EP 16: Jen Spencer, CEO at SmartBug Media 

James Mackey  0:00  

Hello, and welcome to Scale by Design! Today we are joined by Jen Spencer. Jen, welcome to the show!

 

Jen Spencer  0:05  

Hey, good to be here!

 

James Mackey  0:07  

Yes, very excited to have this conversation today. And so before we jump into it all, could you share with the audience a little bit about yourself?

 

Jen Spencer  0:16  

Sure. So I am the CEO of SmartBug Media. We're an intelligent inbound marketing agency and a top HubSpot and Klaviyo partner. I joined SmartBug About five years ago and prior to that, I was a client twice. So my background is more of a marketer background, and kind of grew up throughout the software world, and now have the joy of getting to lead a team supporting marketers, mostly B2B.

 

James Mackey  0:51  

That's great. And I was really excited to learn more about your company while we were doing the prep. So yeah, 200-person professional services. I think one of the initial thoughts was that my business is obviously not the same, but similar to some extent in terms of we have humans doing the work, providing that solution to the client, not a SaaS model. 

 

And so one of the things that, personally, I really wanted to get your thoughts on is capacity planning, capacity utilization. Thinking of what capacity utilization we should be targeting as a services firm. How we think about hiring, and in general I would love to just get your perspective on the whole thing. And then I can share mine, it would be cool to just go down some strategies around together.

 

Jen Spencer  1:40  

Yes. So Pro Services is such an interesting space. Because it's tricky. It's, sometimes when I look at, like what a manufacturing company does, and how they sort of have to plan for capacity and for their production. It's like - oh, my gosh, these are just machines, right? For the most part, there's some human element. But it all can be very sort of logical, very mathematical. And in SaaS, it wasn't that different, honestly, as well. I mean, you might be serving a couple of different segments of the market. 

 

Maybe you've got an enterprise part of your org, and maybe you've got mid-market or SMB, what have you. And maybe you've got some people who are a little different that you want to put on those accounts. If you're software, on the customer service side, customer success side. But for us as an agency with the pace in which marketing and sales and revenue, operations, strategies, techniques, and technology is changing, we are having to make these like very specific love matches, so to speak between a new client and who is going to actually be able to service them? 

 

So you're looking at the industry, you're looking at the size of an organization, you're looking at what are their goals as an organization. Are their goals attaching more revenue, like growing wallet share of their existing customer base? Are their goals net new expansion, or is it a direct model? Is it a channel model? And then we look at our people and our people who are going to deliver that marketing work, they have to have some experience in that industry, and they have to have expertise with the sort of problem that the client is looking to solve. And they have to have the time and space in their day, week month to actually do it. 

 

And so often when we're doing account assignments, when we're doing capacity planning, it feels like you've got this Jenga and you're pulling this piece out and putting it here, and then you're hoping the whole tower doesn't fall over. So it's a blend of art and science that I truly didn't appreciate until I was the CRO here at SmartBug is when I really began to appreciate the strain that it can cause on the team.

 

James Mackey  4:08  

Oh my god, yes, the manager and director level roles, overseeing all of that, that you're coordinating with and trying to figure out stuff. I would say for us, at least it's the most important position in the company. Fortunately, we have a Head of delivery and customer success that just crushes it, and she's all the way in and doing really well. She really holds the whole thing together because we also so we do like two types of solutions, right? 

 

One's kind of larger scale where we'll have a team of several recruiters dedicated to a client, there might be some tech recruiters, revenue, and G&A sourcing partners. So there could be a different blend, but it can be something like that. But then we also have a fractional model, where we might have situations in which several recruiters are working on  2 to 3 different accounts at once. 

 

And for us, the fractional model actually is the heaviest lift in terms of the behind-the-scenes because it's tight, you know, somebody might be working on two or three accounts, and then they're offboarding one account and then moving to another. And I don't know what kind of notice period y'all have, but we're kind of on demand. So we have it on a 30-day notice. So our capacity is constantly shifting on the fractional model. And it's definitely been a lesson that we've really had to learn over the past couple of years since we started offering this solution.

 

Jen Spencer  5:31  

Yeah, that is challenging. I mean, for us, we do ask for a minimum 6-month commitment, and then goes month-to-month after that, and there's a 30 or 60-day notice period, just depends. But, we asked for that because we actually, unlike other marketing agencies where you have account managers, and those people, they're very polished salespeople, really. And they're sort of relationship people. And then there's a team behind the scenes that are doing all of the marketing magic. We don't have that kind of a model. We have a model where we are hiring very highly skilled marketing professionals who have been in or could very well be a director or VP-level marketers inside of an organization. And then they're assigned to an account. And so we go through that process of vetting and hiring and paying that caliber of talent. 

 

Because we know when we pair that type of talent up with one of our account managers that the client is going to have a better experience. We know they're going to stay with us longer, we're going to be able to help them grow. And so because of that, we're making that commitment, we're fronting that expense. And so we do ask for that kind of that commitment. But if we jumped into just a month-to-month kind of situation that would be far more challenging for us. And what we live in now is already challenging enough.

 

James Mackey  7:10  

Yeah. For us recruiting just fluctuates so much, primarily for early-stage companies. We were trying to think - how do we take this embedded recruiting model that's typically accessible to late growth-stage and enterprise - and how do we bring that value to early-stage companies? So that was kind of the idea behind it. And obviously, it's a higher margin than for multiple full-time resources. We charge more for fractional, and that's how we make up for the risk and for the additional overhead it takes to manage it. I mean, the 30-day notice period is one of the primary value ads, it's what people are paying for, right? 

 

Jen Spencer  7:48  

Right.

 

James Mackey  7:49  

But yes behind the scenes it's just a ton of work. You know, one interesting thing that I'm seeing, and I'm curious if you can relate to this - is thinking about capacity utilization. So we're bootstrapped, we don't have funding, as a services company that's pretty typical. So we have our margins built out as such that we can hit our target operating income, operating at 85% capacity utilization, which I guess is a fancy way of saying 15% of our folks that could be billing aren't. 

 

And the idea behind that is - we're on demand. So if we have some people available, and a new client comes to us, then we have somebody to get started next week. So it helps us cut down on that time, so we can be competitive in terms of getting a new client onboarded. But what's been really interesting is that when the market was crazy last year, in Q4 and companies were getting all these crazy valuations like 60-100x ARR, whatever they were for SaaS, we were okay operating at 85, maybe even 80% capacity utilization. Kind of hiring a little bit more ahead. 

 

Now the market has shifted. And now I want to be at 90 95% I really want to try to tighten the belt because there's so much uncertainty, and we're seeing a lot of fluctuation in revenue. It's shifting from a later growth-stage to a lot more early-stage organizations, we're just seeing a lot happen. So I'm just curious, does the market impact how you think about capacity and in the application what do you target? And then how has this market shift impacted that?

 

Jen Spencer  9:30  

Yeah for the most part we try not to let external, economic factors like that impact the utilization rates that we've put together. Our utilization rates are based on the role for the most part. So it's each role, the highest level so one might be at 85% utilization as an individual because the rest of their time is spent on training and development. Professional development is extraordinarily important to us. Also being a fully remote organization -team bonding, and culture. 

 

When we think about the hours you spend in a week, we look at a week as being about 45 hours. And you look at that time and want to make sure we're allocating some of that time. So for example, once a quarter, we have Certification day where we shut down all delivery operations completely, and all business operations. It's extraordinarily expensive for a services company. But instead, the whole team is focused on getting, renewing, and achieving new certifications that are coming out from our partners like HubSpot or Google. Spending time on professional development, and growing because of the place, and the market that we're in, we have to be at the top of our game. 

 

And so it's rather than take the approach of just expecting the team is just going to have to do it themselves and it's just part of what it means to be here. And that's how I grew up. I grew up in a world where you spent your nights and weekends doing that kind of stuff, right? I don't think that's the reality culture-wise anymore. And we need to carve out the space for our team to be able to take a step away from their day-to-day work and learn and grow. And we've seen it makes us better and helps us retain our people. It helps us recruit people. So there's a lot of value there. So at that end, it might be 85. 

 

But then we might have other team members who are managing other people, but they're also contributing to some client work. And so maybe their utilization rate is 50%. And the way that we look at the non-revenue carrying roles, I think finance, human resources, and people operations. In those roles, we're looking at EBIDTA margins. So we're just looking at the overall health profitability of the business. 

 

And in fact, this year, we decided for our next sort of stage of growth, we recognized there was some infrastructure we needed. We couldn't continue to just hire these revenue-carrying roles,  we needed to make those investments so that we can get that next surge of growth. Because that's a people-based business, we had to invest in the resources that our people would need. And those come in the form of human beings, they're in accounting, finance, and HR. So we very strategically invested this year, knowing we needed to lay that foundation for the next kind of phase of growth.

 

James Mackey  12:53  

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And, one of the things that we also go into it is thinking a bit about timing. Are you looking at qualified pipeline? And monitoring that alongside hiring objectives for both overhead and revenue-generating roles? How closely are you monitoring qualified pipe?

 

Jen Spencer  13:20  

We're getting there. So this year we've seen some more extended kind of push rates in our deal pipeline. Just some hesitancy in the market, sales cycle lengths have shifted from 30 days to 45 days. So think things like that. I'm just being very cautious right now about taking that data on as being true, to just try to understand what's maybe just a blip, a moment in time sort of situation, and what's a trend. 

 

Because in Q2 of 2020, there was something happening, we assumed it was going to be a trend and it wasn't going to go away anytime soon. And looking back, we should have actually been hiring ahead. So, just kind of that sort of lesson learned. But ultimately, yes, what we've done is we first have segmented our delivery team, our Client Services team by market segment, and then the marketing team and the sales team. They've got goals that are aligned with each of those segments. 

 

So when I say segment, I'm looking at parts of the market, like if you're more of a growth business, if you're expanding, if you're more of what we would consider enterprise, which for us is not really enterprise, it's more mid-market. And so then the next step from that is to look at that pipeline flow. Look at those close rates and we know how much work our Client Services team can carry. And if we follow these - what are the close rates? What are those size deals? And what market segments they're coming to, we want to use that data to inform our hiring pipeline. So that's all in the works right now.

 

James Mackey  15:24  

Yeah. We're seeing the same, our conversion rates throughout the entire funnel are not nearly as good as they were last year. The biggest dip we've seen is from verbal commit to closed won. It's just gotten killed. We used to have over an 80%, very high. And now, we have to run the numbers, but I think it's like at 50, or maybe under 50%. There are so many companies - yeah, we're ready to move forward, send over the agreement. We're ready to go. 

 

And then next week, they're just - Oh, hey, can we wait two weeks, and then we're gonna get back to you? Yeah, it's just happening all the time. And so, now, when a company verbally commits, it's like a coin flip. I'll believe it when we sign the contract instead of the kickoff date. 

 

Jen Spencer  16:14  

Yeah. I mean, used to be like it would take an act of God for something not to go through at a certain stage. And then we had that, we had COVID. It was like - Oh, here's this act, this sort of situation. But you know, for sure. I mean, for us it's resulting in these pushes where CMOS, who a year ago had the decision-making authority, the budget authority to sign the contract, no longer has that authority.

 

James Mackey  16:51  

Yeah, it's going straight to the CEO who's getting pressure from PE or VCs or whatever else.

 

Jen Spencer  16:57  

Yeah, everything is with Board approval. Everything's going through legal guidelines. Definitely, and so we've had to adapt to that.

 

James Mackey  17:12  

Have you seen any shifts, as we're talking about the market, on where demand is coming from? So for us in the recruiting space, we're seeing late growth-stage companies, category leaders, primarily US-based companies going through layoffs, cutting recruiting services, cutting internal recruiters. Laying off building offshore teams for dev engineering, and their focus is on the kind of restructuring, cutting bills, and doing layoffs. 

 

We're seeing seed and early-stage companies fare better in this market and a lot of our pipeline is with companies with 50, or fewer employees right now. So that's definitely been a pretty dramatic shift that we've seen. And that's why we have our fractional model. That's what's really helping us the most right now. And we do have a couple of larger deals in the pipeline. So we'll see how that goes. But most of the stuff that's getting through at this point is with smaller org. So have you seen any shifts in terms of where demand is coming from, compared to last year?

 

Jen Spencer  18:26  

Well, I can say we have intentionally refocused where we're farming. So we practice inbound marketing for ourselves. So we drink our own champagne. Stuff we do for our clients, we do for ourselves. And so we look regularly. I consume a whole lot of data, I'm constantly looking at what industries are struggling, where I see growth, and then making adjustments to where we're spending our marketing energy. So as a rule, a company below 5 million in revenue is below our ideal customer profile and not someone we would bring on a retainer. We might do other services for them but our bread and butter is the retainer. 

 

And we just have learned we're best equipped to help somebody who is really above 5 million in revenue. Ideally, they're more in the 10 to $15 million range up to like 200-250 million. And then even within there, there are other little, little factors. But what I would say where we're seeing the most momentum from all of our efforts, is with manufacturing, with financial services, with industries that have been a little bit maybe laggard in their approach to marketing and sales and they're running a more traditional kind of approach. 

 

They made it through COVID, they found a way to adapt, and they probably recognized that there was a lot of potential in really digging into digital and exploring more. And so now they're ready to make those investments. So that's where I'm seeing the biggest bright spot. And then on the software side, it's more of platform need-to-haves versus nice-to-have sort of solutions. So pull back from the nice to have, and I like CSS company and like - Oh, you do this one thing that I could kind of do it other ways. I'm intentionally saying I don't want to spend our marketing energy trying to attract those companies right now. 

 

Because I'm just seeing tons of consolidation in the market. And I don't think that's where we should be spending our time. But if you have a platform, that's an HR platform, helping organizations operate remotely - awesome, that's a really good fit for us. And so we're seeing success there.

 

James Mackey  21:10  

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. That definitely makes sense. So we're seeing some pretty noticeable shifts there, I was very excited to get your thoughts on that. And one of the other things - just kind of jumping around here - we talked about, one of the strategies or processes that you recently built out was figuring out when it makes sense to skill up your existing staff versus when it makes sense to hire experience externally. 

 

I don't really have that figured out yet. So I'm hoping you can tell me how you're doing it so that I could just copy your process, because, for me, it's usually a very hard judgment call. It's still very ad-hoc, situational, you know? How are you solving that right now?

 

Jen Spencer  22:02  

Over the last five years, this journey that I'm on, finally I can say - wow, we're in a really good place with that. So one big piece of it was segmenting our clients and our Client Services team. I'm gonna talk about client services because that's the biggest part of our organization and so it's going to be the most beneficial. Segmenting based on the part of the market that they're in. 

 

So are they the growth companies, maybe someone we would say they're new to the idea of inbound marketing and they're looking for benchmarking early success and figuring out like - Okay when we put effort here, what does it yield? Our expansion clients are, I think your typical Series B, SaaS startup, VC funded - they've had some success, and they're ready for the next level. 

 

And then our enterprise, these are organizations that have marketing teams of 10 or more people, and we are an extension of that team. And we're really helping them just move faster, because they need to be quicker, or they're buying companies and then needing help integrating and launching those solutions. So the make-up is different. The reason this was important is that we were noticing this major drop-off where we have all of these different levels in our organization. 

 

And one of the biggest shifts on the client services delivery side is that you go from being a specialist or a senior specialist, which is a very supportive role. It's a lot of project management and a lot of marketing operations work inside of HubSpot and Klaviyo. And then moving to a strategist role where you're the account owner, you're the mastermind behind the marketing strategy that's actually getting recommended and then delivered for the client. 

 

You are the face of the company to the client, the shift from specialist to strategist was pretty huge. Especially if you're a specialist and you're working on one of those enterprise types of accounts. You're watching your counterpart, your strategist, and going - I don't think I could do that job. And so by segmenting it's created this path, so somebody can start on that growth team, and then they can be able to move across from growth to expansion to enterprise. 

 

So we have vertical and horizontal movement. And then we also have this sort of project team, this one kind of squad. And it started as a place where we had these like, misfit projects, things we really wanted to do for clients but it just didn't fit into any one of our programs. And we identify that that was a place for people who are really hungry and green, to learn and grow and try things without the risk of them carrying a multimillion-dollar account. 

 

And so creating that also gave them more at-bats to have more interactions with more clients and different personalities and see different industries, get more experience and figure out what they're really good at, what they like. So it's hard because I wish I could say that - Oh, I wish we would have done this from the get-go. But the problem is that from the get-go, we would never have been in a place where we could have put that in, it happened when it could have happened. 

 

James Mackey  25:42  

Yeah, you have to achieve some level of scale before that's an option. Even we're not there yet, we don't have those segmentations. And we were almost there before the craziness of the two quarters, and now we've dipped a little bit, and who knows when things are going to start to get kind of back to a growth phase. So it's probably going to be, 6 months to a couple of years before we really start thinking about that strategy. But that makes a lot of sense to me. 

 

And since you spelled it out, I'm thinking about other companies. And I feel like I've definitely seen this kind of path laid out. And so I am curious, is this how it goes? So on the specialist side, does it go from SMB, mid-market, or enterprise for instance? They work their way up as a specialist enterprise. And then when they go into the strategy role, they go back to SMB, or can they jump straight from SMB specialist to SMB strategist essentially? 

 

Jen Spencer  26:37  

Yes, both. We wanted to create more options for people. Because we have some people at that specialist level, that don't want to be in that driver's seat of an account ever. That's not what they want, but they want a path for career growth in the organization. And we were losing people, they were saying - I love this company, I love the culture, I love the people, but I want to grow and I want to learn more, and I want to make more money, but I don't want that job that's like right ahead of me. They don't want that strategist job. They're like, well, this is all we have, right? 

 

So we ended up creating these different paths that are a better match for their skills. One of the other problems we were looking to solve is also when we hire someone like a strategist to come in from the outside, they have a much longer ramp time even if they are more seasoned, even if they've been a marketing leader for 20 years. They're going to have a little bit of a more challenging ramp period, because there's a way we do things here as an organization, as an agency. Even if they've come from another agency. And so if we can, we would rather build the pipeline ourselves internally. And then we know there's going to be times when someone from the outside makes a lot of sense to bring that person in.

 

James Mackey  28:02  

Yeah, for sure it's a balancing act, right, between speed to onboarding, and then also getting the energy and new perspective of a new person to the team. And both can be really, really important, right? I think a blend is ideal. If every once in a while you want some new perspectives and energy coming to the table or, who knows, maybe they can bring a process or some kind of solution to the table that the existing team who's just got the blinders on executing every day maybe isn't considering. 

 

I find that fascinating. As we get bigger I think that that's exactly what we'll do - segment out teams. That's a natural progression in account management, and customer success anyway, it's necessary to optimize the client experience. And then yes, in tandem, it creates better career progression for employees too, so it's kind of like a win-win.

 

Jen Spencer  28:57  

Yeah, yeah, it's worked really well. And our clients have really responded positively to it, as well. So it's been really good.

 

James Mackey  29:06  

Yeah. And then even from that, there are surveys and such, but employee engagement, just keeping that passion alive that people have when they first join an organization, how do you make that last beyond the first 6 months? And I think that that's also the clearer the career pathing is for a company, the longer they can keep great people engaged.

 

Jen Spencer  29:31  

Absolutely. There are so many factors involved in retaining employees. But more often than not these days it's transparency, authenticity, and trust. I know who I am here. I know what I'm doing. I know what could come next for me. I see where the company is investing in me. I see where they're investing in others - that's really powerful.

 

James Mackey  29:56  

Totally! and just a last topic before we wrap up for today, I wanted to talk to you about something really funny you said before we hit Rec. And it was - "if I implemented every good idea for my team, we'd be bankrupt, right?" So we can't do everything. If you have a decision, okay. Obviously, I would assume your board and you - you have the strategic vision, and you're picking the things that have the most direct, clearest path to executing that mission. All sounds great in theory. 

 

But it's probably a little bit more difficult on a situational basis to actually execute and know which path is right. For instance, your CMO comes to you and says - I want to budget for this, this, and this. If you had your delivery person, or whoever else it's going to be. How do you go about filtering through that and picking the objectives that on a function level are gonna help drive the company forward?

 

Jen Spencer  30:56  

So I think there are a couple of things. One is that we use the Entrepreneurial Operating System, the EOS. So we have set: Okay, here's our three-year goal, here's our tenure B. We actually skip over the five-year because honestly, we're growing and moving so fast. We don't even know what five years looks like, but 10-year, 3-year, 1 year, and then we identify - Alright, here are your goals and they're usually financial goals, what does the company look like? 

 

So the executive team goes - All right, and we're about to do this for about at the end of this month, we're gonna do this for 2023. And we're going to say, at the end of 2023, what do we look like, right? And so then what is the end of 2026? And what do we look like at the end of 2026? And so we come up with what are those things? And some of those things are financial, their actual numbers are, you know, quantitative, and some of them are more qualitative. People feel this or were perceived as that. 

 

And so then we look at what does it take in order for us to achieve that? And then we look at that and go: what are the gaps that we have between where we are now and where we would need to go and is that attainable in that timeframe? And then we usually have to make some cuts to our grand vision of what we'd like to do. And then every quarter we have Rocks, which are big strategic projects that go across the whole organization that is helping us to achieve that goal. 

 

So we've got that, from a big sort of strategic, why do we do what we do sort of planning, where a lot of great ideas will come up. But also, we eat feedback for breakfast here. And we have a lot of very, very creative people who get exposure to a lot of different organizations. And so I'm constantly pinged with ideas of - Hey, have we ever thought about doing this? Or hey, I know we do this, but why don't we do that? So many awesome ideas. 

 

And when we were smaller, we were able to respond to an idea immediately be like, that's a really great idea. I see no reason why we shouldn't implement it right now, let's do it. As we get bigger, it's harder to do that. Because there are implications that come with implementing something. It sounds natural, but that's true. Now we're dealing with this problem because we solved that problem. 

 

James Mackey  33:30  

That's challenging, right? The bigger you get. It's one thing if it's coming from an Executive leader, but one of the things that people love about working for a smaller growth company, is their ability to make an impact.  And so you'll get a lot of individual contributors that are bringing great ideas to the table. The thing about that, though, is that a lot of the time they're thinking about their day-to-day workflow, and how it's going to impact them. But they don't necessarily understand how it's going to impact the organization as a whole. At scale. 

 

And so it's bridging that gap of - okay, yes, in an ideal world, we would do it exactly like that. However, when we look at Delivery as an entire function within the company, if we were to do that, then this would be the implication you were mentioning. So that's been really interesting to see. And the bigger we get, the more we're starting to see I guess kind of a split between some of the feedback that we're getting from the individual contributors to what we're actually able to implement because it's like, we're listening, and we're trying to find that middle ground, but it isn't always perfectly where we want it to be. And that can be a little bit challenging. Does that make sense? I hope I explained that well. 

 

Jen Spencer  34:46  

Yes, it does. And that's where I get the most feedback, from the individual contributors or even people within the organization and I talk to a lot of our team. I meet every new hire but I also meet every functional group, we meet twice a year. So in addition to our quarterly kind of all hands, quarterly business reviews that we do as a company. And the goal is that everyone in the company always knows what our vision is, and why we're doing what we're doing. 

 

That they can kind of poke holes, ask questions, and get clarification. And every time I explain, wow, hey, that's a really good idea. And I see how that would benefit this, this, and that, here's something else to think about. And share another perspective with them and they're - Wow, yeah, you're right. Normally, people get it. They really do. They just don't have the visibility. And so that's my job, me and the executive team, it's our job to make sure that they have the visibility, that they understand. And that it's not just that they think that their suggestion is going into a suggestion box that goes right into the garbage.

 

James Mackey  35:57  

Right? I think that's the most like people need to know that they're heard and that there's a legitimate reason for whatever decision that's made. And that that's weighed in the decision. Like - hey, we're considering that, this is the full picture and what makes it challenging. And sometimes it's a situation in which we might be able to revisit it at X stage of growth. We don't have the budget or the process or the bandwidth or whatever else to do this right now. But if we see X amount of revenue or headcount, or whatever, in the future, this could be a real option. So let's circle back on that. There's been a few cases where that's happened as well.

 

Jen Spencer  36:45  

Yeah. And the more you can actually say, you can tie if, what someone's asking for, such as - Hey, that's a really good idea. So if your team can achieve this goal, we'll be able to pull the trigger on that, and we'll be able to do. Oh, wow, now they've got thick skin in the game, right? And it's something that they can control, that they can do, as opposed to things just happening to them.

 

James Mackey  37:11  

That's a really good insight. I liked that. If there's a way to tie it back into team performance to further incentivize and make people feel part of the growth and the mission - Yeah, that's really cool. That's really cool. Okay, cool. Well, I don't want to come up on time, we can keep going but then we might come up right on time, and then we'd have to rush the last few minutes. So I think this is a good stopping point. 

Jen, I really wanted to say, thank you for joining us today! This has been really insightful. I've been fortunate enough to ask you the questions and the stuff that I want to learn and learn more about so it was really fun for me, but I hope you had a good time. And thank you for joining us today.

 

Jen Spencer  37:52  

Absolutely. No, I always love talking shop. And this has been fun for me too!

 

James Mackey  37:57  

Cool. And if people want to engage with you online or with your company, how can they find you? How can they find your company?

 

Jen Spencer  38:06  

Absolutely. So the company is smartbugmedia.com. I am pretty active on LinkedIn, so Jen Spencer on LinkedIn. If you send me a connection request, please let me know that you met me on this podcast so I have some context for how we know each other.

 

James Mackey  38:24  

Yes, I totally agree. That is always a good thing to have from folks, when they're connecting, always a little context helps. Last thing before we log off, are you going events back up and running? Are you doing that now? Or are you pretty much just staying remote even for different events and stuff like that?

 

Jen Spencer  38:42  

We are a big Hubspot partner, so we were at Inbound. And so we were that was the last big event that we were we were at we had a number of folks there speaking and sponsoring. And then we are at Smash. It's a senior living and housing conference in Las Vegas at the end of October. But honestly, those are the two big events that we go to every year. And this is the first year that's really all back in person. But we have been sending some of our sales executives out to some events that are more local to them is that we're geographically dispersed, we've got people in all different cities. So we have sent a few people here and there out but frankly, events haven't been a big part of our marketing or sales strategy.

 

James Mackey  39:35  

Just thinking if there's anybody that might be able to meet y'all at something like that, but cool that sounds really good. We're gonna go ahead and jump off. And Jen, thanks for joining us and for everybody tuning in today. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.​