How Talent Management Can Help Accelerate Growth with Jennifer Thornton

In this episode, host Eric Dickmann interviews Jennifer Thornton. Jennifer has developed her expertise in Talent Strategy & Leadership Professional Development over her exciting 20+ year career as an HR Professional.

The rapid growth of her consulting firm, 304 Coaching, has been largely due to Jennifer’s unconventional approach to building innovative workforce development solutions for companies who are facing breakthrough growth and accelerated hiring patterns.

She is a sought-after business strategist, specializing in start-ups and large value-based organizations. She assists her clients in building talent strategies that complement their business strategies to ensure exponential growth.

Eric Dickmann can be found on Twitter @EDickmann and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/edickmann and my website https://ericdickmann.com

Jennifer Thornton can be found online at https://304coaching.com/ on Facebook @304Coaching, and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferrthornton/

Episode Summary: The episode summary can be found at https://fiveechelon.com/talent-management-help-accelerate-growth-s3e13/

If you'd like to contact us with feedback or guest inquiries, please visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/podcast

For more information about Virtual CMO strategic marketing consulting services, visit The Five Echelon Group at https://fiveechelon.com
 
Episode #44

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Transcript

Carla: 0:01

The Virtual CMO podcast is sponsored by the strategic marketing consulting services of The Five Echelon Group. If you’d like to work directly with The Five Echelon Group and receive personal coaching and support to optimize your business, enhance your marketing effectiveness and grow your revenue, visit Five Echelon.com to learn more and schedule a free consultation.

Eric Dickmann: 0:24

Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business. Today, I'm excited to welcome Jennifer Thornton to the program. Jen has developed her expertise and talent strategy and leadership professional development over her exciting 20 plus year career. As an HR professional she's led international teams across greater China, Mexico, the UK, and the us to expand into new markets, manage franchise retailers and develop key strategic partners, all will exceeding business objectives and financial results. The rapid growth of her consulting firm three Oh four. Coaching has been largely due to Jennifer's unconventional approach to building innovative workforce development solutions for companies who are facing breakthrough growth and accelerated hiring patterns. Jen welcome to the virtual CMO podcast. I'm so glad you could join us today.

Jennifer Thornton: 1:28

Thank you. I'm excited to be here with you.

Eric Dickmann: 1:30

I wanted to start out today a little bit because we both have interesting company names. So I'm The Five Echelon Group of people. Ask me all the time. Where did you come up with that one? And you've got 304 consulting, correct. Where did that come from? Yeah.

Jennifer Thornton: 1:43

So three or four coaching actually came from a lucky number. He know the day I decided to go out on my own. I was like, what am I going to call this? And how am I going to help people understand, what I do? And nothing sounded right. And three Oh four is a mixture of dates that have always been important. So I've always looked at the number three or four is my lucky number. So I went with that.

Eric Dickmann: 2:07

That's great. And doing something unusual like that really helps when it comes to finding a domain. Doesn't it?

Jennifer Thornton: 2:11

It did it definitely helped. And the great thing is it creates conversation just like this people ask, where did that come from? And so it's a wonderful conversation starter.

Eric Dickmann: 2:20

That's right. You've got to have a story around your brand. I love that. So you have been in HR for a long time, right? Got some deep expertise there. And I just want to dive right into it because HR is one of these issues that I think is very confusing and troublesome for a lot of people. Why are so many companies bad at the hiring process?

Jennifer Thornton: 2:39

So when you think about HR and you think about the history with HR, it was the police of the company. And that is not what we want to look at as HR going into the 21st century and how we look at it. And so if you really look at HR as a talent strategy group, That is how you can drive your business. So when you look at why people are bad at hiring, there are several reasons. One, we don't take the time to really understand what we're hiring to. We don't take the time to do the work around what work needs to be accomplished and how do we do that? so we set ourselves up for failure from day one because we don't really know why we're hiring someone and what we want them to do. And then once that kind of goes through and we figure if we do figure out what we want to hire. We start to get really emotionally attached to candidates. And it's difficult to ask questions and get honest responses. Most people are not that self-aware. so when they give you an answer, often times, it's not the reality, it's their perception of how they perform or the stories they say in their head. And there's a lot of difficulties that go into hiring.

Eric Dickmann: 3:43

So interesting that you say that because, I regularly get job offers that come into my email box and there was one that came through and it was for a very senior level executive. And one of the job requirements was, must be familiar with Microsoft word and Excel. And I thought, in a limited amount of space in a job posting, you're hiring an executive and that's what you want to put as one of the top things for them to know. Yeah. It just, it struck me as that. They just don't really know what they want.

Jennifer Thornton: 4:10

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And it's also, so I'm somewhat insulting. You're like if I'm a candidate for this high level position, and all you're worried about is if I can use, Microsoft Excel, then there's an issue. And there's some connection issues to this job. The other thing I really work with clients around job descriptions is they are pieces of marketing. When someone reads that job description, it starts to set a tone to the culture way of work. Expectations how we play together within the work environment. And so we can't look at the job description as a check box of things we might want you to do. We have to look at it as the building of a culture.

Eric Dickmann: 4:47

I'm so glad that you said that because I firmly believe that I have seen so many job descriptions over time that you read through them and they're a pain to read through. They're boring to read through. They do nothing to make the position sound interesting or exciting, or the company, a vibrant place to work. And I think that too many HR departments look at it, as it's almost like an accounting document. it's full of ones and zeros and commas. it's not a marketing piece, but it should be.

Jennifer Thornton: 5:15

Absolutely. And I love that phrase that you use. It looks like an accounting, a doctor document, and you're correct their checklist. one of the things that I think is important to put in your job description is your values, your company, culture, and mission. Because at the end of the day, how we do the work is as important to what work we do. And so if you have things right, your job description, say your value is entrepreneurial spirits then in your job description, it should talk about that. it could say things around taking ownership of the business, having strong conversations with peers, when you see opportunity to drive business, that's a job description. That's what we actually do.

Eric Dickmann: 5:54

And you brought up a culture, which I think is such an important thing for many companies nowadays. So there's this idea about hiring that may be, you should be hiring more for cultural fit rather than past experience or specific skills or expertise. How do you coach companies when it comes to hiring, is cultural fit more important, equally important? How do you look at it?

Jennifer Thornton: 6:17

I think a lot of it depends on the job. Culture's always going to be a key factor because job satisfaction and job purpose comes from the way in which we do the job. You could do the same job in three different companies in one and not the other. And it's because of how you do the job. There are jobs that are incredibly technical and there are a handful of experts in the world. And we do have to look at those a little differently, but for the majority of the jobs out There, we need to have a balance. We need to have a balance between culture. Then we also need to take into experience in way of work. And then we also need to take in natural job behavior traits. So as someone high, detailed, or low detail, naturally as someone highly assertive, are they highly creative in their decision making because all of that will play out and to the success of the job.

Eric Dickmann: 7:09

So one of the things that I know you specialize in is this, OAD assessment. is that similar to like a disc assessment, which I think some people are familiar with, is it, three hours of sitting in front of a computer answering questions? What is it that look like to a job candidate?

Jennifer Thornton: 7:26

So the OAD, he is actually very quick, takes a candidate on average, less than 10 minutes to complete. And you're going to get a, just array of information. You're going to find out their natural work traits around how assertive they are creative, if they're methodical less patient, their adaptability and how they approach problem solving around creativity and emotional control. And we hire people all the time for their experience, but they fail because their traits don't match the job. And so the OAD helps us one select the traits that we need for a job at the time that we're placing that job, then we're able to look at our candidates in a more effective way and make sure that we've got culture experience and the right job traits. Then once that person, yeah. Onboarded, you can have amazing conversations. This is your natural work style. This is a natural work style of your supervisor. They're probably opposite cause we probably needed someone different. And so you can start to close in that conversation really early on about getting to know each other. And then we provide coaching reports and all types of tools, roles that allow people to them and use the OAD survey as a life cycle journey, the entire journey of their career.

Eric Dickmann: 8:41

How do you position that with the candidate? Because I know it can be a bit off putting, you talked about know bad job descriptions before, but sometimes when you go in, you have a barrage of interviews and then they say, Oh, we want you to take this personality test too. You're like, Oh, come on. It doesn't matter. Resume mean anything. How do you position it to be a win for the candidates?

Jennifer Thornton: 8:59

it really is a win for the candidate and that's what we have to make it clear to them. So if I'm interviewing for a job and I match everything, being able to be myself at work and not having an additional job stress of trying to fake my personality, that's a benefit. And so when we're talking to candidates and we're using the OAD, one of the things we talk about is we use this survey. There's no right or wrong, cause there's not, we need all types of people. There's no right or wrong. But what we want to ensure is that when you come on board that we use this tool to better communicate, To get you up to speed faster, and that you can come to work and be truly consistent to who you naturally are so that we're putting you in the most successful role. And no candidate is going to go, you know what? I don't really want to be successful. I don't want people to know me. Most people are going to say fantastic. Please let me come to work and be me.

Eric Dickmann: 9:50

So do you see companies that are implementing an OAD type assessment as being the type of companies that are very focused on improving their corporate culture, that they go hand in hand.

Jennifer Thornton: 10:02

Absolutely. I also find that companies who put a lot of work into the upfront process of hiring, they have a lot of heart in the way they hire, because they understand that when they hire someone, we change the course of someone's life. And when someone starts a new job, it impacts the course of their life. It impacts their livelihood, their financial, their happiness, their purpose, it affects their family. And so companies with a lot of heart to understand how important it is when we hire someone, those are the types of companies who I work with that bring OAD in so that we can ensure that people we're placing are happy in their role. These, if we're happy at work, we go home. We're happier with our family, therefore our family's happier and it really is a trickle down way to positively affect your community.

Eric Dickmann: 10:50

We're living in this crazy world right now of the workplace. Just being completely shaken up because of COVID people are working remotely that never have before companies have had to shift very quickly. Education is a mess right now because of teachers having to do remote teaching and students were learning. How are the systems really equipped to handle all that. Do you think it requires a very different kind of interview process of onboarding process? When you're talking about dealing with remote workers?

Jennifer Thornton: 11:21

it is, and we do have to look at it different my, corporate career before I started my own business, I was a remote leader. I led teams across the globe. I had teams, China and Hong Kong and London. I have led remotely for most of my career. And so when all of this started to change, it really made me pause and think, how did I do that? Because that is. What was natural to me now I can help others do. And so when you think about remote leader leadership, you have to start getting really attached to results and not hours in the seats. And I think that's one of the biggest switch for leaders at the end of the day, as long as the job gets done and they've gone above and beyond, I don't think anyone's going to complain, but we have to get really attached to the end result.

Eric Dickmann: 12:09

Such a big change. I talk about that often on this podcast that you really need to focus on the results and too many old school managers, especially they'd like to see people in those seats, don't they it's really a difficult a mindset shift for them.

Jennifer Thornton: 12:22

Absolutely. And hours in the seats does not equal productivity doesn't equal success. And in fact, as we work enough hours, we actually are, our productivity is going down. And so if we're getting attached and people are getting, recognition for how many hours they're behind their desk, but they're not getting recognized for results. Then we start to see our work put deteriorate, and our highly effective people choose not to be effective because they're not being rewarded for it.

Eric Dickmann: 12:53

I know one of the concepts you talk about as well as this idea of a talent cliff, which brings to mind the old game of lemmings, where one just went off the cliff after another. So talk a little bit about what is this concept of a talent cliff and how can companies avoid it?

Jennifer Thornton: 13:06

Yeah. So I have seen this time and time again. And in fact, been in companies who experienced this. And so what a talent cliff is it happens with really aggressive companies that are on that fast track, the ones that are growing very quickly. And so what happens is when you launch your company, the skill set out arcs. The actual sells. And so that's what causes the fast growth because we are doing so well. We know what we're doing and things start to really take off. But what happens is people get really focused on their business strategies and they don't put a talent strategy that matches the business strategy together. And so they stopped taking care of their people. They get so busy, they're not making good hiring decisions. They're not focused on development. They're not focused on great conversations. And so what happens is, as the business gets busier, our skills start to deteriorate because we are in crisis management, then the sells continue to escalate. And at some point your talent skills go off the cliff and then your sales will go right back behind it. And you will see that your sells start to dive bomb down. And no one wants that. And so many times when I see this happen, it's because we just don't have a talent strategy.

Eric Dickmann: 14:22

It's your best people who leave first.

Jennifer Thornton: 14:24

You're absolutely right. The best people want to be in an organization where they will be challenged, where they're going to learn where they get to work with the best of the best. And when you start to crisis manage, because you're looking at that cliff. Your top performers are gonna leave because top performers want to use their mind. They want to make their own decisions and they do not want to be managed in a crisis situation where they're being told what to do. They want to use their own mind. And those that you're left with are going to probably do what they're told. But the problem with that is then the leaders of the organization are frustrated because they're doing all the telling of people and they're standing around looking at each other going, why aren't people actually just doing their job? Why aren't they making their own decisions? Why am I having to tell everyone what to do? What was our own actions that created that?

Eric Dickmann: 15:13

It seems so many organizations that I know I've been a part of and friends as well. That what seems to happen is that hiring is always an afterthought. You wait until a problem starts to occur, people have left the organization and the team is too small. It seems like very few organizations really hire for growth, where they anticipate where they're going to be. They have confidence that they're going to get there. And so they start to bring people on board before that cliff or before that crisis point so that people can be trained and fully productive by the time they get there. Why do you think that is? And do you see that often when you're consulting with your clients?

Jennifer Thornton: 15:50

I do. I see it all of the time. And I think there's a couple of reasons. there are obviously financial reasons around that. but there's so many interesting strategies that you can use to approach that. So say, the work starting to get difficult in one department, but you're not sure. Quite ready for a full, salary, bring in a contractor part time, then groom that person. So when you're ready for full time that person's ready to come on full time. the other thing that we don't do, naturally I see this all the time in companies is we don't project the work and project the skills. And so if we have a business projection that our business is going to increase 30% in three years, that means our team needs to be 30% more efficient. Their capabilities need to go up 30%. So what do they need to learn today? So that in three years they have the experience to lead a company that's doing 30% more. So not only do we hire to it, we don't project the development that our teams need. And if we projected and did a better job developing, we probably would actually not need to hire as many people. And that would solve the financial issue.

Eric Dickmann: 16:57

So true, because I think especially for many publicly traded companies, there's always this push for increased earnings and profitability and at the same time expense reduction. So they're looking to cut costs at the same time. they're looking to grow and oftentimes one of the easiest places, especially for new executives that come in, is they just slash head count and so what ends up happening is it puts more work on fewer people.

Jennifer Thornton: 17:21

Yeah. And the work isn't reorganized. So oftentimes we do have to make difficult decisions around head count, but what we don't do is sit down and say what work has to be done. And one of the exercises I like to do with individuals when we're looking at work is, when you look at the 50 things you need this job to do, how many of the 50 is a must to do. How many is a nice to do and how much has actually vanity work. And when we stop and look at what we do every day in the workplace, there's a lot of vanity work is that work that doesn't drive the business that we're just doing, because someone likes it. Someone likes to see a report that way someone just thinks we're supposed to. And what happens when we caught get caught up in vanity work, we are losing productivity because the person doing it's like, why am I doing this? It doesn't make a difference. We've lost their purpose. And we are creating extra headcount that we actually don't need. And when I work with organizations, that's one of the first things we do is what is required. What is nice to do? what are we doing? Cause out of habit. And let's get honest about what's vanity work.

Eric Dickmann: 18:24

Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level? If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO onsulting service may be a great fit for you. We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step. We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads. How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers. How to strategically package and position your products and services. How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business. To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services. Now back to the podcast. You've mentioned training a couple of times on our conversation today. And I know from my own experience in the past that a lot of corporate training just isn't that good. it's not really teaching some of those soft skills that people need. for example, in all my years in the corporate world, I don't think I ever went through a training on how to interview someone and I think we've all seen this when we've been job candidates is you go and you talk to four or five people, they all ask you the same questions. And so Nope, but he is really exposing anything new. They're just hearing the same answers over and over again. why do you think this is that companies spend so little effort, really giving leaders and managers that kind of skills that they need, especially when it comes to dealing with people.

Jennifer Thornton: 19:56

Yeah, that is a really great question. And there are a lot different reasons. The most common thing I see as people are like, it's expensive. we don't have time. if you don't make the time, we know what the end result of that is. And one of the things, when you think about financials or, there's more than one way to make a dollar, you can save a dollar, you can make a dollar. And the cost of turnover is actually one and a half times. Someone's. Salary. So if you look at a hundred thousand dollars salary, if you lose that person, that's$150,000 hits your bottom line across multiple of places. So it's lost revenue, it's other people picking up the job. And so you lose revenue from them. It's training, onboarding, interview, it's all that stuff. But if I said, Hey, you've got this a hundred thousand dollar employee, do you want to invest?$10,000 and them across the next two years to make them amazing. They're like, Oh, that's just way too expensive. okay. I'm losing$150,000 is also expensive, which do you want to choose? You got a, or B you get to choose. but people just don't really understand the financial impacts of saving money and not educating people.

Eric Dickmann: 21:05

It's so funny because, we've got this whole concept of people who are, are addicted to being right all the time. And I'm sure you've worked for a few of those. I know I've worked for a few and those are exactly the kinds of people who tend to think that everybody else needs the training, but they don't. And so what happens is sometimes the troublemakers within the organization, some of the leadership. Are actually the people who could stand to benefit the most from some of these learnings yet. They're the ones who are too busy. Don't have time, but training's important for everybody else.

Jennifer Thornton: 21:35

Yeah. I'm so glad you brought that up. It's one of the things I work so often when I work with executive teams, we actually can get addicted to being right. And what happens is when we are right, we get a dopamine head. That feels good. We're pretty excited about that. Who doesn't want that, but it's the same dopamine hit. We would get if we were addicted to sugar or an alcohol or substance. And as we all know, the more dopamine you get, the more you need to have that feeling of happiness. And so what happens over time as if you have for really strong player and as he or she is starting to work up the ladder and they get to be right and right. And they're getting that hit and they need to be more right. Every time, by the time they get to an executive chair, they're addicted to that tip. hats. And so they have to be right. They will fight with you and say, the sky is purple today just to win. And when we are in that place, and that is our addiction, we can't hear the truth. So we can't hear the customer feedback. We can't hear why our company might be struggling. And because we have to know the truth, we will push false hoods down into our company and tell the company. Leave them make sure that they are true. And that is really the first sign of a company going into a failure mode because the leaders can't see the truth.

Eric Dickmann: 22:54

It sounds like the underpinning of what could become a toxic work environment.

Jennifer Thornton: 23:00

Absolutely. And when you have leaders that are addicted to being right, things like you'll go into a meeting and the supervisor that, the executive will say, I need to know what's wrong. Why are we not doing well with product X and the room falls silence. And the reason why is because they know they can't tell the truth, they can not tell that executive why they're waiting for the executive to say, this is why it's failing. And then they all nod their heads and they say, yes, even when they know it's not true.

Eric Dickmann: 23:27

Yeah. The last thing you wanted accompany is a bunch of yes men and women, Because you're not really getting the right kind of feedback from them and it's demoralizing.

Jennifer Thornton: 23:37

It is. And when you do you leave that stuff, a meeting and you go back to your desk, you're like, that's what, they think, so that's what I'm going to work on. But man, I wish they'd hear me. I wish I could tell the truth because I know I could save this product. I know I could get this product back on track, but they will choose not to. Because they'll get in trouble for telling the truth. And that is, that's a difficult place to put your team in and more than likely, they're not going to want to work with you and you will lose those talented people. Because again, they want to use their mind. They want to use their voices and they want to make a difference for the organization.

Eric Dickmann: 24:10

So speaking of demoralizing, I can't let this interview go without talking about the topic of compensation, because compensation certainly is meant to incentivize people, but sometimes the way it's rolled out can be a disincentive. I think about the back that, many companies are still on annual performance cycles. So there's an expectation that once a year I'm going to be reviewed and that review is going to lead to some sort of a salary increase. And if it doesn't, then I'm demoralized. Some people are very tied to a quarter bonuses or annual bonuses. And then the year comes when that doesn't happen, maybe because the company wasn't working well, but maybe that was a year where they were a stellar performer. What are companies really doing wrong when it comes to their compensation policy?

Jennifer Thornton: 24:55

So I think the old way, the old 20th century of looking at compensation as a flat budget, everyone's going to get 3% and you might get a teeny tiny bit more. You might get a teeny tiny bit less the other thing. And that's the old way. I think when you look at the 21st century, you have to look at compensation packages. Because salary is important and bonuses are important. We all have bills, but it's actually one of the lower, things on why people stay at a company it's not one of the top reasons people stay at a company. So if you look at how you want to spend your dollars, You can, once a year or however you want to look at some compensation and reward, but what if you also looked at training programs and said, if you are, you complete your goals this year and that puts you into, that next league, those people were looking at that next level of management. And if you get there and you do that this year, the next year, we're going to put you in our leadership Academy. And so you're going to take out.$30,000 worth of, training dedicated to you that's compensation that helps people. we also need to look at access and experiences. if you know the top level people, they get to do monthly round tables with the CEO, where they get to use their voice and talk about new, innovative ideas. They have. There's so many ways to compensate people outside of the dollars that we need to get really creative that will actually drive the business results, drive purpose, and really maintain your retention.

Eric Dickmann: 26:27

Do you think in that kind of a model, that consistency is the most important thing, or does consistency build expectation, which then is very easy to disappoint. Do you think it's better to reward people almost randomly when you know, certain things happen, they finished a project, they did an excellent job, here's a bonus rather than saying every December 31st, we're going to give everybody their performance review.

Jennifer Thornton: 26:51

Yeah, I think it's part of the equation. So those are spot bonuses. So if a company has, a budget every year and someone goes above and beyond and maybe takes on an extra project and really does something for the company and impacts then out of that spot bonus budget, then reward them and say, Hey, we appreciate the fact that you figured this project out. We landed this$2 million contract because of your hard work. So here is X dollars in a spot bonus. We want to say thank you for your hard work. And on top of that, we've also giving you, given you$2,000. And, continuous education budget. Find a conference you want to go to, we want you to work on yourself and have that personal development too, so that you can come back and do even more work to really land even bigger projects.

Eric Dickmann: 27:40

No, I love that. Do you think that the performance review is going by the wayside?

Jennifer Thornton: 27:46

I think that it is on its way out, but people are not ready to give it up yet. I think that there's some big changes that have to happen. and we're in some of those big changes, we are working in different ways and so we have to reward in a different way right now. but I've worked with several companies. In fact, this year alone about how they're going to handle performance reviews. And changing the mind and looking at it differently. It hasn't been easy. some companies have chosen to do it. Some have not. And I think time will tell on how each type of company lands and how they reward their employees. And what does that mean? Long term for them?

Eric Dickmann: 28:26

There's such a dreaded thing in the corporate world, managers hate to do them because they're sometimes complicated to fill out. You want to be fair employees, look at them with a bit of dread, right? They can because they look at every word and what do they mean by that? Or, if they're not rated a five or a 10 or whatever the scale was, what did I do wrong? there's a lot of stress that goes along with both completing them and receiving them.

Jennifer Thornton: 28:50

Yeah. And, I tell people all the time when I talk about performance reviews and we look at how are we going to reward performance? I always say it's about the conversation. It's not about the score. And so really the education. And again, it goes back to developing leaders. we don't want leaders that can't interview and, Put off candidates in the beginning, say we do get the candidate. we also don't want to end our relationship with them because we don't know to how to have great performance management conversations. And so that's a piece of the puzzle that leaders I have to understand. They have to understand how to have great reward conversations, how to, consistently apply accountability. The how to look at, consistently applying, jobs. And projects and those types of things, it's a big conversation. And I think companies have true talent strategies, understand how to teach their leaders to apply these techniques so that we're not setting. And are these archaic mindsets and these archaic performance review processes.

Eric Dickmann: 29:52

Jen, this whole idea of talent strategy really rings true with me. And I think it's something that's so important for companies because, as the old saying goes, people are your most important resource. How can people find out more about your coaching services and where to find you on the web?

Jennifer Thornton: 30:08

So our website is 304coaching.com, you can check it out and even sign up and have a free consultation with myself. I'd love to hear you and get to know what your needs are. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn at Jen Thornton. Jen Thorton ACC.

Eric Dickmann: 30:27

Okay. That's terrific. I will make sure we link all of that up in the show notes so that people can find you, this has been a fascinating conversation, and I think it's a great topic that isn't discussed as much as it needs to be. And so I really appreciate your insights.

Jennifer Thornton: 30:40

Thank you for having me. It was a joy.

Eric Dickmann: 30:41

Thank you. Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. For more episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast to subscribe through your podcast player of choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent lead flow and a highly effective marketing strategy, visit fiveechelon.com to learn more about our Virtual CMO consulting services.