23 Dec Overcoming The Challenges In Building Startups With Amanda Rabideau

Building your startup business could be very exciting. However, deciding on different things could result in your downfall or success, especially during the pandemic. In this episode, Amanda Rabideau gives us an overview of what we could expect to start one and how we could overcome challenges. She also discusses her mission of helping startups with her company Arch Collective and carving your path to success through effective marketing, strategy, and sales practices. She has worked with large enterprises like Dell, Microsoft, CoreLogic, and tech startups, including Arturo, AdAdapted, Venteur, Cloudstaff, and OraMetrix.

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OVERCOMING THE CHALLENGES IN BUILDING STARTUPS WITH AMANDA RABIDEAU

We have Amanda Rabideau on Hooked On Startups. I’m going to say everything is in the wrong order now, chop it up and put it right, which is a bit like what you have to do when you go into these companies?

It’s never super straightforward. You sometimes need to chop things up to make them work. That’s for sure.

I can imagine when the deals come in, you think, “I wonder what’s in store for me with this newly funded company?” Give us just a tiny bit of background about what you do, but don’t dive in too deep, just to frame the conversation.

Through Arch Collective, I serve as a fractional Chief Marketing Officer or CMO for Post-Series A B2B tech startups. In addition, I have a team that I call The Collective, which is my network of freelance marketers and creatives. They’re essentially an extension of myself. They help execute against the marketing plan and the strategy that I provide for my clients.

My first question is, are you a Star Trek fan?

I am not. I don’t know a whole lot about it.

It’s a shame because, in Star Trek, they had this thing called the Borg Collective, which is this hive mind. The key phrase that the Borg Collective has is, “Resistance is futile.” I’m just wondering whether or not that could be a great tagline for the Arch Collective in brackets, “Resistance is futile.”

I would say a strong no and I’ll tell you why because so much of what we have to do myself and The Collective educate our clients about what is right. A lot of times, these startups don’t know a whole lot about marketing. In fact, some of them may have never been involved with marketing before. If we give them what they wanted and we didn’t resist, I’m going to say educate them a bit of a better direction, and I don’t think we’d be doing a very good job.

That’s exactly the answer I was hoping you would say. I just teed that up perfectly for you. B2B that’s a very different language and approach than Direct-To-Consumer or D2C and you focus very much on tech. Is that a FinTech? I know you were involved in PropTech as well. What is your primary focus?

You sometimes need to chop things up to make it work.

Most of my clients are in the PropTech, FinTech, real estate tech, InsureTech space. The reason is prior to starting this company. I spent five years at CoreLogic, which is the largest provider of real estate data and analytics here in the US. It was the right segue. However, I do have clients that are outside of that industry. Not as many. I have one in AdTech. I had one in HR. That’s why I use tech more broadly because there are those outliers in industries outside of the built environment.

One of the obvious questions is, you work with clients that are Post-Series A. Why is that an important delineation?

Post-Series A is a term I’ve been using. Seed Series A, those definitions are becoming a little bit more nebulous and maybe not the best way to segment. When I say Series A, what I mean is that this is a company that has some existing clients, so there’s a product-market fit. That also has $1 million to $3 million in revenue. Those would be good parameters. I have a client that has multiple millions of dollars in revenue and they just closed their Series A funding. That’s not typically what it would be, but I would say product-market fit in under $3 million in revenue is a good way to think about it. They have some investment funding and hence the Series A, so they’ve got money and expectations that they need to meet from those very aggressive investors.

Typically, a lot of the people that you work with may not have the marketing expertise to enable them to move to the next stage. They probably got enough to get the product to market, to get some traction to prove the concept, perhaps, but is your role now to step in at that point and accelerate the growth into something much more meaningful?

I should hire you on my marketing team because that’s about a perfect summation right there. It’s very common that once you close your Series A, there’s either the expectation that you’re certainly doubling but possibly tripling your revenue in that next year that comes after the funding. Up until that point, the company, through hustle, their network, or introductions, or referrals, that’s how they’ve built their business.

They’re now sitting there looking at this target that they need to meet and thinking, “This isn’t just going to come from my network. I need a marketing engine, a repeatable way to bring in business, so that when I’m going in for my next round of funding, or I’m reporting back to my investors, that I can show them, I know how to bring on the next client and the next one and so on.”

Let’s talk about the difference between sales and marketing. There are sales that need to be driven, sales process, sales approach and the whole sales cycle, which we can put over on this side. Marketing is a very different animal and has a very different skillset. Do you find that sometimes there’s a lot of confusion between those two animals and how would you differentiate the role of marketing within an organization?

It’s something that needs to be defined in every organization. When is that proverbial baton handoff from marketing to sales? When does that take place? What criteria need to be met? That can vary, but that’s where having great working relationships with your sales colleagues is so important. The other thing I would add is if you think of the funnel starts with marketing to bring people in eventually gets to sales, but also your customer success team and think of that as your whole Go-to-Market, or we call it GTM, team. It’s important that all of us are aligned when those handoffs need to occur and when it’s marketing’s responsibilities versus sales versus customer success.

Do you find that with the types of clients you work with, there is a natural resistance to bringing on marketing people because of the success they’ve created so far? In other words, “I only want to bring you on because my investors have said that I’ve got to have a marketing person.” Is there, in most cases, that natural understanding that the company needs to have that level of expertise brought in at this stage?

Usually, by the time I’m talking to a founder or someone from their team, whoever I get engaged with, they have recognized that there’s a need for marketing. They may not understand exactly how marketing is going to do it. How do they measure success? What exactly a marketing person, a CMO, would do, what they should be looking for, how to evaluate if they’re good or bad, or in between? There can be some education at that stage. At least I haven’t experienced a ton of pushback on the value of it. Usually, by the time I’m talking to them, they’ve recognized that there’s a gap and they need some help filling that gap.

A lot of that is probably to do with where you come in and as part of the company’s life cycle. If you come in at a very early stage, you probably got all these very hot-headed entrepreneurs who should all write books because they know all the answers. Let’s talk a little bit about why your approach is very different from a full-time CMO and why this concept of a fractional CMO together with this huge team of your collective, your support team behind you, why that is a better approach?

One thing I will say and I don’t know what your ratings are here, but in Arch Collective, we have a no bumhole policy. Those hot-headed founders, we don’t work with them. That’s not our MO. I apologize.

This is very valid. The great thing is that you can only work with people that you can work with. As much as the team that’s employing or engaging you, there has to be that fit. One of the biggest challenges of growth is finding how to grow your team to take the company to the next stage so that you don’t end up as a CEO or as a founder suddenly becoming head of HR when you need to run the business.

There are so many important points and things. I agree with what you just mentioned. I got into this because I truly love growing businesses. I love working with entrepreneurs. I come from a family of entrepreneurs. I feel like it’s just something I would enjoy. One would say I would do it if I wasn’t getting paid. I had that genuine interest, but I feel a responsibility to the companies and the founders that I work with to do a great job. If there isn’t that relationship buzz and it’s like, “We’re totally feeding off each other and love working together,” we’re probably not going to get there. Some of that comes with time as you start to get to know someone in their nuances.

On the flip side, my collective, I want them to keep working with me. I want them to engage with my clients. I feel a responsibility to them as well that I’m putting them on projects that are set up for success. If you have a client you can’t communicate with properly, or you’re not on the same page or is that proverbial check the box, “I’m there, I didn’t put it into the NAP,” my team’s not going to be happy.

I’m not going to be happy. It’s just not worth it. I want to make sure that I’m enjoying the work, selfishly. I want to make sure that the collective and my team enjoy the work and I want to make sure that those companies are getting the help and the right fit for them. It’s about finding the trifecta of happiness between all of the groups involved.

Make sure you’re enjoying your work. You should enjoy the process.

That needs to be in place as a foundation because your job is quite hard. You’re going to come in at a stage when a foundation has been built that may need to be unbuilt to a certain extent. On that note, what challenges do you typically come across? If you were to put all the founders into a room and ask each one of them, “What is your company’s vision? What is your company’s mission? What is the most important thing about your company?” Do you find that you often end up with lots of different answers and you then have to try and create a cohesive marketing strategy out of that?

The one thing that comes up 100% in my conversations and I call it the FOMO of revenue or the Fear Of Missing Out on revenue. A lot of times, companies that have gotten to the Series A phase may have clients that look this way or that way, or this size, or that size in that industry because they’re like, “I just take whatever revenue comes my way.” When I come in, I have to have the conversation of, “If I have $100 to spend in marketing and I’ve got to go after twenty audiences, that’s $5 towards each audience.” If you said, “I’m going to pick one audience and I can put $100 towards that one audience,” and we go hard and fast after them, think of which more we can do.

We can drive your revenue. We can learn a ton. We can always expand down the road. It’s not to say we won’t set you up to expand into other industries or other sized customers, but you can’t be everything to everyone. Targeting and being very specific about who we’re going after in that segment, that’s a conversation that I have time and time again.

If you look on your website, there’s a number of very profound success stories that you mentioned there. Is that the fundamental recipe that drives that growth that success, the idea of focus and excellence perhaps to one market sector at the expense of the others?

It’s a large part of it. I can give you an example of that. We’ll just pretend that there are two audiences. If one audience is red and one audience is blue, for lack of a better way to differentiate, then you’ve got to start writing content to appeal to that red audience. You’ve got to explain the company in a way that appeals to them. You’ve got to put out content. You’ve got to target them differently because they may not be online. They may be at events and the blue audience may only be online. You’ve got to have more videos or quick consumable content. This goes back to budget and efficiency.

If anything, startups don’t have extra time. They certainly don’t have a lot of extra money lying around. Even if they just got funding, that money is probably going to an engineering team, the product side, building out the team and hiring. If you are going to be trying to go after two different audiences, you need to make sure you have the budget, bandwidth and resources to go after that. That’s why it’s better to just focus on one audience, especially as you’re building up a marketing team.

There’s always the option to do more. I’ll use my $100, but you could end up spending $50 here and $50 there and still not even learning everything you need to learn to be able to say, “This is what worked and what didn’t.” Especially the digital platforms, you’ve got to invest enough to get statistically significant information out, to be able to make decisions about what works and what doesn’t and where to put more money and where not.

One of the real benefits that you bring compared to a traditional hiring approach is the feedback you get from the various clients you work with. It is creative to all of your clients as a whole. It’s much more compelling to look at bringing skills in on a fractional basis because there is that benefit. Does that resonate with your clients? Do they understand that benefit?

They do and my ability to educate and I call it cross-pollination to where I say, “This other client we’ve been leveraging this, we’ve seen great success. I know that they’re not an InsureTech, they’re an AdTech, but we should apply it.” We do and we get great success. The more that I tell those stories, then it certainly helps people say, “This is valuable because I’m able to draw on the best in the learnings from all sorts of different clients in a short period of time too.” My team is doing the same thing. They’re not just working for me. They’re able to pull ideas and learnings from other clients and other industries as well. You’ve got this great pool of ideation, learning and experience.

On your website, there’s a great article that you wrote called The Great Resignation, which is this pandemic inspired change in the approach. Do you think that the way you operate was the ability to provide services to multiple targeted clients and delivering distilled wisdom, as it were? Has that become a lot more possible or a lot more practical because of the impact of the pandemic?

I started Arch Collective on November 1st, 2019. At that point, I never could have predicted what’s happened in the next 18, 20 months or so. In fact, when I first started, I had a couple of clients and they had just signed up for the whole thing. March happened where in the US they shut everything down. I had to resell them and re-engage and it was quite a lot to handle at the beginning of running a business. As with a lot of businesses that saw an opportunity with the pandemic, I certainly have seen that too. The fact that there is a lot more awesome talent that is saying, “I don’t want to be working at just one company, or I want to have a bit more autonomy,” and they’re going the freelance route.

It has certainly benefited me on the flip side. The fact that clients don’t expect someone to be in their office, that they’re used to doing things remotely over Zoom or Google Meets. That’s made it easier. It opened up the minds to say, “This is a good option.” Most importantly, the other side of The Great Resignation story is that venture capital funding in 2021 versus 2020 is like 2 or 3X, depending on the timeframe you look at.

It’s massive. It was already big and now it’s even that much bigger. I’m like, “Who the heck is working at these startup companies?” The fact that I have a way to say, “We can fill these needs and we can resolve these. We can still grow your business. We can get you set up well.” That’s intriguing and valuable when so many companies are struggling to find talent.

What are the marketing-driven outcomes have you seen over the last couple of years that have surprised you? In other words, things that you can relate to your clients where, for example, the landscape in a certain area has completely changed because of COVID or some other related impact? Do you have any examples of things that have surprised you over the last couple of years?

I mentioned InsureTech. I have clients in that space and the insurance industry is notorious for being slow to move and laggards in a lot of things. When people think about claims here in the US, typically, you’d have a claims adjuster come to your house, check out the damage, make sure that this is valid. “What Matt said is true. We’ll write him a check as designed by the policy.” It was frustrating to have to deal with that before the pandemic. One, you’ve got some stranger coming into your house or outside of your house, you might have to take off time to meet with them. It’s just like being around someone. It’s not ideal.

It takes up time. It’s cumbersome. That’s the way the process has been and insurance companies, “It’s expensive to send one, but that’s the way we do it.” Throw in the pandemic where your inspectors don’t want to be going into some stranger’s house or around some stranger. They were more open-minded to the change and they had to make changes quickly. A lot of InsureTechs benefited from the fact that the old systems, the manual, people-based systems, aren’t going to work.

“What are we going to do? How are we going to get the same level of information? How are we going to be able to do this in the same way?” Arturo, a company who I worked with, was able to resolve these issues and make things a better experience for getting the insurance companies all the information plus work that they need, but then also enabling those insurance companies to give their clients or their customers a great experience as well.

From your perspective, you’ve got to be fairly fleet-footed because as these changes come in, you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got the marketing approach to take advantage of these changes in scenarios. That’s was more of a comment than a question. My question is about the B2B language. You talk about the voice of the customer. How different does that have to be than a direct-to-consumer? Is there a universal approach that businesses need to take in many cases they don’t?

In direct-to-consumer, one might argue that your decision-maker is one person, or it’s a smaller group of people, at least. You may have a couple that’s making a decision or a house of roommates, but it’s 1, 2, 3, maybe 5. On the flip side, with a business, you’re going to have a lot more people in the mix of making that decision. The more expensive or disruptive it gets, the more people are involved in that decision. Being able to tell a story that compels your CFO, CTO, or the team that’s going to be implementing it, your analyst, or calls it like the people that are going to be rolling up their sleeves and using what your business is offering.

There’s a lot more work around education. It can be that the sales cycle is longer. Something like a Zoom, which we’re both on. The sales cycle hasn’t been very long. People just download it and with SaaS, it can be short. A lot of the things that I’m selling or working with clients that they’re selling, there’s a lot of people involved in the decision-making process.

Being able to craft messaging and tell a story that will at least resonate enough that they want then to have a conversation with sales and then sales can dive in and get into the weeds with each of those members of the audience. It is challenging. That’s why when I segment my audience, I say, “I focus on B2B. That’s the world I grew up in. That’s the world I’m used to being in.”

Do you find that one of the issues you come across with your clients is that historically they have been targeting the wrong person? Is that a common failure?

You can’t be everything to everyone.

It can be. A lot of times, when I’m in there, they haven’t been targeting anyone. They have a network and they’ve been working in their network to get entree into certain clients and then using that and working their way through. A lot of times, the companies I work with, they’ve had no marketing, or they brought in an agency, or maybe they put out some press releases, or it’s like the CEO’s younger sister did some campaigns and that’s what they’ve been doing for marketing. The learnings, or what they’ve been doing, are typically limited. As I was speaking, one example came to mind. I had a client and I had looked at their website multiple times before.

I’m like, “This is the right company.” As we were talking about their website and I was giving them some pretty straightforward and blunt feedback on it, they said, “We’ve been focused on raising money. The story we’re telling is focused on investors.” As we grow, we can’t send prospects to this website because they’ll get confused and they’ll do what I did, which is leave. We need to shift that we need to talk to the people who will be buying it and using it and all of those things. I have seen that. It’s not every customer. It’s one in a few.

The difference with your background, I wouldn’t say industry-specific because you deal with a number of industries, but it is industries specific. Would you say that you have a great deal more focus and experience than if a business were to go to a more traditional marketing agency that tries to do everything under one roof?

I had a conversation with this not too long ago. There’s going to be content that the team puts out. We’re going to be doing campaigns and those are things agencies can do, but where I’m not like an agency. I’m like, if you hired a full-time CMO, I’m acting in the same way, except for less hours and for multiple companies at a time. I sit in on your executive meetings. I’m managing your team. I’m managing your budget. I may be presenting to your board updates. I may be under the fire of, “Why aren’t you performing? What’s going on?”

These are things that a traditional CMO would have to do. I do those just for multiple companies and agencies at the same time and for less number of hours. I can’t speak for all of them, but typically it’s more, “We need to launch a product. Can you put together messaging and this collateral that we need,” or if it’s a digital agency, “We’re launching that product. Can you help us get this into the marketplace? Here’s our budget, here’s our KPIs that you want us to meet.” It’s more like a drop in and out. That’s how I would distinguish between what I do versus an agency.

This is a huge difference because the traditional joke about the consultant is that they borrow your watch and then charge you for telling the time, without any sense of responsibility. If you are able to go in and have a responsibility as a member of the executive team, then the company is getting the best of both worlds because they have the flexibility of working with you.

I know we’re changing tacks, but that’s important because there are tons of decisions that all have to be made at the same time that companies need to make. Your approach removes so much of the burden on the founder because you don’t have that fear that, “What if I bring this person on and they don’t work out? How am I going to get rid of them?” Is that not a fair comment?

It is. My goal is always to get up to speed as quickly as I can. In the beginning, I am like, “The CEO or the CRO, or some point of contact, will review things before they go out.” Quickly they say, “Amanda, this looks great. You’re getting the results. You know, you have full autonomy.” That’s huge. There are so many competing priorities and everything needs to be done five minutes ago and everything is a top priority to everyone. If there’s one less thing for a CEO or a leader in a startup to have to worry about, then I’m happy to take that off their plate and own that.

Are you seeing other industry trends emerge across the companies you work with that the founders may not be aware of? For example, the need for environmental credentials may have slipped the founder’s mind, who’s focused on a completely different part of the business. Do you have any thoughts or examples of things like that you’re able to bring that may have been completely missed by your founder’s founding team?

There’s ESG or Environmental Social Governance. It’s something that does come up a lot. I certainly have brought it up to get a perspective. There’s a lot around diversity initiatives in the US and making sure that all groups are included. In fact, I did an Instagram live with a founder of a marketing agency. We were talking about this specific topic like activism marketing and things like that. I do want to bring these up and approach founders with them. It’s important not to have founders just hop onto the cause du jour and then do some things around it, get the hashtag out there or the message.

The Greenwashing or the equivalent.

Exactly. Thank you for mentioning that. I’m happy to bring it up and I do, but if it’s something that’s not embedded in the culture or meaningful, then I don’t push it because then it’s going to be inauthentic and that does more harm than good.

We’ve been talking about the founders and the investee company, but from an investor’s perspective, have you seen any changes in the last couple of years in terms of their approaches, requirements and demands of that investee companies?

I’ll stick with marketing. There’s a lot more than you can measure. It was challenging back in the day and, not that TV ads don’t still take place, but how do you know how effective that TV ad was? If you think of a LinkedIn campaign or a Google Adwords, you know so much information. There are so many metrics. From them, it’s like they want to know everything, but then it’s like boil it down to the 1, 2, or 3 metrics that are the key indicators of success or lack of success. There is a lot of focus around numbers, but not just all the numbers, like getting tight on the key numbers that matter to your business.

That’s interesting because you say the volume of investment has grown significantly. You’ve got these twin almost opposing forces to a certain extent, you got tons of capital going in, but there’s a lot more analysis happening. My view is that the role of the CMA has become far more important in recent history because of this need to communicate. The world now is an instant judgment cancel culture. If you say the wrong thing, this is more D2C or Direct-To-Consumer. Are you seeing those twin challenges of trying to grow the business yet being very cautious about how the messages are delivered?

There is that going on within Corporate America and to some extent in startups. There is certainly a percentage of startups that are focused on addressing these issues or concerns. One may say about employees or talent that if you don’t want to do it, there’s someone down the road that’s willing to do it. You are replaceable. Everyone’s replaceable. There’s a little bit of that, maybe with startups with tons of great ideas out there, but chances are whatever your company’s doing.

There’s probably 1, 2, or 5 other companies doing something, maybe not the same, but something very close to that. You do need to be mindful because if you do something that polarizes a particular group or offends a particular group, you can get canceled. There’s another startup right around the corner that is doing something similar.

If anything, startups don’t have extra time. They certainly don’t have a lot of extra money lying around.

That’s important that you’re able to bring that serious focus as well. I would imagine from a founder’s perspective, the more time they spend with you, the more they realize that’s probably been a very good decision to bring on board because of this depth of experience and knowledge that you’re bringing. It’s not just in terms of the messaging, but just as a to the company as a whole, in your role as a senior executive.

A long-term client of mine, I was with them for several months, which is longer than usual. One of the women in HR, as my last day was coming up, she’s like, “I don’t think I could do what you do. It would be hard. A lot of people here just think of you as being part of the team.” I said, “Frankly, I don’t expect it to be so hard too.” Part of my job is to fire myself and to leave. That is what I do. With these companies, I get attached. I built these relationships and together with all the people, we’ve done great things together.

It’s never just one. It’s not just marketing. It’s a combination of a great product, great leadership and everything. I do have great relationships and it’s hard to say goodbye to them. One of the things with this client was that I was a big part of bringing in the new CMO. She’s someone who’s been in my network. I’ve left them in good hands. That makes it a little easier to walk away from the work I put into these companies.

As you’ve mentioned earlier, you have the entrepreneur spirit in your blood, as it were. It is quite difficult to play the distanced consultancy role because one’s natural desire is to build and not just to watch but to be part of it. It must be quite challenging for you to see this thing grow. I suppose it’s a bit like sending your child off to college or something.

I’ve used that analogy myself. It is a good way to think about it. I also think that’s why I’m good at what I do. It’s because I am invested. In fact, a good friend of mine, her name’s Anita, we did an Instagram live together and she’s a product marketer by trade. She said, “It’s so important for a product marketer to fall in love with the product,” and I agree with this. It’s the same. I want to fall in love with these companies and teams because that makes it so much richer and more fun. As I’m beginning to meet with potential clients, I say, “Growing a business is fun.”

It’s hard work, but this should be enjoyable. We should enjoy this process. They always say like, “Do you want to get stuck in an airport with someone?” If you don’t, then it’s probably not someone you should work with. It’s the same way. As hard as it is to say goodbye, I’d much rather have that relationship where we’ve got some good laughs. We build some good memories, we crushed it, we built that business, than to be a bit more distant. That’s not in my nature. I couldn’t do that.

You would be a very different member of the team if you weren’t as engaged. Do you ever sit there sometimes and think, “I’m going to start my own business?” Do you ever have that desire to say, “With everything I’ve learned, here’s a gap in the market? I’m going to go for it.”

That’s what Arch Collective is, in a way. I noticed the gap in the market. On the flip side, sometimes I’m asked, “Why don’t you ever go full-time?” Sometimes I’m like, “Why don’t I? It would be a lot easier.”

It’s the antithesis of your business model. It’s every reason why you’re successful is because you don’t go full time.

I enjoy the process then of building, getting them set up. When I can bring in the right CMO, I find that because finding a great fit full-time CMO for a company, magic can happen at that point. It’s an important hire. If I can be a part of that, help guide that and bring in a great person, then that’s enough for me.

The time that you come in is so crucial. It is great to hear of these successes because you’re coming in as a company when its need is greatest, but they probably don’t realize that. They must be very grateful in retrospect to have made that decision.

As part of my process, as I’m meeting with potential clients and maybe this is part of the NAP protocol as well, but having founders that recognize, “As a founder, I may know my space. I know this company, but I’m not a marketer. I’m going to rely on you to be the expert or lean on you.” They may say, “I have a marketing background, but you’re the leader and I’m here to give you feedback and defer, but this is your ship to steer.” I make sure that there’s the right fit there because there’s a lot of CEOs that want to be CMOS or think that they’re COO. In those cases, it’s not a good fit for me because, ultimately, there are 1,000 priorities. If they want to be a CMO, be one. If you want to be CEO, be a CEO and let me be your CMO.

I’m sure that there are a number of stories that you could tell. There’ll be a book, I’m sure, at some point. I have some questions for you from my Hooked On Startups’ quickfire questionnaire. I’m not sure if you were prepared for this, but we’re going to switch gears slightly. Are you ready? Fasten your safety belt and scream if you want to go faster. Question number one, what is your favorite word?

Evergreen.

I haven’t had that one ever. Question two, what is your least favorite word?

No.

Number three. What are you most excited about?

I just signed up a new client and we started doing a little bit of work and I’m so excited to keep working with them.

Question number four. What turns you off right now?

The cold weather that’s coming.

I heard that people in California had been forced to wear shoes.

Unbelievable. San Francisco is not the rest of us.

It’s not. It was Mark Twain that said, “The coldest winter I ever had was a summer in San Francisco.” Number five. What sound or noise do you love?

When my kids get home from school and they’re just so excited to see me.

Question number six. What sound or noise do you hate?

When people honk their horns, it drives me crazy.

Number seven. You may plead the fifth on this one. What is your favorite curse word?

I do love a good F-bomb.

It is the best. It is a gift. People don’t understand the versatility, the joy that of that word.

It’s a verb. It’s a noun. It’s a lot of things.

It is the primordial molecule wrapped up in a word here. My next question, number eight. What profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt?

I would love to be a full-time artist.

If you don’t want to be stuck with a certain person in an airport, then it’s probably not someone you should work with.

Painting or sculpting?

I have this vision of massive installations that involve visuals and music and a whole experiential installation.

Question number nine. What profession would you not like to attempt?

I would never want to be a surgeon or anything involving cutting human beings open. No, thank you.

That’s mine. That’s the thing I always wanted to be. That’s what makes a market. Isn’t that funny?

Nope, that’s on you. You do that. I’m staying away.

I’m sure that reveals far more about me than I would prefer. Question number 10, if heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

“You made it through by the skin of your teeth.” You can’t live too perfectly. You got to take risks. You got to have an edge. I don’t want to have a boring life or something along those lines.

It is fun. It is one of the strange questions. None of them are mine. I’ve stolen them from In the Actor’s Studio. In fact, those questions were based on a questionnaire from a French philosopher. Anyway, I just want to say thank you so much for being an amazing guest. How do people get in touch? How do they find out how to engage you? How to get hold of you and find out more about how you can help their company succeed?

My website is a great way to do that or my social channels. The website is Arch-Collective.com. I’m on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. You can find me. I do my best to market myself. Any of those places, if you reach out, we’ll be able to get in touch and connect.

Thank you so much for coming on and I very much look forward to following your progress and hopefully staying in touch.

Thank you so much. I enjoyed our conversation.

Important Links:

• Arch Collective
• The Great Resignation and Freelance Boom: Which Came First?
• LinkedIn – Amanda W. Rabideau
• Twitter – Amanda Rabideau
• Instagram – Amanda Rabideau

About Amanda Rabideau

Amanda Rabideau built her career growing businesses using effective marketing, strategy, and sales practices. Over the past fifteen years, she has worked with large enterprises like Dell, Microsoft, CoreLogic and tech start-ups including Cloudstaff, New Relic and OraMetrix (acquired by Dentsply Sirona in March 2018).

Throughout her career, Amanda has served as a trusted advisor to entrepreneurs as they launch and expand their businesses. This passion for helping entrepreneurs led Amanda to start Arch Collective. She now devotes her career to empowering entrepreneurs and business leaders to grow their companies through effective marketing and commercialization.