Neale 00:07
Emma, hello, welcome to the podcast. I was just saying to you and Mark, I’m genuinely excited for this episode because I guess talk to a marketeer. So that’ll be really interesting. And I’ve got a lot of questions to ask you. Um, the first one that I want to run with is I fell into marketing. I had a not so promising career in television as a runner and a few job runs a graphic design sort of bounced around a little bit of print and then sort of found to marketing kind of sort of ran with it really. And 20 years later, here I am. Um, what was your start? How did you get into it?
Emma 00:44
Oh, gosh. Okay. So I studied journalism at university and went to Sheffield Halam University. And such is, I remember the first lecture at university and they said, if you’re in this for the money, you’re in the wrong field. And I was like, oh no, okay, sure. I mean, three years later, I was still convinced that I was going to do it. And came out and obviously struggled getting a job in the field and sort of thought, right, well, what can I do to take the skills I’ve learned the last three years and try and apply it sort of into an industry that’s related. And I fell into marketing again, myself by accident. And then going back to work for the primary school, the secondary school that I used to go to, as they’re in my in-house marketing transition. It was basically three jobs shift into one title. And it looks confusing now. Yeah, 13,000 a year type of role. It was good time. But it was actually really good because it was the first of its role. I got to do loads of different things that were related to marketing, but at the time didn’t really understand necessarily what marketing was. And then went and went to another private school. So obviously slightly different goals, but the role was predominantly the same. And off the back of that was like, okay, maybe marketing could be a career for me, but I’m the same. I sort of fell into it, maybe not as exotically as you just.
Neale 02:11
And you’re now a founder and head strategist at Victress, your own digital market agency. How did that come about?
Emma 02:19
I’ll be honest, I think I tried for a while to try and find the right fit in a company. I know a lot of people tend to really have this aspiration of running their own business. It was never really for me, if I’m honest, and I went through a few different agencies and saw the potential in social media as being a lead function, but it very rarely was in the agency, and tried to bring it to the forefront of a couple of different agencies and pitch it as a new service, but at the time, so you’re looking at like 2016, 2017, it wasn’t necessarily something that… They saw it as a lead. Yeah, they saw it as a bringer in of, and I remember one leader said to me, I don’t think it’s going to make us money. I just don’t think it’s going to be a driver of money. So after that, I thought, right, I’m going to try and give this a go as a freelancer, try and apply some of the skills that I’ve learned in-house, an agency, and see if I can make it as a freelancer, and it sort of grew from there, and now I have a team, and now we do predominantly service social media as a service, so yeah, it was worth doing.
Neale 03:29
Fantastic. No, it sounds really, sounds really great. One thing that I was really keen to talk about is the fact that you worked, – I have worked a little bit agency… obviously, you’re an agency, you work with a lot of companies, as thier marketing resource. Marketing, in my experience, tends to be, especially for small organizations, like a nice to have, you know, do you think that’s, do you think that’s right? You know, sometimes when the budgets are tight, it goes, we can just pause the agency for a while, pause the campaign, maybe come back to it. Oh yeah. What are the dangers of that and why is marketing important?
Emma 04:01
Yeah, I think a lot of businesses seem to see it as, I don’t know if you’ve seen the meme that’s like in case of emergency break glass and it’s like the mass quitting budget and someone hasn’t seen that. That’s great. Yeah, but it is a bit like that and I understand that particularly as, so we’re an agency and if you’re a business and you’ve got lots and lots of employees and then you’ve got a vendor like us on the side, you need to make some quick cash. Parting ways with a vendor that you’ve got on a 30-day rolling contract is a lot easier than it is losing staff or making people redundant. So I appreciate that it’s a lot of smoother transition and that’s part and parcel of it. We know that that could happen at any point. I do think that there tends to be a sense of reactivity with that. We saw it obviously when COVID hit where a lot of people pulled their budgets and for us, March 2020, I invoiced for 150 quid worth of work and was absolutely convinced I was under, that was it. Because people panicked and they thought, right, how do we save money quickly and let’s pull this, there’s no point advertising and actually I would argue that’s when exactly when you should be doing marketing. But I understand from a small businesses perspective that marketing can be a huge portion of the budget that they have. If you’re doing any paid advertising, that can be a huge part of that marketing budget in itself. So I think that most of the time it’s free panic, which I appreciate when you’re a small business, you try and clutch to what you can, I guess, save. From a budget perspective, I just argue that keeping the lights on consistency is better than pulling the plug and then trying to start again.
Neale 05:44
to say to someone who works for small business who’s watching this, what would you say the dangers are to pulling that plug, you know, why should they not smash the marketing budget in case of emergency?
Emma 05:56
I think there’s just always ways to try and condense down activity that you can still keep people knowing who you are. Um, because a lot of businesses, unless you are an econ business, um, and I mean, I myself, I make a Amazon basket and I come back to it like multiple times. So people’s purchasing decisions are not instant. And all we want is if someone’s going to buy from you, they want to have you at top of mind, if you’re not constantly doing things, the likelihood is they’re going to forget who you are. And obviously majority of services out there, you’re not the only ones that do what you do and the likelihood is if your competitor is still keeping some visibility up there and you’re not, then it’s just going to make you feel further behind. So I think my main advice would just be, um, reducing is fine. If there are areas that you can, if you’ve got a marketing person in-house, it can advise where budgets can be slowly reduced, that’s fine. But pulling the plug completely can be really detrimental to business success.
Neale 06:57
I really like the, when you said, always top of mind, we’ve got a, I’ve got a post about how we’re desk. It’s not just the neon podcast lights. It says atomic, which is a top of mind in community. So whenever someone’s ready to make that decision to purchase, so we do things like giveaway Lego and, you know, we’re not guessing that kind of stuff. It’s really, really crucial. Yeah. So with social, you can’t have a social presence without content. Um, how would you go about putting together a content plan? I know it’s going to change from organization to organization, but where at Victor’s do you naturally start with content creation and what
Emma 07:34
Yeah, we tend to look at what the idea, obviously whatever your ideal customer profile is or who you’re really after is business. And one of the main things that we say to people is, you don’t have to be on every social channel because I think there’s that panic of like, we must be on everything. And when actually if your main customer isn’t, then you can actually look at where they are and where they’re visible. So we tend to start with what platforms do you want to be on and the type of content that you put out there, it helps if you have buy-in for the rest of the business and you’re not just one solo person that’s trying their best to make all of the content. But I think there used to be a more of a stereotype that you have to have super high quality, like everything has to look like it’s been made by a really impressive video company. When in reality, I think people have moved more now towards social with user-generated content and everything that’s a little bit more- Phone’s in our pocket, we can do it quick. A little bit more rough and ready is absolutely fine. So we tend to look at what people have got planned in terms of their content like calendar for the rest of the year, have they got any events that they’re appearing at and who they want to reach and then trying to pick out their pain points or what they’re actually feeling as a customer and try and tailor content to that. So it tends to be a lot of different people from the business in one room because I think that also happens as well is one person gets, is the marketing person in this role business and then not necessarily fall by and means that there are bits of the business that get missed in marketing because that person’s not actually obviously coming into the meetings or having any discussion into content.
Neale 09:14
unless it has the power to change.
Emma 09:16
I don’t know if you find that, but I definitely think that a more successful, it’s basically a smaller business content calendar is when everyone’s involved in it. We also find that they have a lot better customer rapport and success with getting people over the line if they’ve got their own social media presence. And I don’t mean just reposting content that the company page puts up with no additional word or commentary. I mean actually getting involved in that process. So we’ve seen successful clients who put in an employee advocacy program or incentivise in some way that the employees must post on social media. Because it’s hard, because you don’t want to say, we’re going to dictate what you need to write. But giving people the freedom to be able to post content and actively encouraging them to get involved in it has a lot more success than if you’re just running social content from just a company. And just reposting it, yeah.
Neale 10:06
I think a lot of people who I’ve connected on with LinkedIn have their own personality but keep it within company ethos. Do you think there’s an argument to say, I don’t mean your aim to do this already, I might just have been to something fantastic. You have tone of voice, you have brand guidelines, social media tone of voice for the company so you can be yourself within these. Do you have?
Emma 10:29
Yeah. So we usually would advise that companies have a social media guidelines, any which covers tone of voice. It’s really difficult because you equally can’t say, I don’t want you to post something or tell them off. I remember- Yeah, you’re trying to get the buy-in. I remember going for an interview once with an agent saying, I can’t think they’d ever be listening to us, but if they were, they all know who they are. And I went for an interview and I’d put up a post recently, which wasn’t controversial, but it was opinionated. I’m all right with that. And in the interview process, the person who’s interviewing me said, oh, well, if I’d seen that in your working for us, I wouldn’t have been very happy. And I remember at the time thinking, well, my page is my page and it wasn’t too bad. It was just having a strong opinion on something. So I do think you can run the risk of obviously telling people what to write. And that sometimes can remove the personality from that person. Because we all as a team, there’s so many different personalities and different types as well. You might not be a huge extrovert. You might actually be more introverted. You might have neurodiversity. So you don’t necessarily want to box people off.
Neale 11:42
No, of course. And it’s important that you want them to express how they feel when these are all contained.
Emma 11:47
But providing them with some sort of guidelines of this is how we talk about our products or services is really like helpful and useful to them. And particularly if you’ve got something or a service that you want to push out. So if anyone’s doing any posts this week, we are really like looking for, yeah, this is the kind of service we could potentially be talking about or can anyone do a post, is anyone comfortable to do a post this week versus being like, you must write this on this because that can appear very stale and obviously then you can, you can smell, I think you can smell an albino toxicity, a Mylar.
Neale 12:22
Yeah, yeah, I did a post which was just come back from South Korea and family wouldn’t over the gangnam style told me more B2B sales You know, it’s like
Emma 12:32
Yeah, it’s when people try and, I’ve seen a couple and they once saw a B3 influencer do it off the back of their engagement and was like, I’m out, I’ve checked out now, like I can’t, I’ve just done that for women. The conversations they must have over dinner are just going to all be like sales related conversations, but I mean.
Neale 12:55
What your KPI is, this one’s not that true. Okay, well there’s almost an argument to say then, for a lot of businesses, it would make sense to have people are up for it, like a LinkedIn team where you have set time every day maybe half around the morning for whoever in the team wants to do it, and then work with the guidelines and use that for their time.
Emma 13:18
I’ve actually seen some businesses that I’ve really benefited from understanding that it’s such a crucial part of marketing and it really contributes really well. But they have had to tie into some sort of measurable outcome. So developing as some sort of report, which pours in everyone’s data and incentivises, gamifies it almost, whoever gets the most impressions for their content this month wins XYZ. So there is that incentive to do it, because I think some people are fearful of posting online of how they’re going to be perceived. Some people have no idea where to start. So I think putting those stuff in place can be really beneficial to a business because not only will obviously the company will get wider reach, but also the company’s content from their own company page tends to do a lot better when other people are getting involved. So yeah, I think it’s really great.
Neale 14:08
I’ve genuinely never thought about sort of asking our engineers to do that and this episode is probably not going to go out for a few months so tomorrow I’m going with a brand new, I’ve got this great brand new strategy. Yeah I know, do it, do it.
Emma 14:19
And also find like a
Neale 14:21
It’s a really good idea.
Emma 14:22
Yeah, my friend Rebecca Holloway is actually got a really good, I can look at studio template. So she pulls through all of her team, her agencies, and LinkedIn content, and then looks for patterns. So they’re saying, this person has got the most impressions this month, or out of all our team posts with a video of performed better than posted images. So then you can have another meeting the following month and actually show people the data, which really helps. And obviously, if you’re trying to incentivise it that you’re not just about throwing snowballs outside, then at least, yeah. Because I think a lot of the time when we’ve got these crazy ideas as marketers, it can be really difficult to tell people that they need to give us the time to do that. Yeah.
Neale 15:03
Yeah, well, it’s seen as marketing work the longer I’ve been in it, it went from being you run the event, you produce the catalog, you produce the literature, you know, you do the branding, then it was digital, but then as the payments went online and sales inquiries became more and more digital and less telephone based, marketing all became about lead gen and that lead gen way used to just sit on sales and it just graduated over. And I think marketers now, you may go to a disagree with this, still get pushed hard on the KPIs, but don’t always get given that flexibility to the headspace.
Emma 15:39
And not everything is always as measurable as it used to be, so obviously loads of issues happen with attribution models anyway, but also I think sometimes you can risk boxing people in to it has to be measurable. And some things that we do aren’t, or sometimes they are, but they take time. So you might not see the back of that lead. I recently converted a lead, and the first relationship I had with that person was eight years ago. It was the first meeting I ever had. So in terms of a long lead time, that was a long time, but it was authentic and I didn’t go into that conversation thinking that anything was ever going to come a bit, but technically converted. And if you actually look through some leads are like that. Some people will speak to you and convert instantly, and some people apparently will take eight years and several cups of coffee. But yeah, I think it’s trust as well, like marketing that we talked about with small businesses particularly, marketing can be such a big investment to them, like it can be such a risk if you’re saying, right, you need to put money back into your business now and you need to reinvest a large percent of your profit last year or like, yeah, it can be really, really scary. So, and there’s so many people that do what we do all over the country, particularly.
Neale 16:59
as good as what we do think. No, no.
Emma 17:02
Definitely not, but agency-wise in particular, they are popping up everywhere. There’s loads of consultants, a lot of people going more freelance now, particularly from working from home. So I think a lot of it is trust. You’re placing a lot of trust in someone’s hands who tells you that they’re gonna help you succeed. So for me, it was more about developing relationships of saying, I ride this wave with you. This is not always gonna be completely linear. You’re not necessarily, we’re not gonna be celebrating all the time, but at least you know you can pick up the phone to me and tell me if something’s wrong, versus a partner who might say like, that’s not my problem. Your dip in sales is not really my issue.
Neale 17:41
I’ve definitely worked with marketing agencies who are like that, so.
Emma 17:45
Yeah, I think if you have to try and find, like we all want to talk about our successes, right? So I’d love to be able to say every month, like look at the percentage difference in traffic that we bought you this month, but ultimately if it’s not affecting your bottom line and your boss is still mad at you, then we’ve got an issue. So I’d rather see it. And that’s where when we’re talking about attribution, I’d rather see things as all-encompassing. It’s no point me coming forward and saying, well, we’ve actually been growing your leads this month. And then everyone’s saying, yeah, well, that’s not turned into sales or we’re really struggling and meet someone redundant because we’re doing really badly. And I’m like, yeah, but we do really well. It just doesn’t matter, like the brand scheme is something that doesn’t. And that’s hard, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s hard to swallow because marketing teams aren’t responsible for everything. There’s so many different things that can happen, like trends politically, like loads of things that can affect what we do. But at the end of the day, it’s all-encompassing results. So yeah.
Neale 18:40
Picking up on trends, a blue sky that the people who left got kicked out with Twitter X, their social media platform’s gone to 20 million users. A lot of that potentially off the back of the election, a personal tag against Musk, do you see that growing? Do you think there’s, you know, politics and social media?
Emma 19:03
possibly. So we work with quite a lot of software brands and there’s a lot of, so a lot of developers and game developers have moved to Blue Sky from X. So in terms of the goals of some of our clients it’s a really good market for us. We’re doing a lot of research in the minute and we’ve basically put it into a stage where we’ve said for the first month we’re going to post exactly what we post on X on Blue Sky identically, same day, same time, same text, just to see if there’s an impression reach difference and if it is more beneficial than trying to develop a strategy because as a new platform comes out you’ll see I’m sure there’ll be some LinkedIn grow that says that they’re really experienced and they’re trying to sell Blue Sky training already based on AI.
Neale 19:46
Algorithms and all that, yeah.
Emma 19:48
And I’ve had it, I’ve had it already. I’ve had a couple of clients question me about and say, like, is it worthwhile? Do we, I don’t know yet. I honestly don’t, don’t think that the information is there enough for us to make that decision. So to me, what is the least amount of risk? The least amount of risk is duplicating what we already have and seeing if it is alike for like better option, um, because they have seen a decline in their performance on X, those particular clients. Um, so I do think like politics and trends have something to play, but we did see that with fight threads, threads came out, everyone jumped on it instantly and then it sort of died off. Um, not to mention the house parties and clubhouse and all the different apps that popped up and then died. So I think it’s what, whatever the users make of it.
Neale 20:34
They’re going to set the trend.
Emma 20:36
Yeah, I mean, a developer, particularly a developer community is like massive on social media, particularly on places like Reddit. They’re just really, really vocal. So from them to make a stand and say, we’re actually going to take our conversations away from X and put it onto Blue Sky is quite a significant shift in an audience. So that’s a small example of what we can achieve maybe. But as, as of us having this conversation right now,
Neale 21:02
I’m a change boat
Emma 21:04
I mean, it might not even be that, so who knows?
Neale 21:06
It’ll be Red Sky, X will be re-named, it’ll be broadcast from space.
Emma 21:10
Well, no one’s calling it. Act still, it really, like… It really is just Twitter, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s difficult.
Neale 21:16
They’re getting, they use the leads, you know, whoever’s using it, that’s, if everyone wanted to call it X, they would do, but the fact that they put the foot down and they’re setting the market. Speaking of social media. So we’ve got, we’ve got, you’ve got your TikToks, I’m so cool, you’ve got your YouTubes, you’ve got your Facebooks, you’ve got your X Twitter, those guys. There’s only one professional network, LinkedIn, which has changed quite a lot, especially to peers. So have you got more sort of personal, it’s a bit less, sort of less CV based and less I’m looking for a job. Do you think this space for another business platform or have they kind of got it covered?
Emma 21:55
So I don’t know if there’s room for the traditional, what LinkedIn used to be in a new platform, potentially not because I think people are buying in very different ways now and they’re consuming content in completely different ways. Um, I’m sure there are the traditionalists on the LinkedIn that would love to see it go back to how it was. And I see that all the time. Um, but I think there was a trend for a while of people like this isn’t Facebook and then suddenly it kind of is now in a way. Um, so I can’t see the need for it. Um, while we’re still evolving. Yeah. Whilst people are still buying in this way and communicating in this way, I can’t see it necessarily taking off in that regard because obviously starting a new platform, like we know, unless you’ve got huge financial battings, like the musks of the world, it’s pretty difficult to do.
Neale 22:46
Yeah, definitely. Okay, so to top my budgets, we were chatting before about cutting marketing budgets and how that’s an attractive thing to do. If you’re in a dire situation, obviously you should be doing it. Let me finish that sentence and stuff before I move on. The question that I’m trying to get to the bottom of is if we have a lot of founders, we have a lot of startups, a lot of people will come to us. We’re an electronics company. I’ve got an idea. I think this thing could be great. They may be searching for funding. They may have a bit of cash. They may have a sales partner. They certainly won’t have any marketing and they probably won’t have any experience in marketing. They’re an ideas person. They’re an engineer. They’re a person. How do you start marketing campaign when they have no marketing? What would your advice be? What would you love to spend out? What would you love to spend out?
Emma 23:44
I try and deter people from spending until the organic foundations are in place. We see a lot of people coming to us for social media campaigns and they don’t already have an organic presence. And I often think like you wouldn’t necessarily run a Google ads campaign to a shop that was shut. But it’s in a similar vein is if you are then putting yourself out there within advertising, you are opening the doors to people finding you and discovering you in different ways. And if things like your website and etc. are not sort of sorted, then that is the primary problem.
Neale 24:19
You don’t want to drive traffic when it’s in a bad state. No, I think…
Emma 24:23
the problems with websites is people feel like they need to have the end result instantly. I mean we’ve been going for six years and I’ve probably done six seven eight maybe iterations of our site and I’m not massively happy with it now but it is a working progress but for me it’s just like finding somewhere for people to find you, giving them the option and so I would say even if you get a London page sorted it’s a good start it doesn’t have to be can like an overly complicated website
Neale 24:53
Just say what you do, be clear, communicate, get in touch.
Emma 24:57
A CETA, or some sort of form. Call to action for people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll try and keep my briefings. No, I’m not going to explain it. I’m enjoying it now.
Neale 25:07
Knowing the abbreviations, I usually interview really high-level engineers and I’ve got a clue. I know.
Emma 25:13
not even said ROI, but I would say that website’s a good start. And like we’ve been saying about getting, if you are a founder of a business, having a LinkedIn presence and starting talking, because I’ve had business, I got business when I started out freelance before I had a website based on the stuff that I was putting out there and the kind of person that I was. So I don’t think it needs to be overly complicated in that regard. And obviously we know branding is more than just a logo. So I think people spend a lot of time worrying about the logo and the right color and the right color scheme.
Neale 25:48
future-proof, is it dated, is it-
Emma 25:50
Yeah I mean the first logo that we got I think it cost me like 50 quid and so I had the domain I always think that’s the obviously get you the domain you want. I got a 50 quid logo done I made some business cards which I still have loads of and I’m like never gonna hand them out I know why anyone orders like 500 business cards in day one
Neale 26:08
And they always say it’s cheaper to buy.
Emma 26:11
I’ve got some really like they’re really high quality as well like that’s so sturdy. I’ll never use them.
Neale 26:18
But the pricing structure is insane. So it’s like, it’s 50 quid for five. Yeah. Or it’s 55 quid for 1000. Yeah, there’s no in between.
Emma 26:26
Yeah. So basically my entire family has just got like my business card is coasters around the house trying to like make use of them, just make it rain every day and again. But yeah, I think starting this morning, there’s such a temptation to go big and this person’s on this advertising, this person’s on this, right? Okay. Make sure you’ve got some sort of landing page to direct people to. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated. We can come to big websites and fancy websites when you’ve got the money in the nicest way possible. And then starting your own pages, getting all those sorts of sources and starting, just starting.
Neale 27:02
your content. I think you’re absolutely right. I think if you’ve not got the content and you’ve not really found yourself, that’s really critical, isn’t it? In all that good stuff. It lined up when you do have the budget and then you can increase your reach, I suppose.
Emma 27:17
Yeah, I think it’s good to try and, um, segment like your own personal content by thinking about what sort of things do I want people to think about me and my business. And then actually shaping content around that. So, um, I put some buzzwords down for my own of how I want people to feel like trusted, safe, that sort of stuff. And then make sure that the content I’m putting out there is aligned to at least one of those buzzwords, I guess.
Neale 27:43
a tip because it’s emotional isn’t it? A business relationship, say the relationship is a personal relationship and all relationships are based on emotion. So if you said you’ve got these buzzwords then you want people to feel when they interact with you. As long as one of them are fearful then you know I think occasionally for cold calls.
Emma 28:02
Yeah, yeah, anyone that’s in my DMs on solicitor, beautiful.
Neale 28:09
I want to finish off talking about relationships, actually, and your network and events. I know they’ve been in front of a couple of years. I know the base to Nottingham. I know I’ve never been to one. I’m very sorry. No, you’re wonderful. I mean, we’ve only met recently. I will definitely be attending at the end point. And I won’t be doing any eligible sales pitches. They’re banned. They are banned. Well, tell us why. Tell us about why is that important and why is it that you don’t want people going into selling and just give me the pitch and up the pitch.
Emma 28:41
Okay, cool. So yeah, I run a networking event called Nottingham DM, which is the sister event of Sheffield Diem. So Sheffield DM has been running for a long time, I think six years this year. And it’s been a while since I went to a networking event, when I first went to theirs, where I felt very chilled. I think networking events sort of turned into a bit of a big, glorified sales pitch. And I’m not an extrovert by any means. I like my own company, and my social battery runs out really fast. So I was going to a lot of networking events, which were like really intense sales pitches, and then coming home and being a bit like, I need to lie down in the dark room and not talk to anyone for a couple of days. And then I went to Sheffield DM, and everything was really relaxed. And afterwards, we went to the pub, and everyone was just like, that’s been a bit of a rubbery suite. Let’s talk about this client, or let’s talk about this that’s happened. I thought that’s a good vibe. That’s what I wanted.
Neale 29:38
Useful as well. So it’s almost like Big Brother Little Sister older mentor-y advice type vibe – rather than “Oh this CRM is going to change your life”.
Emma 29:48
Exactly. I mean, we, we bring in people from all walks of life. So it’s every two months that we run them in Nottingham city centre, but I’ve picked in a venue, which is quite small anyway. So it doesn’t necessarily bring a, we’re going to bring crowds and crowds of people. It’s not the ice arena. No, it’s not the ice arena. So just booked like Bali to Western Town, which is right near the station. So it’s nice, obviously a nice little pub. And the main thing that I just wanted people to go is have a safe space that if you’re not a huge, big personality, and actually maybe you struggle in those situations that you can go feel energised, feel like you can maybe meet one or two people that you make a connection with. Because there are so many different networking events, particularly in Nottingham, but around the Midlands, that are very salesy. So that is kind of covered. If that’s the stuff that you want, that’s kind of covered for you. This is a point of difference. Yeah. And we get people, we get marketing students in, we get directors of businesses in, we have two speakers. So you can learn something, even if you came to listen to the speakers on the left, you’ve learned something, but there is an opportunity to obviously meet people, connect with people. And it’s been described as like a safe space and a really nice place for people to be. And that’s all I really want. I’m not looking for it to be profitable. I’m not looking for it to be a new business venture. It’s just something that is quite close to my heart. Yeah. So far, so good.
Neale 31:12
Fantastic. We’ll put the, uh, links to the events and stuff in the, in the description, and so people can check it out. Uh, you were talking about the client who, uh, the prospect of lead came in eight years later. I think these sort of events have got the same sort of vibe. So you may go to a couple, you may miss a couple, you have a director, might make a marketing student, get some good advice and you don’t know where that stuff’s going to lead. I think that’s what you’re doing.
Emma 31:35
Yeah, I think if you can build connections and find places that you can build connections with people who are similar to you, like there’s a place for everyone, like there’s a networking event for everyone, but we are just a little bit weird and quirky, and if you do, when you do come you’ll see, I’ll make them like random themes, we’ve done, there’s nothing better than watching a group of like grown adults doing an Easter icon. It was a highlight of my life, yeah, yeah, so actually that was pretty great. The last one I’m just done was Halloween, so covered in cupboards and all sorts of stuff, so yeah, thanks a lot.
Neale 32:07
Last one, I know from your posts that you’ve been a weightlifter all your life, you’ve recently completed your first half marathon, half run. Any plans to carry on running through 2025? Did you enjoy it? It was hard.
Emma 32:20
Oh, it was hard. I picked probably a really difficult first course.
Neale 32:25
It didn’t make it easy for yourself then. No.
Emma 32:27
i picked hole in towers because i was like oh there’d be loads of things they’ve been really distracting and it’s great because you’re like running through cbb’s land and everyone’s waving at you and it’s really sweet yeah but most of it’s copper and it the full course is um undulating so like constant like this and i found myself about 12 13 ks in shouting “i just want flat ground” so i just wanted not to be constantly going for a hill um but yeah there’s nothing i don’t think there’s anything more mentally challenging than being in your thoughts for like over two hours so maybe i’ve already said i’d like to compete one marathon at some point um but yeah i’d be one and done i think
Neale 33:07
Alright, congratulations. Thank you for your time. I’ve really enjoyed this. Thank you very much, Emma. Thanks.