
And it's like two seconds. And whether it was something that would have taken me 15 minutes on my own or maybe an hour on my own that has significantly boosted my productivity. So I haven't had the luxury yet to really implement any of the great AI enterprise tools out there. But I'm really looking forward to this year, you know, standing up another tech stuff stack and introducing some new tools. Because where I am now at DAWGS, we're very sales driven and I know that I can give them some ideas and prompts to help prepare for discovery calls, to help prepare for demos, to help write their follow up emails. And so that's where I see integrating AI into my current organizational structure and helping that make everybody more powerful and boost productivity.

Matt Carnevale [00:47:54]:
Yeah, totally, yeah. In the like when you're in a company that's like a typical tech company where everyone's very plugged in, it's people are going to use AI and have the motivation to because they see it everywhere and they know the value. But maybe in a company that is like not a tech company and is not necessarily driven that way and does a lot of stuff, boots on the ground, there's a lot of opportunity to do like the 0 to 1 stuff and that's going to have such a big impact on things, right?

Rachel Weeks [00:48:20]:
Absolutely. And meanwhile while we're doing it, encouraging them that this is going to make you more powerful, you know, this is going to help you close more deals. That's what salespeople want to see or help you build more pipeline. That's what they want to hear. And so it's positioning it in such a way that they can understand why it's relevant. Not like, oh, marketing is telling me to use this tool that I don't necessarily want to use. So I'm looking forward to rolling it out.

Matt Carnevale [00:48:46]:
Love it, love it. Okay, cool. And yeah, just last thing I wanted to touch on that piece you said about AI making an individual or giving them the ability to like think more strategically. I think that's such an important piece. There's a lot of things that it can speed up and expedite for us. For example, let's say you are launching a webinar. Very basic example. But the description of the webinar, the invite emails, all that, you can do it at a fraction of the time, which is great, without really losing that much quality.

Matt Carnevale [00:49:18]:
And for a lot of people, they're going to take that and be like, great. What used to take me two hours now takes me 20 minutes.

Rachel Weeks [00:49:24]:
Great.

Matt Carnevale [00:49:25]:
But the part, the other part of it is like, well, I just got an hour and a half back of my time. What am I going to do with that? I can do more grunt work and do more stuff in ChatGPT, but I could also just do more strategic work, which is a little bit ambiguous, but I don't know. The way I've read it and how I've been trying to and act on it is like if I get that hour back, maybe I'm going to just spend some time actually like, I don't know, researching some stuff and like learning more about community building and trying to understand like what are some of the next big moves we're going to make as a company. How am I going to use AI more in different parts of the community business side of Exit five. So that's the part that's like more fuzzy but you buy time back and it's like important thinking about how you're going to reinvest that time back into the things that you're doing.

Rachel Weeks [00:50:14]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's something that everybody will struggle with when it's just a balance of integrating these new tools and into your day to day and how that does free up time. I think there's a lot of great things that people can be doing and obviously it depends on the goals of your organization. But if you're a marketer, I hope you always wish you were talking to clients more. Well, Guess what? If you just freed up an hour in your week, that's an hour that you can be reaching out and trying to have calls with clients, right? Or maybe you just feel like you need to learn more. Well, guess what? You could find a webinar every day. Whether it's Exit Five or any of these other communities or so many things out there. You could find a webinar every day on integrating AI into your organization.

Rachel Weeks [00:50:56]:
So use that extra hour a week to go educate yourself. So I think that there are lots of different things. And again, this is where leadership needs to play our role in creating some structure around this transformational time that is working with employees. Well, what do you need more of? If you just found more time in your week, what do you need more of? Is it talking to clients? Is it more education? Is it that other project that we've wanted to work on but we didn't have time to work on it? Or maybe it's working with HR and a reward and recognition program. So there's never a shortage of things to be done. Whether it's for you personally when you find that more time or to support your organization, it's just going to vary. But again, that's where leaders can really help working directly with your teams. Because also what's right for one person isn't right for another person.

Rachel Weeks [00:51:47]:
There's probably someone on your team that really needs a little bit more AI education. And then as a leader, you could help them find those resources. Then there's somebody else that's been totally self exploring it for two and a half years already. That that's not what you're going to suggest they do with their time. But you can find something else.

Matt Carnevale [00:52:05]:
Yeah, yeah. Love it. Very agreed. Agreed. All right, Rachel, this has been such a great chat. It's been a pleasure having you around the Exit Five community for so long. You've been such a ingrained and engaged member, which is much appreciated on our end. But yeah, I'm glad we just got to talk today about this topic that you obviously know a lot about and are passionate about.

Matt Carnevale [00:52:24]:
And yeah, I look forward to seeing you around and seeing you at Drive this year.

Rachel Weeks [00:52:28]:
Well, thanks, Matt. It's been a pleasure. I do as well. And I'll be honest, one of the reasons why I enjoy my engagement with Exit Five so much is because it makes me feel appreciated.

Matt Carnevale [00:52:38]:
There you go. Well, you are much appreciated.

Rachel Weeks [00:52:40]:
That's what it comes down to.

Matt Carnevale [00:52:41]:
Awesome. I love it.

Rachel Weeks [00:52:42]:
Thanks.

Matt Carnevale [00:52:43]:
Okay, Rachel, thanks. Take it easy.

Rachel Weeks [00:52:44]:
Take care. Bye.

Dave Gerhardt [00:52:49]:
Hey, thanks for the listening to this podcast. If you like this episode, you know what? I'm not even going to ask you to subscribe and leave a review, because I don't really care about that. I have something better for you. So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at Exit Five. And you can go and check that out. Instead of leaving a rating or review, go check it out right now on our website, exit5.com our mission at Exit Five is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing. And there's no better place than to do that than with us at Exit Five. There's nearly 5,000 members now in our community.

Dave Gerhardt [00:53:20]:
People are in there posting every day, asking questions about things like marketing, planning ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers. Building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are. So you can have a peer group or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100% free to join for seven days.

Matt Carnevale [00:53:41]:
Days.

Dave Gerhardt [00:53:41]:
So you can go and check it out risk free. And then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go check it out. Learn more exit5.com and I will see you over there in the community.

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