Speaker 1: 0:10

I really push myself to focus in on whatever is stressing me out the most. First because I think getting that out of the way first will give you a lot more sort of perspective and clarity for everything else you have to do and you can get to some of the more fun things a little bit later in the day.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Welcome to Bubbling Out, where we're popping the norms of leadership and creating new, powerful ways to lead. This podcast is your sanctuary for discovering how to lead with resilience, manage, change your depletion and handle stress effectively. Join me for a series of breakthrough conversations, practical tools and mindset tips, and a peek into my weird and wonderful life as a leader and entrepreneur. All aims are helping you lead without compromising your time, energy, values or lifestyle. Hey everyone, welcome back to Bubbling Out. I hope you have all had a wonderful week and you are enjoying a bit of winter sunshine, even if it's cold outside. That's how it is here right in Leon at the moment. It's beautiful blue skies and it's freezing cold, and it's exactly how I love it. I have my dad. He's hilarious. He calls me during the week and he says Emily, I can see that it's a bit green Leon today and he actually loves trains and he's loved trains forever. He has one of the webcams for his trains on a bridge near us and he's constantly checking in and telling me how the weather is outside. It's the highlight of my day. I'm not going to lie.

Speaker 2: 1:45

Anyway, today I have got an amazing guest, kelsey McGuire. She is from Shardium. They are a company in the web through blockchain space, but we're not going to be talking about the company. We're going to be focusing in on Kelsey. We're going to talk all about her leadership, the struggles and the challenges that she's faced coming up from five or six years ago, being in a head of marketing role for a really big company in the space, to now being chief growth officer, and what that transformation look like.

Speaker 2: 2:17

What did she have to do to jump from a head of marketing to a CGO role? What were the shifts that she felt really benefited her and what were the things that she needed to work more on? She goes into all that and she's just such a wonderful energy we share a lot on the leadership bubble of balance that we talk about how she prepares herself for the day. I think you're going to love it. See you in there. So, kelsey, you are currently in a big role and we can go into that. What took you from being head of experiential marketing to chief growth officer? What did you have to change to get there?

Speaker 1: 2:54

Yeah, absolutely so. I did take a lot from my time as an experiential marketer at Consensus. That really led me into this role and that was a more holistic, campaign oriented way of thinking and that naturally flowed into a CGO type role and that, as the experiential marketer. How those were run were at Consensus, a lot of our big campaigns hinged on these large conferences like DevCon, ETH, Berlin I mean we can name dozens so I was used to pulling together all of these different teams to build out cohesive strategies around specific KPIs and in that way it was really similar to the CGO role. I would say that the level of buy-in and how you collaborate with, say, the founder of an organization, has evolved quite a bit from experiential marketer to CGO and that you're having a lot more direct conversations, your goal setting with the founder of the company or project. And it's really also important even more so, although these are essential across the board to establish those clear KPIs and have consistent, very clear communication.

Speaker 2: 4:03

Yes, and so that consistency with communication is such a big one, and one that I see done well and not done so well, right, and so how did you prepare yourself for that?

Speaker 1: 4:14

Yes, so I was somewhat used after being in the space for a number of years. I think I'd been in Web 3 full-time for probably about five or six years by the time I became the CGO at Shardium and it really was kind of that repetition making sure that you can get clear buy-in and being really straightforward with what you mean, and by that I mean outlining everything, leaving nothing up in the air. No one's guessing at anything. If you say we need to do better, what does that mean specifically If you're referencing a? Oh, are you filling out the strategy doc length, the strategy doc just being consistent, because as you scale in these types of roles, you have to scale in how clear and concise you are with your communication as well.

Speaker 2: 5:01

Definitely, and you mentioned the get-in buy-in right, and this is something that I've talked about in the podcast in the past. But what did getting buy-in mean for you?

Speaker 1: 5:11

Absolutely. This is a part of, I think, all of these types of leadership roles that can cause people to become marginally unhinged or enraged, and I think a lot of us have said that, yeah, because you're like, you've hired for this job. I am an expert in this role, I know what works, I have the numbers. Why are we not on the same page? And really what that means to me is having those individual conversations that you need, outlining the very clear business case and really helping the team or whoever the stakeholders are that you're working with, understand the benefit of moving forward together and almost the challenge or problem that you're fixing with whatever you're doing.

Speaker 1: 5:55

I think a great example of this was a sort of internal partner marketing process that I developed and worked with the team on and we got buy-in because there were a lot of challenges with setting expectations with these internal external partners, excuse me and they didn't know exactly what they were getting. We didn't know what we were providing as part of these different types of partnerships, and really kind of bringing people together, addressing the issue, kind of managing some of the initial pushback at times, was really really important, but we got on the same page and you just kind of talk to people, try to reach them where they are so that they can understand the benefit that this would provide to their specific team, because folks have good intentions and we're all trying to do roughly the same thing and sometimes different people want to get there in different ways, so you got to get everyone on the same page.

Speaker 2: 6:49

Yes, 100%. I understand because when like same kind of situation, I was a product like well, not product, but product marketing. That was always my focus and getting buy-in from the product team was one of the hardest parts of my job. Because they're like why do we need to improve the UX, that kind of thing, and it's like you have to make your case for it. You can't just bring opinions and beliefs, you have to build a case. You have to have a. I used to create paper trails Like this is what's being done. This is what the customer support team was saying. We just had this meeting and you have to be very strategic and detail-oriented.

Speaker 1: 7:29

Absolutely. I completely agree, because reoriented folks towards like we're building something for people so they have to be able to use it, they have to be able to understand it. We'll have to be you, think about it is always an important reset.

Speaker 2: 7:42

And you mentioned as well that you used to get a bit of pushback. I used to get it all the bloody time when I was a bit younger. It used to impact me in a way. I used to feel rejected, I used to feel like my ideas were no good and I used to feel frustrated because I put so much work into something right. And so how did you deal with these pushbacks in the CGO role?

Speaker 1: 8:01

Yeah, I think it's really important to have a network and a community of fellow professionals that you can connect with. So if you feel like you're starting to falter a little bit or you're wondering why maybe you're not quite getting your ideas across, having just one or two other people in the I mean specifically for me in the Web3 space that are former colleagues that I've worked with before to sort of bounce ideas a little bit and sort of talk through some of these challenges has been a really helpful way to kind of receive that little bit of extra support and perspective that you won't necessarily get from your colleagues where you are currently.

Speaker 2: 8:41

Yeah, it's having that non-biased support.

Speaker 1: 8:44

Exactly. I think that that's absolutely essential because with these roles being so challenging and fast paced, that will really a lot of times just feel like a breath of fresh air and you can sort of recenter reorient yourself a little bit and keep kind of moving forward and you know what you'll get there, because if you're in this role again, you have the experience, like you've figured out, yeah, and I think that's a good point, though.

Speaker 2: 9:08

Just quickly back to the support network work, though. That's a really great copy mechanism and a really great way to talk your thoughts through and be able to bounce your ideas off people and understand is this just me, or do I need to come on it a different way? How can I make this work? And it also helps you to understand the other person as well, and maybe someone else has dealt with a similar personality in a different time, so I fully support that as well. It's something that I'm in group coaching. I've been in group coaching for many years now, but when I was a CMO, I used to have a mentor. She actually prepared me for my CMO role, and she was the one who was like what Fuck that? No, that is not how it things should be. You need to do it this way, try this tactic, and so having someone who was very ballsy and many, many years ahead of me was very helpful.

Speaker 1: 10:01

Oh, that's fantastic. I think really being open to establishing those kinds of connections throughout your career is really really important, because we can always keep learning and there are a lot of amazing, very talented people out there that I really do believe are willing to connect, at least offer some thoughts or be a mentor as well.

Speaker 2: 10:22

On the terms of mentorship, who did you look up to or who did you work with? Who helped you feel prepared for walking into a senior role?

Speaker 1: 10:31

You know I'm thinking through former colleagues. It was more of a kind of collegial, supportive type environment Outside of work. I do feel fortunate that I have very strong family, friends, partner type foundation that will help me ground me and also understand that, yes, this is absolutely something to move forward with, these ideas are great and so on and so forth. But in terms of a mentor-mentee type relationship, I feel like what prepared me more was some of the intense challenges of working in early web three, more of a baptism by fire type experience than it was a mentor-mentee type experience, although I've been fortunate enough to connect with a lot of fabulous people along the way.

Speaker 2: 11:26

Yeah, it's really interesting that you are able to lean on your family and your friends, because a lot of the time it's opposite, because their family or friends are like I have no fucking clue what you do, don't talk to me about it. Especially my family. They're like we can maybe talk about the team dynamics and stuff, but none of them have run companies and none of them have been in the finance space or the tech space. So for me, having the mentors, that was the number one goal for me to find someone like that, and I just it would have been delightful to have a family who knew about crypto and finance and managing a company. So, zooming out of that part of the conversation, I want to just focus on you and how you prepare to walk into work on a morning. What does life look like before you walk into your role and start working with other people?

Speaker 1: 12:16

Yeah, absolutely so. I like to get up fairly early, around like six or six thirty. Sometimes that also means seven. I found that it really makes me feel great to feel like I can get some sort of start on my day a little bit early, and that's helped me maintain a little bit more balance throughout the rest of the day. So get up definitely, grab some cold brew coffee which is essential like as much as I can possibly get at all. I did not have enough today.

Speaker 1: 12:47

So, and just sort of I do initial kind of check through of everything. I work across a lot of different time zones, so it's really important to me to also feel like I can address anything that needs to say happen with part of the team that's in India as early as I possibly can, or prepare or write if I'm writing an op-ed or something early when I'm drinking my coffee, because I find that it's a little bit more efficient, it's extra fast, I feel really great about that. And then a lot of times I'll also try to go down to the gym just for like a quick half hour because or else, like I feel like as the afternoon progresses I've been inside all day. I've probably been sitting for eight hours and things kind of can drop off in the productivity department. So just making sure that I'm taking care of myself and doing those types of things has helped me a lot when I kind of prepare for today every morning.

Speaker 2: 13:41

I love it. I love that you put time aside for you to start with and you're not just opening your phone straight away, which is actually, I would say, 99% of the people that come to me. That is the number one habit that they want to get rid of is the phone check on the morning. But when you get out of bed and I mean not when you go for a pee, but after you've had your pee and your brush your teeth what is the routine? Do you have anything apart from make your coffee and maybe go to the gym?

Speaker 1: 14:08

Not, much, I'll grab my coffee, sit down, open up my computer and get through that initial batch of messages questions. I've been trying to do something where I really push myself to focus in on whatever is stressing me out the most first. Okay, good idea, Because I think it's so easy to start pushing that off throughout the day and then it's sort of in the back of your mind for the entire day and maybe you have a hundred other tasks. I know that I usually do. But getting that out of the way first will give you a lot more sort of perspective and clarity for everything else you have to do and you can get to some of the more fun things a little bit later in the day, Like for me that means some of the creative campaigns, reviewing, like new creative assets for whatever you know, t-shirt or swag, or signing off on those types of things I can do pretty efficiently and quickly and it's really enjoyable to see what you know, what my creative direction has generated with our designer.

Speaker 2: 15:04

So you're doing all the fun stuff and so on that. I? Have you ever heard of the working genius model before? No, I don't think I have. It's my favorite model ever. I don't generally use models I use a few with the coaching but the working genius is the most accurate model I've ever utilized with my clients and it's very much about where. Are you focusing too much on areas that you are not good at and you don't like doing so? You mentioned that you do the things that are stressing you out the most. I wonder, are they the ones that you don't feel as either confident in or you don't like them?

Speaker 1: 15:36

Oh yeah, I would definitely agree with that. I think it's sometimes if it's something that's been pushed off too long, but it is something I know I'm pretty good at. That falls into the stressed out category because for me, like sitting down and writing something like an op-ed either it's flowing and it's working and I feel great about what I'm writing out, or it is like pulling teeth, but I'm really pushing myself to have kind of a consistent level of consistency there. So that can be in the stressful bucket. But also things I just don't like quite as much Some of those just updates or some of the presentations that I'm not as thrilled about, or reviewing some of the budget pieces, which can be an exciting category. So you're like, wow, I have so many amazing things that we can do this year and we're planning for it. But like sitting down with a calculator and making sure everything is correct and really buttoned up is in the slightly less fun category, even though it's a small job.

Speaker 2: 16:39

You're good at it, but you don't like to do it Exactly. This is why I love like. Honestly, it was like the light bulb went off when I discovered this and I'm going to send you the link. You have to do it, yeah, but it really helps you to hire people because you understand where your genius zone is. So then you understand what needs to be filled in, and you will find yourself doing things you don't like, but much less of it, and you'll be able to focus your time on the things that you're really good at.

Speaker 1: 17:03

I love that. I was really fortunate to be able to bring someone amazing on that works directly with me and he's based here in New York City. So, hey, Anson oh, that's amazing and he is really great across the board, and it has been fantastic about picking up some of these pieces that are too time consuming for me and also I'm really focused on trying to do the things that almost like only I can do. So what do I bring from my unique background and skill set and add? That adds a lot of value to Shardium, to whatever project I'm working with, and really try to use a lot of my time doing those things and really hiring talented people where what they can only do and what they focus on and do great work with is something that complements that Brilliant.

Speaker 2: 17:54

Yeah, I think you've already figured out. You're genius, you're good. We won't go down the human design route. I don't know if you've ever done your human design before. No, I don't believe I. Okay, that's next level. Some people listen to this will understand that, but it's, we'll do another episode on that. So you have all these tasks and you get up in the morning, you do the ones that are most stressful, the ones that you don't necessarily like, but they need to get done, and you can move on to the creative stuff. How do you prioritize this work and help your team member prioritize that work?

Speaker 1: 18:26

Yeah. So I tend to look at things across my calendar for the week, the month and so on, and really I'll block out different pieces of my calendar for these different tasks based on what needs to happen that day. And for me it's also great and very gratifying then to look back because, you know, at the end of the day sometimes my brain is just mush. I have nothing left. If you know, my husband's like what did you do today? I'm like I actually I don't even remember at this point, but it's great to be able to look back and be like, wow, I accomplished so many things that I feel really good about. I clearly prioritize based on that to folks I work with. So I'll be like, hey, here's kind of what we have on today.

Speaker 1: 19:07

I have a detailed timeline that is maintained by the person that I mentioned that I brought on, and we're constantly arranging priorities based on what's coming in and sort of those mid to long term projects, and if things come up to me that need to be managed by someone else on the team, I'll ping them in and let them know for sure, hey, this just came up, we need it done before end of day, and they know that if that can't happen, talk to me about it, because we can rearrange the priorities. But I have a great sense of generally what's going on based on these timelines and different documents and processes that we've established. So I feel very confident, you know really clearly, letting folks know when something needs to be in, why that's important, and letting the conversation be like go both ways as well If there's too many priorities or if there's a level of confusion, because I think we've all worked places where every single thing is the top priority and that is just not prioritization. Nope.

Speaker 2: 20:12

It's very difficult and I like that you're able to empower your team members to understand why things are prioritized, how to prioritize things, and that they can come to you when they're like literally cannot do this, like there's no way this can happen. And especially the last minute request, which was like is like very typical in Web three, how do you guys handle it like as a team? How do you stay resilient when you're like I've been working on all of this all day and I've got so much to do and now I've got this other bloody thing to do and I just want to go home and chill and have my dinner, I think it is being really aggressive with prioritization, because generally there's going to be periods, like you mentioned, where it is the I just need to sign off.

Speaker 1: 20:53

for the rest of the day I'm exhausted. But I think more often than not, if you really are aggressive with prioritization, that should not be happening on any sort of regular basis. So I think it is setting. The expectation is these are the priorities. Why general timeline and when things do start to pile up, just really setting great expectations across other teams that are maybe asking for these things, or external groups, partners, parties that are asking for these things.

Speaker 1: 21:24

Because burnout does not help anyone and I'm very opposed to the. I send messages at all sorts of weird hours, but I try to make it very clear to my team I do not expect you to answer at 6am, I don't expect you to answer at 10pm. Those are the times if I'm thinking of things, I want to get things out. But here's what my expectation is for when you do answer and for you. And we really want to avoid burnout. I'm not trying to glorify working too many hours, because then no one has creative ideas anymore and everything gets kind of stagnant and depressing, and we really want to avoid that.

Speaker 2: 21:57

Yeah, no, and I love that. That's what you do and the fact that you explain to them. You literally do not respond to this. That is something I do, as well as my assistant, because I do the same. Like, yeah, like I might do it. Don't respond. Yeah, exactly, just have your dinner go to sleep. Like this is, this can wait till tomorrow, and the fact that you're doing that, you're giving them the confidence to also implement their own time boundaries. Moving forward with you, with other team members.

Speaker 1: 22:26

It's very healthy. Good yeah, because I've been. I think we've all had experiences where the culture is not like that, or really I think it comes down to who's managing you whether or not they're like that, because how many cultures, even a bigger conversation? But really trying to set that and put that out there where it can work for, say, you and I, where we are having ideas and writing notes at 6am or 10pm or you know, I want to get these last things done and I feel like that should fall on me because that's my particular responsibility, but making sure that folks know that those aren't the hours I'm expecting them to respond and that there's, you know, not a constant state of emergency.

Speaker 1: 23:08

You know, this is important stuff. We're excited, we're not saving lives. If something is urgent and an emergency which needs to be used very sparingly for real catastrophic situations, then you can market as emergency and set the expectation that, hey, if I'm sending you notes, usually don't respond. If I say emergency, all caps, if I call you, then something big is happening and then we will need to have these after hours moments. But that really should not be happening very often at all no, unless you've been hacked.

Speaker 2: 23:40

That is the emergency. Yeah, like literally. And then we go into a different topic, which is crisis communications. But that's fun. Oh yeah, that's all the whole of the road. Yeah, but yeah, no. It's really interesting, though, because I'm wondering if you've been an experience that you probably have where you have tried to implement boundaries and you've been pushed back by the. You mentioned the founders or the managers, the leaders, who don't have boundaries right? Have you ever been in that situation before? Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 24:12

And a lot of times it's something that's prevalent through every level of the organization that I've seen and it is conversations. It is pushed back, but also there's going to be always a level of stress if that is not resonating with whoever you're working with around losing your job. I think you know if you're pushing back in the company culture is that if someone calls you, pick up the phone, it doesn't matter. You need to evaluate whether or not that place is a good fit for you, because you're not going to necessarily single-handedly change everything over there and you need to understand like what is working and not working for you and make decisions accordingly 100%, and it all comes back down to values at the end of the day.

Speaker 2: 24:59

What's okay for you?

Speaker 1: 25:00

Yeah, I completely agree and you need to understand that and really know that and try to stay true to that. We're all going to go through experiences where maybe that's slightly compromised through a period of time and maybe that does help you move forward in your career. But understand when you've had enough, yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:17

And I think that's very scary, because people are like, from the experience my experience is been both ways Like I haven't pushed back when I was younger, in my early 20s, because I was like this is what it's like in crypto, like 2016. But then, as you get older, you have a life Like you have responsibilities and you have less energy, you need more sleep, and so that was always a sticking point for me Like how do I implement these boundaries that I desperately need because I'm so fucking tired, without pissing people off? And that was something that I worked really hard to do and, fortunately, I got there, but it was not without challenges. Sounds like it was a bit of a journey for you.

Speaker 2: 25:58

Oh, yeah, it was fun, and I actually run a workshop on boundaries and I always do it live on LinkedIn and the people who come that is, their biggest fear is that I'm going to get fired. What if I get fired? And so I'll send you it. But, to be honest, I don't think you have a problem. Pretty good about that now. Yeah, I think you've sorted it. So you mentioned previously, when we were having a chat before, that setting an example was really important for you. Is there anything that we haven't covered, that you would like to discuss on that point.

Speaker 1: 26:31

Yeah, I think we did touch on most of that already with attempting to communicate very clearly, defining what you mean. My big thing and I'm not perfect at this either You're in a rush, you forget to do it or you don't put in the energy to do it. You're a little overextended. But, referring to a document, link it, please, and I really try to do that as well whenever I can, unless it's overly like just abundantly clear exactly what this is, and I know they have the resource and then really trying to set healthy boundaries when it comes to when messages should be responded to, even if I'm working long or strange hours. The folks on my team directly supporting me unless they need to be there as part of it should should not be. So I try to to set a decent example there, but some of that might be me just saying that rather than me actually working normal hours, yeah, and sometimes it's okay.

Speaker 2: 27:31

right, we talk about work life balance, but I just I really believe it's more work life integration. It's like what is okay for you, like, do you want to work lots of hours? Is that okay? Can your body manage it? Can your mind manage that? And that's fine. It's different for everybody.

Speaker 1: 27:45

I completely agree because sometimes, or a lot of times so, it could be really long hours and some of these projects I'm working with for shardium as this current role that I have, but it's a lot of really exciting stuff. So if I'm feeling still energized and I'm feeling kind of in the flow of getting all these things done and putting these pieces together, that can feel really great and fulfilling to and that can be a few days maybe where the hours are extra extra long, before maybe going back down to the to the normal amount.

Speaker 2: 28:15

Yeah, it's really good that you can just shift and then have it as like a non-negotiable and then you can. Okay, cool, we're going to recalibrate and we're going to keep going the way we were before, exactly Amazing. In the last portion of bubbling out, I've introduced a new segment. Are you ready to pop into the bubble? Yes, let's go. So three questions. Question number one what gets you up every day?

Speaker 1: 28:38

I would say people, the people in my life, my job and everything I do is human and people oriented, and really that's what kind of keeps things exciting and I just people are endlessly fascinating, whether you're close and they're supportive and you know them or not.

Speaker 2: 28:57

I love that one. Okay, Question number two what one thing do you do that keeps you sane?

Speaker 1: 29:03

I would say moving around. I've made the mistake in the past where I've become overly sedentary and it is to my mental health, to the detriment of my mental health. Basically, fewer are good ideas like less energy and you know, just kind of moving to process things really does help me so much.

Speaker 2: 29:25

I totally agree. That's my thing as well. I have to. I dance around. I do somatic dancing on the morning and I have to go for walks in the middle of the day, like no matter what the weather is. So I feel you on that one. How can you help our leaders have more success? Is there any one thing that you feel has helped you get to where you are? I know success is different for everybody, but your kind of success.

Speaker 1: 29:47

Yeah, seek to understand when things have nothing to do with you. I love that one. You know it can be applied through interpersonal things. It can be applied through maybe a new project comes up and maybe you'd be really good at it, but it doesn't really impact your KPIs. You don't have time. Don't take it on, even if you maybe are better at it than the person that does manage it. Be thoughtful and aggressive with your time and what you're trying to accomplish Wonderful.

Speaker 2: 30:15

Yeah, don't chase all the shiny objects. Yeah, even though it's very tempting. Yes, it is all the time. Anyway, thank you so much for popping into the bubble, kelsey. It's been wonderful and it's just lovely. If you can all see her on camera, she looks lovely and glowing for the morning. Love it, it's so nice. I love it because people make an effort to come on the podcast and they always do their hair and look great, so I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 30:36

Thank you so much and thanks for having me on as great as we can with you.

Speaker 2: 30:45

That's all for today on Bubbling Out. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a five star review. Your reviews and subscriptions help more people, more leaders, more entrepreneurs like you access the Bubbling Out podcast. Also, if you're on Instagram or TikTok, go and follow me. Emily Rose Dallara, coach for behind the scenes, dog vids, somatic exercises and me DJing sometimes. See you next time in the bubble.