November 17, 2025 • 27 mins
Julie Irving shares her skills journey from working in radio ad sales to transitioning into pharmacy and healthcare marketing. Fun times hearing about her strategies for success amid the COVID-19 pandemic while working at a major pharmacy brand on their marketing team.
▬▬▬▬▬ Resources ▬▬▬▬▬
- Julie Irving: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julieirving/
- Efrem Epstein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/efremepstein/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cacklemedia/
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cacklemedia
- X: https://x.com/CackleMediaLLC
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CackleMedia
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cacklemedia/
- Support the pod when signing up for Descript / SquadCast: https://get.descript.com/transferableskill
▬▬▬▬▬ Timestamps ▬▬▬▬▬
00:00 Introduction to Transferable Skills
00:39 Julie's Early Career in Radio
05:45 Transitioning to Marketing
08:53 Marketing Strategies and Roles
13:23 Healthcare Marketing Challenges
25:36 Navigating the Job Market
27:26 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Transferable skills, skills, skills from Cackle Media.
This is transferable skills. I'm Noah, Michigan.
Today's guest is Julie Irving, who shares her skills journey
from radio ad sales into healthcare marketing.
Stay tuned for the second-half of the episode where Julie
shares a little bit of her perspective and experience
working for a gigantic healthcare pharmacy company
(00:20):
amidst the COVID-19 lockdown andvaccinations.
What's it like to try to market to an appeal to a vast variety
of different kind of sectors, populations, all dealing with
the same crisis but having different perspectives,
feelings, impressions? Not easy.
I hope you enjoy Julie. It's great to have you here on
(00:40):
the show. Thank you for having me, I'm
excited to be here. All right, let's start in your
career after college. Where were you and what were you
doing? So I was in College in North
Carolina. I thought I wanted to get into
the music business. I'd been a music major in
college and I switched to business.
I was like, I'll do something with both of them.
I had interned at the radio station in DC101.
For anybody that is familiar with that area.
(01:02):
That was a really fun internship.
It was like a promotions internship after school.
My first like professional job that I was in was being a sales
coordinator for one of the station.
It was for Cleared Channel, which is now iHeartRadio.
It was a sales coordinator for Wash FM.
So I was basically like administrative support to the
sales team. And I saw them all going out and
(01:22):
being independent and having clients and putting together
proposals for them. And I just really wanted to do
that. So I had to convince them to
essentially let me do that. I'm not like your standard
salesperson, but I think, but I did decent in it.
I was already in there, so I hadto interview with a couple of
(01:44):
the different sales managers andI think I put together a couple
of decks that was like, This is why you should hire me.
These are the kinds of accounts I'm going to go for and the kind
of results I'll bring and etcetera, etcetera.
And I think I did that for that was like the Top 40 station and
the rock station I worked for. So Hot 99.5 and DC1O1.
(02:04):
Again, anybody that is from the DC Baltimore area will know it.
Anyone else will not. When you're putting together
that proposal, you're saying like, here's my goals, here's
what I believe I can accomplish.What was that based on?
Like just hopes and dreams? Or were you basing on doing some
level of research and understanding the market and
getting a proposal that you feltwas somewhat unique in this what
(02:25):
you were going to bring at the table?
I could see what kind of accounts were running on those
stations from the data and resources I had, and I could see
just understanding the categories that did well and
what other businesses could we go after in those categories?
Like I had access to some qualitative information and
things like that. So I think I just took that.
It was like, this is what I'm going to do.
(02:45):
These are where I think the opportunities are.
I think that most people probably interviewing for these
rules were not doing that. So I feel like that kind of
drive and accountability where they're like, all right, let's
try this out. One of the sales leaders was
basically like, you're either going to do like amazing at this
or you're going to fail. Somebody saying that to you, is
(03:05):
that a motivation or is that fear?
Like what is that? How do you react to it when
somebody says you're either going to do really well or
terrible? Oh, it's 100% motivation if
anybody thinks that I'm incapable of doing something,
like to this day, if someone thinks I'm not able to it, I'm
like, yeah, I'm going to do thatactually.
You characterize yourself in some of our earlier
conversations as internally driven and always learning.
(03:27):
So I'm going to figure out how to do this and I'm motivated to
to outperform your expectations.Yeah, that's totally who I am.
The one thing I will say is you got to be careful with that.
It's juice isn't always worth the squeeze.
Like it's kind of like the pick your battles don't do something
just because of that. I think it's also OK to
recognize that, like early on your career, we don't all know
what we want and what that juiceis going to be worth.
(03:49):
And so you got to try a bunch ofdifferent things before you
figure out what you're very satisfied with, what brings you
joy, what you're fulfilled through and where your strengths
are. How did that go for you, that
role? It is hard.
That is a hard role and most people do not make it past the
first year. It's a lot of young people too.
So that was fun. I was with a bunch of other like
23 to 25 year olds. You're on Commission.
(04:10):
I was on a draw of $1500 a month.
So if I would get that no matterwhat, but if I didn't make that
in Commission, I would have to pay it back.
So I think that maybe there was only a couple months, like the
first couple months where that'sall I made and then it picked
up. But it's just very hard
financially because it takes time.
Like when you're in those kind of roles, you have to go as an
entry level, like newer person, you have to go get all your own
(04:31):
business. So you're getting direct
business. Most of your larger business
goes through like an ad agency. How did you figure out who to go
after? I would just see who's
advertising other places, see who had budget, call them, say
you're trying to do this, I can help you do this.
Essentially. I just had to.
I just had to hit the phones. It's so painful to think about
that now. I was just very determined.
(04:52):
I don't know. I don't think I could do it if
my life depended on it, but I don't think.
Yeah, Can we talk about that? Because hitting the phones cold
calling, that is a skill. You just have to be like, I
think a machine. I get salespeople that reach out
to me now all the time trying tosell me things that make
absolutely no sense for me. You need to know who you're
talking to a little bit. You need to know something about
them, and you need to find a wayto to relate to them and relate
(05:15):
to helping them. I don't know.
I tried to make friends with people.
I tried to relate people. I tried to to understand what
was going on in their business and ask them questions and
basically you cold call. Then you get a meeting with
them. You do a meeting where you do
like a client needs analysis andunderstand what their business
is, what their goals are. This is what you need to do.
And then you come back and you put together a plan.
(05:36):
It might be radio, it might showwhat time, it might show what
time, type of ad, or what creative we can develop for you.
How long were you banging the phones and doing sales?
So I was in that role for about 3 years and then so then I
realized I want to don't want tobe selling.
I'm going to be on the side where I'm like strategizing the
whole bigger picture. And like, I did not come to this
(05:56):
decision lightly, but I'm like, all right, I'm going to move to
New York and go to NYU and get my MBA and move into a marketing
role. So with that though, I went to
the program where I worked through the program where I was
going part time and then I endedup interviewing and getting a
job with the direct competition,which was CBS Radio.
So I took that and I moved up there.
I knew I wanted to do marketing,but it was just making the, this
(06:20):
was like the biggest transitional movement, I think
was moving from the sales into marketing, even though I didn't
feel like it was that big a job.But what you usually want to do,
and maybe you got in this from talking to a whole ton of people
about this is the easiest move for you is either change
industry or change function. And I couldn't, there wasn't
really like a lot of marketing jobs like that in radio.
(06:41):
There was to an extent they werepromotions and those jobs were
just super competitive. And I think also in many cases
might not have even paid as muchas sales.
I didn't think that was the right direction.
So if that was the majority of the marketing roles in radio,
what was it that you wanted to do that you were hoping for?
I think when I went to school, Isaid I wanted to get into brand
management in my essay, but I just, I don't even think I
(07:01):
honestly really knew specifically what kind of
marketing I wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to
strategize and manage campaigns.I was working the whole time
through the NBA because it was only I went at night and at
night on the weekends. The last few months of school I
had AI got a contract role with Quincy, which is they don't
exist anymore. They were like diapers.com and
(07:23):
wag.com, but that was my first like marketing manager full time
type role where I was basically tasked with driving traffic to
this siteafterschool.com post ontheir social media accounts.
I was actually doing a lot of encouraging people to join their
affiliate program. I had no budget.
It was an interesting role. I was just getting very scrappy.
I was targeting businesses in specific states to do
(07:45):
partnerships. That was like a lot of what the
role was and social media posting and maybe some e-mail
marketing. You were the.
Catch all of marketing for them.They didn't have any other
marketing person for that site. They had for the larger
organization, like I think therewas like a paid search person
and things like that. But for that specific site, it
was just me. The sales mindset came back into
(08:09):
it 'cause I was like cold calling people and just trying
to do these, all these little partnerships.
It was very like grass roots. So I was given the direction to
do that and to take that approach.
But then I think I had to figureout how to make that, yeah.
You're totally leaning on your cold calling sales experience
from before and that's an unconventional way to do
(08:30):
marketing and you're taking yoursales experience and applying it
to the marketing role. Yeah.
But by the way, all that freelance work that I did, same
thing, there was a couple of clients that I had to put like
proposals together, be like, this is what I'm going to do.
I mean it all, everything it plays into even making like
these smaller, like industry changes that I've made, all of
it. It's such an important skill to
have, I think. So now what?
(08:53):
So I got a marketing manager role at Macy's or it was
macys.com really, and I was there for almost 5 years I
think. So I was still living in New
York at the time. But anyway, the 1st 2 or 2 1/2
years I was there, it was all driving business to the website,
driving business to certain departments.
So the job was essentially like e-mail marketing, allocating and
(09:15):
driving strategy for paid searchlike SEO, content hubs,
affiliate marketing, all those tactics of figuring out how to
drive that and how to get the share of voice for the
businesses that I had in the larger Macy's like ecosystem.
I would say. So Macy's always has sales like
they always have sales. Some sales are better than
others. I know which ones to buy
(09:37):
different things in, at least ifthe strategy hasn't changed so I
can get myself some better discounts there.
Nowadays. Macy's strategy, a lot of it and
especially for the businesses like the kids business, it's
like how do we show up and get like a share of voice in these
different sales to drive our business.
I got promoted at one point and was really focusing on the lease
businesses that we are. We had a restructure where there
(09:58):
was no E com marketing team anymore.
And also, at the time, my husband and I had moved on New
York City into Stamford, CT, andI was commuting in every day and
it was just like, it was just too much.
And yeah, I'm like, all right, Ithink we just need to try
something totally different. So I really, I just expanded my
geographic search to New England, New York, all of it.
(10:22):
And I found a role at CVS Health.
I say CVS Health because I also work for CBS, so it's confusing.
But while I was at Macy's, one of the businesses I worked on
was LensCrafters along with Sunglass huts.
So that's, it's all Luxottica islike the parent company.
And I think because I had that background, I pivoted that into
the CVS role where it was literally doing that.
(10:43):
Yeah, what a natural progressionthere.
Yeah. But then the interesting thing
was that it seems like when I started, it was like this big
initiative, but then they decided to stop with the
audiology and then the optical became less of a priority.
But then I helped launch the optical.
There was like an optical ecom site there where we were.
(11:04):
We're partnering with 1800 contacts.
That job went in different directions.
But I would say what's interesting about that role is
that what looks like on paper that the roles might have been
very similar, they actually weren't.
There's so many different kinds of marketing roles.
There are so many. I don't think people realized.
That if you can just make maybe highlight a few that might
(11:25):
appear similar but how they distinguish themselves quite
differently. What would some of those roles
be all. Right.
Let me just say this. I think people think that
marketing is basically like making something pretty and
coming up with a cool tagline. I think it's part of marketing
well. Yeah.
But I think that's why they can do marketing.
What I do now and kind of what Iwas doing at CVS, it's more like
(11:47):
strategic marketing where you'redeveloping a strategy, the
insights like why are we doing this, what are we trying to
accomplish, how are we going to measure that etcetera.
And it's not, you're not going to have these this much
specialization at smaller companies.
There's CRM, there's and there'slife cycle marketing where
you're looking at your retentionand loyalty and nudging and
whatever the business does will change your segmentation.
(12:08):
There's performance marketing where you are literally like
buying media and looking at results.
There is Brandon Creative where you're developing the creative
concepts. That's who would probably
develop the slogan. So and make it look nice.
Yeah, on insights coming from meand what do they do?
That's right. That's.
Right. Well, there's data and the data
analysts within marketing are analyzing, like you said, life
(12:31):
cycle, I should say, LTV, retention, attrition.
They're also analysing the data from conversion from the actual
promotion or media and all that stuff.
But then there's also content marketing.
It's like, what are you writing and what kind of format is it?
Is it blog? Is it articles?
Is it on social media? There's social media marketing
with this. It's it's own thing, which is a
hybrid, hybrid between sales, customer service and content in
(12:54):
an engagement. And so there's so many different
types of marketing. So when someone says that they
work in marketing, I I have a general idea of who you are, but
I don't know the type of work you're doing at all.
Yeah, it can just it just variesso much.
So this is what I say. It was more in this that my team
would play like the strategist role at CVS, but when I, and
while there was elements of thatat Macy's, like we weren't
(13:16):
driving the strategy as much andmy role was more like drive
sales, traffic drive sales, likethat was what the role was.
Now I work for Elegance Health, which you probably don't know
unless you're in healthcare, butit's Anthem Blue Cross Blue
Shield. Most people will know that it's
like a Fortune 50. It's a huge organization.
I have moved over to the PBM side.
So the pharmacy benefits managersaid the pharmacy side of that,
(13:38):
which if you're not, don't know anything about this, you
probably don't even realize there's a difference, but it,
there is. But it's all part of the same
company. Essentially.
My role there, both roles have been all about driving member
behavior, which might mean, for example, like getting people to
close gaps in care, encouraging our members to get a flu shot or
I was very involved in everything COVID because this
(14:00):
was like 2020. That was really interesting
because early on people were like, wanted this information
from us and they were like, dying for it.
They're like, what are their vaccines coming?
And it made a quick turn into people getting mad about hearing
anything about vaccines anyway. Or interesting time to be part
of a pharmacy and healthcare company.
(14:21):
It's crazy. You are seen as a reliable
source. They're coming to you for
information but also solutions. Not to get like into that topic
because it is a whole another conversation.
But we can actually scratch the surface.
Well, I don't mind scratching the surface a little bit if you
don't mind like in your role driving and information to
consumers during a period like COVID where they're looking to
(14:41):
you for information, results andsolutions for in this case,
vaccines and healthcare and bestpractices.
And then when the narrative and the tone changes suddenly into
fear or just, I don't want to hear about this anymore, or
there's disinformation or a lackof transparency and
understanding. There's a lot of things that
would maybe upset people or turnthem off from wanting to hear
(15:03):
more about it. What would what kind of
responsibility do you have or how do you change your job when
it when the sentiment of what the audience and society is, how
their sentiment changes so quickly?
How do you react to that? We had started communicating
information about like misinformation or trying to get
around myths and things like that.
I will say that was a bit difficult to do because just the
(15:25):
speed at which that information was going and the speed at which
we could react, we're not in thesame level, but I don't think
that was needed to be our place anymore.
We let people know they could get vaccines, did provide
education or a little on. We decided to stop doing it at
some point. Like we put hopefulness surveys
in a lot of our emails. So we get like straight feedback
from people, which I find fascinating.
(15:47):
Yeah, I'm sure. But one thing actually that like
the company pivoted and as a marketing strategist I supported
was we had got free COVID tests for certain segments of our
population. And we had a, because we had a
lot of members that were gettingthe more expensive, I forget
what they're called, but there was a couple different kinds of
tests and one took a few days and was more expensive.
(16:10):
And then there was the rapid tests were like starting to come
out. So we only had limited number of
tests and we wanted to get them to the places where they were
needed most. So what I did is I put together
a campaign that I worked with the clinical team to basically
look at the data, see where COVID was spiking.
And then I set this up so that afew days after we got that date
about COVID spiking, we'd send an e-mail to tag COVID spiking.
(16:32):
We can get you free tests in just a couple days and that did
it did amazingly well. I can't think of all the metrics
off the top of my head, but it was like when I compare that to
even retail marketing where people are more responsive, I
feel like in general it was likeit would and conversion was
insane, like everyone wanted it and it was beneficial to
everybody involved. That's the best of of all the
(16:53):
worlds when that happens. So I guess in summary answer the
question is the IT wasn't just me, but the company has a whole
shifted what we were doing and it became less about like myths
about the vaccine because that had just been beaten to death by
society, I think, and more abouttesting and just yeah.
So if as a marketer and somebodywho looks at the data, the
(17:16):
survey results, the feedback andengagement, if you if you have
some insight into this, the example that you used was
there's a virus that is spiking right now, we can get you the
solution from the consumer side.I personally speaking, sometimes
I'm skeptical where I see an e-mail like that with the
(17:36):
subject line. It's like I'm addressing this
need right now. And I sometimes find myself
saying, wait, is this authentic and helpful to me and they're
trying to serve the community? Or are they trying to be
opportunistic about a situation and make money as a healthcare
company? And that's like the consumer
mentality that I'm in, always trying to parse out or evaluate
(17:58):
the intentions of this e-mail and promotion.
From your side of it, how do youlook at it?
So I totally hear that and I butthere are things that I like the
way that I think about it and the way that I think about
communicating with members is just providing them with the
information that they need and providing them with tools and
resources they can use at the right time.
(18:18):
There's only so much that I can say.
Like we actually spend more timetargeting people that, for
example, like that we think are more likely to take the action
because of their behavior or because of their digital
behavior or their clean behavioror something.
So there might be some people that you just are never going to
convert because they're like, they think they're going to get
a chip in their arm from gettinga vaccine.
And we've been to consideration.But for the people that are more
(18:40):
receptive or coming more open toit, it's just a matter of
actually, as your insurance company, we're telling you that
this vaccine is free. It doesn't cost you anything to
get and also here's some places where you can get it near you.
Like it's just giving them that information.
And I have looked through so much research about what people
want from their health insurancecompany or their pharmacy
(19:01):
benefits manager or any of it. The place where we always went
is like, we can tell them how much things cost and what their
benefits are and how do they getaccess.
Yeah, transparency and pricing and accessibility is probably
the most important thing. And you probably have to ignore
the questions or the, I don't know if you want to call it
conspiracy theories, but you probably on your side have to
(19:21):
just assume we're going to do our best and we're going to send
out this information. The majority of the people will
assume that this is helpful information and everybody else,
it's not our concern. They can either believe it or
not, we're just trying to be helpful.
Yeah, Or we just shift the messaging to those people or we
don't message them at all if we have the information like we try
to be, I'd say this company and this and I don't think it's just
(19:43):
this is the only company I worked in this industry.
We are so sensitive about what we're sending out and who we're
sending it to. And when in in an effort to
going back to being annoying or not annoying or offense, it like
you can be real. You can really offend people
with the with communications about their health.
So the question you always have to ask as a company, regardless
(20:04):
of what product or services you are offering is, can I send this
out knowing that there will be some people that will
misinterpret our intentions here?
Is that still OK to send out? Yeah.
And it's a balance because you want to get people the
information, it's going to help people to know the information,
but you're going to, you could potentially offend people and
related to health and just I, weare very careful about these
(20:27):
things. Give me some insight behind the
curtain scenes of an e-mail campaign that might go out in
healthcare, specifically where in a meeting about it, the
question comes up, how will thisbe received?
Can you just characterize or give me a general understanding
of how much time is spent considering even the copy the
(20:49):
subject line? Like what are you use a variety
of tools to score it and to decide how to move forward?
Like on an e-mail that I might open for a second and delete in
a matter of moments. How much time is being put into
considering that e-mail before it goes out?
It's not just anywhere that any of these companies that I worked
with these bit the beats big companies that I work with, CVS,
(21:09):
Macy's, it's like all there are processes.
It takes takes months from when you brief it.
So going through the process andgetting out the door, you write
a brief, you're going through a creative team.
The creative is developed. There's project managers
involved. There's like and the CRM team
involved to look at these relative things going out,
what's the priority, How are we coordinating it?
(21:30):
You have, depending on what the campaign is, you might have
multiple layers of leadership. Looking at it generally now, I
don't have a lot of that. The amount of time that goes
into considering an e-mail before it goes out is huge.
The number of people involved and therefore because of the
time and the individuals involved, think about the cost
(21:51):
to the company as far as like hourly wages go.
The rates at all those individuals that had eyes on and
meetings about considering that all that time before an e-mail
goes out, that e-mail that I opened for a second, looked at,
scanned and quickly deleted, allin a matter of five to 10
seconds was very expensive. Yeah.
And The thing is like people, people think including I'm
(22:11):
probably guilty of this too. Emails free.
Yeah, emails. It's not free.
It's just it's like time. It's time which is paid for by
the company, but it's not like atelevision ad.
A television ad, you pay the media company, whatever.
But yeah, no. Different cost structure.
Yeah. The thing is, I will say this
job market is absolutely ridiculously beyond insane.
(22:33):
But what I found, and I don't know what the solution is in
this job market, when I've made some changes in my career, it
was easier because I didn't havethe financial burden.
I didn't have kids, I didn't have the same responsibilities.
I was younger, I had more freedom.
I was like in school, entry level I think is very difficult.
But once you're past that point,it's a little easier.
(22:55):
And now I've also had the opportunity to be a hiring
manager and to lead a team. When I interview people, I love
all of them and I wanna hire allof them.
I genuinely like and I just build a new team.
But that doesn't make any sense.And I've actually, I'm like, I
need to balance this out with people that are gonna be more
critical than me because I thinkI feel like there are people
(23:16):
that gave me a chance that I want to give other people a
chance to give them the same benefit of the doubt.
You have to balance it. And I also know that with the
complexity of my organization, Ineed somebody that has some kind
of experience in in this. I guess some solutions would be
1, If you can do freelance work,if you can do side work, even if
you don't get paid enough or youdo it for free, if you can
afford to do that, leveraging your network is another thing
(23:38):
which everybody says. And yeah, you do that.
I've had a lot of success in reaching out to alumni.
I always offer to help the people I'm talking to, even
though most of them probably can't use anything for me.
But you never know. You never know, right?
I don't know. You just have to be.
You have to just get out there. I don't know, like these are all
probably things that people knowand they're easier said than
(24:00):
done, but you have to do that. I think like 10X right now.
I agree and I've seen that firsthand.
I know a lot of people looking and that's a shared experience.
Yeah, just keep, keep going. Don't.
You. I don't know.
I don't know what to say, I wantto be more helpful.
This is great. I want to say thank you Julie
for being here today. Thank you for having me on.
(24:20):
I want to thank Ephraim Epsom for recommending Julie as
today's guest and to your listeners for joining us on this
episode of Transferable Skills. Remember, the skills you've
gained can take you anywhere. Until next time, keep exploring
those transferable skills.
Transferable skills, skills, skills from Cackle Media.
This is transferable skills. I'm Noah, Michigan.
Today's guest is Julie Irving, who shares her skills journey
from radio ad sales into healthcare marketing.
Stay tuned for the second-half of the episode where Julie
shares a little bit of her perspective and experience
working for a gigantic healthcare pharmacy company
(00:20):
amidst the COVID-19 lockdown andvaccinations.
What's it like to try to market to an appeal to a vast variety
of different kind of sectors, populations, all dealing with
the same crisis but having different perspectives,
feelings, impressions? Not easy.
I hope you enjoy Julie. It's great to have you here on
(00:40):
the show. Thank you for having me, I'm
excited to be here. All right, let's start in your
career after college. Where were you and what were you
doing? So I was in College in North
Carolina. I thought I wanted to get into
the music business. I'd been a music major in
college and I switched to business.
I was like, I'll do something with both of them.
I had interned at the radio station in DC101.
For anybody that is familiar with that area.
(01:02):
That was a really fun internship.
It was like a promotions internship after school.
My first like professional job that I was in was being a sales
coordinator for one of the station.
It was for Cleared Channel, which is now iHeartRadio.
It was a sales coordinator for Wash FM.
So I was basically like administrative support to the
sales team. And I saw them all going out and
(01:22):
being independent and having clients and putting together
proposals for them. And I just really wanted to do
that. So I had to convince them to
essentially let me do that. I'm not like your standard
salesperson, but I think, but I did decent in it.
I was already in there, so I hadto interview with a couple of
(01:44):
the different sales managers andI think I put together a couple
of decks that was like, This is why you should hire me.
These are the kinds of accounts I'm going to go for and the kind
of results I'll bring and etcetera, etcetera.
And I think I did that for that was like the Top 40 station and
the rock station I worked for. So Hot 99.5 and DC1O1.
(02:04):
Again, anybody that is from the DC Baltimore area will know it.
Anyone else will not. When you're putting together
that proposal, you're saying like, here's my goals, here's
what I believe I can accomplish.What was that based on?
Like just hopes and dreams? Or were you basing on doing some
level of research and understanding the market and
getting a proposal that you feltwas somewhat unique in this what
(02:25):
you were going to bring at the table?
I could see what kind of accounts were running on those
stations from the data and resources I had, and I could see
just understanding the categories that did well and
what other businesses could we go after in those categories?
Like I had access to some qualitative information and
things like that. So I think I just took that.
It was like, this is what I'm going to do.
(02:45):
These are where I think the opportunities are.
I think that most people probably interviewing for these
rules were not doing that. So I feel like that kind of
drive and accountability where they're like, all right, let's
try this out. One of the sales leaders was
basically like, you're either going to do like amazing at this
or you're going to fail. Somebody saying that to you, is
(03:05):
that a motivation or is that fear?
Like what is that? How do you react to it when
somebody says you're either going to do really well or
terrible? Oh, it's 100% motivation if
anybody thinks that I'm incapable of doing something,
like to this day, if someone thinks I'm not able to it, I'm
like, yeah, I'm going to do thatactually.
You characterize yourself in some of our earlier
conversations as internally driven and always learning.
(03:27):
So I'm going to figure out how to do this and I'm motivated to
to outperform your expectations.Yeah, that's totally who I am.
The one thing I will say is you got to be careful with that.
It's juice isn't always worth the squeeze.
Like it's kind of like the pick your battles don't do something
just because of that. I think it's also OK to
recognize that, like early on your career, we don't all know
what we want and what that juiceis going to be worth.
(03:49):
And so you got to try a bunch ofdifferent things before you
figure out what you're very satisfied with, what brings you
joy, what you're fulfilled through and where your strengths
are. How did that go for you, that
role? It is hard.
That is a hard role and most people do not make it past the
first year. It's a lot of young people too.
So that was fun. I was with a bunch of other like
23 to 25 year olds. You're on Commission.
(04:10):
I was on a draw of $1500 a month.
So if I would get that no matterwhat, but if I didn't make that
in Commission, I would have to pay it back.
So I think that maybe there was only a couple months, like the
first couple months where that'sall I made and then it picked
up. But it's just very hard
financially because it takes time.
Like when you're in those kind of roles, you have to go as an
entry level, like newer person, you have to go get all your own
(04:31):
business. So you're getting direct
business. Most of your larger business
goes through like an ad agency. How did you figure out who to go
after? I would just see who's
advertising other places, see who had budget, call them, say
you're trying to do this, I can help you do this.
Essentially. I just had to.
I just had to hit the phones. It's so painful to think about
that now. I was just very determined.
(04:52):
I don't know. I don't think I could do it if
my life depended on it, but I don't think.
Yeah, Can we talk about that? Because hitting the phones cold
calling, that is a skill. You just have to be like, I
think a machine. I get salespeople that reach out
to me now all the time trying tosell me things that make
absolutely no sense for me. You need to know who you're
talking to a little bit. You need to know something about
them, and you need to find a wayto to relate to them and relate
(05:15):
to helping them. I don't know.
I tried to make friends with people.
I tried to relate people. I tried to to understand what
was going on in their business and ask them questions and
basically you cold call. Then you get a meeting with
them. You do a meeting where you do
like a client needs analysis andunderstand what their business
is, what their goals are. This is what you need to do.
And then you come back and you put together a plan.
(05:36):
It might be radio, it might showwhat time, it might show what
time, type of ad, or what creative we can develop for you.
How long were you banging the phones and doing sales?
So I was in that role for about 3 years and then so then I
realized I want to don't want tobe selling.
I'm going to be on the side where I'm like strategizing the
whole bigger picture. And like, I did not come to this
(05:56):
decision lightly, but I'm like, all right, I'm going to move to
New York and go to NYU and get my MBA and move into a marketing
role. So with that though, I went to
the program where I worked through the program where I was
going part time and then I endedup interviewing and getting a
job with the direct competition,which was CBS Radio.
So I took that and I moved up there.
I knew I wanted to do marketing,but it was just making the, this
(06:20):
was like the biggest transitional movement, I think
was moving from the sales into marketing, even though I didn't
feel like it was that big a job.But what you usually want to do,
and maybe you got in this from talking to a whole ton of people
about this is the easiest move for you is either change
industry or change function. And I couldn't, there wasn't
really like a lot of marketing jobs like that in radio.
(06:41):
There was to an extent they werepromotions and those jobs were
just super competitive. And I think also in many cases
might not have even paid as muchas sales.
I didn't think that was the right direction.
So if that was the majority of the marketing roles in radio,
what was it that you wanted to do that you were hoping for?
I think when I went to school, Isaid I wanted to get into brand
management in my essay, but I just, I don't even think I
(07:01):
honestly really knew specifically what kind of
marketing I wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to
strategize and manage campaigns.I was working the whole time
through the NBA because it was only I went at night and at
night on the weekends. The last few months of school I
had AI got a contract role with Quincy, which is they don't
exist anymore. They were like diapers.com and
(07:23):
wag.com, but that was my first like marketing manager full time
type role where I was basically tasked with driving traffic to
this siteafterschool.com post ontheir social media accounts.
I was actually doing a lot of encouraging people to join their
affiliate program. I had no budget.
It was an interesting role. I was just getting very scrappy.
I was targeting businesses in specific states to do
(07:45):
partnerships. That was like a lot of what the
role was and social media posting and maybe some e-mail
marketing. You were the.
Catch all of marketing for them.They didn't have any other
marketing person for that site. They had for the larger
organization, like I think therewas like a paid search person
and things like that. But for that specific site, it
was just me. The sales mindset came back into
(08:09):
it 'cause I was like cold calling people and just trying
to do these, all these little partnerships.
It was very like grass roots. So I was given the direction to
do that and to take that approach.
But then I think I had to figureout how to make that, yeah.
You're totally leaning on your cold calling sales experience
from before and that's an unconventional way to do
(08:30):
marketing and you're taking yoursales experience and applying it
to the marketing role. Yeah.
But by the way, all that freelance work that I did, same
thing, there was a couple of clients that I had to put like
proposals together, be like, this is what I'm going to do.
I mean it all, everything it plays into even making like
these smaller, like industry changes that I've made, all of
it. It's such an important skill to
have, I think. So now what?
(08:53):
So I got a marketing manager role at Macy's or it was
macys.com really, and I was there for almost 5 years I
think. So I was still living in New
York at the time. But anyway, the 1st 2 or 2 1/2
years I was there, it was all driving business to the website,
driving business to certain departments.
So the job was essentially like e-mail marketing, allocating and
(09:15):
driving strategy for paid searchlike SEO, content hubs,
affiliate marketing, all those tactics of figuring out how to
drive that and how to get the share of voice for the
businesses that I had in the larger Macy's like ecosystem.
I would say. So Macy's always has sales like
they always have sales. Some sales are better than
others. I know which ones to buy
(09:37):
different things in, at least ifthe strategy hasn't changed so I
can get myself some better discounts there.
Nowadays. Macy's strategy, a lot of it and
especially for the businesses like the kids business, it's
like how do we show up and get like a share of voice in these
different sales to drive our business.
I got promoted at one point and was really focusing on the lease
businesses that we are. We had a restructure where there
(09:58):
was no E com marketing team anymore.
And also, at the time, my husband and I had moved on New
York City into Stamford, CT, andI was commuting in every day and
it was just like, it was just too much.
And yeah, I'm like, all right, Ithink we just need to try
something totally different. So I really, I just expanded my
geographic search to New England, New York, all of it.
(10:22):
And I found a role at CVS Health.
I say CVS Health because I also work for CBS, so it's confusing.
But while I was at Macy's, one of the businesses I worked on
was LensCrafters along with Sunglass huts.
So that's, it's all Luxottica islike the parent company.
And I think because I had that background, I pivoted that into
the CVS role where it was literally doing that.
(10:43):
Yeah, what a natural progressionthere.
Yeah. But then the interesting thing
was that it seems like when I started, it was like this big
initiative, but then they decided to stop with the
audiology and then the optical became less of a priority.
But then I helped launch the optical.
There was like an optical ecom site there where we were.
(11:04):
We're partnering with 1800 contacts.
That job went in different directions.
But I would say what's interesting about that role is
that what looks like on paper that the roles might have been
very similar, they actually weren't.
There's so many different kinds of marketing roles.
There are so many. I don't think people realized.
That if you can just make maybe highlight a few that might
(11:25):
appear similar but how they distinguish themselves quite
differently. What would some of those roles
be all. Right.
Let me just say this. I think people think that
marketing is basically like making something pretty and
coming up with a cool tagline. I think it's part of marketing
well. Yeah.
But I think that's why they can do marketing.
What I do now and kind of what Iwas doing at CVS, it's more like
(11:47):
strategic marketing where you'redeveloping a strategy, the
insights like why are we doing this, what are we trying to
accomplish, how are we going to measure that etcetera.
And it's not, you're not going to have these this much
specialization at smaller companies.
There's CRM, there's and there'slife cycle marketing where
you're looking at your retentionand loyalty and nudging and
whatever the business does will change your segmentation.
(12:08):
There's performance marketing where you are literally like
buying media and looking at results.
There is Brandon Creative where you're developing the creative
concepts. That's who would probably
develop the slogan. So and make it look nice.
Yeah, on insights coming from meand what do they do?
That's right. That's.
Right. Well, there's data and the data
analysts within marketing are analyzing, like you said, life
(12:31):
cycle, I should say, LTV, retention, attrition.
They're also analysing the data from conversion from the actual
promotion or media and all that stuff.
But then there's also content marketing.
It's like, what are you writing and what kind of format is it?
Is it blog? Is it articles?
Is it on social media? There's social media marketing
with this. It's it's own thing, which is a
hybrid, hybrid between sales, customer service and content in
(12:54):
an engagement. And so there's so many different
types of marketing. So when someone says that they
work in marketing, I I have a general idea of who you are, but
I don't know the type of work you're doing at all.
Yeah, it can just it just variesso much.
So this is what I say. It was more in this that my team
would play like the strategist role at CVS, but when I, and
while there was elements of thatat Macy's, like we weren't
(13:16):
driving the strategy as much andmy role was more like drive
sales, traffic drive sales, likethat was what the role was.
Now I work for Elegance Health, which you probably don't know
unless you're in healthcare, butit's Anthem Blue Cross Blue
Shield. Most people will know that it's
like a Fortune 50. It's a huge organization.
I have moved over to the PBM side.
So the pharmacy benefits managersaid the pharmacy side of that,
(13:38):
which if you're not, don't know anything about this, you
probably don't even realize there's a difference, but it,
there is. But it's all part of the same
company. Essentially.
My role there, both roles have been all about driving member
behavior, which might mean, for example, like getting people to
close gaps in care, encouraging our members to get a flu shot or
I was very involved in everything COVID because this
(14:00):
was like 2020. That was really interesting
because early on people were like, wanted this information
from us and they were like, dying for it.
They're like, what are their vaccines coming?
And it made a quick turn into people getting mad about hearing
anything about vaccines anyway. Or interesting time to be part
of a pharmacy and healthcare company.
(14:21):
It's crazy. You are seen as a reliable
source. They're coming to you for
information but also solutions. Not to get like into that topic
because it is a whole another conversation.
But we can actually scratch the surface.
Well, I don't mind scratching the surface a little bit if you
don't mind like in your role driving and information to
consumers during a period like COVID where they're looking to
(14:41):
you for information, results andsolutions for in this case,
vaccines and healthcare and bestpractices.
And then when the narrative and the tone changes suddenly into
fear or just, I don't want to hear about this anymore, or
there's disinformation or a lackof transparency and
understanding. There's a lot of things that
would maybe upset people or turnthem off from wanting to hear
(15:03):
more about it. What would what kind of
responsibility do you have or how do you change your job when
it when the sentiment of what the audience and society is, how
their sentiment changes so quickly?
How do you react to that? We had started communicating
information about like misinformation or trying to get
around myths and things like that.
I will say that was a bit difficult to do because just the
(15:25):
speed at which that information was going and the speed at which
we could react, we're not in thesame level, but I don't think
that was needed to be our place anymore.
We let people know they could get vaccines, did provide
education or a little on. We decided to stop doing it at
some point. Like we put hopefulness surveys
in a lot of our emails. So we get like straight feedback
from people, which I find fascinating.
(15:47):
Yeah, I'm sure. But one thing actually that like
the company pivoted and as a marketing strategist I supported
was we had got free COVID tests for certain segments of our
population. And we had a, because we had a
lot of members that were gettingthe more expensive, I forget
what they're called, but there was a couple different kinds of
tests and one took a few days and was more expensive.
(16:10):
And then there was the rapid tests were like starting to come
out. So we only had limited number of
tests and we wanted to get them to the places where they were
needed most. So what I did is I put together
a campaign that I worked with the clinical team to basically
look at the data, see where COVID was spiking.
And then I set this up so that afew days after we got that date
about COVID spiking, we'd send an e-mail to tag COVID spiking.
(16:32):
We can get you free tests in just a couple days and that did
it did amazingly well. I can't think of all the metrics
off the top of my head, but it was like when I compare that to
even retail marketing where people are more responsive, I
feel like in general it was likeit would and conversion was
insane, like everyone wanted it and it was beneficial to
everybody involved. That's the best of of all the
(16:53):
worlds when that happens. So I guess in summary answer the
question is the IT wasn't just me, but the company has a whole
shifted what we were doing and it became less about like myths
about the vaccine because that had just been beaten to death by
society, I think, and more abouttesting and just yeah.
So if as a marketer and somebodywho looks at the data, the
(17:16):
survey results, the feedback andengagement, if you if you have
some insight into this, the example that you used was
there's a virus that is spiking right now, we can get you the
solution from the consumer side.I personally speaking, sometimes
I'm skeptical where I see an e-mail like that with the
(17:36):
subject line. It's like I'm addressing this
need right now. And I sometimes find myself
saying, wait, is this authentic and helpful to me and they're
trying to serve the community? Or are they trying to be
opportunistic about a situation and make money as a healthcare
company? And that's like the consumer
mentality that I'm in, always trying to parse out or evaluate
(17:58):
the intentions of this e-mail and promotion.
From your side of it, how do youlook at it?
So I totally hear that and I butthere are things that I like the
way that I think about it and the way that I think about
communicating with members is just providing them with the
information that they need and providing them with tools and
resources they can use at the right time.
(18:18):
There's only so much that I can say.
Like we actually spend more timetargeting people that, for
example, like that we think are more likely to take the action
because of their behavior or because of their digital
behavior or their clean behavioror something.
So there might be some people that you just are never going to
convert because they're like, they think they're going to get
a chip in their arm from gettinga vaccine.
And we've been to consideration.But for the people that are more
(18:40):
receptive or coming more open toit, it's just a matter of
actually, as your insurance company, we're telling you that
this vaccine is free. It doesn't cost you anything to
get and also here's some places where you can get it near you.
Like it's just giving them that information.
And I have looked through so much research about what people
want from their health insurancecompany or their pharmacy
(19:01):
benefits manager or any of it. The place where we always went
is like, we can tell them how much things cost and what their
benefits are and how do they getaccess.
Yeah, transparency and pricing and accessibility is probably
the most important thing. And you probably have to ignore
the questions or the, I don't know if you want to call it
conspiracy theories, but you probably on your side have to
(19:21):
just assume we're going to do our best and we're going to send
out this information. The majority of the people will
assume that this is helpful information and everybody else,
it's not our concern. They can either believe it or
not, we're just trying to be helpful.
Yeah, Or we just shift the messaging to those people or we
don't message them at all if we have the information like we try
to be, I'd say this company and this and I don't think it's just
(19:43):
this is the only company I worked in this industry.
We are so sensitive about what we're sending out and who we're
sending it to. And when in in an effort to
going back to being annoying or not annoying or offense, it like
you can be real. You can really offend people
with the with communications about their health.
So the question you always have to ask as a company, regardless
(20:04):
of what product or services you are offering is, can I send this
out knowing that there will be some people that will
misinterpret our intentions here?
Is that still OK to send out? Yeah.
And it's a balance because you want to get people the
information, it's going to help people to know the information,
but you're going to, you could potentially offend people and
related to health and just I, weare very careful about these
(20:27):
things. Give me some insight behind the
curtain scenes of an e-mail campaign that might go out in
healthcare, specifically where in a meeting about it, the
question comes up, how will thisbe received?
Can you just characterize or give me a general understanding
of how much time is spent considering even the copy the
(20:49):
subject line? Like what are you use a variety
of tools to score it and to decide how to move forward?
Like on an e-mail that I might open for a second and delete in
a matter of moments. How much time is being put into
considering that e-mail before it goes out?
It's not just anywhere that any of these companies that I worked
with these bit the beats big companies that I work with, CVS,
(21:09):
Macy's, it's like all there are processes.
It takes takes months from when you brief it.
So going through the process andgetting out the door, you write
a brief, you're going through a creative team.
The creative is developed. There's project managers
involved. There's like and the CRM team
involved to look at these relative things going out,
what's the priority, How are we coordinating it?
(21:30):
You have, depending on what the campaign is, you might have
multiple layers of leadership. Looking at it generally now, I
don't have a lot of that. The amount of time that goes
into considering an e-mail before it goes out is huge.
The number of people involved and therefore because of the
time and the individuals involved, think about the cost
(21:51):
to the company as far as like hourly wages go.
The rates at all those individuals that had eyes on and
meetings about considering that all that time before an e-mail
goes out, that e-mail that I opened for a second, looked at,
scanned and quickly deleted, allin a matter of five to 10
seconds was very expensive. Yeah.
And The thing is like people, people think including I'm
(22:11):
probably guilty of this too. Emails free.
Yeah, emails. It's not free.
It's just it's like time. It's time which is paid for by
the company, but it's not like atelevision ad.
A television ad, you pay the media company, whatever.
But yeah, no. Different cost structure.
Yeah. The thing is, I will say this
job market is absolutely ridiculously beyond insane.
(22:33):
But what I found, and I don't know what the solution is in
this job market, when I've made some changes in my career, it
was easier because I didn't havethe financial burden.
I didn't have kids, I didn't have the same responsibilities.
I was younger, I had more freedom.
I was like in school, entry level I think is very difficult.
But once you're past that point,it's a little easier.
(22:55):
And now I've also had the opportunity to be a hiring
manager and to lead a team. When I interview people, I love
all of them and I wanna hire allof them.
I genuinely like and I just build a new team.
But that doesn't make any sense.And I've actually, I'm like, I
need to balance this out with people that are gonna be more
critical than me because I thinkI feel like there are people
(23:16):
that gave me a chance that I want to give other people a
chance to give them the same benefit of the doubt.
You have to balance it. And I also know that with the
complexity of my organization, Ineed somebody that has some kind
of experience in in this. I guess some solutions would be
1, If you can do freelance work,if you can do side work, even if
you don't get paid enough or youdo it for free, if you can
afford to do that, leveraging your network is another thing
(23:38):
which everybody says. And yeah, you do that.
I've had a lot of success in reaching out to alumni.
I always offer to help the people I'm talking to, even
though most of them probably can't use anything for me.
But you never know. You never know, right?
I don't know. You just have to be.
You have to just get out there. I don't know, like these are all
probably things that people knowand they're easier said than
(24:00):
done, but you have to do that. I think like 10X right now.
I agree and I've seen that firsthand.
I know a lot of people looking and that's a shared experience.
Yeah, just keep, keep going. Don't.
You. I don't know.
I don't know what to say, I wantto be more helpful.
This is great. I want to say thank you Julie
for being here today. Thank you for having me on.
(24:20):
I want to thank Ephraim Epsom for recommending Julie as
today's guest and to your listeners for joining us on this
episode of Transferable Skills. Remember, the skills you've
gained can take you anywhere. Until next time, keep exploring
those transferable skills.
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