Meaningful Scaling: Balancing Tech and Personal Touch in Marketing
Meaningful Scaling: Balancing Tech and Personal Touch in Marketing
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In this week's discussion, Emily chats with Sara Croft, the Co-Founder and CEO of Five Four, a growth agency for early-stage founders and founder-led businesses. Sara offers insights on experimentation, community-led growth, and preparing clients for fundraising, product launches, and revenue growth. We dive into the importance of local marketing and the power of meeting customers where they’re at. Listen in for valuable perspectives on balancing scalable marketing tactics with personalized approaches!
TUNE IN FOR TOPICS LIKE:
0:20 Journey from food blogger to marketing exec to entrepreneur
4:40 Lessons learned from marketing in a nonprofit
7:41 Parallels between the nonprofit and startup world
9:16 Origins of Five Four and building an agency
12:15 Indicators that you’re ready to bring on a marketing partner
15:07 Meeting people where they are with local marketing
17:28 Setting a channel mix to balance scalable and non-scalable strategies
19:31 Attribution and conversion challenges and overcoming them
22:44 What it looks like to be a Five Four client
27:07 Building out a small team and creating a strong culture
29:16 Creating a relationship-driven network
32:20 What’s next for Five Four
Listen to this week’s Local Marketing School conversation!
Other episodes you'll enjoy if you enjoyed Sara’s episode:
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Emily Steele
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Local Marketing School. It's Emily here. I'm excited to be back. I had the absolute pleasure of reading a very exciting article. I mean, exciting for me, right? You might be like, okay, that's cool. Harvard Business Review came out with an article when it comes to influencers, smaller can be better. And you know, when you have that joy, I don't know if like in your industry, maybe you hear something or read something that totally validates what you're doing and it's written by like, great publisher and you're like, my gosh, there it is. But it's so validating. If any founders are listening to this, like you work so hard, right? Because you have this idea that you know you have conviction around, like is going to be big, is a huge opportunity. And then you get this validation through customers, through growing your community, through media press, et cetera. And then, you know, HBR writes about like your industry and exactly what you're doing and the words that you use and it's like chef's kiss, you know? So that's my joy this week is that and my joy is also that I chopped off all my hair on a whim and I just need to know if anyone listening is like me that you you have an idea of what you're gonna do when you go to your hairstylist then it changes in a split second and you're like, I'm actually way happier.
I've lost so many inches of hair, so I'm a lighter. Someone said I look older and I just took it as a compliment because she said it was a compliment too and I received that. So I'm excited to be back and I'm really excited to bring you Sara today. Conversation with her was very fun. We both aligned on the world of jazz music and being in jazz band in middle school, so Shout out to my fellow percussionists out there. I'm not a good trap set player, but you know, I tried. I really tried and my dad still has two drum sets that he was trying to get my kids to play and they might be good at it, but I'm like, I really don't want a drum set in my house. Like that is just, I just remember growing up with that and being like, dad's playing the drums again. So, but anyway, Sara's not a drummer, but she is an excellent marketing executive and truly still, you know a pianist and a flautist. I think that's how you say it. OK, enough about enough about my description on that. Let's dig into who Sara is and get into that. So Sara Croft is a seasoned marketing exec and entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in tech startups and nonprofit sectors. Currently, she's the co-founder and CEO of Five Four, a growth agency for early stage founders and founder led businesses.
Prior to founding Five Four, Sarah held leadership positions at InnovateMap, where she served as VP of Marketing and Principal of Growth Marketing. Her expertise spans revenue growth, market expansion, brand awareness, and thought leadership development. Sarah has a strong background in communications, having worked as Senior Director of Communications at TechPoint, where she launched significant initiatives for Indiana's tech ecosystem. Her experience also includes roles at Easter Seals Crossroads, where she developed corporate PR and digital marketing strategies.
An active mentor in the startup community, Sarah contributes her expertise through organizations like Endeavor, First Round Fast Track, and Pavilion. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from Indiana State University and continues to be a driving force in the tech and marketing landscapes.
Emily Steele (00:12)
All right. Hey, Sara, welcome to the podcast.
Sara Croft (00:16)
Hey Emily!
Emily Steele (00:17)
Thanks for being here. Okay, so I gotta dig in right away. You were a food blogger, turned marketing executive, turned entrepreneur. Tell us about that journey and more of your story.
Sara Croft (00:29)
Sure, gosh, sounds like I'm wearing a lot of different hats. I'll even add another one in there. I studied art history in college, which was like super, I don't know why did it. I liked art. just thought it would be interesting to learn a little bit more about that. Thought I might have a career in museums. And then I graduated in 2009 when the job market was not that great. And there was an opportunity for an internship in marketing and I took it and it turned into a full -time job. And so I had the opportunity to start a career in that, which was super, super cool. If you don't know what was happening at that time, 2009, 2010, social media just became like a big deal for businesses. And so yeah, we were all getting our own Twitter accounts and LinkedIn's and Facebook's and then we were like, what do we do with those? Being the youngest person in my nonprofit, my hand was raised and they were like, hey, Sara, you're young and you might know this. Maybe you can go figure this out. And hilariously, it turned into a career for me. So fast forward, yeah, I own my own marketing agency now, but that was how I got my start in marketing super early on.
Emily Steele (01:24)
Okay, yeah, yeah, I love that. So the food blogger part of you, like how did that come about? Like, okay, art history, then apparently you're showing people recipes, like doing it at the local level, like how did this start? Tumblr?
Sara Croft (01:53)
Well, kind of. my gosh, yeah, I did have a Tumbler back in the day. please don't Google me. It's probably still out there. It's probably there somewhere. Yeah, mean, funny story. I graduated college. I had to learn how to cook, like for myself. I didn't grow up cooking. I'm 36, so I grew up in the era of a lot of hamburger helper, and I love my mom. She was really great, but that was not her jam. So I had to learn to cook.
Sara Croft (02:22)
And I got really excited about it and I thought certainly if I'm interested in this, maybe other people will be interested if I can give my own slant on what I like in cooking. So I had a food blog that was recipes. I got to work with partnerships like KitchenAid and Cuisinart and Driscoll Berries and all these cool brands, which made me feel special and fun to get to work with them. And yeah, just kind of took off from there. I actually got a weekly standing recipe in our Indianapolis Star paper on Sundays, which was so funny Women would come up to me usually 60 plus women in the grocery store and they look at me and they'd be like I think you I think you had that recipe for chocolate chip cookies and I really liked it and I would say thank you Some of them did yeah, seriously.
Emily Steele (02:54)
Thanks. Did you cut it out and put it on your fridge? Because that's like, yes, it's like a thing. Yeah.
Sara Croft (03:17)
Yeah, it was pretty cool. There was a restaurant I did a review of and I made my own tacos from their, like what I thought I could make on my own. And I went in to visit them one day and they had it out of the newspaper and framed it and put it on their restaurant wall, which was just so like, yeah, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it.
Emily Steele (03:25)
Yeah, yeah, super cool. I do remember the days of like getting into that like local magazine like local business journal if you will like it still is a big deal in some ways right but it like was so different when you like everyone had the paper everyone was getting it distributed to the local restaurant bar in a different way where you like were learning about people and cool things and trends from like a physical thing like it was all I looked forward to on Friday is like when I worked at a physical location and got those. So you're a celebrity.
Sara Croft (04:05)
Yeah. And I think like that trend is coming back a bit. I think we're all getting a little overwhelmed digitally sometimes and we're looking for that physical connection or at least like a compliment of the two. But yeah, I do actually still get some of the actual business papers these days and I pick them up and I flip through them and with a cup of coffee on a Friday morning. Yeah, it's a nice treat.
Emily Steele (04:10)
Yeah. Yeah. It's satisfying. Mm -hmm. It is. It sounds about right. Okay, so you're kind of food blogging. Are you doing that simultaneous to working at the nonprofit? Was it Easter Seals? Yep.
Sara Croft (04:39)
Yep. Yep. So I was working at Easterseals Crossroads, which is a nonprofit dedicated to providing services for people with disabilities of all ages. And that's when I learned that I really enjoy helping people and I just didn't know it yet. Super collaborative. You get to work with the community, the local community on a day-to-day basis. So I was doing that full time and I was young and I had a bunch of energy. So I was able to also do the food blog at the same time and then various volunteer gigs. wrote for Visit Indy because I had moved to Indianapolis from Terre Haute, Indiana after I graduated college. And I saw Indianapolis through like the lens of a young person who just moved here. It was like, there's so much to do compared to my little small town. And I wrote about that, what I saw of interest and shared that with Visit Indy, which was also a pretty fun highlight of my early career. Yeah.
Emily Steele (05:10)
That's so fun. I was like, we kind of have the exact same trajectory. I worked at nonprofit. Like actually my husband worked at Easter Seals, right? And then like started doing the side hustle things where I'm like, I'm like, how did I do all of that? But yeah, different energy levels, different obligations, like just a different era. 20s were just a fun different time. Yeah. Yeah. So I know.
Sara Croft (05:39)
They were. They were. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. Your husband worked for Easter Seals too. It's a small world out there. Huh. That's great.
Emily Steele (05:58)
Yeah, yeah. okay, blogging. And then does that give you the clarity even within Easter Seals, blogging, like, okay, marketing maybe is the path based on the things you're kind of getting thrown into just based on being the youngest. How does that transition to the next role you take?
Sara Croft (06:15)
Yeah, yeah, think a general theme across my life has been I really love to share positive experiences that I have with other people. I do it in person and I do it digitally and I kind of can't help myself. It was like early on I had an Instagram that was just like, see something cool. I want other people to be able to experience it and maybe share why I think it's cool, especially if it's something overlooked.
Emily Steele (06:41)
Yeah.
Sara Croft (06:41)
And Easter Seals is not a very well-known nonprofit. So I had a lot of enjoyment and fulfillment out of helping get their mission out the door to people who may not have known about them or heard about them otherwise, who then can get support and services from them. So I started to see that kind of conduit of, I think I'm really good at identifying stories and sharing them with other people in a very genuine and authentic way. Like it always had to resonate with me internally. So that kind of became the thread for me for my marketing career was seeing those stories, packaging them up, sharing them with other people. And so I just kind of expanded on that over time. At Easter Seals, it started with social media, then it went into media relations and PR, then it became event fundraising. So I helped put on these wonderful events to raise millions of dollars and that was very fulfilling. And then after that, I started to get into the tech world with communications and the rest of that is kind of like part two of my marketing chapter book, believe.
Emily Steele (07:41)
Yeah, because I was like going from nonprofit to tech is like a pretty, you know, I find nonprofit and tech companies, especially early stage, like you're kind of doing a little bit of everything in the nonprofit world and the like tech startup space. So do you find that true? Is that your experience of? Mm hmm.
Sara Croft (07:56)
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And even with my clients today, I have some nonprofit clients because they operate like startups. They have little budget. They're trying to achieve a lot and they're all doing it under a very short amount of time. And it's like basically the same thing that a startup is doing without the venture capital behind it. So I get really attracted to founders with a lot of vision and mission and desire to like change the world. And I just believe I can be like their right hand to go along with that and make that happen. So yeah, I do see a lot of, a lot of comparisons between the two that are the same. And I actually, when I left Easter Seals, I went to TechPoint, which was the state's, Indiana's nonprofit to accelerate and amplify the tech community. So it was a nonprofit, but it was here to support tech. So it was this fun, like entryway into tech without saying, Ooh, I work for a SaaS company now. And like having that complete change of career path.
Emily Steele (08:31)
Yeah, but you keep doing marketing in the technology space to startups and eventually you're in the startups and now you're you're doing it in a consultative way or like, you know, having kind of the agency model. Is that kind of how you would describe what you do today? Yeah. OK.
Sara Croft (09:11)
Yes, yes. So today I run an agency called Five Four and short backstory on that. I played jazz music in middle school. I another one of those like who does that kind of things. No way! Seriously. Okay, what'd you play? What was your instrument?
Emily Steele (09:15)
I did too. I played the trap set.
Sara Croft (09:32)
Okay, fabulous. I was piano and flute. either one of those, whichever made sense at the time. So many, so many similarities here. Okay, so then you know in jazz band, five four is a time signature that comes up fairly often and it's a little challenging. It's a bar of three and a bar of two and you gotta like stay on it. And I
Emily Steele (09:34)
Yeah. okay. We... Yeah, of course. I love this. Okay.
Sara Croft (09:59)
I startups and think marketing can kind of be the same. It has a beat, it has a rhythm, it's a little funky. And so I named my company Five Four after that time signature. Yeah, little nerdy. See, we said marketing can be nerdy and it's gonna be a little, I just made it nerdy. I did. I did.
Emily Steele (10:12)
You did. You took it to middle school, which is like the ultimate chapter of life, right? I just absolutely love that. Do you remember how that came to you? Iis it one of those like, always know this will be the business name I have someday. It came to you at one point, but not exactly when you started. I'm just so curious. Sometimes names come to us so randomly.
Sara Croft (10:34)
Yeah, it did come fairly randomly, but I think the goal was I wanted to name my business something that was meaningful to me. And at the time, I didn't know a lot about what I was building. So I didn't have this full thesis. I didn't say, this is the name that resonates in the market. And it's an agency and it's mine. And I kind of wanted to do something fun and it rolled off the tongue. And then when other people start saying it, that's when it felt real. and cool and other people start saying, I want to go work with five four. I was like, that gives me goosebumps. You want to work with me and my company name? That's pretty cool. So yeah, so today I work with startups of all various shapes and sizes and industries who don't have a head of marketing and don't have a marketing team, but need marketing power to be able to grow. And I help them create their strategies and I've got a team of experts to come along and deliver said strategies. So it's both on the strategy side and the execution side about half of them are SaaS companies, the other half are a mix of services, nonprofit, CPG companies. Marketing as a foundation is pretty similar across the board, I find, with some nuances of your ICP and a little bit of the channels, but ultimately the foundations are the same. So my bet right now is that I can help just about any growing business that wants to grow figure out the best efficient ways to do that that are affordable.
Emily Steele (11:37)
Mm -hmm. -hmm. And so someone who doesn't quite have like a director of marketing, head of marketing, whatever that like leadership role is, but they know they need someone to guide strategy and, you know, tactics and who does what, where. How does a business get to a point where they're like, we know we need this or identify that gap? They just don't have a marketing person. They're like, we need one.
Sara Croft (12:14)
Yeah, yeah, in some ways it could be that that's an indicator. Like I think I need to hire marketing. And then the next question is often who or what kind of marketer and for an early startup, can you really afford them? And should you put that person on your balance sheet? Right. So like you and I, if we were to hire marketers for our companies, we'd have to take that pretty seriously and say, okay, like when does it actually make sense to do that? And what kind of person do we need? And really early on, my bet is that a lot of founders can get my bet is I can provide them with the team that has the strategy expertise and the execution power to support them that doesn't weigh them down with a six figure cost of a salary. So can I do it fractionally in a way that they need it for 20 hours a week versus you probably don't need somebody 40 hours a week just yet when you're still figuring out how you go to market and how you sell or maybe even what it is that your product is and what the value of it provides, right? If those are still questions in the air, then we're not ready to build a dedicated annual marketing strategy. We're going to do a bunch of experiments. We're going to learn a lot. We're going to try some funky, cool things and see what resonates with the market and get you some early customers so that eventually you can hire the full-time team because we made you successful at the point where you have the revenue to do that.
Emily Steele (13:12)
Mm -hmm, mm -hmm. That makes a ton of sense. Yeah, when you're like, okay, I have a mix of channels, not totally sure what's working, can someone kind of strategize around it or get those channels going? Where should we make some bets based on ICP? It's so helpful to just have someone really provide clarity and a roadmap to try things without throwing a bunch of darts, you know?
Sara Croft (13:54)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yeah, and you could make the wrong marketing hire really early on, which is not great, right? Or you could say, hey, I don't really know what strategy I'm supposed to go after, and you end up doing too many different things and you're not focused. There's a lot of ways that that can go wrong. In the startup world, you don't have a lot of time and you don't have a lot of money. So if we can expedite that process and you've got experienced decision makers behind you so you feel good about that work then that's the ultimate goal we're going after.
Emily Steele (13:58)
Yeah, I love that. Okay, so the podcast is called Local Marketing School. So much of the reason we created this podcast is to really dig into some of those local marketing strategies. Because I think there's all this like local or marketing for small businesses, marketing for startups, but some of it's around the local pieces like geo. What can you do there to expedite growth or really understand something quickly in a specific area? I'd love to hear if you have any key strategies on effective local marketing that either assess companies or service providers. You have a mix of clients, which I think is helpful to even share your experience there.
Sara Croft (15:07)
Yeah, you know, local marketing is honestly my favorite and I toss out different names. Sometimes I'll call it grassroots marketing or like street team marketing or guerrilla marketing in that way, right? It's often super creative and it can be difficult to put an ROI on because it's not a paid ad. So there's a lot of trust and faith that goes into that process. I'll give you an example. I worked with a client earlier this year. It was selling software to farmers to help them with their back office operations.
Sara Croft (15:35)
And we learned enough about farmers to know like they're getting hit up with cold calls every day and they're not trusting of them. They're not reading their email because they're out on the field often. And so they don't want to just like get a drip campaign. And we assume they're going to click it, read it and, and sign up tomorrow for a six figure purchase. Right. So we explore things around like, what would it be like to put on your cowboy boots and go to the fish fry? that's happening that Sunday, right? And you're meeting people and you're talking to them. Maybe you sponsor it or something like that to get your name out there, right? But that's something that a lot of founders would say, well, it's not scalable. So why should I do it? I can't go out and go do 10 of them every Sunday. I'm like, well, we're trying to prove out first off that this is something that people want to buy. So I think when you're in that stage, like, is this something people want to buy? You're figuring it out. the local marketing can be really successful because you can talk one-on-one directly with people and know did they resonate with this or not? Did they like my picture not? And that's where the farmers are. They're at the fish fries. They're at the volunteer fairs. They're doing, they're at the state fair. They're doing the things that are out and about with their families and we need to meet them where they are. So those are some of, that's an example of where I think local marketing can be pretty successful and often overlooked.
Emily Steele (16:35)
Yeah, and it's like, that's the feedback right? Like, well, it's not scalable. So why would I do that? But like having that, like first, those firsthand conversations. So do you find that when you're approaching some of the companies you work with that it's a mix between the like, this definitely isn't going to scale, but this is going to make a splash in a really interesting way. And this like is a performance ad channel that we can put a dollar in, get five out. Like how do you kind of think about the channel distribution if you have scalable, not scalable?
Sara Croft (17:24)
Yeah, I mean, it's it is a mix of both. And the thing on the paid ad side that I try to remind founders early on is if we go into LinkedIn, let's say to create an ad and we don't know what checkboxes we're checking for the titles of folks and we don't know what we're going to say to them yet, then we're not ready to go do this. So, but that is often like nine times out of 10, every founder's first ask of me is what is my paid ad strategy? And sometimes this is before an MVP is even out the door, you know? And so it's like, we, have we done customer discovery? Have we gone out in the market enough to be able to say like, these are, is our audience even on LinkedIn in the first place? Or are we just assuming that they're there? And I'm using LinkedIn as a paid ad example, right? But search could be the same.
Emily Steele (17:54)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Sara Croft (18:15)
So if we don't know what keywords we're gonna bid on, we can waste a lot of money really quickly. So I try to say like, let's run some experiments, but we don't put all of our eggs in one of those baskets because that's also just not how marketing works. People respond to lots of different advertisements in ways that they are approached by a brand, right? What's the stat? It takes seven times to see an ad in some way before you're like, I actually wanna go buy that thing from Target, right? Because you saw it in all these other places, so holistic strategies are really important and local plays a big part in that.
Emily Steele (18:19)
Totally. -huh, mm -hmm. Mm -hmm, mm -hmm. Yeah, yeah, it's so irritating that it's all those touch points, because you're like, where's the attribution lie? in all of them? You know, you're like, okay. And I think that's something like I have always found so fascinating, even running hummingbirds of people being like, well, what's the direct ROI? And it's like, you just think about how many times you see something and then like a year later, a month later, you're like, yeah, I kinda want that now. Like I'm in the head space to buy. Maybe I needed to save for something. Maybe I just like forgot until then I saw the ad that retargeted me. I just find it so fascinating to be like, it's just, I think we've just, it's not black and white anymore in the same way. And like that's okay, but I these conversations are a little bit harder to have. Do you feel the same?
Sara Croft (19:31)
Yes, absolutely. And usually we just have to do, we have to have somebody take a bet that this is the right way to do marketing and then show the results. And that helps to explain that. So I've had clients that say like, a webinar that takes a lot of work. I don't know that I want to put the energy into it. And then we take a bet on it and we do it. And we're like, well, we just got you five new lead conversations. Do you think that was worth it? Or do you still want to go spend $20 ,000 on that trade show next month. Maybe you actually should do both of them, but I want to show you some examples of like, this could potentially work for you. So I love working with people who are willing to experiment, which most founders are, but we get a lot of crap on like LinkedIn and other places that say like, you should totally know exactly what every dollar is returning on ROI. And it's just, marketing, it's psychology, it's behavioral. You don't ask your therapist for like what the ROI is of the conversation, right? Like how do you evaluate? Is my life better because of this from one meeting or 10? I don't know, but hopefully it's better, but you can't really attribute that.
Emily Steele (20:02)
Yes. I know. And it does, makes some of the efforts so much harder to justify. Like we've really leaned into like community led growth where like our community is such a big vehicle in our brand growth, but like that takes so much time to build, nurture, and really grow. But it's a bet we're taking because people as the distribution channel is the thing that we see is so valuable. And yet it's the furthest connection from attribution, because we're not putting a pixel on real people. So you really just can't show that. So it's been fascinating to take these bets and see the response and just build confidence around it. Because ultimately that's it too, right? It's like, yes, like I really like in six months, like when this thing is humming, like it will, you will feel that attribution and through revenue. And that's important. So I love that.
Sara Croft (21:34)
Yes. Yeah. And awareness, like awareness early on is like you're, you are making early products look a lot bigger than they actually are. Right. Like with the, with the hummingbird network, there are so many people that are providing the first foray into understanding what this product is when they share it. And that alone is like educating a whole new population of people on an opportunity to buy something that's going to be impactful for them. They're going to need to see it a couple of times before they buy it. We don't usually buy the thing the first time that we see it, and maybe we shouldn't, right? And so like being able to have that awareness journey is really important, but we look, we always put the pressure on the conversion as the ultimate metric. We don't often look at, how many, just simply how many new eyeballs were on this product because of what we did. That alone is also very impactful.
Emily Steele (22:03)
Yeah, I love it. Okay, so can you tell us a little bit of like, does it look like to be a client that you work with and what does that entail?
Sara Croft (22:40)
Yeah, yeah. So a lot of our clients are all across the United States right now. So even though I'm in Indianapolis, kind of have them from all over the place, and they're all working on a variety of different projects and goals, mostly around getting funding for their company, meaning like we're preparing them for a fundraise. Could that be pitch deck work? It could be investment strategy, whatever it's going to take to help them reach that next milestone, which is I need money to build my business, right?
Sara Croft (23:08)
Then there is launch the product to market. so that's either helping them define their MVP further through various roadmapping exercises and looking at customer discovery, getting feedback saying, this the right product that the market needs? And then there is the, we're ready to launch this puppy. Now we want to grow its revenue. So we do know who we're selling it to. Do we have a channel mix that we think is appropriate? Do we know the messaging and the position of the product? And does it have a great brand that the world is going to resonate with?
Sara Croft (23:36)
And so I and my team will do anything and everything among all those three areas to make sure that we are supporting the founder appropriately with their journey. So I have a team of fractional CMOs who are either former CMOs, VPs of sales, could even be some former founders who are in between what it is that they're gonna go do next and they've seen it all and they're really, really great to offer advice to other founders.
Emily Steele (23:44)
Okay cool.
Sara Croft (24:02)
And so they come along and they're offering strategy and advice and support and ideating. And then I've got a team of brand designers and product marketers and performance marketers who come along to do the actual work. So we're a team of four full -time right now, and then about 25 consultants and advisors in that fractional network who I pull upon depending on industry expertise or particular marketing slant, wherever they can be most helpful. Yeah.
Emily Steele (24:10)
Yeah, yeah. Do you find that there's like a sweet spot in terms of the window of time that you're like, okay, because we're working together, I can get you to this point where you're ready to hire like a head of marketing or someone to really oversee that? there like, it's probably too squishy, but is there like a general, like if someone's listening, like, okay, it makes sense. Like, I'd love to chat and like see what is that timeline.
Sara Croft (24:48)
Yeah, yeah, I haven't. My bet is that it will happen in probably six to somewhere between six to 12 months of working with a founder. I haven't seen it happen yet, but full disclosure, I just launched this business in January. So I'm just now seeing six months with some of these clients of what that what that actually looks like. I think it's going to happen when a founder starts running circles around us and we're not able to keep up. And I haven't seen that happen yet. But that would be a trigger. like, my gosh, you really need someone like full -time now to do this work. You have so many irons in the fire and they're all working and providing value. You should keep doing them, but you may end up paying more for my services than if you hired someone full-time in-house. And so that's when it would be in their best interest to go off in and hire a team. And maybe either we support that team or one of my fractional experts decides they just found their full-time job and they want to go off and work with that founder.
Sara Croft (25:43)
That'd be great. That would fill my cup seeing something like that happen. I'm a magnet for talent and I'm a magnet for founders and all I want to do is match them together. Yeah, that's really what I want to see happen. Yeah.
Emily Steele (25:48)
you're a matchmaker. Yeah. Yeah, I can't wait to be like hear more. I didn't realize you had just launched in January. That is like, that is recent. I'm just like, it's incredible.
Sara Croft (26:02)
Yeah. Yeah. I went freelance in October and started seeing like, I can do this myself for a bit, but it takes a team really to do marketing well. And there were things like, I'm not a designer, but I need a designer. I'm not an expert in social media anymore. It's been 15 years since I've done some of these things. So I tried to get into meta and build an ad and was like, my gosh, I haven't done this in so long. This is not a $5 boosted post anymore, guys. This is a whole other world. So I have experts to do those things and help with that. Just like any marketing director full time in a company is eventually going to need a team of people. I'm trying to provide the best of both of those worlds. So January was really when business took off and I was like, I think this is an agency more than just Sara's freelance. Yeah.
Emily Steele (26:31)
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. huh. Yeah. Any like, so any like big learnings on building out a team and like creating culture like any you can share like what's worked well, what's been like challenge.
Man, yeah, how much time do we have? I have been fortunate that the talent has sought me out. I had a brand designer who I'd worked with previously for a couple of years. So I had rapport, made sense to start working with him early on. And then someone I had known out of Chicago who was an expert in social media reached out to me for advice on her next job. And I was like, you're coming to me at the right time. I think I have a job for you. So I have been very lucky with bird in hand opportunities. I will say I am a believer n in person as much as possible. So even though Kate is out of Chicago, and even though TJ is out in Avon, I try to convene and get people here in Indianapolis or go see them as much as I can. Because I think when you're building a company really early, so it's just moving so quickly. And it's difficult to schedule a huddle or find that ad hoc time when the business is moving so fast, we all need to be on the same page of it. So I might be a little against the grain there, but I believe in person is, I'd love to build an in-person agency with the exception of some talent being remote that maybe isn't needed day to day on the business, right?
Emily Steele (28:06)
Yeah, yeah, there is just like so much magic in the in person. We just did like a part of our team at Offsite yesterday and it's just like, you just don't get that in a Zoom experience. And like, we don't need it daily, we don't even need it weekly or monthly, but some of these moments really are impactful, even if it's just like camaraderie and like, hey, like we're all on the same team, like seeing each other and like, it's an energy exchange that can be really powerful.
Sara Croft (28:49)
Yeah, I mean we're working hard. We're all out here working hard. So if we're going to work this hard, better be having fun, right, as we do it. And to me, that part happens when we can be in person.
Emily Steele (28:51)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Okay, so now I'm curious. You're in Indy. Like are you meeting a handful of founders and organizations at the local level? Is that part of your own like sales flow like how you meet people or is it more on the like online networking?
Sara Croft (29:17)
Yeah, yeah, it's actually, it is it's in-person here in Indy and it's in-person in other cities. So I travel often to Nashville, Cincinnati, Columbus, and occasionally further southeast to Atlanta and Birmingham. There's some really cool things happening in tech in Birmingham, but I, I love the emerging tech markets.
Sara Croft (29:44)
So I don't know if this is true in Des Moines, there are, whenever a market is like not had a ton of exits yet, but has a lot of hustle and a lot of startup activity, that's a really good market for me to come into because frankly, there aren't a lot of other people doing what I'm doing there yet. And it's new. It's like everybody's here is learning how to build a tech startup. And I believe I can help them figure that out. So I go to a lot of in-person events. I go to a lot of pitch nights. And a lot of just road shows to say, Hey, I met you a couple months ago. Could we meet again for coffee and schedule a day to drive to Nashville and have 10 meetings in a day where I'm bouncing around and meeting people. It keeps me top of mind. And I get personally fulfilled because I get that in-person time that I don't often get throughout the week. So it's kind of a win-win for me in that way. And that's been really successful for growing our business.
Emily Steele (30:17)
Okay, awesome. How much are you traveling, would you say a month? Like half of it?
Sara Croft (30:42)
About yeah right now about and I would go I'd probably travel every week. I enjoy it personally to travel yeah, and I listen to podcasts in the car when I'm driving So and I do business meetings and I get a lot done, but yeah, yeah, I travel a lot right now I can it's a personally enjoyable
Emily Steele (30:44)
Okay, it's a little bit far west, but feel free to visit us in Des Moines. We are a blossoming startup community. I wouldn't say like, to ask me to come. We can start our jazz band.
Sara Croft (31:06)
I was waiting for you to ask yes, I love it. Yeah.
Emily Steele (31:19)
As if we both need something else to do in our free time. But you know, it's a cool idea.
Sara Croft (31:25)
I think if we could start up a band, like a concert jazz band of former middle school players, right? I think that would be something people would attend.
Emily Steele (31:29)
I think so. We can have our own roadshow because we like to travel. I like the visions there. Just let me know when you're ready to execute.
Sara Croft (31:42)
Yeah, so we need a clarinet, we need a trumpet, yeah, we just like build out the roster.
Emily Steele (31:45)
Me some brass. Yeah, if anyone's listening and has any interest in joining us, we're ready to hear from you. This is the call to action of this podcast. Not marketing-related, somehow. It's on brand. I love that. Okay, final question for you related to Five Four. What's next? I know you're in the early stages, so it's hard to be like, what's next is getting more clients probably, right? But anything you see the future that you could share with us.
Sara Croft (32:16)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, definitely always looking to grow. I don't really have a cap on the agency so far. just the more more the merrier. Anyway, anyone out there listening who needs marketing help bring it on. The next like big phase would be investing and not for the sake of like becoming a VC actually don't want to have anything to do with that at all. But we got to solve this problem with funding in the market right now. Because it is no problem for me to find founders to work with. But when you're really early and you don't have a product out there and you're not getting revenue yet, how do you get money to start your business? And I don't know about you, but it was hard for me to even get a business loan by being not fully a year in business yet. Like a bank is taking a big chance on me. And if they're taking a chance on me, then everybody else is going through the same problem.
Emily Steele (32:45)
Yeah. Yep, yep.
Sara Croft (33:05)
So I want to solve the problem of how can founders get the capital that they need where they don't feel like they have to give away more than half of their business to be able to just get the cash to take them to the next level of reaching product market fit or even just that first year of business of getting the product out in market. So I want to figure out how to solve that problem. So if there's any investors out there who believe in what it is that I said and think that that's a great idea, come on down and I'm exploring creative ways to be able to solve the funding problem because startups need capital and this market has been very difficult to get capital. So we need to solve that problem, stat.
Emily Steele (33:38)
Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so interesting. I have a very similar way of thinking about Hummingbirds and how we exit and how to use that capital to do something similar. I see it in my own backyard. I host a women's small business pitch competition, because I'm just like, there are so many great ideas in our own backyard. And not in technology. Hummingbirds was built for the small business community. It's like, do these people get like $3 ,000 to like literally take that next step? And not every business $3,000 would move the needle for, right? But there are so many that can blossom when they have that. And so I totally agree. Like it's a little different like funding space and what you're talking about, but it still exists like in different ecosystems. So, okay, more problems to solve. Love it. We'll get there.
Sara Croft (34:26)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. wolf. This gives us something to do next. If we can go from jazz bands to agencies, I think we can handle this too.
Emily Steele (34:39)
I think we totally can. Okay. I love that. Well, I so appreciate you coming on the podcast today, sharing more about you and what you do and like so excited to introduce our listeners to, my gosh, just almost knocked over my microphone. That's the humanness of like a podcast, right? So yes, Sara, where can people find you? We'll get everything plugged, but love to hear it.
Sara Croft (34:54)
Sure, sure. Well, thank you again for having me on here. Huge fan. I have been dying to figure out how to work with Hummingbird someday and it's going to happen with some of my clients. I just know it. I can't wait waiting for the opportunity. But yes, you can find me on LinkedIn, Sara Croft. That's where I share all of my thoughts and hot takes on what's happening in marketing. And then my website, five four dot partners, where you can see a little bit more about our work and learn a little bit more about the people behind it.
Emily Steele (35:06)
Awesome. Thanks for being here, Sara.
Sara Croft (35:28)
Thank you, Emily, appreciate it.
