31 - Kyle Lacy, CMO at Lessonly, Talks About The Power of Irrational Ideas and Golden Llamas

Kyle Lacy, CMO (and Chief Mario Officer!) at Lessonly, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast.

Kyle has been recognized as one of Indiana’s Forty-under-40, is the author of 3 books, built the content marketing team from scratch at ExactTarget (acquired by Salesforce for $2.6B), led marketing at OpenView Venture Partners, and advises a couple of tech startups besides his full-time role.

Lessonly was founded in 2012, has 200+ people, and is based out of Indianapolis, Indiana. They've raised Series C ($30.2M total).

Lessonly is the powerfully simple way for teams to learn, practice, and Do Better Work. Enabling busy teams (like Sales, like Customer Service) to get on the same page, stay ahead of change, and deliver amazing experiences to customers and prospects. This is NOT your ordinary training software.

Here's what we hit on:

You updated your title on LinkedIn to Chief Mario Officer - why? What was that for?;

Irrational ideas can sometimes work;

How we tie marketing to revenue and why that's important;

About Lessonly in your own words;

What's unique about your marketing team;

You've been at Lessonly for 4 years. What did you do in those early days that was critical for success?

Kyle introduced an agile marketing framework with 2-week sprints - we dive into why and how this is done;

Lessonly moved their outbound sales development (SDR & BDR teams) under marketing - why and how this makes you more successful;

Marketing: what’s working well for you right now, what channels (HINT: direct mail is part of it);

Marketing: what are the challenges, what are you trying to figure out (HINT: hiring while remote is part of it, how to keep the culture);

We talk about Ali Llama - who is this llama? Who came up with this? What's the story?;

How do you differentiate from other (online training) players in the space;

B2C can help inform B2B marketing;

Write how you talk when creating content;

Having the space to be creative vs. proving ROI on each creative campaign;

How to lose money responsibly in order to differentiate;

Favorite failures.

You can find Kyle on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kylelacy

Find out more about Lessonly: www.lessonly.com

Here's the e-commerce site to get your llama gear: https://olliellama.co/ 

Do Better Work was mentioned in the episode: dobetterwork.com

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You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov

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Thanks for listening!