I Quit My Dream Job to Start Over at 32...| @Elevenlabs Head of Partner Marketing, Sophia Noel

What skill do you need to buff up on in this new era of AI? There is about to be a premium on human-made storytelling. I knew that what I wanted out of life was different than what I was experiencing here. I'm in a marketing leadership team. Sounds like a warm room. All I need to do is just press the go button on this project. All the brand assets ready, connections and media activation ready, all the media buys ready, all the analytics team ready. The interim CMO looks at me and goes, you know, for this upcoming launch, we really need to hire someone more senior who can actually execute this. Oh, I know. Office drama. Welcome to Office Drama, where we meet with people obsessed with their work, learn about their career lessons, their career journeys, and the inner drama that's happening during their breakthroughs. I'm your host Chloe Shi and today in the office, or at least my living room. We have one of the most sought-after marketing managers in Silicon Valley. Oh, one of my best friends, Sophia Noelle! Hello, hello. Thank you so much for being here. She's actually based in New York and she's here, staying in my place in Los Angeles. I am. She's worked at three sent to unicorns at Airbnb, Databricks and 11 Labs. She also moved from San Francisco to Japan to become a professional dancer. She produced an award-winning short dance film that bridges the cultures in Japan and San Francisco. And right now, she is going through her biggest plot twist in life thus far. For the last time, I'll be leaving tech to pursue my dreams of being a professional artist. This is the great millennial career crisis as we have referenced in Jomo and my short form videos, Exhibit A. It is such an honor to be here with you. You know, I've seen you from the beginning and to be at home. It's really beautiful. She's a day one, homey, and she's a Jomi. That's true. That's correct. Sophia, how do we know each other? We went to Columbia together. And how I met Chloe is I was the president of a Korean pop dance team. And we were hosting auditions. Chloe came in, really shredded her stuff. I basically popped my booty a little too hard. It was incredible. I lived for that moment. We then send the acceptance emails to everybody and Chloe says that she won't come. She won't do it. Because I just started engineering school so I was like, I got a study. I got a study. No, but we needed her talent. I said, hey, we need to get some boba and really talk this through. And that's exactly what we did. You got me boba and sushi. Oh my god. And sushi is very expensive, by the way, as a college student. Yeah, it is. For sure, right? I mean, I needed to bribe you. And she did. She wooed me. And I was like, damn, I looked at her sparkly eyes on the steps where the sun lit up. And I was like, I guess I can't say no. And that's how relationships started. And what did you study in college? I studied art history. So how did you know you wanted to go into tech? I was in tech before. I was in art history. Oh, 15 or 16. I worked out my first startup. It is social media based type of startup that got sold to Yahoo a long time ago. Oh. And is that considered a unicorn? No, no, no, no. It was a very small one. I got to understand what it's like to work with incredibly talented smart people. And I thought, this is an environment that I want to be in. So I have just been working in tech companies since then. I think when I went to college, I knew that I really wanted to learn. But I didn't ever think that it had to be tied to my vocation because I'd been working for so long. That's a very freeing thought. Because I think a lot of people choose like the hardest major. And then they fear they cannot get to their job because of their major. But you did, you did it for the arts. Do you think that helped you in your career? I think in life, for sure. When we're talking about what is art history, it is looking at political, societal, economic shifts in the world through these pieces of art. That tell you a lot about that point and time and those stories that they had to tell today creating anything, whether it's a piece of art that I'm creating or in my role as a marketer telling a brand story. All of that really comes into the fold. You are most known right now being the previous head of partner marketing at 11 labs. What is 11 labs? What is partner marketing? What do you do or what did you do? So 11 labs is an AI audio company and they have both a product team and a research team. So they have researchers that are creating these AI models and then a product team that has created a suite of AI products. So what is partner marketing? I worked in the organization called Partnerships and the idea of how can you create these meaningful relationships with people, with brands, with organizations outside of 11 labs to help create and work with them. To build new, interesting things. So while is that 11 labs, I helped create their impact program. Yeah, and the impact program is the AI for good. Arm. We love AI for good. We love AI for good. There's a lot of AI for bad. There's a fair amount of AI for evil, so we love the idea of AI for good. A rare moment for AI for good. Let's talk about. Flap it up. Because who invests in AI for good? There's anthropic and there's 11 labs. No one else puts money behind their mouth. Carry on. Impact program. The impact program. And so how it started for people who lost their voice due to different conditions, whether it's ALS or Stroke or Parkinson's. 11 labs gives free licenses to their technology for people to recreate their voice. And you can recreate your voice through a voice nail, a WhatsApp note, a wedding video, any little bit of audio that you have so that you're able to use your own voice instead of a robot voice. This area of healthcare really expanded to being able to give over 7,000 voices and with the goal of eventually giving a million. Now there are other verticals. So education, what does this look like in giving to professors and giving to schools? And then what does it look like as far as culture and giving to museums and that type of thing? Ah, yes. Yeah, I remember that. So with giving people back their voices, what did a partnership campaign look like? A big project that I worked on was a docu series called 11 voices. That's right. She worked a lot of overtime for this. And I'm just saying. I got the voice now. [laughter] Absolutely. A lot of very, very interesting days and nights. But it was one of the most meaningful projects I've worked on in my career. Oh. Absolutely. I got to travel all around the UK and all around the US, meeting different people using these 11 labs voices. Really getting to tell their story. I give a lot of credit to our CEO who was very, very pro me going out and capturing these stories. And this very much could have been a typical brand campaign where you hire people, hire actors who will create fantasy worlds. But instead, because it was a docu series, I got to immerse myself in real people's lives. Did you pitch this? I did. You pitched this? Yes. This came from Renoggin. This came from my noggin. And then you pitched it and the CEO was like, Hell yes. Yes. So it's interesting. So I would say, so he came to me first and said, the impact program needs more eyes on it. We need more people to know about it. And I would like the format to be video. What can you do, Sophia? And this is the concept that I came back with. I went on these sets as director and as producer. And it was really able to be with these subjects and these films. People had talked to them about their experience. Yeah. And it is one thing to get product feedback and say, oh, maybe this isn't working so great. Or I would love it if you could do this. But it's a different thing to say, your product has literally changed my life for the better. I think that is something that I will never forget. You never get to see that if you're working on, if you're working on the tech side, it's a very rare opportunity. So it's 11 stories. Yes. 11 people specifically. How did you choose those 11 people? I did you already have relations with them or how did the final selection happen? So we have partner organizations at 11 labs. Yeah. And we worked with one called bridging voice in the United States who help people specifically with ALS. Although they are very kind. And if you have a different condition in which you need their help, they do end up helping, which is amazing. I basically reached out to bridging voice. I said, hey, do you guys have anyone who's using 11 labs who would be interested in being a subject? And so many people raised their hands way more than 11, which was really an incredible thing. But I just had to select from those who would work with the filming schedule. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Very good, very good. Did you ever cry? I cried on every set. Why? Or like what was a momenter? There is just you. Take me with you. Take them with you. Take you with me. Yeah. You have to understand. If you have a condition like ALS, you have lost a lot of capability in the way in which you can move in day to day. So you might be in a chair or you might have difficulty walking. Every single one of these people has lost the ability to speak. There's so much struggle and hardship that they have just to get through the day to day. But then to be with them and see them so happy and laughing, experiencing life so fully in these moments was just something so unbelievably real. Damn. That's such good and impactful work. Who gets to say that? Who gets to say that they were a part of, you know, changing people's lives for the better for a problem that they thought they could never recover from. You did some good shit. I was like tearing up right now. I think as I grow older, you meet people who are so into the hustle of making so much money and they optimize for it and no one really tries to prioritize like AI for good or tech for good or work for good. Even the creator economy, creator community. A lot of it is just like the entity in views and fame and money and sponsorship. So it's very rare I get to meet people who dedicate their commitment and their work to bettering the lives of people who really like couldn't experience a core human thing. That's some crazy stuff. Sophia, damn. And you're quitting this. I mean, and you quit this. We'll unpack that later. - Exactly, well, back it. - Just a little back it. - Okay, so how long did it take? So we shot in, I would say July, August, premiered them at South By in March. We had a beautiful panel where one of the people, one of the subjects of the film was on the panel, which is amazing. She came all the way from London. London, yes, truly incredible. When we were on the panel, we showed her film. And so people definitely were tearing up in the audience as they saw her, saw what she went through, and then got to hear from her live in her 11 Labs voice, talk about her experience. What it's like to use an AI voice in day to day, you know, how it's not just you being able to use your voice, but also your family gets to hear you again, and your friends get to hear you. And I've heard stories of a dog recognizes your voice again. - I know. - I know. And it's just every story I hear, it never gets old. - When you showed it to the internal company, how did the internal company react? - It's interesting, the impact program itself is a lot of the reason people will join 11 Labs as people looking to be hired as employees, just because it exists and the idea of it. But I think this is different because it takes the idea of it and brings it to life, shows you really what the program is doing and why it's so important. And so I think that was amazing for all the employees to see is really all the work that they do. It doesn't matter if you're on the product team, if you're on the sales team, from the engineering team, what you're doing is helping these people tangibly. - You were part of the why at the company. - You were the why. - The hardest part in that process is really figuring out, okay, what are the unique stories that we wanna tell because all of these stories at the end of the day are someone doesn't have a voice, someone gets a voice, but everyone's human story, everyone's personality, everyone's family, what they're going through, what's giving them joy is so different. And so how can we make sure to highlight the beauty that is that person? - What is your biggest lesson learned from this campaign? - These stories are so important to tell. I think I'm really glad that I fought to tell these stories and to do it in a docky series and not have it be made into something smaller. I think a lot of times when you're working, particularly in tech companies, and you dream really big, scope gets taken down and down and down. - Yes, I agree. Ah, you're so right. But I think I really dug my heels in the ground so much on this one, and did you get that I did? - Did you get pushback where you were asked to desco? - I think there was always a lot of why, why are we doing this, why are we doing this, which is totally fair. It's a crazy thing to do as a company that 11 Labs being three, four years old, very small, not a small company, but I would say a young company. - How many people? - 450, yeah, so small-ish, young, medium. - Yeah, but to say that we're gonna do a docky series kind of a big thing, so it's reasonable for them to say why, but I very easily could have folded it and said, "Oh, maybe we don't have to do something this big." Maybe it's not that important that we capture all of those different stories we could do one or two, but I think I am so grateful that they allowed me to go and do it to the fullest. - Okay, so personal lesson. - What is most important in life, in day to day life is how we treat each other. It is so important when I was on these sets because these are real people. I ended up doing really small, meaningful things. Maybe somebody needs to be pushed in their chair somewhere. Maybe they need something wiped on their face. Maybe I need to be very patient as they're trying to tell me something, communicate something with me. While they type inside of an eye gaze, and I think that taught me so much about, I need to be present, and when I'm with you, I'm here with you, and I wanna know what you're thinking, how you're feeling, how I can be there for you. I think those little parts of the day to day, more important than I could have imagined. - Airbnb. - Was that your only choice at a college? - In college, one of my internships was at Airbnb. What, I didn't know that. - Yes. - What was this? - Yes, this was the summer before senior year. - And I actually am still very, very good friends with a few of those interns, but after the internship, I really thought, okay, this is the company I wanna work at, and so that's why I went full time the next year. So at the time I was at Airbnb, I loved being there. Every single day I had, I don't regret. I still have deep love for everyone who is on that super brand team at the time. It was such an unforgettable life experience. - Yeah, hell yeah. - For sure, but at the time I left, there was a lot of organizational chaos going on at the company. They were doing a lot of reorgs, trying to figure out under what products or brands that, the organization needed to be structured under, and they were having a difficult time figuring that out. Right before I had left, they had just gotten a COO. And so before then, there was nobody running the day-to-day operations. - So, yes, growing pains, growing pains for sure. - Yeah, as all the companies do. - Yes, and I think a lot of employees saw this moment and time of, I can ride it out through these growing pains and get to the other side and continue to be a part of this amazing journey and this brand, and some people thought, I don't need to be here for these growing pains. - Got my own growing pains? - Yeah, you can skip this chapter and be like, I'll come back when you figure it out. - When you guys for you, this one, yes, for sure. And in particular, the marketing team was a little bit in chaos, our CMO had left. - Oh, yeah, and to those in team. - 10 terms, CMO, T. - Yes. - And then you made the big decision to be like, yeah, I'm not going to be part of this part of life. I'm going to ask a dad all, what was that decision for you? - I am working on this launch. And I am the PMM on it. I've got all the ducks in a row, right? All the brand assets ready. I've got all the connections and media activation ready. All the media buys ready. I've got all the analytics team ready. - Okay. - And I'm in a marketing leadership team with the interim CMO at the time. - Sounds like a warm room. - Yes, we're in a warm room. - Okay. - Yes, we're in a warm room with a bunch of other leadership members of the organization, including my own boss at the time. I know. (laughing) (screaming) Oh my God, those are the most insane to your words. - Yeah. - 'Cause they didn't know who you were. - I mean, it's not as if he doesn't know who I am in the organization. - Oh my God. - I know. - I haven't felt this rage in a long time. - And you know, it's a tough thing. 'Cause I'm a young woman. - Yeah. - Obviously a whole room full of men. - Yeah, it's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. - Yeah, it's a whole room full of men. - I called my best friend, my friend talked to me and she said, hey, look, this job has given you so much grief. Be honest with me. If you left tomorrow, what's the worst thing that could happen? What's the worst thing that could do? What would you do? And I talked to her and I said, you know, I could probably work for my old boss who left. And be doing work that I am very competent at doing. And I would be okay. And she said, well, if that's the case, that's a pretty good gig. And you should leave tomorrow. And so I thought, okay, okay, well, if that's it, then that's it. My original manager at Airbnb, I'm still very dear friends with today. She's an incredible woman. I have nothing but the highest of praises for the manager that I had at the time I left. I think was very sad to see me go, but understood. I think what was happening in the climate of the company. - Oh, he was like, you were amazing, but it's also your choice. And I don't want to stop you. I hope you stay in touch. - Okay, that's cordial. But I remember it was hard for you to leave. The people loved you. - Airbnb, the people did love me, it was hard for me to leave. So when I was leaving the company, I obviously talked to my manager. But that, he escalated it to his manager who I had to talk to to try to convince me to stay. - Did he tell you that he would escalate? - Yes, oh, and then you were like, please no, or. - Well, I just said, okay. Because the conversation is, can you please just talk to this person? - Okay, okay, fine. Before you go, could you have a conversation with them and let them know face to face? And then that conversation is trying to get me to stay. And then that manager escalated it again, which escalated it again, which escalated all the way to the CEO who I had a long conversation with before I left. - Yeah, this is you. - Yeah, this is you. I mean, I really think he's doing great things now. I know that he has grown a lot as a leader. - Yeah, yeah. - I think just at that moment in time, it was a little bit of chaos. - They're rough in it out. - Yeah. - What did they tell you to get you to stay? - To tempt me, they tempting me with sabbaticals, with arrays, working on even cooler projects, even cooler projects, even cooler projects. I think that as much as I really loved this company and still do, I needed to go and find what it is I want to do with my life. - That's why you were so set on leaving, you knew you were quitting. There was no world in which you would have stayed. - That is a common problem young people face. I feel like young people have so much grit in their 20s, in their early 20s mid 20s to put even more work than the people in their 30s, in your 30s, kind of know the game and you're kind of tired of it. Then you kind of just know how to do the minimum work game. That's if you're doing it. Of course, you're very competent in your own ways, but in your 20s, you dedicate the shit out of it. You're like arriving at the office at 7 a.m. and leaving last bus, last shuttle, last lights out every single day, weekends, because that's all you have going on. I get it. That's a slap to the face. I believe I left Airbnb in October and in January. I was in Japan. Can you introduce yourself in Japanese? Hi, Konnichiwa, Sopya desu, yoroshiku o negashimasu. She's our Japanese translator whenever we go to Japan. My big vision was, okay, I mean, Japan for three months, I'm gonna master the Japanese language. And of course, I'm gonna go back to the United States and continue to live my life on another startup to work out, figure it out, but it turns out you can't learn the Japanese language in three months. It's a shocker. Not enough time. Crazy. So, I stayed a little longer. I stayed a little longer. And then the pandemic hit, and I was trapped in Japan as a foreigner. You could not leave the borders. Trapped. But more free. That's true. That's true. So, I got to see all around the country and I made incredible friends, incredible community. And then you became a professional dancer. What did that look like? The main thing is when you leave corporate life to a non-corporate life, you need structure for a dancer that looks like going to a lot of dance class because it's training, it's strengthening, and it's structure for your day to day. So you have a momentum pulling you towards something, you're constantly making, you're creating, you're getting inspired, and you're also staying ready for auditions or whatever it is that you want to be doing. I first start going to all of these dance classes. And then I start to, in these classes, see all these pamphlets, and I start to pull all of them. Information about different grants and fellowships and these kinds of things. And so I start applying and applying and applying. There's one where you had to connect a city across the world, somewhere to the city of Tokyo. And that was the prompt of this one grant. I apply for it, I go for it, I am thinking, okay, what makes the most sense as far as connecting Tokyo to a city somewhere else is I'm originally from the Bay Area and I was missing it quite a bit. What if I found a Japanese artist who's living in the Bay Area and we could do some kind of switcheroo, interesting art piece and so that birthed my first kind of foray into being a professional dancer, which was I created this live dance performance both in Tokyo and in San Francisco. And we also shot a short film together. What was it called? It's called Tonari. What is it called? The Japanese word for next to your neighbor. And why did you choose that name? So we chose this name because we were still in the pandemic and so we didn't think that we would ever be able to perform together in person, so the original concept was there would be one of us on a screen and the other performing live in front of that screen in one city, the reverse happening in another city, and then we would be performing next to each other. Tonari, but it turned out that we got to do something even bigger and more extraordinary than that, which was putting together these live shows where we had a full live jazz band and two dancers in both Tokyo and in San Francisco. And we also got to shoot this short film in both cities where we've got the main character played by myself who is moving between the two, trying to figure out where is her and where is home. I think it really speaks to this idea that in the modern world, there is more than one place that we call home and it's not just the place you're born, it's not just the heritage that you grow up in, but you know, in a world in which we can watch K-dramas or we can be listening to Rigatone or we can be listening to Afro House. There's just so many different cultures that are informing who we are as people. So many places, therefore, that we can call home as people. How did you choose your San Francisco counterpart? It's a great question. So the idea genuinely was, can I find a Japanese artist who's based in the Bay Area? I called around friends in the Bay Area and around the Bay Area and said, "Hey, do you know any Japanese artists?" And I called one friend and she goes, "I don't think I know any." And then the next day, she called me and she says, "Wait, I actually have a friend who's a really great drummer who is Japanese, who lives in the Bay Area. Let me see if he's interested." We got connected and his name is Akira. There is, I believe, a really famous anime, also named Akira. Yeah. So it's not a red motorcycle, but close. Yeah. He is incredible. He is this amazing drummer in his 70s. It was jazz percussion with modern dance mix. Yes, jazz with, yes, modern dance. That's a really cool mix. Yeah. One of the scariest things of going from corporate to artistry is how do we make money? How did you answer that question? There is the ability to teach a dance class. There is the ability to create performances. There is the ability to get hired for a performance, to get hired for a commercial shoot. There are all these opportunities. It's just about going after them. It is a scary notion to think that you don't have that gig yet when you leave your corporate job. But you have to know that there's so much opening for you and so much time and so much opportunity for you to get those gigs once you leave the job, but you're not going to be able to feel like those opportunities are getable until you go, which is, yes. It's like the whole stability versus freedom, the anxiety of not having your next paycheck. What I'm hearing is you just have to believe you're going to get it. You do. You have to believe in yourself more than anyone else. How do you get that belief going into artist life? The reason why I had that belief is because nobody told me otherwise, nobody told me how hard it would be. Okay. Wait. This also sounds like a bad thing too. No one told me. Nobody told me that you would have to make all these decisions for yourself. I just went. Okay. I'm going to go full force into this. Would you rather have gotten that information first or not? No. Because you don't want to know. You don't want to know. You're in this business. - Wow, I feel like I would wanna know. (laughing) Tell me, tell me, I don't want to suffer. Like, come on, I would avoid it. Why did anyone just tell me? I wouldn't have done this. Our greatest lessons come from our greatest suffering. I don't believe in suffering, but we do a lot. We do a lot of struggle. I only really work with product marketing managers. What are the different types of marketing roles out there? You're in partner marketing. Product marketing, which is marketing on a specific product launch. What are the other roles that you've seen? So I would say in the upper umbrellas, There's product marketing and there's brand marketing. And so brand marketing is a lot of what you see in bigger companies like Coca-Cola, having an ad at the Super Bowl, that's the idea of, I want to showcase my brand and storytell what we represent. There is also the analytics portion of the team, so people getting insights saying, okay, how well are these ads doing and how can we figure out how to optimize them to make them better for the future? There are people working on the media buying side, which is really important, I would say if content is king, the media placement is queen, whoo-hoo-hoo-bars. What is a media placement? - The idea of where does the ad live? - Digital aid, it's clay, both. - Okay. - So is the ad in what we call out of home? Out of home is a billboard or bus shelter or a bench or something literally see in a train station, physically outside your home. There is television ads, digital ads, There are programmatic ads, programmatic ads. Do you know what that is? - No. - That's okay. (laughing) I'm like nodding. Just like I know what if he's talking about it. - Okay, so before the, let's say, 2010s, how you might buy a digital ad is you go to someone like the New York Times and you say, "Hey, I would like to buy this ad on this page at this time." But in today's world, a user opens up the New York Times anonymous data about that user gets sent out and that there are different companies that are putting bids out on that ad. And one of those companies automatically wins that bid. And then that's the ad that gets shown to that user. There's people buying the ads, there's people doing analytics on the ads, there's people who are in brand and product marketing, and then there's people who are creating the ads themselves. So the creative team of people who are making video, who are making digital assets, who are doing photography, who are creating the fonts, creating the brand style, who are creating the logos. There's a number of different areas within the marketing world that you can find yourself in? - In early careers, someone's like, I wanna go into marketing. I apply to 600 jobs got rejected by all of them. What do I do? - I would say if you got rejected by 600 jobs, definitely fix the resume. There's something not right there. - Do people look at resumes anymore? (laughing) - That's a great question. I will, they must look at a LinkedIn, no? At the very least. - I think that there is LinkedIn optimization and there is resume optimization, but you know how like AI scrapes and determines whether resumes and LinkedIn pages are worth looking at, I think there is a game to play. I would say that I think I am such a referral based person It's so hard for me to work with people who I've known. There's no reference on. Whenever people ask me for resume advice, I'm just like, I'm not even sure if that's worth. I was relevant. Optimizing for. Should they just go straight into infiltrating the company somehow? I've seen people post on LinkedIn and make a viral video and tag the company and then be like, this is my portfolio. I need to do some crazy viral memes stunt. I would say put some eggs into your resume. Don't come at me with garbage. But I will say referrals are super, super important. Your ability to get referral or meet someone through someone is really critical. In this world of AI taking over, I think it's still really human trait that we need is to build relationships. And particularly if you're looking for a job and you're coming out of college or you're in early grad, I think that your ability to go to a networking event or to find your way to some other kind of place where there's people that you're interested in working with. That is a really core key skill. There are happy hours. There's bullying parties. There's hiking. There's biking. There's running clubs. There's all kinds of affinity groups in relation to tech. I would find the one that suits you best. And then go for it and just meet people. and connect with them. -Doesn't matter how strong the referral is though. -It doesn't matter to me. -Oh, they just go through the referral queue. -Yeah. -Have you ever gotten a referral request and you're just like, "I hate you?" [laughs] -I have not hated a referral, but a number of times, I've got a referral where someone says, "This person is perfect, perfect, perfect for the role, perfect for a company, and they have no relevant experience." [laughs] -Nepah hires. -Which is why I find that it doesn't matter how strong a referral it is. -You're probably one of the good people who actually will check if this person is qualified. -Yes, yes, I'm trying to fact check. -Yeah, and a lot of people don't. A lot of people I've seen where the VP will be like, "Yes, please hire," and the entire slate says no, and they still get hired. -You see it, right? -Yes. -It's awful. It's literally awful, and that person is the worst person on the planet, and they get through, and you're just like, "Why am I here?" In the world of networking, people are like, "Oh, should I just get an MBA?" And that will open up my career opportunities. Is an MBA or a master's in marketing worth it? -I would say it is one way, but it is not the only way. Okay. -I do know people who go to business school, and they do have a good time, and they do end up getting some value out of it, but I would say if business is what you want to do, then the best way to do that is to start a business, or if marketing is what you want to do, the best way to do that is go out and market something. -How do you stay up to date with the best marketing? -Campains or strategies? -I am looking at the marketing that reaches me. I am someone who is not very online. -It's not. -It's not doing squalor. -I have a piece of marketing that reaches me, and I think that it's really good. I really take note. I am paying a lot of attention to the out-of-home ads, whether it's a billboard or a wild posting, or something in a train station. I'm paying attention to if a digital ad does reach me. I'm a little bit on Instagram, and so when an Instagram ad reaches me and it hits, I go, wow, they did some really good work there, and I really think about, okay, why is this good? I think looking into that, why is really important to do great work? -I was a last-campagne, you're like, this is phenomenal. -This is not a big company, but it was a really small band in New York, and they had these posters up with a QR code, and the posters said something along the lines of, "X, Y, and Z, I can't believe you did this to be. I can't believe you cheated on me. Here are all the pictures for everyone to see, and then the QR code went to an album. That was all about all of these different emotions that were coming out of these crazy pieces of copy that were on the postings, but you couldn't help but break out your phone and be like, "I want to know, I want to know what happened." -Were you upset that it went to an album? Or were you like, "Damn, they got me." -I went, "Damn, they got me." -Excellent. Do you believe in influencer marketing? -I do believe in influencer marketing, but I feel like you use that very sparingly in your work, or you have used it very sparingly. -Well, so influencer marketing is owned by a different person, or has been owned by different people at the companies that I've worked at in the past. -It's an interesting thing. I think it's hard to get right, because you want what you want at the end of the day for your influencer marketing to do, is you want that influencer to speak on behalf of your brand, to storytell on behalf of your brand, and showcase what your product can do. And you want that all to come off as something that that person really would be talking about, and to have that authenticity, I think, is a very tough thing to get right, but if you can get it right, I do think that it is very, very powerful. -What do you think people are getting wrong? -They are a lot of times going for influencers with much higher follow count, but less relevance, whereas I think if you went for influencers with smaller follower count, but much higher relevance, I think you'd get more resonance. -How do you measure relevance? -Thinking, okay, looking at all the content on this influencer's page, how much does it align with the product that we have? You know, if I have a coffee that I'm selling, are they talking about other people's coffee? Do they talk about tea? Do they talk about beverages in general, or are they just talking about food and beverage, or are they talking about restaurants or, you know, that scope gets bigger and bigger and bigger, but the closer you can get to that coffee product, I think the more it can come off as something that feels really within that influencer's world. -What do people do in interviews that you see that you're like, "This is a common mistake, please don't do this," and then what's a bad, good, and amazing interview? -A bad interview is someone who has come thoroughly unprepared with anything. -Is this common? -This is not common, a bad interview is not common. I think someone who does no research on the company, someone who does no research on the role, someone who has not understood how their role is going to translate to this new role. I think a good interview is someone who shows up prepared, who has answers to the questions that are asked during interview time. A great interview, as an interviewer, I am learning something from you. -Yeah. -I'm gaining an insight that I did not have before. You give me something to walk away with. If you have questions at the end, which you should, they are thoughtful. They're not just so, you know, how many employees does your company have and you guys looking to do in the next year. If you have a question, at least one of them should have a level of thoughtfulness to it for it to be great. -Do you only hire the great interviewers? -Yes. -Even the good interviews, you're just like, the reason why is you have to work with this person every single day if you're hiring them. And so you want to make sure it's someone who you can learn from, who is inspiring, who you know is going to do the work on top of the basics. -Now that I'm hiring or have gone through, I get it. But as a candidate, that is so much stress and pressure. And like, how am I supposed to get there when I barely have my previous job? -You can do it. You can do it. I think interview one part of it is the story of your resume, the idea of in a minute or less, how can I tell the story of how I went from A to B to C company in a way that makes sense and in a way that all seems as if the narrative is leading to this new company that I'm interviewing for now. Part two is why you'd be good for this role. They might ask you, what would you do in this situation or that situation in really making sure you can give that to the people. And then the third is, okay, well, now that they know who I am and why I can do this role, just that little extra something I can think about bringing to my interview that can make me memorable. -A lot of people in their 20s are very frustrated at the job market. A lot of people are sharing their frustrations online. What do you think people in their 20s are getting wrong? I am less familiar with what the sentiment is around people of their 20s. I will say that it's not meant to be easy or smooth sailing. When you are interviewing, you are rolling dice and sometimes you're rolling those dice a lot until you get that sweet seven. It's not about giving up after the third dice role. It's about waking up in the morning and rolling those dice again. -I think people kind of go through like really rough states of life when they see so many rejections. I remember my darkest days as well. I think it's tough. I don't have a great answer for it. But I do think that there are ways to up-level your ability to interview, but that's only after you get a referral. Which is really tough. How do you balance like how pissed off creatives are with AI and working in it and trying to use it for good for the right reasons? Where are your values and morals in there? And what are your critiques on AI and creativity where you see it today? -I would say people's biggest worry and stress is, oh, it's going to take my job as an artist. As an artist, what I'm going to do is going to go away and AI will create all the music and all the films and all the television and what will I do then? And I think that is the wrong way to think about it because AI can create, but it is not artificial soul. It's not artificial consciousness. It's artificial intelligence, which means just very complicated math. Like a very complicated math equation is what it's really at its core. Even though it can take like things and put it together, literally on similar vectors, you know, I can say, A is similar to B and then create some sort of mesh of the two. It inherently can't create something unique in a way that a human can. And it is very limited to the training data that it has. For example, a human can take a lesson from basketball and apply it to accounting, but a model trained in basketball in the AI world can't then apply that to something and accounting and create something entirely new. It's just not it's not going to compute. It's not going to work physically can't do that. The premiums then that we have in the creative world is things like your soul and your emotion and your experience and how is it that you represent that? And where AI comes in in my opinion is that it's a tool in the workflow in order to get you from zero to one faster, a lot faster. So in the world of writing, for example, if you have writer's block, which I do all the time, you can go, Hey, can you give me some ideas? And it'll give you a bunch of not great ideas, but at least places to start and then keep going. Or maybe you have something already written, but you want a spell checker or you want to refine there is then a tool for that. But if you're looking at the world of creating images, let's say you have something in your head that you want onto paper, you can just do that a lot faster. Same with video, you can just get the idea out faster, but I don't think that the final end product being created entirely by AI is the future of creativity. I think the future of creativity is understanding what this tool is in the toolkit. Do you think marketing will die because of AI? I do not think marketing will die because of AI, but I do think that the roles of marketing will change because of AI. There is a lot of the basics in the creative assets that are being made, and you know, you need creative assets in different sizes for vertical, for horizontal, for posting in digital ads, for banners, for what have you. I think a lot of that AI will be able to take care of as far as building the pieces of it, but I know the higher level strategy, the storytelling is still very much in the hands of the humans. With any art form, I would say, including marketing, there is about to be a premium on human made storytelling. I was going to ask you, what skill do you need to buff up on in this new era of AI, but it sounds like it's human made storytelling. I think human made storytelling strategy, particularly if we're talking about marketing, the idea of, okay, I have this ad that I've made potentially with AI, where is it going to be placed, and, you know, in which parts are those going to be important, who needs to see these things, because if you have a gorgeous ad, and nobody sees it, then what was it all for? Also, there is a component of taste, okay, you have this brand identity, and how does it look like to manifest that into the world? I think right now that's still very much in the world of the human, until AI can figure out how to have good taste. How do you become a better storyteller? Obviously, practicing writing, but then having that writing be critiqued. Of course, you can have a critiqued by AI, but I highly recommend getting it critiqued by a human. I think that there is something to be said about studying any type of storytelling structure, whether it's short story, whether it's poetry, whether it's copywriting. I think if you want to get better, you write it down and then have human editors help you refine, and then over time, you start to get better and better. I remember when I was an early marketer, I'd write these emails that were crazy long, that just had too much information at some point, someone sat me down and went, "These just need to be more succinct. How can you say this in 10 words or less?" And suddenly, all of my communications just became so much more crisp. I think that is true of any marketer you want, as crisp and clear communication as possible. I think practicing that is important. What about if they're not in marketing, because you have just a storyteller? Well, storytelling is a skill in any other role, even as a PM, even as an editor or in podcasting or in content creation. Storytelling has become such a core ability, like a core human ability, but actually a lot of people don't do it right. Are there top three resources or things that you would tell someone who has very little storytelling ability? Yeah, how you build taste is you are reading a bunch of great stories anywhere, whether it's articles, whether it's books, whether it's short fiction, whether it's poetry. You are just reading as much as you can of really high quality content. So I would say if you're trying to look to increase your taste in storytelling, I'll give three examples across different mediums. One is the podcast, this American life. I think they do a very good job in creating the story is that they tell. Two is the book on writing by Stephen King. I think that he does a really good job of explaining how to tell a story grammatically, literally with your writing, but the way in which he tells his own memoir is really powerful and done in a really beautiful way. And if you're interested in reading a movie script, I think the script of the Matrix is a perfect script. The Matrix, in my personal opinion, the dialogue is perfect. That's fascinating. I would not have guessed that one. That's really cool. You told me that you would rather be a starving artist than a successful corporate girl. That's true. That's crazy. And that means you're ready. It means you're ready. If you're willing to fail in the past, you should be in it. I really genuinely believe in the path of artistry. You have to be okay with failing at it many, many times over and over and over and over again. Absolutely. There's the ability to end success or not guaranteed. But you do have to believe that you'll get there and you have to put in the work and execute. You have like 10 minutes to go back in time and you can tell 22-year-old Sophia and give her advice. What would you tell her? No crypto, no, whatever. Nothing of that. If I could go and talk to my 22-year-old self, I would tell her, start the artist's way. Now there is a book called The Artist's Way. As you know. As we know. I wish I could have done that sooner. How has your definition of success changed over time from 22-year-old Sophia to now Sophia? As a 22-year-old, my definition of success was definitely being a CMO. I think the title was success. Sexy. Very sexy. Something you could put on a business card 10 years later. Success is much more about the work that I'm outputting and the quality of that. Am I happy and proud of it and did I make it with excellence? There's someone who takes pride in the effort you put into your work and that's very rare. Now for the video viewers, we are looking a little bit different right now because we are actually reshooting this segment. I actually posted on LinkedIn about Sophia being on the pod and we got a lot of engagement, a lot of questions. So we're like, dude, should we reshoot this? And then we're like, yeah, probably. So Sophia actually flew back from New York to LA to reshoot the segment that has more questions about marketing. Let's get into it. Sophia, how much room is there as a marketer for your own personal voice because marketing is very much like using your creativity to sell a product and people are like, where's my personal voice? What is your take on this? My take is that it's not about you. Yeah. Period. Who is it about? If you're a marketer, you're marketing something. If that something isn't you, then what you need to focus on is the voice of the brand and your taste, your instincts, your perspective is all really important and it matters. But it matters towards building that brand voice. I'm guessing you get brand guidelines and this is how we talk about our company. Have you ever disagreed with that and be like, oh, we need more flair? I have better creative instincts than you guys do. I think that's missing the point of a brand guideline. The brand guideline really is there to show you, okay, this is our parameters. This is the sandbox that you want to play in. And if you're a true creative person, you love a sandbox. I think the hardest thing as a creative person is to not have a prompt or a frame to understand what exactly it is you're supposed to be creating and so I think the guidelines are incredibly useful and definitely a tool that any kind of marketer or creative person wants to use. Big, big buzz word in marketing. We get a lot of questions about authenticity, like what are we looking for? How do you retain it and when does it get lost? I will say, when I first heard a marketer talk about authenticity, I was a teenager at an internship and it blew my mind. I thought, is this not the most important thing we can do as marketeers? And you know, over a decade later, I've heard that word quite a bit. All right. Tell me more. But I would say at its core, authenticity is about alignment, alignment of what your product is doing, who is using it, how you're talking about it. Or the color pallets around it, everything just being an alignment, telling a story that is true about it. I think the closer you can get to whatever is that truth for your brand and for your product, that's really what we're talking about when we're talking about authenticity. And it's when those things are misaligned, when your product isn't aligned with your marketing, which isn't aligned with how people are using it, which isn't aligned with all of the other pieces, that's when the authenticity gets lost. The first one that popped into my mind is Tom's, the shoe store. I think they are very tried and true to what they do. Wait, do they do the thing where they donate every, oh okay, although they're making lots of different kinds of shoes, really their mission at its core has been the singular mission of how can we help make the world a better place with shoes? I think that comes across the board the whole way and keeps them very authentic and aligned. Recently I've seen a lot of their ads, it's I believe they're 20th anniversary or something like this. That's why they were top of mind. GTM strategy, everyone knows that you have to have one, whether you're working at a big company, a startup, any product, any service that you want to launch, but the question is, what exactly is a go-to market strategy? What does it look like? What does the playbook look like for a tech company, one of the steps? The basics of a go-to market strategy. We have these questions around what is the product and who do we go to? And then we build the core narrative around it. Once you've got this solid story of, okay, what is it and who is it for and how's it going to work, then you create content around that, right? We're creating marketing assets, so we're creating video, we're creating photo, we might create graphics, we might create all kinds of different creative assets. And then once those assets are made, we need to put them somewhere. They can't just sit at home on the couch. We're going to have them on billboards, maybe we have them on television, maybe we have them in digital ads. And then after that, we run the campaign and we see, is this working? Is this not working? Are people clicking on what we do? Are people interested in engaging with this and then iterating from there? What is a good GTM strategy? What does good look like? In marketing, we talk about this idea of thumb-stopping. Do you know what this is? It's not about thumb-stopping. This idea of this content was interesting enough to take a look at it for a second. I think that is what we talk about the good stuff. And the great stuff is when you get even deeper than that, you click through and see what's beyond that ad, whatever it might have. What you're trying to do with the marketing at the end of the day is to have more users come on board, and you're trying to target the people that you think might be interested. And so it is success when the person you know is interested in your product finds you. As someone who naturally gravitates towards creativity, curiosity, and the arts, how have you been able to bring that left brain thinking or logical side of you into your day job? So essentially how do you balance left brain versus right brain in your work as a marketer? Of course, of course. So in the world of marketing, you need both. I would say left brain is the strategist, and the right brain is really the spark. And the left brain is really doing all of the numbers where it can strategic work, because you do need that in order to make something creative, the idea of the sandbox, to have kind of the boundaries, the rules, the regulations of what creative work can be made within this campaign is really helpful for making the most interesting creative. I think the biggest catalyst to creativity is constraint. I think that it works really well together in the role. - We got a lot of questions about how do you even break into tech marketing? So how do you break into tech marketing? (laughs) As an entry-level person, like a lot of people are interested in marketing, working such like a broad, nebulous type of career path, there's so many different ways to start and take it. How do I break into FIA? - There's a great question. So if you're entry-level, I think, and you look at all of the very big tech companies, the Googles and the metas of the world, they have really wonderful programs for entry-level marketers where you can go, and you can learn a lot about all the different parts of marketing and figure out what's right for you. If you just wanna jump in and get your hands on a product ASAP, you can definitely try and reach out to much smaller companies and see if they could use a person like you. I think if you're interested in building your own portfolio, I would make a really, really beautiful slide deck that had examples of the type of work that I did, maybe potential work of that reflects whatever their product is. Let's say their product is a toothbrush. Maybe I create a beautiful slide deck having toothbrushes, toothbrushes around the world, toothbrushes throughout history. Yeah, and I send it to them and see how it say outfairs. It's a lot of work. It is a lot of work, but getting a job takes work. A lot of people are also starting off their career in social media marketing, which I think is a pretty new entry-level job in their grand career path of marketing. Do you think it's easy to go from social media marketing to let's say PMM? I think it is possible, for example, if you're in an organization, I think my best advice to you is if you're in one marketing org and you're interested in going to another that you go and ask to take on a project on that other team's repertoire. I think that will help you not only gain experience and see if you actually like it, but you can also show your value to that team. Like a 20% project? Actual. Let's just say someone from, I don't know, like customer support team went to you. Can I do 20% product for you? How do you navigate that first conversation? I think because it's an internal person, it's actually a very exciting conversation and I have had it before. I have had people come to me and say, can I do 20% projects with you? And then come onto the team. I think that if it's an external person, it's much more difficult to have that conversation. But internally, if I'm working at that company, I'm basically getting a free extra set of hands to help me do projects that I need done. And then if that person is able to showcase value, then it makes a case for me to bring to whoever is my manager and say, hey, this person is bringing great value to the team. Why don't we think about bringing them over? I see, okay, so you're like open to it. Of course. I feel like I'd be so annoyed. You're like, oh, that's another person to teach. I just need to go. I think my take is, I'll add you to the meetings, but I'm not going to go out of my way to make it work for you, unless my manager tells me to. And I'm like, okay, fine, I'll do it. Yeah, okay, you're a nice one. How do you stay up to date on the latest and best marketing strategies and trends? I think historically, I used to look at a lot of industry reports. So for example, when I was at Airbnb, I looked at Skift, which is a lot of travel reports. I've looked at Gartner as well in the past. The best thing you can do, though, is really just take a look at the marketing that's finding you. Are there industry conferences or events that people are marketing should just go to? Or it's really specific to your field. I would say it's specific to your field. So I would go to the conference in software. If it's software, I'd go to the conference in toothbrushes of toothbrushes. There is can, where they give out the canliance. I would say that's the biggest advertising conference. I also did go to South by, which I think was nice as far as breadth. They have so many different things happening at South by music. They have technology, they've got film. We're the most useless conferences at events. Let's see, yes. Oh my god. (laughing) That's just, you know, catching L, C, yes. It's just too big of an event. It's too big. There's too many things going on. In every single office drama, we have a little segment called performance review where we do a rap of our question and you tell me your answer. And it's just like a gut thing. And then I will give you your performance rating of your role and your time here. You ready? I'm ready. Number one question. Would you rather be bright or promoted? Right. (laughing) The hesitation though. (laughing) Would you be down to make a million dollars? But you'd have to be a course person. Buy my course on marketing. No. (laughing) You rather make zero. Yes. As a marketer, who bullies you more? PMs legal or your CEO? Legal. Why? Because there's so many rules. There's so many rules. If you found that that your underperforming work enemy is moonlighting, two full-time tech jobs do you dark? Yes. How? I don't know, but in a really spectacular fashion. (laughing) Would you ever write a post starting leaving my 500K tech job to start a dot, dot, dot? If it could promote your music as an artist. Never. You would never. I would never. That's your biggest ache. She hates it. Should filming a day in the life working in tech be banned or permitted in the office? Permitted. Okay, she's for it. Are you living with main character energy or are you in your NPC era? Main character energy. Meetings before 10am. Yes. Damn. Morning person. Sorry. Out of 100% for a promotion, what percent is skill and what percent is visibility? Oh. I think we all wish it was 100% skill. Reality. 60% skill, 40% visibility. Hmm. Decent balance is Gen Z cooked or trainable in the workplace. Trainable in the workplace. Oh, you're optimistic. Do you think any PR is good PR? Yes. Really, even if it's like super negative bad, I just like to be controversial. Well, congratulations. You got a greatly exceed. Yay! And I really give you a greatly exceed because you almost made me cry with your 11 stories campaign. I haven't felt that way in a very long time as someone who has been in the tech space and worked a lot of high powered, very competent, very prestigious elite people in the industry, whatever. But like to meet someone who works and has such a strong mission and isn't as influenced by the glitz and glamour of what tech an AI is, I think that's very, very, very rare. Thank you for being on Office Drama. But thank you for having me. So where can people find you these days? People can find me on Instagram @sofmaster. No, LinkedIn, you're not doing that. Absolutely not. Are you open to people cold messaging you on social media or email? Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't come at me. So just comment and just follow. If people wanted to get connected with you, what do they have to do to increase their chances? Referral. Get a referral. Get a referral. You got to be in the inner circles. That's correct. Would you Sofia want to come back on a future Office Drama episode? Of course. Thank you. Yay. Thank you for being here today. And as always, I will see you next week. Bye. Hi, Drama Lomas. Shout out to our Drama Lomas on Patreon over here. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Sofia was actually one of my bridesmaids and she actually officiated our wedding, yes. She's a very dear friend of mine since college who's seen me through the absolute ugliest of times. Like, she's literally seen me through the worst ex-boyfriends I've ever had that she absolutely despises and she has been there for me for the best of times as well. I really should have listened to her back then, but here I am anyways. I actually really get to hear these kinds of decompressations about how my friends and their work worlds happen. Like, as a friend, you hear the surface level stuff, but as a friend, you don't really get to dive into their world of work and work in our sphere is kind of the majority of our lives for better or for worse. The things that I heard that she's accomplished with 11 voices and 11 labs was absolutely incredible. It's one of those rare moments you get to see firsthand. How someone can work with AI for good for making the world actually a better place for actually helping real world human problems. And I know AI is a very touchy topic. Even Sofia has shared her qualms in conflicts while being a dancer and artist, a filmmaker, a rapper, a writer, and a musician while still working at one of the top AI companies in the world. It's a weird position to be in. Regardless, I am so pumped for Sofia's journey after 11 labs. I just think she's got such a rich history of seeing various cultures across art and geographies and she is a deep appreciator of the arts. She's an extraordinarily beautiful girl. talented storyteller as well. We used to have these monthly calls while she lived in Japan that we called dreams, like we literally put dreams in the calendar invite, where we both were accountability buddies for each other when reaching our own dreams and goals, and that brought us to where we are today. If you have any other questions for Sophia, please share them down below in the comments, I will be sure to ask them. The video was actually pretty nervous to come on here, so please be nice. I hope this episode gives a fresh perspective on how multi-dimensional people's personal and work lives can be, and that your path doesn't need to be the traditional path that you thought it had to. Thanks so much for watching Office Drama, and I will see you next week.