Episode 13 Transcript | Nico Dato of Entrata

Peter Stevenson

Welcome to By Subject to Silicon Slopes brand and marketing podcast. I’m your host, Peter Stevenson. And I’m here with my co host, Alysha Smith, managing partner at agency and modernate. And our guest today is Nico Data, chief marketing officer at Entrada. Welcome.

Nico Dato

Thanks for having me.

Peter Stevenson

So maybe you know first give us a brief rundown of your past and where you grew up and where you went to school, some of the background of you.

Nico Dato

Sure, yeah. So I grew up here in Utah. We were just talking about Bountiful, that’s where I grew up. And I’ve spent pretty much my entire career here in Utah working for Utah companies. I went to the University of Utah, came out of that or came out of school there and kind of started discovering marketing and was changing a lot back when I was graduating college.

Peter Stevenson

What year was that?

Nico Dato

It was like 20 12, 20 12, 20 13. And it had really started shifting to more of a quantitative type approach to marketing, which was really interesting. I was an economics major.

Peter Stevenson

Oh, you were?

Nico Dato

Yeah. At the University of Utah.

Peter Stevenson

Did you get your econ degree? I did okay.

Nico Dato

And I got an internship and, it know, really interesting, quite quantitative and kind of just kind of took off from there, just stuck around marketing from there.

Peter Stevenson

So you wanted to go into econ at the U and that’s what you got a degree in and then you got an econ internship or a marketing.

Nico Dato

Marketing. So I did economics just because it was interesting. I took a couple of classes in my undergrad and early on and kind of was like, oh, I’m relatively okay at this. I guess I’ll just make this my major and did that kind of contemplated law school a handful, like going into finance, just anything and everything with something that was that broad. And I was honestly pretty surprised at how quantitative marketing had become at that point.

Peter Stevenson

Okay.

Nico Dato

And was really interested by it. And so the internship I got was at a company called Teleperformance. It’s a big call center and BPO company doing Demand Generation, which essentially was working hand in hand with Sales and trying to figure out how we drive Pipeline and ultimately sales and loved it. Took a full time job with them upon graduating and then went and decided that I wanted to try my hand at a startup. I remember going to I forget what it was called before Silicon Slopes, but there was the first kind of like.

Peter Stevenson

The Beehive startups, like that, sort of, yeah.

Nico Dato

You remember the conference maybe it was at the Gateway the first couple of years Clint put that on. And I remember going to that and just thinking to myself, oh man, I got to figure out how I get in this world. Because what I was doing before, while I loved it, it was just very kind of like corporate, not software startup y, at all and I just had that alert, right? So that really honestly was a pivotal point for me. I went and got a job as the director of marketing with a company called at the time Zane Benefits. They’re now called People Keep and worked there for a couple of years and then got outreach from Sid Cromenhook’s firm. At the time it was Peak Capital, now it’s Album Ventures and said, hey, there’s this company that I’m really interested in called Rep Drive. We just invested, would love you to meet the founders. That company ended up becoming podium, worked there for seven or so years and then just recently made the jump to Entrada.

Peter Stevenson

So what was it about startups that you wanted to be a part of? Like why tech startup from the corporate world? What was the work like that you thought, this is more my vibe?

Nico Dato

I think there’s two reasons. One, it’s going to sound really cliche but I like to just learn and just kind of figure stuff out on the job that’s just really fun for me and I felt like I was doing that in my current role. But there was this allure of the software kind of startup world which was it’s scrappy, you just got to figure it out. You’re going to learn stuff as you go. It’s kind of fast paced, you’re doing a little bit of everything and I think in my mind that sounded really fun. I wanted to kind of go prove to myself that I could figure out how to actually help a company grow. And then the second is in my mind I was always kind of like this is like the gold rush a little bit and if I don’t jump in right now I will absolutely regret this at some point in time. And so that’s when I decided to make the jump is those two things just kind of kept pestering me in my mind and never looked back.

Peter Stevenson

What did you learn at that first the benefits company that you can think, okay, this has been driving me and the thing that has sort of pointed me in the right direction ever since.

Nico Dato

What did I learn specifically there? I think what I learned there was marketing is fairly broad. There’s a branding component, especially in SaaS, there’s branding, there’s product marketing, there’s communications, there’s demand generation, the list events, the list goes on. And I think there I really started to get a grasp of what are all these functions of a high functioning marketing team and how do you put together a marketing team and a marketing strategy that works for the type of business that you’re working in. And I think for know, for example, there at Zane Benefits it was really heavy around content and so I learned how to go create content machines, ebooks, webinars, white papers, et cetera, work hand in hand with salespeople on what they needed and the things I was doing at podium were astronomically different as well. And so I think the strategy per company is always different to some extent, and I think that at Zane Benefits, it just kind of gave me insight into, oh, man, there’s so many different levers that you can pull as a marketing person that I really didn’t know about before long.

Peter Stevenson

What years were you at Zane Benefits?

Nico Dato

Oh, man, you’re testing me.

Peter Stevenson

Probably the point of this whole podcast.

Nico Dato

Yeah. It was probably 2013 or 2014 to 2015. I was only there for about a year and a half before I left for podium.

Peter Stevenson

And they’re still around today?

Nico Dato

They are, yeah, they’re around as people keep.

Peter Stevenson

People keep yeah. And same ownership.

Nico Dato

Same like I actually am unsure that’s the wrong answer on a podcast, but I’m not sure. I think that ownership potentially has changed a little bit. I know management has, but yeah, I know they’re still around.

Peter Stevenson

Okay, cool. And then you got recruited to go down and work for podium?

Nico Dato

I did.

Peter Stevenson

Early. Was this, like, when you’re in the upper floor of the bike shop you started there?

Nico Dato

Yep, I did.

Peter Stevenson

So you’re employee number five? Six.

Nico Dato

I think I was seven.

Peter Stevenson

Seven.

Nico Dato

I need to validate that. I should ask Eric and Dennis, the founders, to validate that for me. So I’m not lying. But, yeah, I was early employee there. It’s funny. I got an outreach from Sid Crominook’s firm, Peak Capital. Said go to lunch. I went to lunch, and I’ve told this story to Eric and Dennis a hundred times, so they’ll just laugh if they hear this, but I went to lunch with these guys. They were in Joggers and, like, floral button up shirts, and it was just so much different than what I was used to in Salt Lake, and they’re, like, splitting pot stickers. And then Eric and Dennis started talking, and immediately I thought to myself, oh, man, this actually makes a ton of sense. There’s a ton of traction here. Google reviews were still really early, and from that point on, I basically, in my mind, was thinking, I’ll do anything to figure out how to get to become a part of this company.

Peter Stevenson

So it’s 2015 ish.

Nico Dato

Yeah.

Peter Stevenson

What was it? What was it that they had that you thought, this is the right thing?

Nico Dato

Have you ever met Eric or Dennis, either of you? I’ve met or heard them speak.

Peter Stevenson

I’ve seen them each speak at least once, and I met them a handful of times here or there, but okay. Not in any sit down or anything.

Nico Dato

A, they both have a ton of passion. They’re just passionate people, especially about the business. B, they’re really good salespeople. Like, really good salespeople. And I think within 20 or 30 minutes, I could see, okay, they have a good product. They have a ton of passion. They’re willing to get their hands dirty and go sell. And I think that when you’re looking for a founder to go follow, you have to have a founder who has a little bit of crazy in them in the sense of they think in their minds they’re unstoppable, there’s no way that this doesn’t work out. And they had that, and it was really enticing.

Peter Stevenson

What was the name of the company.

Nico Dato

When you started rep Drive.

Peter Stevenson

Rep Drive.

Nico Dato

R-E-P-D-R-I-V-E.

Peter Stevenson

So you got to be part of the rebrand.

Nico Dato

Yeah, I did. I think in the first couple of months we ended up rebranding. They had already started of down the pathway with the name Podium and some of that, but yeah, I was part of that.

Alysha Smith

And what was it exciting about being able to market this company? I mean, were you thinking just all these ideas started coming to you or what was exciting about that marketing piece of it?

Nico Dato

Yeah, it’s a great question. There are a few things, I think. One is at the time it was very much a point solution, meaning it was really solving one problem, which was go get Google reviews. And they had pitched some of the other things in our initial interview around, hey, think about two way texting a tire shop, which at the time, by the way, was just inconceivable, like it wasn’t a thing. And they’d pitched some of that, but the point of having some product market fit around a product that was pretty straightforward, which was collect Google reviews, let consumers know that you’re a great business, help local SEO, et cetera. That was really interesting to me. The second was I learned this from peoplekeep I really like the human element of a know, and I’ve been drawn to those businesses since. So when you have direct ties to someone’s life or business and it’s very tangible, the results that you’re driving, I think that’s really interesting. And I think who they were selling to were dental practices, car dealerships, auto body shops, and their first customer was an autobody shop in Orum, or Provo. I’m blanking on the name of it owner operated. And I think in my mind I was thinking, and I still think to this day, oh, that’s really cool, I get to go help impact this small business, or this local business, ideally drive more revenue, allow them to take their family to Disneyland or whatever it is. And that feels really real and tangible to me. And that first company I worked at, Zane Benefits, it’s kind of carried through. I did it at podium. I’m doing it now in Trotta. And it’s just really enticing to me to have that direct tie.

Peter Stevenson

Same sort of buyer from Zane. Benefits to podium, actually.

Nico Dato

Oddly similar.

Peter Stevenson

Yeah, small business.

Nico Dato

That’s right.

Peter Stevenson

Owner operator type.

Nico Dato

Exactly right. Yeah. And Podium, they do serve the enterprise too, to some extent, but at the beginning, it was truly just small businesses.

Peter Stevenson

So you come in, you’re employee number seven, director of marketing. What was it that worked right away? What was it in the marketing space? Clearly, everybody had to be batting almost 1000 at that point to get to where it is now. So you came in and you did something right, like, what was it that worked?

Nico Dato

Yeah, I think for me, and this philosophy still stands today, I’m a very revenue focused marketing know. There’s a quote from one of the founders of Google which is Revenue cures all. And I firmly, firmly believe that if you are driving revenue, it masks a lot of the other issues and that’s problematic and for a whole different reason. But I am very focused on driving revenue. And I think when I came into Podium, I very quickly teamed up with a handful of salespeople. There were only three or four of them at that time. We just hired a BDR, so an appointment setter. And my success was tied to the revenue or the pipeline that we were driving on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And I worried about kind of like planting seeds in all these other areas around brand or content or communications. But I really was focused on working with those sales reps, on, hey, if I drive a lead for you, or I help accelerate a lead through the pipeline or the funnel for you, what are those activities that are working really well? Let’s keep doing those things, and the things that aren’t working well, let’s divest from those areas. And that was really important because we didn’t have a ton of money at that point. I think when I joined podium had only raised $500,000 in seed capital and so every single dollar we cared about. I remember going to Eric and saying, hey, there’s this webinar that we’d like to run through, a trade publication, an auto trade publication, and essentially you pay them like $5,000 and they send out this webinar advertising for this webinar to their list of customers. And I remember thinking to myself, this is like the riskiest thing this business has done. If this flops, I’m probably going to get fired. Fortunately, it worked and we kept doing that. And so to kind of bring it home, I really think I tie myself still to this day to the success on the sales side and all the other things that I’m doing. And the seeds that I’m planning are in support of that one core thing that really matters, which is driving revenue and growing the business.

Alysha Smith

In the past. It feels like we’ve heard from a lot of marketers that those two sides of the business are kind of siloed and don’t work together as often as they should. So do you feel like when you started, that was kind of a novel approach to marketing, working with the sales team?

Nico Dato

I do think it was actually, again back in 2012, 2013, as I was coming into the working world, demand generation was still kind of new. Like the idea that a marketing team could drive a lead that was worthwhile for the sales team was kind of still just a little bit of a novelty. And so, yeah, I kind of just subscribed to that early and I latched onto it and I still latch onto it today. I probably have people on brand teams that I’ve run or comms teams who get sick of me talking about revenue. But, yeah, I latched onto it really quickly and I think for me, the two most important relationships as a CMO that I can have within the business cross functionally are with the Chief Product Officer because I need to understand what they’re building so I can build a vision set kind of overall messaging strategy and launch products correctly. And then the other is the Chief Revenue officer. And if the relationships aren’t strong with those people, you’re setting yourselves up for failure because you’re siloed and if you’re just sitting around and tinkering in your own little world, you’re not going to be able to drive the results that you need as a company.

Alysha Smith

Yeah.

Peter Stevenson

How are you managing the signal from the noise and that revenue? It’s getting harder. Again, to say this directly led to a sale, as you did before, so you’re seeing a little bit more brand marketing that you didn’t have maybe five, six, seven years. You know, now that you’re at Entrada, it’s a little bit different than those first couple of years where you could track everything at Podium. So how are you sort of managing that signal from the noise now as compared to it then?

Nico Dato

Yeah, it’s a good question. I think there are some channels and areas where, to your point, you can get really clear attribution on we did this, it worked, x did Y. There are others where it’s a little bit gut feel it’s qualitative. You have to go talk to reps or talk to marketing people or look at overall lead volume and say, we did this ad this day, we can’t tie to anything, but we think it had a spike. So I wish I had a perfect answer, but candidly, it’s a lot of just trial and error at podium. For example, we didn’t do a ton of brand marketing, but we did have a handful of channels like SiriusXM Radio or Podcast or some of these things where you could set up a dedicated page that says go to Podium.com XM and whatever. And some people would do that, but most people don’t. They just Google Podium or Entrada or insert name of any company. And for us, we really would just test turning it on and off and noticing when we intentionally turned it on and off to try and track it. But it’s not super clean. It’s always a little bit messy on the brand marketing side.

Peter Stevenson

Right. And as brand marketers, we really lean into that idea that brand marketing really just leads to that long term organic search. It does, by the way, that’s really the thing that you can drive with. It not like I got a sale today.

Nico Dato

My head of revenue marketing at Entrada, he worked with me at podium as well. His name is Chris Finkin. He’s one of the best demand gen marketers I’ve ever met. And he is as quantitative as they come. He’s as surgical as they come. But on the brand marketing side, he has told, I’ve heard him say it 100 times, you just make the bet based on gut feel on some of these brand marketing things, let them grow, and the dividends are seen through all the other activities that you’re doing. Interesting through paid marketing, everything else. And so I think that’s 100% right. You have to feel confident kind of putting those seeds down, and you have to be thoughtful about it and use your gut. But they done well. It amplifies everything else that you’re doing.

Peter Stevenson

Yeah, lower cost per click, like all sorts of things. If you do your brand marketing right, 100%. What’s entrada like nowadays. What are you guys trying to build? What are you, 1213 year old company now 14? Maybe longer than that. 20 now. 20, yeah, man, I’m old. So tell me a little bit about where Entrada is going. What are you trying to do marketing wise? Where are you as a company sort of building product wise, marketing wise? What’s happening over there?

Nico Dato

Yeah. So Entrada has, in the last couple of years, seen a lot of new people come in. We have a new CEO who came in two years ago, Adam Edmonds, and he brought in a lot of other great executive leadership. Catherine Wong from Domo is there. Mark Hansen from Pluralsight. Amanda Fumo actually came over from Silver Lake as our chief revenue officer. We’ve got a really great leadership team. And so a lot of what we’ve been focused on is kind of honing in on the overall strategy and vision for the business and figuring out how to also go simultaneously knock down deals to keep the business growing. And on the marketing side, specifically, a lot of what we’re doing is trying to identify what our differentiator in the market is we work in.

Peter Stevenson

What is that?

Nico Dato

For us, it’s focusing on the resident. So a little bit of background on Trotta. It’s a software that multifamily owners and operators utilize to just run their apartment communities. Right? And it can be everything from rent or talking about a leak or getting insurance, renting insurance or whatever it is. It happens through a platform like Entrada. And there are a handful of others out there, and I think there are others in the market who are really focused on reporting and showing full transparency at the property level or whatever it is. And we think that’s important. But at the end of the day, we think there’s something that’s even bigger, which is the millions and millions of residents that live in the communities that we’re powering as business. And so our differentiator really is around the resident experience that those people who.

Peter Stevenson

Are using the product maybe not even really paying for it, other than maybe through their rent checks.

Nico Dato

That’s right.

Peter Stevenson

They’re the ones, if they’re happy with the product and they’re happy with the way that it works, that they’ll ultimately tell their landlords multifamily, multi unit, family type stuff, that they want to continue to use it.

Nico Dato

Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever leased an apartment or not.

Peter Stevenson

Been a while.

Nico Dato

Yeah. But traditionally, if you remember any parts of it, it’s pretty cumbersome. You go you show up at a leasing office, you have to go on a tour with them. They give you a paper application, you fill that out, then they basically run it through credit checks or whatever else. They’ll call you back. And that’s all kind of fast forward technologically over the last decade or so. But we think there’s a ton more to do on just making that seamless. And if you make that seamless and really get great for the resident, you can start finding efficiencies at the property level or at the corporate. So, you know, Adam, our CEO, he has a background in customer experience. He built and sold a handful of companies on the CX side. He has a huge, huge passion for that. And I think he came in quickly and kind of saw this angle. And so on the marketing side, we’re capturing a lot of that vision from a product standpoint, from a company vision standpoint, repackaging it up, telling it to the market in unique ways and obviously thinking through all the channels that we’re utilizing to do that. And so we’re a big events company. We do a lot of events, whether they’re field events or our annual Summit Demand generation is something that’s much newer for us as a company, but ramping up heavily there with webinars or content or paid ads or trade publications, et cetera. And we’re really just trying to pull all these different teams together to build a cohesive marketing function that works for our business.

Alysha Smith

Circling back to your purpose behind working at podium and the people centric part of that, and what was exciting about that is that do you feel like that’s kind of also coming full circle here at, you know, with working with the residents and really impacting them? Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?

Nico Dato

Yeah, 100%. It’s actually one of the reasons I really wanted to go to Entrada is there’s a human element to it that’s really clear. There are other reasons. Like the financial stability of the business is really strong, the leadership strong, et cetera. But I love the human element of it, and I think we have different types of products that address different types of housing. And not to geek out too much because a lot of the listeners probably don’t care. But there’s conventional housing, which is your average apartment. There’s military housing, there’s student housing, there’s affordable housing. We just launched an affordable product earlier this year. And when you start looking at types like affordable and you start seeing or hearing case studies or the stories around low income families moving in or out or having housing vouchers or whatever, it feels very real to you. And so I think that Human Element was absolutely a deciding factor for me and is still a reason I’m super, super engaged.

Alysha Smith

It must make it so much easier and more fulfilling to work every day.

Nico Dato

It does. And it’s no knock on any other company. I shouldn’t speak too strongly on one thing or another because who knows, maybe at one point I’m working on AI. I don’t know, I’m just making that up. But I really like it right now. Human elements. Really, really fun.

Alysha Smith

That’s awesome.

Peter Stevenson

You talked about your big events company and you’re sort of like newer into demand gen there. Was that something you brought in?

Nico Dato

It was.

Peter Stevenson

Tell me why you wanted to bring it in. Clearly they were a successful company already. What was it about demand gen for this audience that you thought was going to work? And has it?

Nico Dato

Yeah, it absolutely has. And I think for us, when I speak about demand gen, a lot of it is just around content. So how are we giving best practices to these owners or these operators? How do we help educate and inform them and be seen as thought leaders? And obviously we’re using can. You can name all the obvious channels like Google or Facebook or all those. And those aren’t massive, massive channels.

Peter Stevenson

Tumblr marketing.

Nico Dato

Yeah, tons of tumblr. It’s our biggest spend, but you can use all of those. But really, as far as demand gen goes for us, a lot of it is just how do we get operators out there in the market viewing us as someone who they should come talk to? Right. And that’s really what we’re trying to turbocharge and kind of accelerate along with the sales team.

Peter Stevenson

Interesting. And then those same people are people who are interested in your events and interested in other sorts of places. Is that title typically Owner operator or is it typically like manager, operations manager for a multifamily? All the above?

Nico Dato

Yeah. So it’s everything know, property managers all the way up to CEOs depending on the products or the size of the business, et cetera. Yeah. And on the event side, we have our annual summit every year. Historically we’ve done it at the Steinerkson. This year we’re doing it in downtown Salt Lake because it’s getting much larger. That’ll continue being a focus for us. We love that event. It’s fun. It’s a great time to get everyone from across the world to come to Salt Lake. But we also do a ton of field events. Right. It can be as small as getting professional on the customer experience side of things to go speak to a group of people to, I don’t know, a professional chef cooking event. It really just depends what we’re trying to accomplish and who we’re trying to get to engage with us.

Peter Stevenson

Are you seeing that there’s a lot of chum in the market, in the property management space?

Nico Dato

Right?

Peter Stevenson

Like, there’s some stuff related to airbnb’s down a little bit. People aren’t staying in those sorts of places as much. The short term rental market’s a little bit chaotic and housing vouchers are certainly in this weird space. Are you seeing a lot of churn in the market right now for Podia, for Entrada? Or are you seeing, like, it’s pretty consistent, same owner, operator, know, office spaces are just going to get turned into multifamily. Tell me what you’re seeing a little bit.

Nico Dato

Yeah, when the market’s good interest rates are down, you’re going to see a lot more activity on the M A side where people are, know, gobbled up or whatever with where the economy is at today. You see a little less on the transaction volume side. You see a lot of people kind of hunkering down and saying, if we’re going to enter a recession, how do we make sure that we stay efficient? And so you’ve kind of seen those tables turn over the last little bit. As far as software companies go within the space, there are some big behemoths who have been there forever. They’re going to keep chugging along.

Peter Stevenson

Right.

Nico Dato

There’s a lot of startups that are probably in the opposite position where they’re not feeling like there’s a clear line of sight for them to make it through the next 18 to 24 months. But I also don’t think that’s unique necessarily to multifamily. I think you’re seeing that in a lot of areas, but yeah, I think depending on the definition of kind of churn, there’s different answers to it. I think from a property manager, owner, operator standpoint and the M A side there, it’s definitely slowed down a little bit with interest rates where they’re at. But I think on the software good, the down market is like, causing a lot of people to think about different things as far as their futures go.

Peter Stevenson

I guess part of my question is we had somebody in here a couple of weeks ago talking about how they started out in customer marketing. So tell me a little bit about what you guys do on the customer marketing side. How are you focused on your own current customers and keeping them engaged and keeping them as entranced customers?

Nico Dato

Yeah, there’s a few elements to that. So one is just ensuring that they know how to use the product.

Peter Stevenson

Sure.

Nico Dato

And so I think that falls somewhere between product marketing and customer marketing and ensuring that there’s success there so that retention stays really high.

Peter Stevenson

Right.

Nico Dato

As you. Launch new products or new features, make sure they know about them, how to use them. We do a lot of email marketing around that, a lot of webinars. Sure. I think there’s another side to it where we just want to maintain relationships. I think for a company like Entrada, the average deal size is in the high six figures. And so we want to make sure that those relationships stay really strong. And so whether it’s events or on site meetings or swag that we’re sending them or whatever it is, there’s a constant drumbeat with those customers. And I think it’s doable for a company like Entrada where the deal size is much, much larger. If you look know, I’ll use Podium as an example. They have hundreds of thousands of businesses. It’s a little bit harder. You have to use different channels like email or in app notifications or whatever. So for us, it really is more of a one to one versus a one to many type situation in a lot of ways and in other ways it is one to many. But it’s just a little bit different in Entrada than probably some other software companies out there.

Peter Stevenson

And so what have you had to learn at Entrada that you didn’t think you needed to learn?

Nico Dato

It’s a great there’s it’s a great question. I think one of the main things that I’ve had to figure out and learn is when I joined, it wasn’t a small company that we were trying to scale from Pennies, not a startup. They were hundreds of millions of dollars when I came in. And so having to take behemoth like Entrada and figure out how to tack on more activity, more pipeline, the right types of activities, spend budget in the right ways, hire the right people, drive more revenue, drive more revenue, it’s been a lot. Right. And I think the other side is figuring out the brand marketing aspect of it as well, which is what’s our position in the industry? How do we make sure that we’re front and center and how do we stay the company that people see as innovative and they want to go work with? And I think that coming into something like that mid cycle teaches you a lot really quickly and there’s not a playbook for it. And so I think that’s probably the main thing that I’ve had to figure out how to adapt to and learn.

Peter Stevenson

How to learn not just from your starting out with nothing, but have to start with something and make it better.

Nico Dato

Yeah, because the analogy I use, which is the most cliche one ever, is you’re flying the airplane and building it at the same time. And it’s pretty dang true. You can’t crash the airplane, the airplane’s got to keep flying. But you also have to figure out how to make it better, more efficient, faster, whatever it is. I think oftentimes when you’re in the startup world, it’s not to discredit at all because it’s really hard. I’ve done it. The plane is on the ground a little bit longer. And it’s not that you can take your time, but it’s not that there’s playbooks necessarily, but you’re not trying to multitask and keeping the plane up in the air necessarily.

Peter Stevenson

Right.

Nico Dato

So it’s just a little bit different cool than what I’ve been used to. Yeah.

Alysha Smith

So I guess on that note, if you were to kind of sum up a tip, marketing tip for our audience, it could be something you’ve learned or just something that you think about every day. What would that be?

Nico Dato

I think two things. So the first is be transparent. I think a lot of marketing people, because to your point, on the silo side, they sit in this world that a lot of people maybe don’t understand, it’s easy to not be transparent. I think it’s just much easier to be transparent. Whether it’s around pipeline numbers or who you’re hiring and why and the overall strategy for marketing or where you’re getting beat in the market. Just be transparent with the broader team I think is really important. It’s advice I got early on. I think the second is make sure the activities that you’re doing as a marketing team or a marketing person or a marketing leader are aligned to the company outcomes. I think that they can be one or two steps adjacent to the overall outcome, but just make sure that they’re helping support that overarching outcome. I think there’s really high turnover in the marketing space, particularly on the leader side. And I think that the reason, I personally think the reason why you see a lot of that attrition is because oftentimes marketing leaders aren’t aligning to what their CEOs or others are trying to do with.

Alysha Smith

And why would that be?

Nico Dato

I think it’s easy to think that, oh man, we need a new website, or oh, this logo isn’t as good as it should be, or this event that we throw is just not cool enough. And I think the thing you need to be asking is why am I doing these things? What’s the impact going to be? And it’s just a priorities game. So I think if you get your priorities aligned to the overall outcomes of the business, you’re going to get to the website or the logo or whatever it is at the right time. But just make sure that you’re aligning the activities that you’re doing to overall outcomes that actually drive results, not just like sound good to you, if that makes sense.

Peter Stevenson

Yeah, I love it. And our final question, what are some restaurants, bars, coffee shops? Like where should people go that you want to give a little shout out to?

Alysha Smith

And also what’s your hat all about? Looks like a little sandwich.

Nico Dato

Yeah, it is. It’s a pimento cheese sandwich, which I like to golf. The pimento cheese sandwich is like the infamous I have a bunch of these hats. My wife hates every single one of them, but I still wear them. As far as restaurants go, I mean, that’s a hard question. I mean, Lehigh is like the capital fast casual.

Peter Stevenson

You don’t have to go with by your office.

Nico Dato

Where should people eat?

Alysha Smith

Unless there’s a nerd that they I.

Nico Dato

Will give one plug because we were talking about Bountiful earlier. There’s a Chinese restaurant, have you tried it? Called the mandarin is great. It is really good. And it’s kind of a hidden gem, I feel like. And only people not on Saturday nights. Yeah, no, don’t go on Saturday night. Good. Takeout the mandarin’s. Great. I love the mandarin. I’m trying to think what else there’s another restaurant in Salt Lake my wife and I really like called HSL. We go there far too often.

Peter Stevenson

Handle Salt Lake? Yeah.

Alysha Smith

Have you had the cauliflower?

Nico Dato

It’s amazing.

Alysha Smith

Gone and just ordered that.

Nico Dato

Oh, 100%. Yeah. That’s like the best appetizer I’ve ever had. And their burger is actually really good too. Yeah.

Peter Stevenson

I like hitchhit. Have you been up to handle in Park City?

Nico Dato

Is that the one right off Main Street?

Alysha Smith

No, it is on Main Street ish I haven’t been, but okay.

Nico Dato

I clearly haven’t.

Alysha Smith

But it’s the same ownership.

Nico Dato

Is it? Yeah. Okay.

Alysha Smith

So next time you’re there, you got it.

Peter Stevenson

Yeah. But that General Chow’s cauliflower is like, it’s so good. It’s worth just going for that. Totally.

Nico Dato

Yeah. It’s amazing.

Peter Stevenson

Yeah. Awesome. I love it. And get yourself to Bountiful. Get yourself over to get some Nielsen’s frozen Custard.

Nico Dato

That’s a common one for me too.

Peter Stevenson

Yeah. Have you been to there’s that little have you been to the Sunshine Cafe in North Salt Lake?

Nico Dato

Yeah, I have the breakfast spot. Yeah.

Peter Stevenson

That breakfast spot with those unbelievable cinnamon rolls.

Nico Dato

Really good. Yeah. And it’s like in a strip.

Peter Stevenson

Like there’s like some weird stuff in that strip mall.

Nico Dato

Yeah.

Peter Stevenson

But that place it’s really good. Yeah. That’s close to where you guys are.

Nico Dato

It is very close. Yeah. And we were talking before this, there’s not many food options in Bountiful. So we basically just named the two that are Manburn and Sunshine Cafe. There may be a couple others, but.

Peter Stevenson

Not have you been at Blacksmith Ice Cream on Main Street?

Nico Dato

That is good too.

Peter Stevenson

Yeah.

Nico Dato

Okay, now you’re proving me wrong. Yeah. I went there a couple of weeks ago. Oh, it does.

Alysha Smith

We’re in the middle of helping them with some branding.

Nico Dato

Oh, are you?

Alysha Smith

Yeah, because they’re expanding.

Nico Dato

Trying to remember what the ice cream I had there was. It was really, really good though.

Alysha Smith

Yeah.

Peter Stevenson

So fresh.

Alysha Smith

It’s so fresh.

Nico Dato

It is. It’s right on.

Peter Stevenson

It’s worth those are the things worth driving a Bountiful for.

Nico Dato

Yeah. I’m looking for a bunch of free food from all these call outs.

Alysha Smith

Think about that.

Peter Stevenson

I’m sure Sunshine Cafe is listening to podcasts. Well, hey, thanks so much for joining us. It’s such a pleasure to meet you and we’ll see you next time.

Nico Dato

Thanks so much. Thank you.

Peter Stevenson

Buy subjects is a production of modern eight agency and Silicon Slopes. Executive produce producers are Alicia Smith and Peter Stevenson. Editor and Producer is Dave Meekham video production by Connor Mitchell development production by Eric Dahl production management by Shelby Sandlin original music composed by Josh Johnson website designed by Modern Eight please make sure to follow and share the show with your friends and your enemies. Thanks for joining us.