Tracy Marlowe is the CEO and Founder of Creative Noggin, a company specializing in building, stewarding, and marketing evocative brands for purpose-driven organizations. With over 20 years of experience and numerous awards, Tracy built Creative Noggin in 2008 to foster a supportive, family-first work environment long before remote work became mainstream. As an advocate for impactful marketing, she specializes in connecting brands to niche markets and women consumers. Her passion for creating a flexible, human-centered workplace has led to both business success and personal fulfillment for her team.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [02:19] Tracy Marlowe shares her journey from shy student to confident entrepreneur
- [04:20] Account management lessons Tracy learned while working in food service
- [06:10] The power of offering to work for free initially
- [08:10] How motherhood inspired Tracy to start her own business
- [10:49] Balancing the demands of running a remote business while setting boundaries to maintain personal priorities
- [13:53] Why Creative Noggin doesn’t specialize in one industry and its advantages
- [15:21] Marketing to women and the influence they have on consumer choices
- [16:48] A case study on rebranding San Antonio’s early childhood education initiative
- [19:13] How the pandemic impacted Creative Noggin’s clients, prompting a strategic pivot in their marketing efforts
In this episode…
Many businesses struggle to balance high-quality client service with flexible, family-friendly working conditions. As companies grow, it becomes even more challenging to foster a culture where employees can excel at work without sacrificing personal priorities. So, how do you balance client satisfaction with the flexibility remote work offers?
Tracy Marlowe tackled this issue by building her company with a remote-first philosophy as early as 2008. Tracy focused on hiring smart, passionate women who sought meaningful work while maintaining balance in their personal lives. By openly communicating the company’s remote structure to clients and emphasizing authenticity in client relationships, Tracy ensured Creative Noggin provided top-tier service without compromising the well-being of her team. She highlights the importance of hiring the right people, those who thrive in remote environments, and how transparent communication and accountability can help maintain a high standard of work.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Tracy Marlowe, Founder and CEO of Creative Noggin, about building a successful remote-first marketing agency. They discuss how she built a business that empowers women to balance career growth with personal life, the lessons she learned from waiting tables that shaped her leadership style, the bold move that catapulted her career in advertising, and the pandemic’s impact on her business and clients.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Tracy Marlowe on LinkedIn
- Creative Noggin
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization
Related episode(s):
- “David C. Baker | The Business of Expertise: How Entrepreneurial Firms & Agencies Can Grow Today”
- “Carl Smith | Pivoting from Digital Agency to Building a Community of Digital Leaders”
Quotable Moments:
- “If you can keep 20 different things in your head as a server in a busy restaurant, you can probably manage a client’s account.”
- “Empower smart, passionate women to enjoy their work and life — that’s what we focus on at Creative Noggin.”
- “The best place to invest in education if you want to have an economic impact is age four.”
- “During the pandemic, we recommended all of our clients turn off their marketing; it wasn’t an appropriate time for products and services not helping lives.”
- “I feel like the type of people who are attracted to this type of work environment tend to be workaholics; they manage it all well.”
Action Steps:
- Offer your services for free to break into your desired industry: This showcases your commitment and abilities, directly addressing the challenge of gaining experience in competitive fields.
- Prioritize work-life balance by adopting a flexible business model: Embracing flexibility allows for personal commitments alongside professional responsibilities, which is essential for long-term satisfaction and retention.
- Hire individuals with the right personality for remote work: Utilizing personality tests ensures a team’s success in a non-traditional work environment, which is crucial for remote work effectiveness.
- Adapt marketing strategies to focus on authenticity and purpose: Aligning with consumer values and the emotional aspect of the product appeals to decision-makers, improving brand resonance.
- Learn from different industries to avoid getting stuck with a narrow perspective: A diversified approach prevents overreliance on one industry and enriches strategies with cross-industry insights.
Sponsor: Rise25
At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.
We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.
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When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.
The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.
We make distribution easy
We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create a copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?
Contact us now at [email protected] or book a call at rise25.com/bookcall.
Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about the trials and tribulations of running a remote first agency in today’s economy. My guest today is Tracy Marlowe. I’ll tell you more about her in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:13
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:30
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of this show. And you know, every week I get to talk to interesting entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs of all kinds of companies.
We’ve had Netflix, Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinko’s. Check out the archives. Lots of great episodes there as well, including lots of great agency owners, which I’m deeply interested in given the work that we have done for the last few years. So check out Carl Smith from the Bureau of Digital. That’s a great episode.
David C Baker, of course, is kind of a guru in the agency space. Roger Hurni Off Madison Ave who I just had on recently for the second time, so you can check that out as well. And before we get into this, of course, this episode is brought to you by Rise25, where we help B2B businesses to get clients referrals and strategic partnerships with the done-for-you podcast and content marketing. You can email us at support@rise25 or go to [email protected] and you can learn more about what we do.
All right. Today’s guest is Tracy Marlowe. And she is the CEO and Founder of Creative Noggin, which is a branding, marketing and communications firm. And she founded the agency actually back in 2008 as a fully remote company. So way before global pandemic made everyone else go fully remote.
She decided to do it from early on. So we’re going to talk about the decision to do that and how she has served clients over the last 16 years now, and so we’re going to hop into that. She’s based out of Sacramento, California. Tracy, great to have you here today. And I want to launch into I’d love to ask people about how they were as a kid. And especially if people have any entrepreneurial ventures.
Not everyone does. I wasn’t really a super entrepreneurial kid. But you were painfully shy. You had this experience where, in seventh grade, you had to speak in front of the class for the first time, and it didn’t go so well. Tell us about it.
Tracy Marlowe: 02:20
It did not go so well. I was so nervous. I had to give my first oral report, and it was my science class, and I ended up walking up to the front of the class and promptly hyperventilated and passed out. And ironically, it’s so funny. I look back and ironically, the assignment was to do an advertisement for a product that you invented.
So it’s ironic, looking back, that that’s, that’s what the assignment was. And now I’m in advertising. But yeah, that’s, that’s what happened. And I was basically mortified. And then the next year I ended up signing up for theater classes for eighth grade.
And then I did theater classes all through high school. And then in college, I ended up majoring in speech communications and actually competing nationally on the speech team. So, so.
John Corcoran: 03:19
Kind of an immersion therapy kind of approach. Like I just got to do this. And were you miserable for the first few years of doing theater, or did you get used to it quickly?
Tracy Marlowe: 03:28
I mean, I was really nervous, but it really helped get me out of my shell and get me comfortable in front of people. And so I just recognized that I needed to to crack that nut and to be able to figure out how to really stand up in front of people. I think people sometimes underestimate, like, the power of that skill. Right?
John Corcoran: 03:48
Yeah. And it’s great that you realize that that was going to be a skill you’d need to have for life. And you have this other great story about you deciding you’d work in food service, as I had, by the way. I’d waited tables and worked at a barbecue ribs restaurant in high school and college, and then also at a dining hall during college. Well, first, let’s start there.
Like what? I personally think I learn and apply a lot from working in food service, and I think everyone should do it at some point in their career. What are your thoughts on that?
Tracy Marlowe: 04:20
It’s so funny because I actually want to write a book about everything I learned for account management. I learned waiting tables like, yeah, it’s a really good waitress or server. Then you could totally do account management. I feel like yeah, it’s it’s really great experience for sure.
John Corcoran: 04:41
Yeah. I haven’t thought about it this way, but probably a good area to recruit from, right. If someone can, if you can keep the 20 different things you need to keep in your head, catch up on this table. Diet Coke on that table. Oh, that person looks a little perturbed.
I should go check on that person. There’s all these different things you have to keep in your head as you’re running around in a busy restaurant. If you can do that, you can probably do it.
Tracy Marlowe: 05:03
One time I took care of myself, and I remember telling my husband I was like, I seriously could hire her. And I bet she would be phenomenal because I think it is true. Like, there’s some people that could have a degree but not really be all that great. But if you can do all of that and juggle it all well and make people still feel good and like they’re being well managed, that’s a phenomenal skill to have.
John Corcoran: 05:27
Yeah, I’ve never really been in the habit of this, but I know I’ve interviewed experts on hiring who say you should always be on the lookout like that, and if you see someone who delivers tremendous customer service, ask them, right, you know, or you happen to be looking for a new job, would you be interested in, you know, going to work for us? So yeah, it’s pretty cool. So after college, though, you found yourself going into management and food service and you ended up working for a large gourmet grocery store and you decided you wanted to break into advertising. But by your mid-twenties, that can be hard sometimes if you don’t have deep experience. They want either a newbie or they want someone with experience.
And so you actually end up making an agency owner an offer that she couldn’t refuse.
Tracy Marlowe: 06:10
I did, yeah. I met with several different agency owners, and the agency owners were actually introducing me to other agency owners, and I kind of went around and meet different people, but nobody would snap me up. Everybody said, oh, we’re just not it’s not a great time. And I finally one day, this one agency owner, that I really liked her a lot, and I just had a good feeling about her and her agency. And so I just called her and I said, look, I’m going to be showing up at 8:00 on Monday morning and I’m going to work for you for free for 90 days.
If you know, at the end of that time you want to pay me and hire me, you can. But if not, then you will have just had somebody work for you for free for three months. And I actually had a I mean, I had a career at that time. So I ended up quitting my job. I started waiting tables at night just because that was a skill I always knew I could fall back on.
Wow. And then I went to school during the day and worked. Worked two days at that agency and within 30 days they were paying me. Within six months I’d gotten promoted and within a year I was a VP. And then they ended up offering me a partnership.
So it was a good risk, I will say. And I learned so much.
John Corcoran: 07:21
Yeah. Sometimes you gotta do that. I mean, I say to younger people, like for me it was actually an unpaid internship in politics that got my entire career started. So if you can swing it, if you can make it work by, you know, waiting tables in the evening or whatever, find some other income source which I realize not everyone can do. But if you can swing it, it’s a great way to get your career off to a good start.
And as you said, if you work hard within 30 days, they’re paying you. So you didn’t even have to do the full 90 days.
Tracy Marlowe: 07:48