Francesca Furchtgott is co-founder of Mariner 11, a brand marketing agency serving small and mid-sized businesses. The firm works as a long-term marketing partner across brand, content, email, social, paid media, PR, and web strategy, so clients avoid building a full in-house team.
The conversation draws a hard line between brand and branding. Branding is the visual identity, the logo, the key messages. Brand is the full picture of how people perceive a company, including reviews and press the business cannot control. Furchtgott argues that reputation is the clearest synonym for brand, and that building it matters even before a company can afford a designer.
AI sits at the center of the episode. Furchtgott describes how AI-generated content is averaging out voices across industries, making a specific point of view more important than ever. She also walks through how search itself is changing, from traditional SEO to AI overviews and LLM results, and what small businesses need to do on the technical and content side to stay visible as that shift accelerates.
Francesca Furchtgott co-founded Mariner 11 after years in brand strategy. Mariner 11 is a brand marketing agency for small and mid-sized businesses, offering strategy alongside execution across digital marketing channels including content, email, social, paid media, PR, and web.
Full transcript of the conversation, published verbatim. Speaker labels come from the recording itself, not from an automated guess.
Jordan:0:00
Welcome back to the [High Ticket AI Systems] podcast. Everyone, please welcome the winner of the Mrs. Francesca Verchka. Francesca, how you doing today? You're very welcome. Now, for those of us that don't recognize the name of the brand just yet, can you please explain to us at a high level, basically what you and the company do and who you guys serve best?
Francesca Furchtgott:0:10
I'm doing well Jordan, thanks for having me on.
Francesca Furchtgott:0:23
Yeah, so.
I'm a co-founder of Mariner 11. We are a brand marketing agency for small and mid-sized businesses that are ambitious and ready to grow. We serve both as strategic advisors and as all of the execution that you need across digital marketing. So we do brand content, email, social, paid media, PR, and a lot of web strategy. So we embed with our clients as long-term marketing partners so that they don't have to hire a full marketing team in-house. We also supplement for some of the businesses that already do have marketing in-house will serve as sort of a few extra experts on hand as they need them. So that's us, that's Mariner 11.
Jordan:1:14
Amazing. Thank you for the context there. Without going into specifics, typically how are your services priced from a modeling standpoint?
Francesca Furchtgott:1:23
So interesting question. We actually have done a ton of work on a project or on a fixed retainer basis, but we have been experimenting with flipping over to hourly to see if that works better for us.
Jordan:1:41
From your discoveries, what do you feel like works better for the company?
Francesca Furchtgott:1:45
So yeah, wait, by the company I'm assuming you mean by the client.
Jordan:1:53
What is more beneficial for the company not the client?
Francesca Furchtgott:1:57
for my company.
Jordan:1:59
Yes.
Francesca Furchtgott:2:01
It depends. mean, clearly that's why there are so many people who are torn on this issue. One of the things that we have thought about, we actually do really think about the client's perspective on this. So we think about, if we can do a clear project fee and know that it works for us, then the client has a lot of predictability. They know exactly what they're signing up for and that makes it easier for them to plan. and it avoids conversations around, wait, why did you use so many hours or why did this take so long or...
How many hours do I have left? Wait, what do I want to prioritize? On the flip side, having an hourly model where we do, for example, a bucket of hours per month, which we do have with some clients, they basically have control over what they want to do. And there's less scope issues of, wait, is it in scope? Is it not in scope? Hey, we have this bucket of hours. Here's just a bunch of work that we need done. Let's just do it until the hours run out. And so that can also give them a lot more flexibility. for us as a company?
Francesca Furchtgott:3:12
For the most part, we're thinking that hourly may work better for us, which is why we're slowly transitioning a little bit more into that, because it's easier to predict the margins. We don't have to worry so much about, we scope it correctly? We do have to worry about scope in terms of, we give our clients estimates of, hey, we think this will take 10 to 12 hours to do. And when they have a bucket of hours of 60 hours a month or 100 hours a month, want to know, okay wait, what level of effort is it? So we do still have to scope, but at least from our perspective, in many ways we're paid for more hours that we're doing work for, or more predictably getting paid for the hours that we're working.
Jordan:3:59
Would you say it is easier to scale that model opposed to services? Like just charging per services, if that makes sense.
Francesca Furchtgott:4:11
Yeah, it does make sense. mean, look, LinkedIn advice is you niche down, you create a product that you can repeat over and over again. You know exactly how long it's going to take to service the customer.
That's the sort of common knowledge and the common, I think, the practice that a lot of people are trying to move towards. And one of the advantages that we have is that we are a team of super strategic thinkers, super senior and experienced people. And we're really trying to think strategically with our clients. so...
We know right now the AI landscape is changing marketing so fast. There are so many impacts that we can see. You can look at just search as one example. You know, for people who have optimized their websites for organic search traffic, they're getting killed right now.
And so having strategic thinkers who can look at each client's use case, each client's business, and think about it from a bigger picture perspective and say, wait, what's actually needed for you specifically? Which services should we be pulling in for you specifically, as opposed to trying to say, great, we've got this one product that, you one set of services that we've productized and we're just going to apply it to you whether or not you need it. For us, that's not the value proposition that we're bringing. The value proposition that we're bringing is we're super strategic and we're going to help you think through your business problem and find a solution for your business.
Jordan:5:47
Gotcha, gotcha, okay. Well, thank you for the insights there. You bring up, you are a branding specialist or a strategist rather. Talk to me about why branding is so important for companies.
Francesca Furchtgott:6:02
my favorite topic to talk about. So first maybe we should talk about the difference between brand and branding. Okay, so a lot of people when they think about
Jordan:6:12
Sure, yes.
Francesca Furchtgott:6:18
branding, they talk, they there's an interchange of what's a brand versus what's branding. When I think about branding, I think about, okay, what's the logo? What's the visual assets that go with this product? You could think of Airbnb, for instance, and you could think of their A logo and their, you know, the red and white of their brand.
When I think about brand as a whole, not just branding, the brand as a whole is how do people perceive you externally? And part of that you can control. So the quote unquote branding is a subset of your brand, your visual identity, what's your brand messaging? What are the messages that you can control? What's the type of content that you put out there? And then there's other components of your brand that people come up with on their own. your customer reviews, the press that you might get. You can't control that so much, but you put all of those things together and that's what makes your brand. This is how people on the street think about you. And so the reason why brand is so important, going back to your original question, is brand is helping you distinguish yourself from your competitors. Your competitors may be saying, Here's who we're for and here's why we're for. this target audience and you can basically bring a different message and say actually we're also for you but here's why you should choose us instead. It gives you a personality, it gives customers a reason to choose you and the reason why brand is so important today in particular probably more important than ever before is that AI is bringing in a whole series of basically averaged out content. People are turning to AI
Francesca Furchtgott:8:16
to generate their content, and AI is pulling from the database that it has accessible to it. And so it's averaging other examples that it already has access to instead of creating something new. And this means that there's a ton of content out there that's being generated that sounds exactly alike. From company to company, everything is sounding the same. And so having a really specific point of view right now today is more important than ever before.
Jordan:8:49
Would you say that when you are defining your messaging in your market positioning, would that correlate more so into branding, like actively working on the brand or would that correlate more into like marketing and the message behind our marketing material, whether it's organic content posts or a 60 second, 90 second ad that you're running on Facebook? Would you say, go for it.
Francesca Furchtgott:9:17
I see the strategy as coming first and the strategy is almost inextricably linked to what is the business strategy. You might even say, if let's take it from zero, let's say, okay, we're gonna develop a competitor to Airbnb. Okay, why are we gonna do that?
Why are we competing with them? What's differentiating us? What's going to be our advantage? Right? You would go through a whole exercise. You don't even have a company name yet, but you know, okay, we are going to compete with Airbnb and we are going to be amazing at it. But in order to compete effectively, you have to build out the strategy.
So you take that strategy and you say, all right, great, now that we have the strategy, we know why we're gonna be different. Maybe we're gonna go after a different audience segment. Maybe we're gonna go after them for a different reason, a different type of trip that they would be taking.
Then you take that and you can start distilling those concepts into a name that will resonate with customers and that will convey what you're trying to do to those customers. Once you have the name, then you can start building out what's the visual identity. once you have the name and the visual identity, then you can start creating all kinds of things, a content strategy, marketing materials, know, marketing assets, promo materials, that all, but everything is still all rolling up to that big picture strategy.
Jordan:10:47
Can one argue that finding product market fit is more important than coming up with the branding strategy initially? And then once we find product market fit, because we're still a small fish in a massive pond, it's just so much more important to just focus on marketing and sales, opposed to branding. I would love to see your kind of argument to this.
Francesca Furchtgott:11:10
Well, you do see a lot of companies rebrand. I mean, you could take Poppy as an example. Poppy used to be called Mother, and they had their own reason for choosing Mother, I think. Somebody's gonna fact check me on this at the end, right? But they had their own reason for choosing the name Mother. And then...
Jordan:11:19
That was.
Jordan:11:26
You're okay, you're okay.
Francesca Furchtgott:11:33
I think they went on Shark Tank, they got a deal, and then they repositioned to Poppy, and then they sold, and they sold as a billion dollar brand, and you know, clearly a huge success story. But I think a lot of companies will put in some thought into their brand upfront.
Every single strategy that you have, okay, this fictional Airbnb competitor, all of it is a hypothesis. You don't know until you go out into the market, is your hypothesis gonna work out or not? And so, started out as Mother, because they thought that that was a really cool name and they thought that it fit in with their brand story and it did at the time. And then as they started getting more and more customer feedback, as they started figuring out, as they started getting to product market fit, they said, okay, great. we have a much better understanding, let's do a rebrand. And I think that both of those are okay. You need to go out into the market with something. You need to go out with a point of view that you can even test to determine if you have product market fit.
Jordan:12:40
I agree wholeheartedly and just stay on the topic of like Poppy and Mother. What company is this? Like I might know them, but just a company I don't know them.
Francesca Furchtgott:12:47
Oh, um, this is a, um, it's like, it's a drink brand.
Jordan:12:55
Okay, okay. You can see like Walmart. Seltzer, I don't drink.
Francesca Furchtgott:12:58
like a seltzer. like a seltzer but it has some like, used to have I think apple cider vinegar, it's called something.
Jordan:13:07
Okay, you're fine, you're fine, move it on, move it on. Okay, yes, we are scientists when it comes to trying to figure out what the hell the market was. trying to figure out product market fit is you have a hypothesis. You say, think the market wants this. You go out there, it's the market and they let you know, yes, Jordan or yes, Vanessa, this is exactly what we wanted. Or if you're like me, you're like, just kidding. The market does not want this. The market actually wants this. And you always are refining your product, refining your marketing message and refining like the avenue that you want to go down. I would give so much pushback on the thought of You're making like less than a million dollars a year. All right, and you focus so much on like designing the coolest logo and like having the coolest colors and like focusing on like the branding package We're like you just need to make more sales Like you're really small as a company and no offense to any company that's out there like I'm still at that boat if you ask some people but I would much rather and I also love sales and marketing but I would much rather as a company just focus on like Selling stuff and see what the market wants and you know making my product better and then once I have like not F you money But like money to throw away then I would don't want to focus on branding and that's like pass a million dollars per year Like once you're not, know focusing on sales, but once you are not the person conducting sales consultations, making video ads if you're still making video ads, and obviously doing fulfillment. Once you have removed yourself from each pillar within the business, then I think you can go out there and start focusing on branding. That's just my opinion, and it could be worth nothing, but what are your thoughts on that?
Francesca Furchtgott:14:56
Okay, so I think what you're thinking about is the branding, not the brand.
So the branding is, as you said, the visual identity, the logos, et cetera. And the brand is, how do people perceive you? What do people think of Jordan? Why should they buy from Jordan? Do we care about him? Actually, yes, we should care about him because x, y, and z. What are your messaging pillars? How do you even get to that first million dollars of sales that you can then say, now I'll turn around and do a visual branding package or visual branding exercise?
Jordan:15:10
Okay.
Francesca Furchtgott:15:32
I know there are so many small businesses out there that do take that approach, but they still choose a company name based on something. They probably still have some visual identity. Maybe they didn't hire a fancy designer to make it. That's OK. But they're still building brand equity. They're still building their reputation. And that's really important to consider, especially in those early days when you're trying to win every single customer and you're trying to get that flywheel of word of mouth referrals going, having a really good reputation, which is maybe another word for brand, it's what's your reputation, that's really important. And so figuring out how do you convey that? How do you convey why people should trust you, why people should buy from you to get from zero to a million dollars? that in a lot of ways is brand work, but people maybe don't think of it that way.
Jordan:16:32
Yeah, because I am asking these. not counterintuitive questions, but sure, one might say heavy-hitting questions because I am trying to conceptualize what the frick branding actually means and I cannot easily articulate myself as if I'm gonna explain it to a five-year-old. I just can't do it because I don't understand actually what branding means. But what I do love is focusing on the proper messaging that's gonna resonate with the audience. I can articulate that and know exactly what that means.
Five stars for you for saying one way to think about branding is reputation because the easiest example that anyone could probably think of is Apple. Okay. And like what's Apple's reputation? Do they make the sickest sleekest freaking phones? And obviously everything from a technology standpoint, laptop, computer, Mac mini is all freaking Mac, right? It's sleek. It's easy to use. Those guys never miss. I love.
The reputation, rock stars, 10 out of 10 they never miss. That's the reputation. And I feel like I can explain that to somebody else, you know? And if we're on the topic of branding. just looking inward in my own company, I work really hard to keep my reputation, 100%. I obviously wanna deliver exceptional results for my clients. If they're upset, well, hopefully they're not, but if they are, I take care of it. We take care of it. I don't want negative reputation out there in the marketplace. And I guess that piggyback software point of, that's building a decent brand. Thank you.
Francesca Furchtgott:18:10
Yeah, yeah, it is.
Jordan:18:13
Anything else you want to expand on there? I probably was all over the place with that. I tend to be.
Francesca Furchtgott:18:19
I think I would just want to reiterate the brand versus branding. The branding is the visual and the key messages, and the brand is the bigger picture. It's every single thing about your company, including people's perceptions of how your company is, what your company stands for.
Jordan:18:39
for sure. And we actually started with identifying what branding is and what brand is and what brand actually means. And then you, and then I asked you, why is it so important? Why is it so important? Did we answer that question or should I just ask it directly again? Why is building a brand so important? We answered. Okay, cool. I think we knew it as well. Okay, moving on. So you talked about if you are focusing on organic search, you are essentially getting left in the dust. What do mean?
Francesca Furchtgott:18:56
No, I think we answered.
Francesca Furchtgott:19:11
Search is expanding right now. Used to be for what, 20 years, more than 20 years, people were investing in SEO, search engine optimization. And that meant they were trying to make their websites show up in the top 10, first page of Google for any given keyword search.
Now people are searching more and more through LLMs. They're searching through Claude, they're searching through ChatGPT, they're searching through Gemini. What's more, for people who are still using traditional search engines, we're now seeing AI overviews. So if you put a search term into Google, you're going to get the AI overview now for more than 60 % of search results.
That means that all of those companies that used to have you click on the link, look through their website, say, wait, that's actually an interesting service. Maybe I should reach out to them. All of those people are losing. used to be people would create tons and tons of content. A blog was a really important asset because people would create content and then that content would show up for specific search terms in search engines. That would drive people, pull people into your website and would allow you to sell.
And now that's not happening anymore. Now there's a race to show up in the Google AI overview. How do you get cited as one of those top two, three, four websites in the Google AI overview? Or how do you get linked to within one of the LLM searches? So if somebody puts in, OK, what's the best agency for small and mid-sized businesses?
Francesca Furchtgott:21:00
how does Mariner 11 show up there? So that's the new, this is basically the new age of search. A lot of people are calling it GEO, Generative Engine Optimization or AEO. There's a lot of people, LLMO, a lot of names out there for this new thing that's basically, okay, what's the bigger, search is broadening now, basically.
Jordan:21:25
Yeah, I have called it so many things, but I think we all understand exactly what the hell you're referencing here. Now, okay, that's the problem. If we're not doing that, we're in trouble. So what's the solution? Like how do you get sat in the top three or four companies on Google AI overview?
Francesca Furchtgott:21:45
Well, the good news is that my co-founder, Daniel Mail, has spent his whole career in search and is super up to date on everything that's happening in the search world. He's really good at basically figuring out what's the technical way to optimize it. The bad news is that you have me as your guest. So I...
I can give you the bullet points fly level of what needs to happen. But my co-founder Dan would be much better on this topic. So.
Jordan:22:11
Thanks.
Jordan:22:19
You're freaking funny for that that freaking killed me If you want you can buy give us like two or three bullet points of what you know without giving away the secret sauce Obviously, but if you don't mind, you know, just what you do cool
Francesca Furchtgott:22:32
Yeah, of course. Okay, so what I've taken away from everything that Dan has taught me is right now there's a lot of work that you can do in the technical backend of your website to make sure that you're showing up or to make sure that your site is being read correctly by the robots, by the search engines, by the LLMs. The second thing is that a lot of these LLMs are answering questions that are posed, are answering things that are posed as questions.
And so the more that you can write your content with headers tagged as h1, h2, h3 as your question, and then you respond to the question in a very clear way with bullet points, with numbered lists, that really helps. Adding things to your web pages like FAQs also feeds those search engines, broad term of search engines, because it's really helping to answer those questions directly. about how you search the internet now, we're doing these really long phrase searches. It used to be we would put in, you know, blue sneaker women, right? And I were saying, okay, what are the most comfortable sneakers that are blue? And I think I saw them at Nike.
Jordan:23:51
Right, right. Yeah, I think another guest said this, that the average length of a search query in LLM is like 43 freaking words. In Google, it's like eight or 12 or something. It's like three, four, four times longer on LLMs. I do want to stay on this topic, but maybe have a contrarian viewpoint.
I think it is really important for B2B companies to focus on this. And let me explain why. Because if you own a roofing company and you sell B2C, like my parents, God bless them, are not utilizing Claude or chat the way that I would want them to. The way that they, that how businesses actually utilize LLMs. Right? So I think you should focus on The traditional SEO and I'm not an expert. Maybe your co-founder can punch me in the face after I say this. I don't know. But I do think if you are a B2B business and most of your, you know, customers are in LLMs like me every day, then yes, optimize the crap out of your website for AISCO. Again, if you sell B2C cause you're a fricking roofer, then like I would just stick to organic, not organic, traditional SEO, technical SEO stuff. Now.
Would your founder give me, or would your co-founder give me pushback? Would you give me pushback? They would? Okay. Lay it on me. Why am I wrong?
Francesca Furchtgott:25:24
I think because you're assuming that only people who buy roofs are people who are older.
Francesca Furchtgott:25:34
I think the underlying assumption of what you're saying is that young people are using LLMs to search and that older people are not.
I think maybe there is an argument to be made about local businesses, a roofing company for the most part, or plumber. You can have a residential plumber, HVAC. Those are all really pushed by Google, Yelp reviews, et cetera, et cetera, local directory listings. there are homeowners in their 30s and 40s. I don't have the data of who's using LLMs to search.
I think the bottom line is if somebody is searching for you, you want to show up. If somebody's saying, who's the best roofing company in my zip code or who's the best roofing company in my county, you want to show up across all search avenues.
Jordan:26:29
I'm not going to disagree with you there. I think I only can speak off of my experiences and I look at my two younger siblings. They don't fricking use LLMs. My parents don't use LLMs, but my other business friends, like we're obviously, you know, similar in age, whatever they, they of course, 1000 % are using, but they also own a fricking business. see what I mean? Like they're, they're, they're kind of in the B space, you know what I mean? The business space. So however, People, my siblings age and everyone growing up, they're gonna probably utilize LLMs more frequently than my parents. So the process of starting now or the thought process of starting now, like why would you wait when the future is coming? Yeah, I like that.
Francesca Furchtgott:27:18
Yeah. I mean, I 100 % agree with you about the timing thing. Right now, it's a little bit of a wild, wild west. There's a lot of opportunity to get listed first and to kind of establish authority. And so the longer you have that authority, the better.
Jordan:27:38
No, absolutely. And one thing that I do know with AISCO, because I actually did hire a company for this, because I'm like, hell yeah, I'm trying to be enough for freaking one in my freaking space on chat. Dude, are you kidding me? Anyways, basically with Google, you can just say you're number one, but with LLMs, have to verify you're number one. How do you do that? Earned media, right? Like backlinks in very authoritative domains.
Reviews like public facing reviews like essentially LLMs make you prove why you should be in AI overviews where traditional Google you can just Like say you are and like it'll believe you opposed to LLMs, know So that's the only difference that I know not only but like it is one of the key components when it comes to getting sighted on LLMs is Yeah, you got it
Francesca Furchtgott:28:30
Yeah, that's actually that's actually part of a traditional SEO strategy as well is the more citations you have from traditional sort of big reputable organizations, big reputable sites, the higher you'll rank on Google for it.
Jordan:28:44
Okay, okay, yeah, I did not know that, so thank you. When it comes to systems for client acquisition, do you guys utilize any systems for that?
Francesca Furchtgott:28:57
I mean we track everything in HubSpot but we're not using a lot of automated workflows if that's what you're asking.
Jordan:29:04
Got you. Systems for like you pull a lever and like you have, not guaranteed meetings, but like you pull a lever and like you have a predictable outcome at the end of like how many meetings you're gonna have for potential clients or with potential clients.
Francesca Furchtgott:29:17
No, we don't have that right now. We've grown entirely through word of mouth and through referrals and through our networks. And it's something that's on the horizon for sure.
Jordan:29:28
That's so impressive to me because I've like for me personally, I will say that that is my least active channel for customer acquisition. I feel like I always have to go out there and just find new business. But whenever I whenever people tell that to me, I'm just like.
Envious. I'm like dude. You've grown your business just off word of mouth and referrals like freaking lucky dog, dude Like that is so freaking cool because me I don't get that lucky. You know what I mean? I'm not saying I don't do good work. I just referrals like that, you know what I mean? So so kudos to you and uh, you and the company but that is freaking awesome Let's of course getting back to who you guys serve because the next question is going to be regarding
Francesca Furchtgott:30:10
Thank you.
Jordan:30:17
fulfillment. Getting back to who you guys serve, would you say you deliver better results over one vertical or niche or with the other?
Francesca Furchtgott:30:27
We've been lucky to work across a whole range of industries. And I think part of that is because we've worked so much through our networks and through referrals and word of mouth that we haven't, we haven't established like both. this is our single niche. We've done a ton of work in e-commerce, we've done a ton of work in building materials and in the education space, but I wouldn't say there's one area or another that we've sort of delivered better results in than others.
Jordan:30:58
And you can be a little biased when I ask this question, but do you have a favorite industry to work with or favorite type of client to work with?
Francesca Furchtgott:31:08
So we've actually ended up somehow doing a ton of work for businesses that are both, that both have a B2B component and a B2C component. I was, it, yeah, it's, it's been interesting and I'll take our building materials, clients as an examples, we have clients that are selling really beautiful door hardware that's inspired by American history. And that has a direct to consumer.
Jordan:31:16
Really? That's super better.
Francesca Furchtgott:31:36
side of it right there's a whole e-commerce website, they have a ton of organic search traffic. They have a ton of people who recognize the patterns and who are specifically searching for that, people who want to renovate their homes and who want it to have this American history look. And then they're also doing a ton of B2B work. They're trying to network with interior designers. They want to make sure that their doorknobs and their door hardware are specified in the drawings. Same thing with architects. And so we have Surprisingly, a number of these companies where we're basically deploying both B2B and direct-to-consumer tactics, and it's really fun. It's fun to be able to take sort of one single brand and say, okay, great, how do we bring this both to consumers and to these business buyers or more B2B entities? At the end of the day, obviously, we're always talking to humans, right? Whether there's a human buying for a business or a human buying for themselves. I think the important thing is how do you are you able to communicate to a human well?
Jordan:32:48
Yes, that is vitally important. I learned this when I was first coming up in sales like 18, but Grant Cardone said this, like you're not in B to C, you're not in B to B, and you're definitely not in B to G, you're in like B to P, like business to people. You're talking to people all day long. I will say though, on the different...
Jordan:33:10
I'm going to try to frame this kindly. Please help me. I think when it comes to income brackets, you like to make decisions differently. I think yes. And one could argue that 98 % of human beings purchase off of emotion, which is probably true. However, when you're speaking with like really executive individuals, I really feel like they do not make decisions off of emotion and they purely make decisions off of like logic and like longevity of the company and one could argue that that's an emotional freaking you know reaction But at the same time, I think they just like crunch numbers more so and they make less impulsive decisions What's your what are your thoughts on?
Francesca Furchtgott:34:08
I've worked with a lot of CEOs and I think each each CEO is an individual person and and I've seen some of them. Hire my team even though maybe we're not the most. You know, maybe we're not the the least expensive bidder who came in, but maybe there was something about. what we had to offer that they felt justified the price. And I've seen
Jordan:34:42
Absolutely. They saw the value in the company.
Francesca Furchtgott:34:46
Right, right. And I've but I've also seen CEOs who say, know what, the numbers are everything. We have a budget. They know their they know their sort of business numbers inside and out, and they know what they want to allocate for different functions across their company. And they make a decision based on that. And and I think that That's okay. It's just every individual person is making the decision that they think is best. Every CEO has a slightly different leadership style. I would say, I wonder if...
Maybe what you're articulating is the difference in business sizes, maybe not necessarily in the executive, in the CEO himself or herself, is that at the bigger enterprise level, they're making decisions in a different way that the sales, the sales cycle is a little bit longer. They have more people who are involved in the decision making. They already have existing frameworks for how they're going to assess vendors. And do you fit into it or not is something that, you know, they have their own culture and You can't work around that in some ways. So what do think about that?
Jordan:35:58
Yes, so maybe let me me frame it this way like let's take it a you know average Joe No offense to average Joe's we need a we love them, but they're gonna buy a car Okay, and it's way out of their budget like they truly cannot afford this car because they should put him in a lot of freaking debt But like this is the brand new. don't know Mustang. I really want this freaking Mustang. You know, it's brand new It's gonna go fast. I want it like emotionally They're purchasing this Mustang that they logically in actuality cannot afford, but they do it anyways because of they get excited emotionally. Right now, going back to the CEO person, they are not overpaying. They are willing to hire a vendor, your company, even though it might not be the cheapest.
But because they logically understand that yes, I am paying more than the next company, but I love the value that they're bringing. Francesca and the company clearly are experts in the field and I'm willing to pay a bit more for better quality stuff. And I think that's what I was trying to say without being as direct or rude to the audience out there, but yeah, it kind of makes sense. And that's why I love selling to businesses by the way, because of that, they just think differently about. making decisions. Anyways, yeah, you would agree? I'm always right. know. know. Let's shift gears here. What is the one thing that you guys are looking forward to if you had to pinpoint one thing that you guys are looking forward to most within the company, like in the next 12 months or whatever?
Francesca Furchtgott:37:16
Yeah. Yeah.
Francesca Furchtgott:37:38
Well...
We're growing, we're growing fast. And so it's really exciting as a business owner to sort of see what that growth looks like. I have been working on my own since 2021 and brought on my co-founder, Dan, last fall. And so we're, I guess in the next six months, going to get to the first year of being in business together. And that's been really exciting because he brings not only a marketing skillset that's different than mine, but he brings a sort of business operations skillset. that's different than mine and perspective that's different. And so it's been really great to have a partner along for the ride as we grow this business and sort of seeing what's gonna be needed at the next stage of growth is something that I'm really looking forward to.
Jordan:38:26
I'm excited for you guys because having a thinking partner, like an actual business partner, really changes the game in my perspective because I have employees, I have people that work with me for me, whatever, but they aren't really like a partner. I can't really explain everything to them the way I can explain to an actual business partner who knows exactly what the hell is going on in the business. I guess I use a chat for that, but...
It's having that sounding board, having that person that brings different skill sets to the table. It's like, yes, yes. I love that for you guys. Now, switching gears one more time. What is the single best piece of advice you've ever received ever in your life?
Jordan:39:13
He's like, why did you ask me this?
Francesca Furchtgott:39:14
No, I'm actually thinking of one of my business school professors. Her name is Paula Price. She was an amazing, amazing professor. She gave me a number of different, just great pieces of advice. One of them was just...
We were talking about how to respond to negative feedback. And she was basically like, let it sink in for one second and then let it just roll off your back. And I think about this a lot. Obviously, I'm in a sales role. Sometimes we get good news, sometimes we don't get good news. Sometimes we get great feedback, but we didn't win. Sometimes we get negative feedback. Here's why we didn't win. You know, sometimes we're... not everything always goes right in life. And so I often go back to Paula Price's advice and think about, okay, absorb it for a second and then just let it roll off your back. Yep.
Jordan:40:14
That is good advice. Shut out Paula. Paula, love you for listening. And then, Favorite Meal.
Francesca Furchtgott:40:22
Ooh, Sushi?
Jordan:40:27
Sushi! That's the first of the podcast. I like that. Yeah, typically it's taking potatoes. I'm like, I like taking potatoes, like, sushi's good.
Francesca Furchtgott:40:29
Really? I love sushi. Okay, I've had three kids and every single pregnancy I can't have sushi and like... killed me.
Jordan:40:42
Yeah, being deprived of sushi. Okay, cool. Let's see. Francesca, you freaking rock. Where can they find you?
Francesca Furchtgott:40:49
You can find me on LinkedIn, francescafurchgott.
Jordan:40:52
Amazing. Okay, cool. Thank you so much for hopping on. Thanks for the laughs and the new insights on branding and building a brand. Yeah, we'll have to have you back on in like nine to 12 months to see how business is going. See if you learn anything new about the AISCO side of things. And yeah, audience, we'll talk to you all soon.
Francesca Furchtgott:41:09
Thanks, Jordan.
Jordan:41:10
Thank
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