Coming from technical support, account management and competitive intelligence, has led me to understand how to educate the market. When I first joined marketing, of course, I knew nothing about PPC, SEM, SEO. That was definitely a learning curve for me and has led me to respect marketers even more. There is a perception out there, however, that marketers put the “fluff in stuff.” That is not the case. I nailed down 6 myths about marketers and have revealed real truth behind each below.

A Whirly Pop lollipop. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1) Marketing is all rainbows and lollipops.

One of the biggest reasons why I love marketing is that it’s a numbers driven functionality of the company. The tools to measure online marketing tactics have become increasingly sophisticated so you’re able to track entire life-cycles of buyers, from the initial interest all the way down to purchase. Consequently, you can track every dollar put in and what the exact output is (in most cases) and can have daily, weekly and monthly goals. It’s a numbers game not a Candy Land game.

2) All marketers have to offer are offers.

Historically, promotions were the only tactic used to drive demand. With the advanced tools now in place to measure the performance of marketing tactics, you can actually spark engaging conversations with prospects that is meaningful to them. The goal of marketers is to educate the market, not to force them into something they’re not interested in. It’s about solving people’s problems. Understanding personas and their respective pain points are essential to building a successful marketing program.

3) Marketers make things look pretty.

If there is an ROI on pretty, then yes, making things look pretty can potentially be a tactic. But pretty doesn’t necessarily sell and you have to be more than just a pretty face. People want solutions and if you can provide helpful content, you’ve earned the trust of a potential buyer. It’s not about boasting how awesome you are.

4) Marketers are all business majors.

While many marketers are business majors, I am seeing more and more math/engineering and English/journalism majors join marketing. Why? For one, to understand the analytics behind marketing, you have to actually enjoy looking at numbers. It’s essential to what marketers do today. In addition, content has become a significant driver for all marketing distribution channels and those with a strong writing background are essential to creating content that drives demand.

5) Marketing is a far away land not integrated with the rest of the company.

Marketers enable the sales team to drive leads, send the customer service teams customers and finance has to understand the entire cycle. Marketers have to be integrated to be successful. And for content, my team at Rackspace works more with our engineers, developers and product teams more than anyone else in the company. They are the builders of the product and a conversation with them is essential for us to understand how to speak to the marketplace.

6) Marketers like to spend money.

As mentioned in #1, marketers are number driven and if there is not case for ROI, there is not a case for marketing spend. Depending on goals, money does have to be spent, but it is also tracked by the dollar and not just down to traffic, down to purchase. Many think marketers order cool swag and spend money on fancy client dinners. There has to be a business case for the money spent.

I am sure there are many more perceptions out there but these are the ones that I come across the most. The increasing use of the web for every day actions has changed the way marketers do business; it’s not about the 4 P’s anymore. Are you a marketer? I would love to hear your thoughts.

I knew nothing about personal chef’s in San Antonio but after doing some searching on the Internet, I found that there were a lot of them in San Antonio and apparently in high demand. I narrowed my search results to three personal chef’s and began writing inquiries to all three. I contacted Lavish to Lite Bites first and before I could send my other two inquiries, I received a phone call within minutes from Chef Catherine Richey. She had this lively voice and you could tell she was excited about my party just from reading the inquiry I sent her. I went ahead and said yes and am so glad I did. Here’s 5 reasons why I would recommend her to anyone:

1) Outstanding Service

Before Catherine even stepped into my kitchen, I was impressed with her service. After I committed to the date, she met me for lunch to chat about the menu. She initially offered to make me lunch at her home so I could have a taste of her cooking but since I was coming from the office we found a half way point. She brought with her the contract to sign and sample menu ideas. I had the opportunity to learn more about her and her background and how she made it to building her own business as a personal chef.

Throughout the few weeks before the party, her and I went back and forth on the menu. I wanted her to make something she was comfortable doing and she had so many options to choose from hors d’oeuvres to dessert options.

On the day of the party, hors d’oeuvres were to start at 7pm and the first course at 8pm. She arrived in her awesome chef uniform at about 5:45pm with all her cooking tools. Within minutes, her and her sister took over my kitchen and got straight to work, it was amazing! Once guests arrived, she brought out the . About 45 minutes into drinks and hors d’oeuvres, she came out to introduce the menu to all the guests. Once dinner was ready, she let me know so everyone could take their seat at the table.

Her sister served our plates, filled our glasses and took each plate as we finished each course. And for dessert, they surprised me with a birthday candle! I had ZERO intention of being sung happy birthday to but that was a pleasant surprise.

Lastly, they cleaned! Once dinner was all said and done and they loaded up their car, I went to the kitchen to find it spotless! You would have never guessed that a five course meal for 15 guests was made in that kitchen minutes ago.

2) Superb Cooking

As mentioned above, we went back and forth on the menu and we finalized on this:

Hors d’oeuvres
Prosciutto Wrapped Lemon Chicken with Avocado Lime dip
Cucumber Rounds Topped with Spicy Hummus

Salad
Baby Greens with Toasted Pine Nuts & White Wine Citrus Dressing

First Course
Lemon and Herb Risotto

Entree
Filet Mignon with Pinot-Noir Mushroom Sauce
or
Pan Seared Halibut with White Wine and Herb Cream Sauce

Vegetables
Chipotle Mashed Potatoes
Roasted Asparagus

Dessert
Dark and White Chocolate Mousse
Petite Fours

Wow! I am impressed just typing this all out. Everything was extremely flavorful and I thought the menu was so well thought out.

3) Reasonably Priced

I had no clue what to expect on the price. I was just doing research and wanted to know what something like this would actually cost. When she told me her price, I said “yes!” before I even confirmed with Jason. Either personal chef’s aren’t just for the rich and famous anymore or I discovered Catherine before she is making it big. She charges you a service charge that you pay upfront and then she does all the grocery shopping for you and you pay her for the bill once complete. Yes, she does all the grocery shopping! I think the most unpleasant part of cooking is the actual grocery shopping and couldn’t believe she includes this!

In addition, because she is a certified chef, she shops at places like Restaurant Depot and gets preferred pricing on meats and seafood. Anything she already has on hand in regards to spices, etc, she will use so you don’t have to pay for it. And she is totally looking out for you. For example, we were initially going to do Mahi Mahi and when she said that the Halibut was 1/3 the price, she recommended to go with that one because it would be just as good. This made me feel so much more comfortable that I chose her for the dinner party.

4) Great Online Presence

When I first started looking for a personal chef, I asked people within my network of friends, online and offline. I received no recommendations. I was going to have to do a search online without any background on the services I would find.

When you’re going to hire someone to come into your home and cook for you, you want to make sure that you’re comfortable with that person and it can be difficult to get that vibe via a website. The first thing that got me to Lavish to Lite Bites was that the website was in the top 3 listings for Google paid ads for “personal chef san antonio” which told me that she was serious about her business. When I got to her website, I noticed 3 things that really got me to contact her 1) About Page. It was so personable and had a beautiful photo of her family. 2) Guestbook. She had reviews from her clients on her website. 3). Active Blog. I read her blog and visited her Facebook page. It was obvious that she had a great business going just through her updated photos and experiences.

5) Passionate about What She Does

I am a firm believer in following your passion and success will follow. Chef Catherine is passionate about what she does and it is evident in every detail of her business from the service, to the food to her business ethics. She is clearly in her element and you know that what she does is what she loves doing. Every time I interacted with her, I felt like I was her only client which, if you visit her Facebook page, I am clearly not! She had done a Spanish Tapas cooking class the weekend before and has regular clients that she prepares meals for during the week, on top of feeding her family! She lives to cook!

If you want to make your next event special, I would hire Chef Catherine from Lavish to Lite Bites in a heartbeat.

Contact Info for Lavish to Lite Bites:

Website: http://lavishtolitebites.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LavishtoLiteBites/

Contact by email or by phone at (210) 683-2933.

If you have questions, please leave them in the comments below.

A photo of a cup of coffee. Esperanto: Taso de kafo. Français : Photo d'une tasse de caffé Español: Taza de café (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve started a mentorship at Rackspace. I had my second session and wanted to share the lesson I learned, which was “define your non-negotiables.” What does this mean? Well basically what it says, what are you not willing to negotiate on? If you define early on what you stand for, what you believe in, what you will not negotiate on, you could not only potentially prevent yourself from being in many unwanted situations but feel incredibly empowered to do things you didn’t realize you could do. I can name 3 different scenarios where defining your non-negotiables would help you in a work environment:

Know when to go home

There was an article recently published on how Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, leaves the office everyday at 5:30 and you should too. She quotes:

“In high school, my friends used to always say they envied my family for making it a rule to have dinner as a unit at least five nights a week, and I honestly feel I would have become a different person had my parents not prioritized it.”

When I became pregnant, I couldn’t fathom myself leaving my work behind for 10 weeks straight. I know it sounds funny because of course, I was going to have to leave, but I could not imagine myself away for that long, not even longer than a weekend. My life changed and I’ve definitely re-prioritized my life but that doesn’t mean work isn’t important. There just has to be balance and that goes for anyone, children or not. There’s a long time Racker, Tony Barrerra, that took a sabbatical to travel the continent over the course of 6 months. He came back to the same work he was doing before. It’s like the saying goes, “work will be there when you get back.” The world will continue to turn even if you step out of it for a minute and it’s a good thing it does. If we define what’s important to us in our lives, whether it’s our family, school, recreational activities, etc, we’ll know when it’s time to leave work – and that is when your time is not negotiable.

Hire an awesome team

If you’re in fast paced, high growth work environment (like that of Rackspace), it can be easy to “settle” on someone to join your team just so you can get some extra hands in to help right away. This only creates a problem that you’ll have to address sooner than later. Fortunately, Rackspace has a set of core values that Rackers believe in and incorporate into their everyday work habits. Our set of core values lays the foundation for the hiring process by providing us a baseline on what to look for in a candidate. As the company has grown and evolved, teams have built their own cultures based off of the core values. As a hiring manager or someone that sits on hiring panels, it’s important to know what you and your team view as important qualities to have in a candidate (in addition to of course being qualified). This will help you connect with those that believe in the same thing you do and consequently, you’ll know the answer on whether or not you should hire a particular person to join your team. And maybe this process takes longer than you want but at the same token, you’re building an awesome team that will endure the long road ahead alongside you – and you shouldn’t let that be negotiated.

Handle crucial conversations

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been in one of these (**as I raise my hand**). We’ve all been in them, some more than others. I can tell you that I repeatedly kick myself in the butt every time I leave a difficult conversation because I discover what I “should” have said and didn’t take the opportunity to say it when it was most relevant. You might think that by my writing style, I’m a super confident person. Unfortunately, I have a habit (that I am trying to overcome) of letting down in difficult conversations. I lose confidence and allow people to talk over me and through me. One of the things that my mentor is encouraging me to do is build a game face and attach a name to it. Sometimes we have to envision ourselves as a strong, confident person and define what you will not let yourself lose ground on. The next step? Practice. Sounds funny I know (and I haven’t done this yet) but it’s good to practice being in difficult conversations even if it’s just talking to yourself in the mirror or in the car on your way to work. So don’t laugh if you see me talking to myself as you drive by me on the road! It is important to me, however, to be respected for my work and I should never let that be negotiated on.

These are three areas where I think defining your non-negotiables is incredibly helpful. I think I have #1 and #2 down but have a lot of work to do on #3. I will probably write a whole separate post just on how to handle crucial conversations, once I’ve learned how to do it myself!

One last note. I will eventually disclose my mentor but for now, I think it’s fun to keep you guessing.

As always, your comments are welcome.

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He and one other engineer worked on the Cloud Sites product way back when Cloud Sites was the only cloud product at Rackspace (and before it was even named Cloud Sites), which was before we were married. I remember countless sleepless nights Jason went through attending to various Cloud Sites related issues. He was really passionate about the product (and still is) and was the go to person for a very long time. It’s really amazing to see the growth of the product and the growth of the team that supports the product. My husband continues to expand the platform-as-a-service products at Rackspace and I can’t be more proud of all the work he has done.

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