The Makeshift CMO: Marketing, Growth & Business Podcast For Early Stage Founders & Teams Bruce Chen

In this episode, Bruce has on Joshua Lipton, his buddy from the Prop Tech world who has transitioned from marketing, to sales, to Director of Product & Operations at Rentsync, which turned from a Marketing Agency to a Prop Tech, SaaS company that is a leader in multifamily marketing software & services, with 20000+ properties on the platform and over five million leads generated annually.

As we go on this episode, Josh and Bruce geek out over the prop tech market, talk career changes and talk about the differences between true SaaS GTM and how to transition out of an agency to a repeatable, SaaS model.

"It's never going to be perfect. But I'd rather have a really good product 85% of the way there today, than a 100% perfect product 2 years from now."

Josh Lipton, Rentsync: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-lipton-9756778a/ 

Read about how Rentsync is disrupting to the prop tech/long term rental space: https://www.rentsync.com/resources/blog

In this episode, I thought I was going to talk to Lauren about email marketing and just simply ask her to define lifecycle marketing. Instead, we stump each other a bunch on tough questions on what lifecycle marketing actually is, how she conducts her tests and how she works with her internal teams to make it really happen.

"At the end of the day, lifecycle marketing is about to try and provide an amazing, valuable experience for users and customers. If you do that, the KPIs, the money and revenue will follow. Provide value, don't take. I think in marketing in general, what value can you provide up front?"

Take five minutes to be intentional about your time this week. Get in touch with Lauren Lord: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/laurenlord

Camille Trent it the Head of Content, AKA "that one girl from dully or something" who unlike most marketers, MATH was her best subject growing up. Perhaps that's what's given her her analytical, scienc-y approach to copy and content writing. Camille works with Dooly leading their content strategy, content marketing and copywriting.

In this episode we take a deep dive through Cam's interesting work history: going from a bank to Marketer Hire to Dooly, while balancing her time as a freelancing, copywriting expert. 

Learn more about what Dooly does at: https://www.dooly.ai/

Connect with Cam at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camillehansentrent/

Great episode alert!!!

In this episode, Bruce chats with Jake Hirsch-Allen. Jake works with North America's governments, workforce development organizations, colleges, and universities to leverage LinkedIn Talent Solutions to close skills gaps and increase sustainable employment. His goal is to expand economic opportunities for every member of the workforce. He has an incredibly interesting background as a connector, a former lawyer, and a community builder.

If you want to connect with Jake, you can do so on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakehirschallen/

Other projects that Jake is involved in:

Workforce and academia at https://www.readworks.org/

Creator advisor at https://www.hireguide.com/

In this episode, Bruce has on Daniel Francavilla, who is passionate about helping others to create social change. He's a Marketing Advisor & Brand Strategist through his own practice, Daniel Does.  After travelling to developing countries as a student, he formed a nonprofit to help children in the developing world receive an education and to empower local youth to become leaders. Today, ACCESS focuses on supporting youth who are creating their own projects and organizations for positive social change, and now offers micro-grants, hosting Bright Ideas Pitches.  His main squeeze these days is at King Street Media, after the agency he founded in 2013 was acquired in 2021. As a partner and lead strategist, he collaborates with creatives and marketers to support startups, businesses and non-profit organizations. As part of the merger, he now launched Now Impact Studio.  If anyone wants to reach Daniel...  http://danieldoes.co/marketing https://linkedin.com/in/danielfrancavilla

Brij is a software platform that powers one-touch registration & reorder to connect brands to their customers with the simple scan of a QR code. You would think it is started by some e-commerce nerd on YouTube or maybe even a college drop out, but nope! 

In today's episode I sit down with Kait Stephens, CEO of Brij. She (gasp) went to college and didn't drop out (double gasp)? More than that, in fact. She went to Harvard for her MBA, with a specific mindset and idea to come out better equipped to become a startup founder. 

With a background in PE and Wallstreet, and a Harvard pedigree, Kait brings firepower and a unique mindset to Foundering (yes that's now a thing). I loved this conversation as it touched on many topics including:


The value of an MBA, even as Elon and Jack Ma are hating on it
The value of a network, even if you don't have an MBA
How to recruit talent for startups in a very specific, targeted manner