What 'Dr Bob' taught me about Marketing for startups

One of my closest friends is a Doctor, someone I often visit for advice. He also has a medical PhD from one of the world's pre-eminent medical schools.

I've learned much from 'Dr Bob' (let's call my friend 'Bob') about being ethical, patient, rational, objective, and compassionate. 

Bob and I have a dark sense of humour which serves us well in dealing with life's difficulties. The more I've gotten to know Bob, the more I've learned to respect his outlook on life. 

What is his life philosophy? He is a stoic. He once told me that he didn't like the word 'happiness' and preferred the Greek term eudaimonia.

In the works of Aristotle, eudaimonia was the term for the highest human good in the older Greek tradition. It is a central concept in Aristotelian ethics.

I've worked for many tech startups in my marketing career, spanning 15 years. My role often feels like being a doctor. Of course, the stakes are lower; money may be lost, but no one will die if I fail. 

But I have been lucky to have worked at companies where the patients have thrived and become world-record-beating athletes! – when you've seen those 'patients' struggling, on their knees at times, it's wonderful to be part of that transformation!

Despite my education and training, I've made mistakes earlier in my career; Once, I was involved in a mismanaged website rebrand.

Our leadership had not realised that changing the website would crash all our search and SEO traffic. 

Another time, I made some errors with our database and email campaigns that got our Marketing automation software shut down. I was forced into negotiations to get it back up and running (luckily, it only went down for two days).

No talent, intelligence or education will help you entirely avoid mistakes – only experience will. Fortunately, it's been many years since I made such professional blunders. Over time you build up the wisdom to make the right judgment calls.

Co-workers at Startups, like patients, can be rude, disrespectful, and dismissive of your experience and training at times. But when this happens to me now, I act like a doctor.

– Why is this or that person at that company so rude? Is it because they are bad people? No, of course not - In my experience, at least not in nine times out of ten cases. Often they are stressed out and not thinking straight. 

I'm human, and using my valuable skills to help when they are not appreciated sometimes feels bad. But I've become much more empathetic over the years. 

The VC-backed startup world can be tough. Your targets - from lead numbers to sales revenue - can vary from aggressively ambitious to almost impossible. So that even if you have growth rates that would be considered stellar in the regular business world, more is often needed!

Sometimes it feels like no amount of effort or results will satisfy your PE investors. But they risk their money, so fair enough!

I'm lucky to love my work, which helps me to stay calm and reasonable in most tough situations. I know how lucky I am to do what I enjoy  - many people don't have that luxury!

One part of the job I absolutely adore is working with data. I enjoy discussing data science and analytics with Dr 'Bob'; Our outlooks are rational, ethical and scientific.

If your business-to-business technology startup is struggling with its Sales and Marketing, why not take a look at some of my work and see what you think?

Reproductive healthcare for productive employees

 

Why your company must implement fertility and menopause policies now.

Or how to get your 40-65-year-old male CEO to care about menopause and fertility in the workplace.      

There’s plenty of research to show that happy employees are more productive and that objectively ranked happy companies (via Glassdoor and other review sites) outperform other publicly listed companies on the stock exchange.

As a senior executive & well-known venture capitalist told me recently: 

'Happiness is not a KPI' 

- and I get it; businesses care about revenue, profits, and productivity, not employee happiness! 

But listening to your employees and responding to their needs is crucial if you want your company to succeed. Only more so today than ever, where employees are in short supply and where there’s an even greater scarcity of top talent in areas as diverse as Sales, engineering, software programming, data science, and more.

What should you do to attract and retain talent and ensure that your employees are not quiet quitting (or even rage quitting)?

One key step is to start implementing reproductive healthcare policies at your company. For example, menopause support is a hot topic and will only grow in importance in the workplace. 

Menopausal women are not only some of your best-performing and most productive employees but also tired of being ignored. According to the latest research, 42% of women consider leaving their jobs because of menopause.

If you don’t have a policy, why not check out a typical menopause policy template? Many companies, such as the BBC, Astra Zeneca, Diageo, and Santander, already have these policies.

Ultimately, these productivity losses can cost more than $150 billion a year, according to research company Frost & Sullivan. They show that other healthcare costs could rise to $810 billion.

Research by Bupa and CIPD in 2019 also found that almost a million women in the UK left their jobs in the last year because of menopausal symptoms.

To avoid losing significant numbers of some of your most valuable employees, the female workforce aged 35-65 (which could be up to 100 million employees in Europe & 50 million in the US.), you must offer rigorous menopause support.

Your employee brand is also likely to be labelled sexist and ageist if you don’t start responding to this critical demographic of your workforce. Here are some of the best menopause websites if you want to explore more about this issue:

European Menopause and Andropause Society

International Menopause Society

Menopause and me

Then there’s the rising problem of infertility. One in Six of your employees will struggle with fertility problems. According to the latest research, more than half of those employees with fertility problems are not getting support at work.

Did you know that 77% of Gen Z’s and millennials said they would stay at a company if it offered fertility benefits, and a large majority said they would even consider changing jobs for better benefits?

Fertility is no longer solely a women’s issue. All family-forming benefits policies must be developed to meet the needs of LGBTQ employees and men because up to 50 percent of fertility issues sit with them.

We know that IVF is still a luxury service for most people. This financial burden is an additional tax for women of colour, LGBTQ+, and single people. That is why employers create health policies for people regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, or marital status; it promotes economic equity in the workplace.

Some of your company’s most productive and valuable employees could be struggling with a range of issues, such as:

• Finding the best egg-freezing clinic
• Finding the best IVF clinic
• What are the best ovulation apps?
• Fertility Support

And the outcomes can be brutal for an employee, from having to take time out of their busy schedules to arrange doctors’ appointments, to experiencing depression if their latest round of IFV has failed. The impact on your business, too, could be severe.

How can you better support your employees going through fertility struggles at work? 

Encourage your employees to be open about their problems. This sounds easy, but it can be one of the most complicated challenges. In this environment, where there is little company or employee loyalty, HR is often seen as' the enemy'. 

Research shows that in many organisations, employees would rather talk to anyone about their problems than to Human Resources. Indeed, the same goes for sharing the most personal and vulnerable information about your fertility journey.

1. Will HR use this information against me at any time?

2. Will my colleagues be supportive? Or will they be judgemental and even unkind?

When we inquired about employees’ reluctance to turn to HR, a recent survey found that 37% of respondents believe HR is more interested in advocating for their company than they are in them.

Don't you want to be an organisation where your employees do not feel such negative emotions and feel they can open up and be vulnerable about challenges such as menopause or fertility?

But if your company is a healthy place to share, supports its employees, and enables them to share their challenges and problems, you can breed many success stories, and increase happiness, loyalty, retention, and productivity at your company.

The goal has been to turn yesteryear's reactive and compliance-focused HR model into one where leaders are seen as trusted executive partners and employee advocates. 

In this approach, HR leaders sit at the leadership table to advise executives on culture and speak up for employees and their needs.

So far, many employees’ fertility needs have been ignored by their employers. However, companies like Centrica, NatWest, Clifford Chance, and Twilio offer fertility support, ranging from help finding egg-freezing providers to IVF. To find out more about menopause support and fertility support at work, go here.