Betsy Schneider (BI Worldwide) - The Evolution of Marketing

Vin: Welcome to The Marketing Stir Podcast by Stirista, probably the most entertaining marketing podcast you're going to put in your ear. I'm Vin, the associate producer here at Stirista. The goal of this podcast is to chat with industry leaders and get their take on the current challenges of the market, and we'll have a little fun along the way. Today, Vincent and Ajay chat with Betsy Schneider, the VP of marketing at BI WORLDWIDE. She talks about how she is able to help inspire companies and their employees take risks and seize opportunities, all while increasing brand awareness. Vincent enjoys his San Antonio visit, and Ajay recovers from a weekend of holiday parties. Give it a listen.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Stirista's The Marketing Stir. I am fresh off a San Antonio trip to the headquarters, so I'm extra happy. Ladies and gentlemen, it's so good to be back. I of course, am your host Vincent Pietrafesa, the vice president of B2B products here at Stirista. We are so happy that you are tuning in and listening or watching us. Oh man, what do I have to say about the trip to San Antonio? I'll get to that in a moment, but first let's pause. Stirista, who are we? Well, we are a marketing technology company. We focus on identity. We have our own business- to- business data, that's my division. Our own B2C division. As far as data, we help companies utilize that data to get new customers, maybe you want to email to it. We also have our own DSP called AdStir. You want to target that data to get new customers, display OTT connected TV. That's really on the rise. Email me vincent @ stirista. com. That is how confident I am that we can help. I just gave you my email address and my phone number is, I'm kidding. I'm not giving you my phone number, but nice job Marketing Stir. The other thing I am confident in for a variety of reasons, I have to give this next man some love, our CEO, our commander in chief. My co- host, your co- host, Mr. Ajay Gupta. Ajay, what's going on?

Ajay Gupta: Hey Vincent. It was quite the weekend. So I'm in recovery mode, but I'm in. What a weekend? We never quite planned so many activities around the holiday, but we definitely made up for last year's missed holiday party.

Vincent Pietrafesa: We sure did. It's your fault I probably sound like this Ajay. My voice is short, but I did not want to miss this episode because of our guests. I will get to her in a moment. Yes, it was fun. For those of you were listening, you probably heard us leading up to this event. Stirista, we had a gathering. We had some people, some folks. Among the guidelines of COVID, testing and vaccinations. So it was great and safe, but we were in San Antonio. We also did our holiday summit that we do. It's around the holiday time. It's not necessarily a holiday summit, but what we do is we get some great guests, some of then that been on the podcast. We get some speakers, we get a comedian, we get a wacky host. That's me. And we pulled it off this year. Ajay, I have to say, I think we pulled it off.

Ajay Gupta: Yeah. You kept the thing going. You were delightful. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback on it already and looks like we might actually had a couple of clients on. So somebody just sent us a RFP.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Nice. I've never been called delightful, so I'll take it. That's a holiday word. Delightful. And let me give you some feedback. I know it was some positive feedback, Ajay. I know I don't usually that. It's kind of our thing where we don't like to compliment each other. Well, a couple reasons. A, it was an awesome event, bringing out people and partners and spouses and our significant others. That's great. Spurs game at the office staff. But I finally got to witness and people who listen to the podcast or avid listeners know that you play tennis. You talk about it every single episode. And I said," All right, is this guy really good at tennis? What's going on? Is his team really good?" He's really good. He's good. He's good at tennis. I went, I saw a match The Stirista Bandits also won. They won it's a three time in a row, right? The Championship?

Ajay Gupta: Three time city champions. Yeah.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Three time city champions for which you are a player and a coach. Player and coach, right captain? You took down Borg. Nobody likes Borg. That's your moral inaudible me. Borg if you're listening in San Antonio, I don't know what each of you do, but we took you down. So no, it was an amazing weekend filled with delight and holiday cheer. And speaking of a delight, I could already tell because you have some great banter. I love her background. It's very festive. It makes me happy. I'm a fan of the holiday season, but ladies and gentlemen, please a very warm welcome to our next Marketing Stir guest. She is the vice president, marketing at BI WORLDWIDE. Can't wait to about that company. Ladies, gentlemen, Betsy Schneider. What's going on, Betsy.

Betsy Schneider: Hey, thanks for the great introduction. I'm so happy to be here and I can't wait to talk about everything marketing.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Absolutely. We are so happy to be here. Betsy, and I love your background. For those of you who are watching us, it's a Christmas tree. If you celebrate Christmas like me, I love it. I have a Christmas village. I put up a tree. It's my happiest time of the year. Like the song says, it's the most wonderful time of the year. At least I agree. Betsy, it is so great having you. I want to get right into it because for those of you who out there who don't know BI WORLDWIDE, tell us about BI WORLDWIDE. I'd also love to hear about your role within the organization as well.

Betsy Schneider: Well, thank you again. So BI WORLDWIDE, probably not a household name. We're BIW for short. And we are B2B. So we work with primarily Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies and also big companies across the globe to help them change behavior and drive results. So if you get right into our marketing message, it's about people and delivering results because we know business is energized by the people and they make it happen. And that's when you get big results. And so if you break it down, we focus on different audiences or segments. So we're trying to help these companies inspire employees, which helps them stay with the company, right? And helps solve problems for that company. We try to inspire sales people take risks and they seize opportunity. And then inspired channel partners and customers are truly loyal to the brand. So my job there is the VP of marketing and I work with a great team specifically on increasing brand awareness. So who is BIW. And then also of course, lead generation at the top of the funnel there within this target market. So we are really hunting elephants.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Nice. I love that.

Betsy Schneider: Yeah, it's fun. I mean, if you can make a difference in a big company, that's inspiring. That's inspiring to me. You asked me how I got started in marketing.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Yeah.

Betsy Schneider: So I'm an army brat. I grew up around the world until the seventh grade and then lived in Colorado. But I had heard about this school in Minnesota that I thought was pretty interesting. So came up to Minnesota to go to school and ended up with a double major in Communications and Psychology. While I was there, I talked to somebody who asked me to take notes in a class for them because they were doing this amazing trip. They were taking some people to Africa and they were working as an event director. And I'm thinking, what is that job? Well it's for people who have earned an amazing recognition and they were taking them on this trip and they were making sure the trip operated well. And I'm like," I have to find out more about that company." So I actually targeted BI WORLDWIDE as a company I wanted to work with right out of college. And I kept looking in the paper, remember it was the newspaper then. So now I've outed myself. And I landed my first job as an executive administrator over 30 years ago. And once I got in, I learned the business, learned from the best in sales, worked in the areas of new product development and client services. Delivered solutions. Then I moved into sales enablement, which helped me prepare for what I really wanted to do. Marketing. And so I've been in that marketing arena for over 25 years.

Ajay Gupta: Let's say that at a time when most people are changing jobs every 18 to 20 months, it's truly impressive that you've been with the same company for over 30 years. So what's been the secret. How have they kept you this long?

Betsy Schneider: So believe it or not, there are a lot of people at BIW with a lot of tenure. And I honestly think it's a number of things, but it's very inspiring. I mean, it's an inspiring position to be able to work with these great brands, these companies, to help them drive big solutions that really make a difference to their bottom line. It's also a complex business. So we have over 18 business units. So we're putting together solutions in the area of data sciences, research, communications, training, recognition, events, just to name a few. So it becomes really interesting and there's always something new to learn. So even though I've been there a long time, we're still coming up with new things because under that big umbrella of inspiration, there's a lot you can do to help people. So I think it's curiosity. I think it's meaningful work. I think it's just passion for the business that's kept me there.

Ajay Gupta: That's amazing. In terms of your own marketing, what are some of the channels and strategies that's working for you?

Betsy Schneider: So obviously that's changed a little bit with COVID and how we've responded to that. But honestly, for BIW it all starts with content. So everything's about the content and it's really about that leadership. So we're not trying to sell a widget, we're trying to solve a problem. So it starts with this thought leadership and then we share that research and knowledge that we have to through a variety of channels and that's dependent upon the audience and what solutions we're delivering. So we look at different tactics to how are we going to get this out to the marketplace? So it could be a blog post. It could be video. Video does very well as people's attention spans get shorter and shorter and shorter. Social posts. We use our marketing automation solution Pardot. And then we use beyond our own selves, which we have a lot of experts in the business. We also use academics to help share the story because their research aligns with what we believe in terms of how people are inspired, what drives people to do something. It's called behavioral economics. I can talk about that all day long, if you want to. But back to tactics, it could be all of the things I talked about as well as webinars and regional live seminars. And we just keep evolving that as new and relevant channels come into play. And of course, as the market shifts. So for example, we did focus really strongly on regional live events, but then when COVID hit, we had to address that and shift that and went into a webinar strategy.

Vincent Pietrafesa: And how did that webinar strategy work out Betsy? The reason I asked, we talked to a lot of people that have been on the podcast and they similar, right? They said, thought leadership, webinar, strategies they've seen an uptick in their webinar. So I'd love you to talk about that and also live events. What's the plan moving forward. I think a lot of our listeners would love to hear about that as you see glimmers of things opening back up.

Betsy Schneider: Absolutely. So let's start with the webinar question first. So here we had these great regional strategic live events happening, which of course allowed relationship building. I mean, you guys just talked about being together in San Antonio. It was just a wonderful way to build rapport with prospects and clients. And it was working really well. In fact, when the world shut down in March 2020, I was in Boston delivering a live event, helping with that. Had to get back to Minnesota and that shut it down. From there we let the quiet settle for a little bit and then said, you know what? We can still get relevant messages out to our prospects and our current customers. Let's work on this webinar strategy. We ended up using a very strong platform that allows a lot of customization to the experience and we thought about, okay, what messaging do we want to get out? And we were really strategic in terms of," Look, we're not going to go on there and try to sell a widget. We're going to go on there with that leadership that's relevant for what's happening in the world right now." So we are very particular about what we put forward. So for example, one of our very first webinars was around compassionate leadership. What does that look like in the world today? And that was super relevant because obviously we're talking about engaging employees, but we're talking about engaging employees in a time of uncertainty. And so that's an example of one we started and we used an outside academic who had a lot of research on the topic and it just went crazy. Right? With webinars. We were all in front of our computer anyway, not sure of what to do next. So we got a lot of traction. Now, fast forward, we've been delivering these with a mix of academics, our own thought leaders, authors, our clients, any combination of that. Some are straight presentations, some are interview style, it's all a different shift, depending upon what we're trying to parlay to the marketplace. As people are starting to travel, and the world's opening up a little bit, we're having to work a little bit harder to be extremely relevant on our webinar topics. And so we continue to evolve that too. For example, we're saying, is 45 minutes the right timeline to deliver webinars? Can we shorten it up? Can we make it 30 minutes? Can we break it into segments? Much like you do your podcasts. So we're looking at that as well. So that's the idea behind webinars and they're very successful. They're available on demand as well. So if you can't consume them live, you can consume them after the fact, which has been a really strong asset for us, because of course we can continue to promote that. Put relevancy out in the marketplace based upon the needs of our clients and our prospects. So live events. I can't wait to get back to live events. How about you guys?

Vincent Pietrafesa: Yeah, absolutely. It was so fun seeing everyone. The new year's ahead and we are excited too.

Betsy Schneider: Yeah. So I think we built in that strategy coming back, of course, but we'll just have to see how that timing is and being sensitive to what's going on today. So you don't want to knee jerk and say, it's time now. We've got to watch, we are in the marketplace, we might be more ready than other parts in the marketplace. We are a global brand. So we're also very conscientious about what's going on in other parts of the world, in Europe, for example, or India, et cetera. But for U. S. marketing too. Because regions of the U. S. are a little bit different, right?

Vincent Pietrafesa: Absolutely. Yeah. Before I get it to the next question, where can people find those on demand webinars?

Betsy Schneider: You can find them at biworldwide. com/ webinars. And there's a number of them and the topics are super relevant to marketers, sales people, HR. So across the board.

Vincent Pietrafesa: That's awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Wanted to get that out there. So as a marketer, what are some of the things that are important to keep in mind as a marketer in this industry?

Betsy Schneider: Hold. That is a good question. Just general, I think to keep in mind is the evolution of marketing. So again, relevancy. What's happening today. What new channels are being introduced? How are people consuming information? I think all of that is critically important. And how is the message relevant to me as an individual? So I think as people are thinking about campaigns, the deeper in we can get to a particular person at a particular company, the more that marketing will resonate. I also think besides the messaging is the consumption. You probably heard the quote about, we have the attention span that's now less than a goldfish. So if we get seven seconds, what are we going to do with that seven seconds? How are we going to capture attention without being traits, without being predictable, but have something that can potentially offer value to me.

Ajay Gupta: Is there other particular marketing campaigns that you have particularly enjoyed working at BIW?

Betsy Schneider: The most fun I can say that I've had in terms of, call it overall marketing, is we had a brand reintroduction. So this was about 10 years ago and the company name shifted slightly. The logo shifted entirely and the look and feel shifted entirely. So the message shifted, et cetera. And it was because we had been a company that has been around for a long time. It's a privately held company, but around a long time and very successful. And it was time for it to just shift and evolve a little bit. And so we did this marketing rebrand, and it was just this whole brand rebrand, and that was super fun to do. So it was a set in time and it was an unveiling. So we had a full company meeting in Minneapolis, people came and when they walked in, all the branding was the current brand at that time. The stage was set that way, everything looked normal. We launched that brand and it turned everything orange, which is our color. And it went from burgundy to orange, the logo shifted. So it was a big introduction and announcement when they walked out, it was everything new. Signage, letterhead, business cards. Everything was redone. And so they came into this whole new experience and it was really uplifting and energetic and just what a fun campaign to work on. To get our whole selves out there in a new light. It was great.

Ajay Gupta: Great Betsy. It may not come as a surprise since you can see my orange background, our color is orange and quite a few walls in our office are bright orange, which brings in a level of energy that other colors don't have.

Betsy Schneider: Absolutely very well thought through right? Way to go marketers.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Yeah.

Ajay Gupta: I knew we were Kindred Spirits. So Betsy, without giving too much away. Do you have any tips on team building and staying connected, especially in the world of Zoom?

Betsy Schneider: That is such a great question. So we're working hybrid now. So we're in the office quite a bit and then we also are working from home some. But one of the very first things that BIW did when we were all remote, was turn the cameras on. So that became a requirement and that was critical to keep us connected. So I know there's still people out there who don't want to turn their camera on, but that allowed you to look in people's eyes and have just a deeper level of connection. And the other thing that we do and did was talk very regularly. So in this time, for example, I had a new digital marketer and he started right in the middle of COVID and my team played a big role in onboarding him. And as a result, he came up to speed very quickly in terms of culture and the company, even though we were all online. And another thing that we did and still courage is to bring your whole selves to work. So including your personal self. So we saw kids on screen, we saw dogs on screen, and it really helped us to get to know each other better. If you've got someone that walks in the back of your screen, I mean, I'm the first one that's going to wave hi to any little child that walks through or a dog that jumps up on the lap. I mean, I think it helps us just connect at a bigger level. So I think it's not being afraid to chat, get on a call immediately just like you would've walked to somebody's desk. And so we really used those tools to continue to make sure it felt and connected and had those conversations that were more realistic than just," Hey, here's the meeting and I got to bounce out."

Vincent Pietrafesa: Yeah. I love hearing that because even four years ago, right, you were, if your little kid would run in you're like," No. Dad's on the phone." And I told this joke the other day at the summit, I was on a call Betsy where someone's cat was cleaning themselves for 27 minutes out of the 30 minute call. And it was just okay. It was just normal, right in front of the screen. And it was just normal. You get to see people's lives and their backgrounds. I love hearing that because the personal side of business is very important. A lot of people have always put up, some people I should say, we put up those walls and those barriers, this is my work self. This is my personal self. It was nice to see the world's combined.

Betsy Schneider: And for example, right now I've invited you into my home. So you're seeing my real background and that's taking down a wall, taking down a barrier to say," Welcome. Here's a little bit more about me." You've just learned more just by seeing my holiday background today.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Yeah. And I love that. The first thing I did before I even started in the podcast is I commented on that and I smiled. Just things like that. I love hearing that. I love talking about what BI WORLDWIDE is doing and the inspiration. Inspiring employees, keeping them there. See Ajay, you want to keep me here? Listen to Betsy.

Betsy Schneider: Oh yeah.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Of course, I'm with you. Don't worry about it. I'm with you. So what really do you think is at the root of inspiring them?

Betsy Schneider: I think honestly, it's really about meaningful work when you talk about employees. So we'll talk about employees first. We do a lot of research around this and employees are motivated to work harder when they find meaning in their work. So meaning, passion, cetera. I'm going to view just a couple numbers at you that I just have off the top of my head that I think about all the time. 94% of employees who find meaning in their work are willing to work hard for their customer, as opposed to only 57% of employees who don't find meaning in their work. I think if you can give people a sense of meaning and purpose at work, it's a great predictor on how much effort an employee's going to give you. And that's what we work with companies on in terms of employee. Now sales people are employees too. So the same thing would apply to sales people. How do they stay motivated? They need to have meaningful work. They to be trusted. I mean, if you can say," I trust you with this," then you're not micromanaging. You're not on top of people. When you're talking about consumers and being loyal to the brand, for them, it's just inspiring them by connecting them and making them feel like, you know what, I can drive this brand forward. I'm actually part of this brand. I like it so much. And we know those brands where we've just got cult followers, right? How do they do that? What's motivating them? It's the feeling that they're important to the brand, they're part of the brand, they meaningful. So I think that's one area that we can always continue to work on finding that inspiration, finding that passion and truly giving people something that's meaningful versus, mm-mm( negative) I'm coming to work. And I'll say this, some jobs don't seem like they would have a lot of meaning potentially, but there is always meaningful work. You can make the connection of what somebody's doing to what the end result is. So it's finding that connection and making sure that purpose is shared so that when that employee comes in that day, or that salesperson is ready to go, they know by what I'm doing, this end result is really helping someone else get what they need.

Vincent Pietrafesa: I like that. And thanks for sharing some of those tips. Is that some examples of some of your favorite ways to get team members engaged?

Betsy Schneider: Those are examples of how they would get engaged. And I think it really is saying ownership of the project, direct responsible individual. So somebody owns it. So if you have a project and you say," You know what, you are my expert, you are on it. I trust you." And even though you're in there having guidance, et cetera, when it's time to potentially present to a board or to present to a bigger group, it doesn't always have to be the leader that's doing that presenting. You can open it up and say, you know what, I'm going to turn it over to our expert on this project. Who's put their soul into this and giving them that opportunity. Also, I think understanding your team. So there's lots of the tests you can take. Are you extroverted or introverted? Are you analytical or a driver? All of those tests. I think understanding. So if you've got a teammate that is very thoughtful and very quiet and you're in a Zoom meeting, they are never going to get a word in edgewise. So it's pulling them and drawing them out." Hey, Sherry, what do you have to share? You've been thinking about this" and actually calling them into the conversation or for the extreme extrovert who's doing all their thinking externally to say," Those are great ideas. Let's hold on that. So we make sure we hear from everybody." So I think it's keeping them engaged that way too, making sure that they have a voice so that when they leave at the end of the day, they know they've contributed. And then finally, a big part of our business is recognition and rewards, but you cannot thank people enough. And the more specific you can be about why you're thanking them and the closer it is to the action that they did, the better it's going to be received. Even to the point, you can find out if people like to be thanked publicly or privately in an email or verbally. And so if you can understand your team members, then I think you can be a big difference.

Ajay Gupta: It may not come as a surprise to you of Vincent as an introvert. So I usually have to pull things out of him in a meeting.

Betsy Schneider: And me too. Could you tell.

Ajay Gupta: So Betsy, a lot of our listeners are younger professionals or college student because of the amount of work Stirista does with some of the younger professionals. So would love to get your feedback for people just starting their career or looking into marketing. What are some of the critical skills that they need today that they didn't need before?

Betsy Schneider: So that is a really good question because I love working with younger people. My newest hire is right out of college, actually. I like having a younger team because I think they bring a great perspective to the business and a business where there's some tenure people as well. So it brings that life into it. Some of this skill sets first are fundamental skill sets. You have to be an excellent writer and an excellent speaker because you're going to be putting messages out in the marketplace. You're also going to be talking to prospects and customers. So you have to have that right presence and we can teach some of that. But the writing skills are extremely important. Also, you have to be a strong thinker. So you have to be able to be in a room and be able to express your opinion, even if it's different than somebody else's. And with part of that expression comes the ability to have grace with the discussion. So it's not railroading somebody, it's a way to speak that allows the conversation to continue. So that's yes. And the whole idea of validating other people's opinions versus just saying," Nope, it's my way." Those are some softer skill sets. In terms of skillsets that specifically help marketing, obviously digital is really important and under standing the landscape, the more skillsets that you have in terms of search in terms of analytics and data are extremely important, as well as visual if you can. Now, it's very rare that you'll get one person with all of those, but the more that you can share and the more passion you have around it, even if you've got some experience doing video for your own self that comes into play with me. So I'll look at that. And then finally, as you are coming out of college, the more experience you have in the customer service arena, the more interesting you are, because that tells me, okay, they worked with some tough people out there. So they've learned how to do that, give and take and back and forth and respond to customer needs. So those are some of the things I would recommend.

Ajay Gupta: Yeah, that's interesting. But we have found some people who have worked in the high stress retail environments, in college, or even as waiters have done pretty well at Stirista dealing with client issues and challenges.

Betsy Schneider: Yeah.

Ajay Gupta: So one of our signature questions has to do with LinkedIn. So given your job title, I'm sure you get a lot of unsolicited messages on LinkedIn. We'd love to know, what's a message that gets through your inbox and what's one that really annoys you. That's like a pet peeve for you.

Betsy Schneider: I bet everybody who gets asked this question could go on and on. So I get many messages, emails and on LinkedIn, many every day. And the ones that get my attention are the ones where somebody has clearly done their research. So they use the language we use. They bring up a problem I have and they're very succinct in their message. If I get a relevant message, even if I know I'm not going to buy anything from them, I'll reply and congratulate them on the great job that they did reaching out." Thank you so much. I really appreciate the way you reached out." Sometimes they'll have a little humor in there and that'll get my attention too, but you have to be careful on balancing that out. Okay. The ones I hate. So my nickname is Betsy. Beth, Becky. So my name is wrong right away. That's a problem or it's misspelled. And then the use of what I call superfluous words. I'll give you an example. I was just reaching out to see if maybe possibly we could get together and you could tell me about some of the problems that you're facing. Delete. There's no time for extra words like that. Tell me what you want to tell me, make it relevant. You can find out what's happening in our business. We're posting on LinkedIn. We're online, even though we're privately held. Now, imagine if you're a publicly held company, how much more you could find out from investor calls from just doing some smart research. So that is a LinkedIn message that'll get my attention and then one that I absolutely will delete as fast as possible. I will not answer everyone. I can't.

Vincent Pietrafesa: I think Ajay, that is a first with those words, right? We've had over a hundred guests and it's those words. It's the maybe, the possibly, that's awesome, because just get to the point and that's it. I love that. That's a first, we appreciate that, Betsy. Yeah.

Betsy Schneider: And they're demeaning words, maybe possibly. Every time you say one of those, it goes down and down and down. Now I'm not feeling very confident if it's maybe just possibly.

Vincent Pietrafesa: That is very interesting.

Ajay Gupta: Spoken like a true communications major.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Yeah.

Betsy Schneider: Now I hope I didn't say those words too many times in this.

Vincent Pietrafesa: You did not. But that's very helpful. People love the LinkedIn question because you get so much feedback and all those people out there who write us and now come up to us and say, the LinkedIn question. I tell my sales people how to reach out to people now because of that. So, great advice. Betsy, take us back. I mean, you said about the re- imagining of the brand, the switching over to orange, but talk about some other shining moments of your work. What are you most proud of your time there at BI WORLDWIDE?

Betsy Schneider: Absolutely. I am most proud of developing people. So I have had people working for me for many years of my career and a lot of young people, and I'm proud of many marketing moments and talk about those as well. But I am super proud of developing these people and helping them to get their start in business. What I like the best is when they come in, we get them started and I say," I am going to help you get to where you want to go next," because Ajay, you said, look, nobody stays at a company really long. BI WORLDWIDE is an anomaly and I understand that. Absolutely it is. So I say, I want to help you. I want to get you the skills you need. I want to get you the experience that you need so that you can grow and do greater and better things and help the world. And what makes me the most happy is if they grow within BI WORLDWIDE. That's a really easy way to do it because we're fairly large and we have lots of great business units again, where we're directly helping customers. And we also have a big client services group that's designing and delivering solutions and they can roll right into that if they would like to. And I have a lot of examples of that and that me feel really good about the work I do. So when I do leave BI WORLDWIDE, let's say retire one day. I'm hoping that is a legacy that I leave because that's what I am most proud of.

Vincent Pietrafesa: That's awesome. Betsy, before we get to a closing thought, let's get into, if people out there listen to the podcast, we'd love to get to know the guest personally as well. Tell us what you'd love to do besides decorate a beautiful Christmas tree there. And obviously the passion about your work there is so obvious, that shines through and the listeners can hear that. I guarantee that. What do you like to do for fun? What are some of your hobbies? What are you into?

Betsy Schneider: Well, first of all, let's start out with where I live, which is Minnesota. It's super cold. So I love to travel and experience new cultures. I mentioned I am an army brat. I lived overseas all of my grade school years. So I'm very comfortable traveling and I have a great group of friends and we travel all the time. So we're on adventurous travel. For example, we'll go to Argentina or we'll go to Peru. So we're doing some of that adventurous travel. Africa was a big trip on safari. So I love to travel and I'm very uncomfortable if there is not a trip planned. So I have to have a trip planned. So that is one of my biggest passions. The other things I would say that I love is, here the summers are awesome. So we love to boat on Lake Minnetonka. It's a very large lake. We have a boat that we love to entertain on. So we'll boat like crazy all summer long. Then I got to stay healthy. I've been at BI WORLDWIDE over 30 years. We've all said that. It's on my LinkedIn. You'll find me there. So that means I'm not very young. So I do strength training. I do palates. I love to play golf. And then I set this ridiculous goal. Well, you can tell me if you think it's ridiculous. This is my third year doing it, but my goal was to walk 2021 miles in 2021.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Wow.

Betsy Schneider: Which if you break your goal down is about 38.8 miles a week. You break it down a day. It's about 13,000 steps a day. So I did achieve the goal for 2021. I've hit it.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Wow. Nice. Congrats.

Betsy Schneider: That probably tells you a little bit about my personality. So those are the activities I like to do. And then I'm a very big reader. I love to read for fun too, because I'm on a screen so much all day. So I love to read I'm in a couple book clubs and that's just fun to get together with other people.

Vincent Pietrafesa: That's awesome. And no, that's not a crazy goal. Go ahead Ajay.

Ajay Gupta: Yeah. It's not crazy at all. Actually had the same goal. So I did it two years in a row. Well, 10,000 steps, yours is a little bit more. But after the pandemic, I figured the world was ending. So I gave up on the goal. So my next year's goal is to get back on the goal.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Ajay, that's the opposite of inspiring. What you just said there. You just gave up on the road.

Ajay Gupta: Now that the world is not ending, now I need to get my steps back.

Betsy Schneider: I'll tell you what, it was hard this morning to get up and go walk because I like to walk outside and it's a little too scary. It's pitch black, it's 6A. M and it's also slippery right now. So I did have to get myself to the gym and on the treadmill, which isn't as fun. But I always know if I go and I say, let's just do it for 15 minutes, I'll go and get three miles. I'll just go do it.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Do you have a next trip planned already?

Betsy Schneider: I'm headed to Colorado for the holidays. And then in January I have a girls' trip to Florida. Next two are coming right up. Not big ones, but fun ones.

Vincent Pietrafesa: That's amazing. We'll have to talk offline about your time in Argentina. That's where I spent my honeymoon in Buenos Aires and Mendoza. Then we went to Santiago, Chile. It was-

Betsy Schneider: inaudible.

Vincent Pietrafesa: Yeah. We took a bus trip during through the Andes there. It was awesome. Betsy, a final thought up there about BI WORLDWIDE, about yourself, about inspiring employees. Anything you want to share with the audience before we depart.

Betsy Schneider: I would say this, if you don't already know, figure out what inspires you and follow that path. And I know I am super fortunate to have found a place that truly inspires me for work because we spend so much time at work and you heard I have a lot of other passions and things that inspire me outside of work, but I want to spend those many hours being inspired. And it's really the intersection of work and friendships and fun and where everything collides and you can come to work excited and energized and ready to make a difference every day. So whether that's through meditation, whether that's through classes or workshops or reading, talking with friends, I would really say as a closing thought. Figure out what inspires you and work on making sure that's part of your path.

Vincent Pietrafesa: I love it. I love those podcasts where I start out with a smile and I end with a smile. Betsy Schneider, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been awesome. We really do appreciate your time.

Betsy Schneider: Thank you for having me.

Vincent Pietrafesa: It's our pleasure. That's Betsy Schneider, the vice president marketing BI WORLDWIDE. Go check them out. I'm Vincent Pietrafesa. That's three time champion, Ajay Gupta. This has been another episode of The Marketing Stir. Thank you so much for listening. Talk soon.

Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Marketing Stir Podcast by Stirista. Please like, rate and subscribe. If you're interested in being a guest on the podcast, email us at themarketingstir @ stirista. com. And thanks for listening.