Episode 4 Transcript | Logan Mallory of Motivosity

Peter Stevenson

Thanks for joining us today on by, subject to Silicon Slopes brand and Marketing podcast. I’m your host Peter Stevenson, and in this episode, my cohost Eric Dahl and I had a chance to sit down with Logan Mallory, VP of marketing at Motivosity. Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you’re from, where you grew up, and sort of what that brought you to Utah.

Logan Mallory

Yeah, I’m a little bit of a classic BYU story. I grew up in Detroit, and when high school ended, just a couple of days after graduation, I came out to BYU, spent a few years here and moved around a little bit between Texas and Seattle. But then an opportunity came back to come to the or came to come back to the Valley in about 2011 and moved from Seattle to the Sandy area and haven’t looked back since. So Utah is officially home.

Peter Stevenson

What years did you years were you at BYU?

Logan Mallory

I would have been there from 2002 until 2007 with a nice two year break for some time in in Washington State.

Peter Stevenson

Yeah, yeah, awesome. Awesome. Good times to be down at BYU.

Logan Mallory

Yeah, it was, it was good. You know, like, growing up in Detroit, it was always kind of this dream to be out with my people, and that dream came true. And I think that’s one of the great things about both BYU and Utah. We’ve just got great communities here.

Peter Stevenson

Awesome. So you graduated in seven and then you ended up in Texas, you said.

Logan Mallory

Yeah, I did. So I ended up working for a startup insurance firm in Texas, and I graduated in communications. But my whole life people always said, logan, you would be amazing at sales, you’ve got to go into sales. And so I accepted a sales role, a sales position with the startup in 2007, 2008, and that’s really where I started my career. It was a great time. It was a great time to have some sort of a job. Yeah.

Peter Stevenson

And so you took a job at the start of how did the start up do?

Logan Mallory

If I can be really honest, it was three of the worst years of my life and for a lot of reasons. One of them was I learned that people had said, Logan, you’d be great at sales, and what they really meant was, Logan, you’re kind of nice, and, Logan, you can sort of talk to people. Right. And those aren’t the same thing. They’re really not the same thing.

Peter Stevenson

Right.

Logan Mallory

So that was valuable for me to learn as an individual. The startup is now a publicly traded company. They’re very successful. It was not a culture or an environment where I wanted to be. And so earlier in my career, in 2008, you didn’t jump from job to job. And so part of me just felt like I had to muscle through it and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I didn’t really know who I was. And so I just muscled through these three years at the start up, but it was emotionally brutal. I only have a handful of Reoccurring dreams in my life, and one of them is that I wake up or that I’m all of a sudden working there again and it’s like the 29th of the month and I have to hit my quota in a day.

Eric Dahl

Like the reoccurring stuck in school dream, but on a professional front, that’s exactly it.

Logan Mallory

So there’s some people there I really appreciate, and I absolutely can see how it led me down a great path. It was a hard three years. That’s all there is to it.

Peter Stevenson

You had a breaking point that you decided to move on to something else. And what was that? What position was that and where did you end up?

Logan Mallory

So I ended up working for another insurance firm. My story ends up with a really happy ending, but there was a lot of struggles in the beginning, and actually, I love sharing that. So, long story short, I was recruited to work for a family friend in the Seattle area and spent about a year working with that insurance firm doing some sales and some marketing. Okay.

Peter Stevenson

And was that your first marketing role, or did you do some marketing with the previous place?

Logan Mallory

It was really my first marketing role. It was really the first place that I started to get some experience, and frankly, it was relatively light marketing experience, but I was able to really leverage that small experience to get into my next role. So another crucial part of my story.

Eric Dahl

In that process, were you akin to the fact that, like, okay, I’m enjoying this, this is getting the creative juices flowing? Did you feel like, I mean, studying communications, there was an idea that that’s probably what you wanted to pursue, but in that initial role, were you connecting the dots and thinking, okay, this is a good I’m digging the marketing thing here.

Logan Mallory

Studying communications was the fastest way through college, right? So it wasn’t as intentional as intentional as I wanted it to be. I really thought sales was going to be my career. That’s what my dad did. Both of my siblings were in pharmaceutical sales. I put myself through college selling ad space for a niche publishing company. And so I really thought it was going to be sales. When I was in that role in Seattle, I was working again for this family friend, and after about a year, 1011 months, I started to really question what was happening in the business. And you don’t see this part of my LinkedIn, but I literally I would I would go to work at the small insurance company. The owner would come, he’d spend a little bit of time in the day, we’d chitchat, we’d go to lunch, and then he’d go home. And after about ten months, I just thought, I don’t understand how this company is working. I don’t understand where the money is coming from. And that led to a really serious conversation with my wife where we said, we’ve got to find something new. And one of the projects that I had taken on was I was asked to explore an email service provider. He had basically said, hey, we don’t have an email service that we’re using. Again, this is 2010, right.

Peter Stevenson

They had email then.

Logan Mallory

I think we had email, but not the same way that we have it now, right?

Peter Stevenson

Yeah.

Logan Mallory

The mass usage of email wasn’t as intense. And so really, he had sent me on this project or on this RFP project to go find the right tool. And that’s when I started learning about A B testing, and it just went off in my head, and I realized that I could impact the business and the revenue like a sales rep would without some of the risk and the emotional damage that a salesperson has to take on. And that’s where I started to say, all right, I can help drive a business and help a company win without having to have recurring nightmares about sales. And that was really where my path led down to marketing.

Peter Stevenson

From that experience, you said, Look, I need to be in marketing. A b testing. And email was the thing that got that spark going.

Logan Mallory

So the company that I had sold ad space for was LDS Living Magazine, which in 2005, when I was putting myself through college, was its own little organization. While I was in Texas, that company got purchased by Desert Book. Right? And so suddenly I’m having questions about what’s happening at this company in Seattle. And we just started to look for roles that might work. And it happened that Desert Book had three marketing roles open. And they might argue whether this was true or not, but the way that I remember the story is I literally called the hiring managers and I said, I’m coming down to Utah for a wedding, and I will be interviewing with you for these three roles. I basically pounded down the door and said, I’m coming. I don’t know if you want to call this fate or divine guidance or whatever you want to call it. So not only had the company I worked for been acquired by Desert Book, someone that was in my congregation in Texas had also moved up and become a VP at Desert Book. And so suddenly I had these connections and these relationships that helped me get that role and make that transition from sales to marketing. And I’ll admit, John Koford works for Adobe, and he was he ended up being my manager at Desert Book. I’ll admit they took a chance on me. Looking back, I didn’t have the resume for it, I didn’t have the skill set for it, but I think I kind of came in on sale, right? I was at a point where I was like, Let me prove myself and I’ll make it work. And they were generous enough and kind enough to give me a shot at something. And I can look back at that experience as a Pivot in my career and my family and my self confidence.

Eric Dahl

So you mentioned, like, a John Colford. Were there other mentors or was there, like, a particular mentor that comes to mind during that time that helped really kind of facilitate your growth and help take you from entry level Logan Mallory into who we know Logan Mallory is? Because within the marketing realm here in the silicon slopes area, your name is very well known.

Logan Mallory

That’s nice of you.

Eric Dahl

Tell me, did you learn from somebody along the way, and what was that process like?

Logan Mallory

I’ve been insanely blessed my whole life. That good. Kind men have taken time to invest in me. And so in high school, that was Mike Messmore, the English teacher. That was never even my teacher, but just somehow kind of took care of me for a while. It was Drew Egan, who helped me get my Eagle Scout and got me a job one summer and mission companions. And Matt Shumway, who was my manager at that start up. That was a hard time for me, but Matt made it great and made me better. John COFORD, Ryan Miller was that member of the congregation that have moved up there. Mike Ward. Like Joe Staples. Scott joe. I can just go on forever and list these people that have really changed who I am both professionally and personally because of their investment in me. And I don’t think I deserve it. And I don’t know why they decided to help and support me, but I have an endless list of mentors that I’m super grateful for. Can I ask about that?

Peter Stevenson

You talk really lovingly and kind of beautifully about all these people who had a profound effect on your life. What was it that they did that was so special or unique or beneficial for you, that gave you that opportunity, that did the thing that you needed as a human being to grow to where you are?

Logan Mallory

Can I give a couple of answers there and again? I’m kind of speaking in blanket statements, right? I think one thing that the mentors in my life have helped me do is look at things through a different lens. And we don’t have to get political or PC, but as a white Mormon, 38 year old male, I naturally look at things through a certain lens. Right. Like, my experiences give me a certain lens. Sure. And my mentors have helped me say, hey, think about it from this perspective, think about it from the customer perspective, think about it from the executive level. Right. And just by challenging me and forcing me to reframe how I’m considering a problem or an opportunity, I’ve gotten better. And what I’m able to do is now, when my team members come to me, I can say, great, you nailed that, but what about looking at it through this other window, right? And so I think that’s been really helpful for me. I’ve had mentors that haven’t made me feel stupid when I screw up, right? I can think about John Coordinat. And one time it was like my first week on the job, and he was telling me, I don’t know if I can tell this story on a podcast well, but I’m going to try it.

Peter Stevenson

I’ll cut it if it sucks.

Logan Mallory

If it sucks, you cut it. I was designing an ad, and he’s like, Logan, put a triangle across the corner and do a call out on the discount, right? Like, I was literally doing B to B pricing, b to C pricing. He’s like, put the discount percentage in the corner. And I didn’t know what he was talking about with the triangle. So I went to the designer and I was like, hey, can we just put a triangle in the corner? And I literally, instead of cutting off the corner, it was just a floating triangle in the ad. Just floating in the middle of the ad, basically. And other bosses might have been like, who did I hire? Or like you’re an idiot. And John and I, we just giggled and laughed. And one day I sent him an email, and I was like, I miss our floating triangle, right? To be able to make mistakes and have someone like just be okay with that is a really big deal. I tell this story. Scott Johnson, the founder of Motivosity, and a couple of months ago, or about a year ago, he took us out on his boat. He’s got a boat. We went up to, I don’t know, Deer Creek, probably. And I was driving the boat while he was surfing, right? This is the whole marketing team is on the boat, and he’s taking his turn. And as he ended his run and I turned the boat around to go get him. And I don’t really drive boats, and I am prone to exaggeration, but I promise I turned into our wake and a bathtub full of water just came into his boat. And I kind of, like, cringed and was really like, what did I just do? And Scott looked at it. I go, Scott, I’m sorry. And he looked at me from the water, and he goes, Logan, boats are meant to get wet. And that really changed how I felt about being able to make mistakes with Scott. Right? Those are a couple of examples. One final one. Joe Staples. I worked for Joe at workfront. Joe was the CMO, and I didn’t report to him. I had a VP in between me and Joe, and I was doing my MBA, my executive MBA, and I finished I had been with workfront for about a year when I finished that, and Joe pulled me into his office, and he said, hey, Logan, bring your family tomorrow. Like, bring your family at 03:00 tomorrow. And I don’t really know what was going on, but at 03:00, Joe had balloons and cupcakes or cookies or something, and he brought the marketing team together, and for five minutes, he let me talk about what I’ve learned, and he said, Logan’s worked really hard to balance these two things in his life. And he gave me about five minutes to talk. He said probably two sentences or three sentences about me, sent my kids off with some balloons, and that was it. That’s not a manager.

Eric Dahl

Sure.

Logan Mallory

That’s not a CMO. That’s a mentor that cares about you. Those are examples. Like, hopefully those are some professional and personal examples of what people have done to contribute meaningfully to my life.

Eric Dahl

And that’s huge because understanding at each step of the process throughout your career, you’ve had that support, and obviously that’s paid dividends. And hats off to you for recognizing these individuals and the roles that they’ve played in your life and your development. So going back to your career, projection or evolution, you went to workfront and then walk me through what’s transpired since workfront leading you up to Motivosity.

Logan Mallory

Yeah, let me share this, and I hope this is super helpful for the audience. I got into that. I went to Desert Book and and ran B to C marketing, right. A $10 million website for four years. And that was invaluable experience. When workfront reached out to me with an opportunity, for me, it was this really big it was a fork in the road. I could have stayed. A desert book. I could have been really happy and had a comfortable life, or suddenly I could go into tech, right? And I just knew that the tech world was the right world for me, and so I took that path. I spent about two years with workfront, and part way through that, I got a phone call from a recruiter at HubSpot. Right? Like Marketers dream, right? So I’m on the phone call with the recruiter, and it’s going so well, and in my head, I’m like, I’m going to pack my bags and I’m going to Boston. Like, Emily, get the kids, get in the car. We’re going to Boston. At the end of the phone call, the recruiter says, hey, really quick, tell me about the ad budgets you’ve managed. Right? And I was running SEO, I was running the website, and I was like, I manage a couple of hundred grand, mostly on licenses and tools, and I could hear the recruiter get bored with me and basically hang up the phone. Right. Didn’t hear from HubSpot again. And so suddenly what happened is I knew that that was the next thing I needed on my resume. I needed to manage significant budgets as a part of my career so that I could keep progressing. Right? And so for me, when matt Peterson called from Jive and there was a decent, healthy marketing budget that I could be owning. No brainer, because that was going to give me the experience that I needed. Loved my experience with Jive, which got acquired by Logmen out of Boston. And I stayed partly because I wanted that public company experience. I wanted to know what it was like to look at marketing from a 4000 person company with international markets and having to report to Wall Street every quarter. And so I got that part of the experience. Through that, I started to realize that sometimes in marketing, though, the demand gen guy has all the budget, the product marketer is seen as the quarterback. Right, that’s true.

Eric Dahl

That’s actually a very good point.

Logan Mallory

Yeah. And that kind of bugged me because I was always like, I have the data, I have the numbers, I have the money. Why you guys go to product marketing? I have all your answers. But I didn’t feel like I was going to change that in the world. And so then I started to say, I need to be responsible for product for product marketing. I need to be responsible for the brand and product marketing. And so then again, when Motivosity called and there was an opportunity there, that was another way to round out my resume. And so what? I share those stories because I think for people who are early in their career or trying to figure out what to do, you need to look at what gaps you have from the job you want and then you figure out how to get that experience and that can change your career.

Eric Dahl

And that’s great feedback because that was actually one of the questions that I did want to cover with you living here in Silicon Slopes, there’s a lot of energy, there’s a lot of things that are moving and shaking. But what is there to learn for an upcoming marketer? What do they need to know? And I think that that’s so important. What you spoke about where it’s like, okay, if you’re looking at your resume, where can you plug in the holes and how can you utilize that to get to the next rung on the ladder?

Logan Mallory

Yeah, the word that I would use is you have to be intentional. Right. And you can’t be thinking, oh, I got laid off today. I want to be X. You have to be thinking, I own my career and I’m going to figure out how to get that experience so that in a year and a half or two years or when I’m unhappy at my job, I can make that transition.

Eric Dahl

So those who work with you or have had the opportunity to work with you throughout your career, how would they describe Logan’s style when it comes to marketing?

Logan Mallory

Oh, gosh, when I’m interviewing people, lots of times they’ll say, tell me about your style, or something along those lines and what I end up saying is, I’m a really bad manager for some people. If you need a to do list and you need me to hold your hand and tell you what to work on next, I’m the worst manager in the world. I’m not necessarily super organized. I can move really quickly in the last minute, and that doesn’t work for some team members. But if you are the type of person that can look around the room and find a problem, then I’m going to help you figure out how to solve that problem. Right. Like, I’m going to help you look at it through a different lens or overcome the political issue with the team member that’s struggling. That makes it hard. That doesn’t really answer your question about what kind of a marketer I am, but I guess that goes more towards a management style.

Eric Dahl

Sure.

Logan Mallory

When it comes to marketing, I default to analytics and numbers. Right. I was responsible for sending out a 500,000 subscriber email twice a week at Desert Book. That’s what I cut my marketing teeth on. And so you better believe I was looking at every click and delivery rates and looking at our margins on the products that we were promoting, and I just became obsessed with those numbers. And that’s pretty hard to let go of.

Eric Dahl

Sure. So I love to say that within marketing you have your artists and your scientists, but I think it’s fair to say that what you’re telling us, you’re very much within the scientist corner.

Logan Mallory

Yeah, I am on the scientist corner. And again, part of the reason, and maybe this is exposing too much, maybe I’m being too transparent part of the reason for taking the role at Motivosity was to be responsible for the art so that I could strengthen that skill set.

Eric Dahl

I love it. Yeah, that’s awesome. So you mentioned emails, and as you’re talking about sending out these email blasts to 500,000 people, what’s one bit of information for marketers who are listening in when it comes to email blasts that they could learn from Logan to Mallory?

Logan Mallory

Here’s what I learned from one of my mentors. Marketers get sick of their message way sooner than the audience does, right. And so when you’re sending something out, whether it’s a product or a promotion or a message, you’ve been looking at it as the marketer for quarters or months at least, right? Like you’ve been trying to frame it. How do I say this in an email? You’ve been going back and forth with the creative team on how to visualize it. You’ve sent out the email two or three times. You get fatigued way earlier than the customer does. Right. And so don’t let that ruin your efforts because customers need to see it multiple times. And if you feel fatigued, don’t assume they are.

Eric Dahl

That’s great advice. I’d love that thinking. Again, we’ve talked about being all over so Washington State, Texas. Now here in silicon Slopes area? What do you see as a benefit or what do you enjoy about living in the Silicon Slopes area from a professional standpoint?

Logan Mallory

I have family that lives in Philadelphia and Georgia and Michigan, and their work communities are nothing like ours. They almost don’t exist. And I feel like one of the beautiful things about Silicon Slopes and working here is it’s such a small valley that you only have to have two or three jobs before you’re starting to cross paths with people again. Right. At Motivosity, there’s a number of team members that I’ve worked with before. In fact, one came from Desert Book, and he had another stint in between, but once the timing was right, he came over to Motivosity. Two of our team members came from, logged me in and joined us. And being able to pull some great talent from organization to organization is something that I don’t feel like you see as intensely in other markets.

Eric Dahl

That’s great. Another question that is I’ve done my research on you. I know that you were an adjunct professor at BYU. And so for upcoming marketers, let’s say for the next five or ten years, what are some things that up and coming marketers should be aware of? Or what did you like to teach students who are coming up through the ranks and wanting to understand more about marketing? What were some staples from the professor?

Logan Mallory

From Professor Logan?

Eric Dahl

Professor Logan?

Logan Mallory

Yes.

Peter Stevenson

Is that what you made the kids call?

Logan Mallory

I made them yeah. No, I have a masters, so I made them call me Master Logan. Just kidding. I didn’t make them call me anything. They actually called me Logan, which was nice. I tried to go in and have a pretty down to earth approach for as much as you can with Bye students. Right, sure. So here’s the thing that I think about marketing. For probably 50, 60 years, marketing relatively held still, right? Like, it was the mass communications and it was TV, newspaper, and a CPA, all the traditional. Yeah, right. And that clearly doesn’t exist anymore. And so what I would encourage young marketers to do is not get great at marketing, but get great at learning how to market. Right. And those aren’t the same thing because marketing today won’t look like what it will in a few years. Right. And there’s great examples of that. Like, I think about Levi Lindsay, who’s in the valley here, and Levi is probably the, I don’t know if I’d say the biggest TikToker, but certainly from a B to B perspective, he’s leveraging TikTok better than anyone in the valley that I know. And I haven’t done that yet. That’s not somewhere I’ve dipped my toe. And so I need to take some of my own advice. It’s just about learning how to leverage the next technology or the next tool. For a while that was email. Now that’s old hat. Then it’s SMS for a bit, then it’s retargeting, then it’s a B. Testing on websites, chatbots for a while, right. And now you’re kind of getting into this TikTok like, what are we all going to do with be real? You know what I mean? And so what I would encourage marketers to do is get really good at I don’t want to say guerrilla marketing, because I think that makes it’s kind of like guerrilla warfare. Like, get in and get out. If get in, test it. If it’s not working, go try something else. One of the things that I try to coach my team members to do, and I do it, I always have an idea in my back pocket, meaning we get inundated with all of these companies trying to sell us and like, hey, Logan, use this technology. And it’s really easy to just glaze over and get annoyed by the spam. But there’s some good ideas in those emails once in a while, right? And so I just keep an idea folder in my inbox, and anytime I see something that’s like, I’m not ready for that yet, but I might be in the future, I just drop it into my ideas folder. And then when we’re having a bad quarter or when numbers didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to, or I get some extra budget last minute, then I go to that Ideas folder and say, all right, let’s go test something and figure something out. Again, that’s just about learning to jump into new technologies and experiment and explore.

Eric Dahl

I love that. And I think that a lot of marketers take that same approach. In fact, I know my father who was in advertising decades ago. He would always say, know the world and steal the best. And if you draw inspiration from other campaigns and things that are working but make it yours, make it better type of an approach, that’s the recipe for winning. But I love it. It’s so validating to hear you talk through some of these points, because I’m thinking, hey, I do some of that stuff too.

Logan Mallory

Nice.

Eric Dahl

And it’s like, okay, I feel validated here. But on that learning curve, reading about marketing or how you’ve educated yourself, is there a marketing book or two that comes to mind when it’s like, okay, what’s the creme dela creme, and what.

Logan Mallory

Did it teach you? One of the reasons that I became an adjunct professor, I always wanted to teach, but I didn’t think it would make enough money for me. Right. And so I did my MBA partly so that I could become an adjunct professor. And I stole some time from one of the professors in the MBA program, Paul Godfrey, and said, hey, Paul, I’m really interested in teaching and writing a digital marketing book, because everyone’s really bad at teaching it, and there is no book. Right. That was literally the conversation that led me into being able to teach at BYU and. Every time I go to lunch with Paul, he says, logan, how’s your book coming? When are we going to work on that book together? And I’ve really struggled. Like, I’ll admit I’ve sat down to put pen to paper a few times, but it’s really difficult. And part of the reason it’s difficult is because it’s not about reading it. It’s about getting your hands dirty and screwing up a couple of times and tweaking the filters and adjusting your audiences and overspending on your budget, right. Like, you learn from that. So I’m going to change your question, Eric, and I’m going to say that the best marketing book that I’ve gotten the most from is How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensenn? And you could argue that that’s not a marketing book, but that’s a book about how to be a great professional and a great leader. And I take a lot of how I lead my marketing teams from that book.

Eric Dahl

So is there one point or principle that Clayton touched upon that’s like, this is it? And what is that?

Logan Mallory

Man, he covers so many good things. One of the things that he says, and I’m going to be again, transparent, I can’t remember if he said this originally or if Keith Ferrazi from Never Eat Alone said it, but they both go to the same point. I can’t remember who the exact quote is, but they’re both saying the same thing. They’re talking about networking, essentially. And like Keith oh, that’s what it is. Keith is talking about networking. Clayton is talking about your family relationships. Right. And what they say is if you don’t invest in those relationships, it’s like planting a sapling when you need shade. Right? So if I go work 70 hours and I don’t spend any time with my kids and then all of a sudden when they’re 16, I want a relationship with them, I’m planting a sapling when I need shade. If I’m one of the people that just got laid off and I haven’t spent any time on LinkedIn or networking or going to lunch with people, and then all of a sudden I’m calling everybody saying, hey, I’m out of work. Can you help me? I’m planting a sapling when I need shade.

Eric Dahl

That’s great advice. And there’s actually a phrase that I use that is same thought, which is dig your well before you’re thirsty.

Logan Mallory

Yes, exactly.

Eric Dahl

Same idea. But you put out the investment into the people who mean a lot to you and that’s going to pay dividends, especially throughout life. And it is an interesting time. And we were talking a little bit earlier about your LinkedIn posts about kind of the shifting change. There’s been some layoffs recently understanding that who your network is can be such a big benefit to anybody. But for those who are looking for jobs, do you have any advice for them?

Logan Mallory

Yeah, I do. I have people reach out a good amount and they’re like, hey, Logan, I’m looking for a job. If you see anything, will you let me know? And there is no world in which I can help with that. I’m busy. I have my own job, I have my own kids. I volunteer. I want to watch Netflix once in a while. Right. I can’t keep that at the top of my mind. But when you’re looking for a job, if you will go to your network or your friends or your family and you say, give them something specific and actionable, then I think that makes that so much easier for them to help you. And what that looks like is, logan, I’ve been looking at this role at company X, you know, person Y at company X. Can you make an introduction for me? I will help with that all day long. All day long. If you say, Logan, I need you to introduce me to this person, or do you know someone at that company, I can do that. But if you just say, can you help me find a job? I don’t have the mental capacity to do that. And so when you are looking for a role and you’re relying on your network, the more specific your request, the more likely your network will be able to help you.

Peter Stevenson

That’s a good idea.

Eric Dahl

That’s a great idea.

Peter Stevenson

I’d love to hear a little bit more about what your day to day is like over at Motivosity. So did you come in at the role you’re at now, or did you get promoted up to that? And then what are you doing day to day? What is the marketing mix look like for what you guys are doing over there? I’d love to hear more specifically about what that looks like.

Logan Mallory

Yeah. So I came to Motivosity in the VP role. Joe Staples. Was the CMO there? And again, I worked for Joe at workfront, and Joe retired and is doing some consulting. He’s actually doing his MBA right now too, so he can teach. Joe moved from that role, and I came in at the VP level on the executive team. So I’m in the same role that I came in about two years ago in grew that team pretty significantly. There’s a good number of us on the marketing team now. What does our day to day look like? And I probably have multiple competitors listening to this podcast, which is great. So here’s the story. Our brand is very lively and really fun, and so we get to do things that you don’t normally get to do. So, for example, we made yeti stuffed animals. They’re these yeti plush. I should have brought some for you. There are these yeti stuffed plush animals or stuffed plush animals, and we take them to events with us, and we’ll bring a plinko board to our events and people can win them. And I’ve watched grown women cry over winning that yeti stuffed animal and so I share that because that’s kind of the tone for my day today. Right. And one of the reasons I have almost always worked for great companies with respectable products, workfront amazing, jive, fantastic, log me in. Great. But and I mean this with all due respect to these companies in the Valley, kind of boring products, project management, software, business phone systems, web conferencing. That’s boring. Right. And I wanted to be able to promote something fun. And so getting to market Motivosity, which is about employee engagement and employee recognition and the employee experience in a very fun brand voice, is awesome for me.

Eric Dahl

And I love the culture that you’ve been able to build, too, because I’ve been able to experience a little bit of that. When you had the barbecue during our time. And to your point, there was a lot of energy there. And I thought, these guys are doing it right, they’re having a lot of fun and bringing in a big crowd. And it was a great opportunity to network with impressive people. So that event alone, I came away a believer.

Logan Mallory

Yeah, I appreciate that. So we wanted to do something fun and we were like, well, what should we do? And so we did the first year we did Safe de Mayo, and then last year was Siete de Mayo because the Friday of Single de Mayo and we had a good time.

Eric Dahl

In fact, that’s where I met you.

Logan Mallory

That was where we met. Yeah, I remember that now.

Eric Dahl

Yeah. Our mutual friend Brad introduced us again, you had been somebody who was like, okay, Logan and I are just friends who hadn’t met and heard great things about you. Anyway, that was a lot of fun.

Logan Mallory

That’s nice.

Eric Dahl

Great activity.

Peter Stevenson

So you mentioned events. You mentioned about making grown women cry. I’m not sure that making grown women cry is the thing you should do it on a day to day basis.

Logan Mallory

Sure, that’s fair.

Peter Stevenson

But tell me a little bit about what you talk about, the fun brand. You got a good brand voice, a fun product. What is the thing that you’re doing that is actively pushing that message out there? You mentioned events, but what else are you doing?

Logan Mallory

Here’s what I would say, I don’t know that we’re doing anything that’s like, ridiculously off the B to B marketing menu.

Peter Stevenson

Okay.

Logan Mallory

Right. Like, if you look at the menu, we’re doing all of it. We’ve got display ads, we’ve got social ads, we are doing webinars, we’re doing events and we’re doing all the things you’re supposed to do. I don’t know that I would say that we’re doing anything radically off of that menu, but anytime we pick something, we put Motivosity, spin and energy into it. One of the things we’re working on right now is our and they’re essentially case studies, but we’re calling them culture studies. Sure. Right. And so, because we’re all about impacting culture and changing culture, and what I said to the team was, the last thing I want to do is put a five page white paper out there. Like the average B to B culture study, like, bore me out of my mind. Yeah. And so have we have we done that totally different. I don’t I don’t know. You should go check them out on our website. We’ve got probably six or seven culture studies we’ve done in the last few months with in fact, we just put one up from Desert First Credit Union, and it’s my favorite. Their CEO basically gets on camera, and I apologize for not being able to remember his name off. Shane.

Eric Dahl

Shane London.

Logan Mallory

London, that’s right. Thank you. I appreciate that. Shane basically got on the video and said, as the former CFO and CEO of DFCU, I was a skeptic. When Motivosity was brought to me by my team members, he thought, that’s not going to work. People aren’t going to use it. And then he said, it’s changed our culture, and it’s a foundational element, and it’s helped us grow.

Eric Dahl

That’s a testimonial gold mine right there.

Logan Mallory

It is my favorite video. Like the skeptic CEO turned believer. It’s literally my favorite video. So the videos are great, but then on the culture study web page itself and on the PDF that we’ve created, we’ve really tried to co brand those. So you can see Carl the yeti lemonade stand. Right. Derek. Derek and John running lemonade stand down in the Oram area. Like when we did that culture study with them. Carl the Yeti is standing at a lemonade stand, and as you move, there’s parallax in the web page, and their brand is coming through. And so their brand is coming through as it bleeds into Motivosity as well. Right. And so, again, are we doing anything crazy? I don’t know, but everything we’re doing is fun and hopefully exciting.

Peter Stevenson

Well, I guess one of the last things I want to ask about the marketing you mentioned starting out in the sales role. Do you think that that sales experience and the knowledge in sales has made you a better marketer?

Logan Mallory

It has been an absolute game changer. How? A couple of things for sure. One, I know the pressure that the sales team is under. Like, I know what they go home to their wives when they haven’t hit their quota. And I know that they’re not sleeping well when they’re not hitting their number. And so there’s some empathy there that I never could have had if I started as a marketer. I know the value of a partnership between sales and marketing. So another mentor is Abe Nell. Right. Abe was involved in workfront and dental intel, and we spent a couple of years together at Jive and being able to work that partnership where he and I were always on the same page. And when Abe won, I won. And when Abe lost, I lost. That meant I always had a partner. Right. And frankly, to be able to go into a job interview and say, I’m going to look at this by driving pipeline and closed one revenue, not just leads, that changes how people see me, and absolutely, that two and a half, three years in sales before I jumped into marketing. I guess it was probably three and a half. But that absolutely has made me a better marketer.

Peter Stevenson

It sounds like you’re saying it made you a better marketer by being able to work internally in the company, but it hasn’t made you better at focusing the message outward.

Logan Mallory

I’ve never thought about it that way, and so I think my answer is no. Okay. I think it’s mostly made me a better internal partner.

Peter Stevenson

That’s good to know.

Logan Mallory

Yeah.

Peter Stevenson

All right, so the last question. What are some restaurants, bars, coffee shops that you think people should go to?

Logan Mallory

Oh, goodness. Well, I have a bunch of recommendations in whitefish, Montana.

Peter Stevenson

What is one in whitefish, Montana, we went to?

Logan Mallory

I can’t remember that. I can tell you. Right. Where?

Peter Stevenson

7 hours away.

Logan Mallory

It’s like, seven, 8 hours away. I wish I could remember the names. I should have looked them up. There’s a barbecue place in whitefish, Montana, and it’s like porkies or something. There’s not that many barbecue places. That one’s exceptional.

Peter Stevenson

Okay.

Logan Mallory

And then we had the pizzuki, the cookie ice cream at dang it. I should have brought a map. We should have googled this at the Italian pizza restaurant on the kind of the corner of the main strip. Those were both fantastic.

Peter Stevenson

All right, so those are whitefish. What about here in the silicon slopes?

Logan Mallory

You know what? My wife and I, we love maza. Right? Like Mazda Grill. That one’s a really big one for us. And I wish I was more fun. I love good food, but I have four kids, and so you would be surprised how much a family of six Mallories can eat. Costa vita. We just eat a lot of costa vita at my place. That’s all there is to it.

Peter Stevenson

So it’s Costa vita rather than cafe Rio for you.

Logan Mallory

I appreciate both organizations very much.

Peter Stevenson

Great.

Logan Mallory

But I default to costa. Vita.

Peter Stevenson

What’s the go to order at Costa vita rio?

Logan Mallory

I could not be any more plain. I am literally a pork burrito smothered with black beans.

Peter Stevenson

Okay.

Logan Mallory

But I don’t know anything from either restaurant unless I get the side of ranch to, like, pour on it.

Peter Stevenson

You pour the ranch on the burrito?

Logan Mallory

Absolutely. Smothered burrito on the smothered burrito. Yes, that’s exactly right.

Peter Stevenson

I’ve never done that.

Logan Mallory

You haven’t?

Peter Stevenson

I’ve never even thought about doing it.

Logan Mallory

They won’t even question you. They literally have the ranches, like, prepackaged to give you. They know that’s coming. You’re good. Go try it.

Peter Stevenson

Okay. That is a solid recommendation.

Logan Mallory

All right.

Peter Stevenson

Costa vita. With the family.

Logan Mallory

With the family. I wish I could be more creative, though. You know what? Here’s my creative one. Yeah. Ruth Diner up at the mouth of the canyon.

Eric Dahl

Which canyon? I haven’t been there.

Peter Stevenson

It’s up Immigration. You got to get the Biscuit. It’s worthy on Sunday morning. They’ve got this little Indigo Girls cover band that plays it’s.

Logan Mallory

Ruth, you’re far enough up the canyon that it kind of feels set aside. And they have an outdoor patio that.

Peter Stevenson

Feels yeah, you got to sit outside.

Logan Mallory

Really different than Utah. That’s a good one. All right, I got one more.

Peter Stevenson

You have to wait probably 2 hours to sit down.

Eric Dahl

Okay. All right. Well, that’s proof in the pudding right there.

Logan Mallory

Yeah. The other one. And this one is up or just at the mouth, I think it’s a big cottonwood canyon is Porcupine Barn Grill.

Peter Stevenson

I love that.

Logan Mallory

They’re nachos. They’re nachos that they bring out. That’s as good as it gets. Yeah. Love. Besides Ruth and Costa Vita rancher day skiing porcupine.

Peter Stevenson

Really? Great. Love it. All right, we’ll well, thank you so much for being here. We’ll see you around the Valley.

Logan Mallory

I appreciate you both. Thanks for let me hang out with you. Bye.