Tackle’s Nicole Wojno Smith: Peers Are the New Mentors

Perspectives is a weekly series interviewing the best marketing leaders. Subscribe for interviews straight to your inbox.

‍

In the spring of 2019, Nicole Wojno Smith welcomed a new CEO. After one board meeting, the new CEO approached her and said, “I don't like how you're presenting the funnel view. Can you find a different way to do that?”

Nicole asked if he had a preferred visualization or model.

“I don't know,” he replied. “Just do something different.”

Nicole had no idea what to do. This was one of her first interactions with the new CEO and she didn’t know how he had seen previous marketing leaders present funnel performance to the C-suite.

As luck would have it, she’d recently joined Pavillion (then Revenue Collection), a professional community for revenue leaders. She knew the community contained hundreds of VPs of marketing and CMOs. While she doubted they should share their board slides with her, she had little to lose by asking.

“Within a few hours, we had 10 examples,” Nicole recalls. “Things like that illustrate the power of a community and building a network of people that you can learn from.”

Nicole’s career is full of moments like that. While others are content to struggle alone, she’s built, adopted, and joined supportive communities. She admits that asking for help is sometimes hard, but also credits peer-based learning as a key driver in her career growth and success.

I caught up with Nicole, who currently leads marketing at Tackle.io, to discuss why peers are the new mentors and how her role as a marketing leader has evolved over the years.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What first drew you to marketing?

It goes back to my time at a PR agency. I was taking night classes to get my MBA. I realized that there was more potential to drive business impact on an organization from the marketing side of the house, rather than the PR side.

Our CEO also recognized that I didn't want to do PR forever. He created a role for me to lead our agency’s marketing. We were like the cobbler’s children: we had no shoes. We were telling our clients, “You should be doing this,” but we weren’t doing it ourselves.

"I was responsible for the entire strategy and execution—from the top to the bottom of the funnel."

So I started building out the agency’s marketing function. At the time, marketing automation tools were in their infancy. We started using a marketing automation platform for our own needs, and I realized that our customers should be using this as well to improve their marketing strategies. I started building out a separate team focused on our customers’ marketing. I led all the sales, marketing, and professional services efforts.

For the five years I was in that role, I was responsible for the entire strategy and execution—from the top to the bottom of the funnel. It was a very cool experience. Eventually, the agency got acquired by a private equity firm. I stayed for about a year, before I decided to move over to a tech company. That's when I feel like my true startup journey began.

I went to UserIQ, a customer success platform based in Atlanta. I was employee number eight. There was no marketing when I came in. I had a great opportunity to build everything from the ground up. I was there for almost four years, before I found Tackle.

When I joined Tackle, they were in their seed stage with no marketing. Now, we have more than 20 people on the marketing team.

Were you looking for another blank slate when you joined Tackle?

I was not! I had said, “I don’t want to build something from scratch again. I don’t want to go to an early-stage company.” But I’d been looking for a while and had talked to around 20 companies and none of them got me excited enough to make a move. When I met with Tackle, I thought they were amazing. The leadership team was great. They had nailed product-market fit. As I learned more about their vision, I knew it was an opportunity I could not pass up.

So I said, “I'm gonna build something from the ground up again, but I swear that this will be the last time!”

You secured your first leadership position after just six years in marketing. How did you manage your learning and development?

When you're an executive, especially at a tech startup, it can be a lonely role. Your CEO hires you and expects you to know how to do the job. If you have a question, your CEO might not be able to help. They might not know what marketing programs are being run or what results you should expect.

I recommend that people fill out what I call their ‘personal board of advisors.’ Find people you can go to with questions. Find people who have been there and done it. Reach out to peers in professional communities or people you've worked with before.

"It can be a lonely role."

When I started at my last company, I built a base of Atlanta people. I reached out to CMOs who had been in their role for a few years and said, “I know you’re another CMO. I’d love to have a monthly catch-up with you and talk through questions and ideas.” I had a group of around five people in that network.

After that, I joined some professional groups, one of which is Pavillion. It’s a global organization, so I started meeting people from different industries and geographies. I was suddenly outside my bubble of Atlanta.

Then I started joining small cohorts within Pavilion of 8–10 people. We would have monthly meetups where we talked about common problems or challenges. I can’t underscore the importance of having a sounding board (or multiple sounding boards) outside of your organization. 

Is it ever difficult to ask for help?

Definitely. It feels like you're supposed to know everything. You can feel silly asking a question—whether it's a Slack group or community forum. You’re worried people are going to judge you.

But all of the communities I'm part of feel like safe spaces. There's no judgment. As soon as I ask a question, people post saying they’re facing the same thing.

Has your role changed as your companies have grown?

In the beginning, I was the one doing everything. During my first year, I only got to bring on two team members. I was very hands-on. I could run most programs myself, but that wasn’t what I was best at. I was launching outbound campaigns and writing blogs. Now, I don't know all the details of each campaign that’s going on. I don’t edit every single blog.

My role is much more about working cross-functionally with the rest of the leadership team to drive growth, building and scaling a high-performance team, telling our story to the market, and making our customers successful.

"Now, I don't know all the details of each campaign that’s going on."

It's been a huge pivot. When I started, Tackle had less than 30 people. Now, we’re nearing 300. Change is hard. There's an article by Molly Graham called ‘Give Away Your Legos.’ It’s about leadership and giving away more responsibilities so you can take on additional areas of leadership. I recommend reading it.

Perspectives is a weekly series interviewing the best marketing leaders. Subscribe for interviews straight to your inbox.