Would you have the courage to fire yourself? 20 Great Answers with Stephanie Challinor, General Manager of Customer Experience and Alliances for AC3

Stephanie Challinor (00:02): 

If one more person calls me the marketing girl, my head might explode. I think it’s such a common misconception, and we might want to call it more of the kind of IT industry. There is that persona or that misconception that marketing is just a group of young women running events. And if you let marketing have a seat at the table, their role can and should change, which is exactly what’s happened in my role in AC3. Now I look after the marketing team, the partner alliance team, the product team, and the customer experience team because I was given a seat at the table to add value. 

Barrie Seppings (00:43): 

Welcome back to Plugged In, Switched On, the podcast where we pull you into the conversations that matter in B2B tech marketing. I am your host, Barrie Seppings, and that quote that you heard at the top of the show was from Stephanie Challinor. She’s the general manager of customer experience and alliances for AC3 in Australia. More from Stephanie in just a moment. 

Now, if you are new to the pod, let me show you around. We do three things here at Plugged In, Switched On. Firstly, we get some of the most interesting people in B2B tech marketing to tell us how and why they do the things that they do. Secondly, we have our special deep dive episodes where we go into a core skill or segment of B2B marketing and have a much closer look at what is happening in that part of the industry. Finally, we also have a little bit of a behind the curtain’s special episode about how teams and leaders are operating in these realms. We ask them to share their secrets, and we listen to see if we can steal a few of those ideas for ourselves. 

(01:48): 

Now, we don’t try and do all three of those things at once. We like to focus. Today’s focus is an interview with a B2B tech marketing leader. The rules of the interview is we ask them the same 20 questions. Invariably we get 20 really different, interesting answers. Today’s episode is no different. Let’s go.  

Question number one as always is the elevator pitch. Your company AC3, what does it do and why would people pay good money for what you do? 

Stephanie Challinor (02:18): 

I like to keep it simple when I answer this question because most of the time when I’m giving this answer, people aren’t in the industry. So I usually just like to say, “Hey, you know when you back up your phone to the cloud? We build the cloud mostly for government, and we make sure everything’s really safe and secure and nothing goes wrong.” 

Barrie Seppings (02:37): 

Give us the elevator pitch when we’re in a really long elevator filled with tech people. 

Stephanie Challinor (02:41): 

AC3 your go-to partner for anything in the data center, stretching out to the hyperscale cloud, and all of the supporting services around that. So, anything that starts from the data center. So if you think securing that data center, running it, running your network, keeping your teams safe, keeping their mission-critical applications on, that’s AC3. We are the plumbers. We make sure that all of the plumbing in your house is working. You don’t need to worry about it. Everything is absolutely on all the time when you need it and you have a safe pair of hands so you can focus on whatever your job is, whether it’s out supporting the citizens of your government, keeping your customers happy, you can do that while we take care of the plumbing. 

Barrie Seppings (03:25): 

You say plumbing and that sounds a little archaic, but we’re not talking basic washroom here. We’re talking high-end Japanese toilets, aren’t we? 

Stephanie Challinor (03:32): 

Yeah, yeah. We’re talking about the $30,000 per day. It is plumbing though, so it’s okay to do something that is perceived as boring. I think we all get, everyone tries to do the elevator pitch and make it really sexy, but actually, it’s just a safe pair of hands for the infrastructure, for the things that run your business that just need to work. They’re crucial. They’re super important. Deodorant’s not sexy. I mean, maybe those old Lynx commercials, but it’s just something that you need to run your business. And you don’t want that person to be the flashiest, coolest person at the party. You want them to be stable. You want them to be reliable. You want to know that they’re there to help you if something goes wrong. 

Barrie Seppings (04:16): 

We see a lot of fetishization of the word innovation in marketing, and I know for some buyers, innovation just means risk. And it sounds like your services are the opposite of risk, right? You’re about the removal of risk. 

Stephanie Challinor (04:28): 

Absolutely, and as a creative person, that’s something I struggle with. You’ve got to find other ways, other creative outlets because everything we do is around removing that risk. If you are innovating, taking the risk element out of it, safe, secure, reliable, which isn’t particularly innovative a lot of the time. Can be, but innovative in a very safe way. So for a creative marketer at heart, it can be a challenge to kind of maintain that balance sometimes. 

Barrie Seppings (05:00): 

Question two is the superhero origin story. 

Stephanie, you are the general manager of customer experience and alliances for AC3. Was that on your bingo card when you were in high school talking to your careers counselor? Is that what you thought you were going to do? 

Stephanie Challinor (05:17): 

I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, to be perfectly honest with you, Barrie. It changes reasonably often, but I think the earliest memory when I was in school, I wanted to take over my parents’ health food shop. I wanted to own my own business and continue that legacy. In hindsight, actually, it’d probably be a much more booming business now than it was in the ’90s. When I got a bit older, I actually decided I wanted to be Gail Kelly. She was my absolute idol. She, for those that don’t know, was the first female CEO of a big four bank. So, she was the CEO of Westpac, and I just thought seeing a female CEO on that stage was so inspiring and so cool. 

And for the early part of my career, that’s what I worked towards and I worked really, really hard to try and progress as quickly as I could. After a while, I realized that that probably wasn’t for me either, apart from the ethical reasons to not work in one of the big four banks. I started in software, so I fell into a tech role. 

Barrie Seppings (06:23): 

Wow. Yep. 

Stephanie Challinor (06:23): 

I still don’t really know that much about tech if I’m going to be blatantly honest with you. It’s not my passion. Fell into it. Fell into a software company, enjoyed it. Enjoyed the opportunity and the security that the tech landscape kind of gives you. And at that point in time where I started my career, it was a real estate industry software and I kind of had a decision to make at that point in my career. I could take my next job in the real estate industry and that would be my industry of choice, or I could take my next job in tech and that would be my industry of choice, and I’m pleased that I chose the tech path. 

Barrie Seppings (07:04): 

And it keeps you interested today? You say you’re not a tech person. I tend to agree, and partly we’ll get onto this as well because it changes so fast. Keeping up is a full-time job with tech itself. What’s the appeal? Why are you still working in this industry? 

Stephanie Challinor (07:18): 

I think as a human being, I’m reasonably risk-averse, so there’s all the things on paper that make it more of a safe and secure industry than, say, hospitality. I think beyond that, it’s kind of nice to be involved in an industry where I’m not the expert and to be the voice of reason that you don’t have to be an expert to do a marketing role in tech. It’s better that you don’t know the fees and the speeds and you can actually have a different perspective. 

So, I like to learn. Once something becomes too easy, it gets very boring, and I lose motivation. So being in a place where I’m constantly being challenged to try and figure out how the next new thing works, and how we’re going to message that, and what product we’re going to make out of that, how are we going to cross-sell that to customers, what value is that going to add, keeps things interesting and it starts to tick that education and creativity box for me. 

Barrie Seppings (08:17): 

Question three, I’d do this for free. Stephanie, what part of your job do you just naturally enjoy and find yourself just drawn to it or spending more time on it that you possibly should? Where’s the joy for you? 

Stephanie Challinor (08:29): 

I think the alliance is part of that exceptionally long title that I have. So for me, it’s kind of a toss-up. If I was thinking just really in the marketing sphere, it’s the strategy. I could come up with ideas all day, come up with ways to change our business, which is not particularly valuable if you can’t execute on them, so that’s why we can’t do that all day. But the partnership space, especially in this industry, there are so many intelligent people and there are so many opportunities and things to learn and things to uncover and value to add that I spend a lot more time tapping into our partners, meeting with vendors, going along to events and just talking to people. 

It’s where we come up with most of our ideas. I mean, we’re a service provider. We don’t create our own tech. We take other people’s tech and build services around it. So definitely, that plugging into my network and building that is what I would do free. 

Barrie Seppings (09:26): 

And who do you think has got the worst job in B2B tech marketing, or which part of your job do you just really not like doing? It’s a bit of a grudge. 

Stephanie Challinor (09:34): 

I think that’s easy for me. I would say anyone that’s an event manager has my ultimate respect because I could think of no worse job than full-time organizing events. There’s a million things to do. Something always goes wrong. Everyone always notices the thing that goes wrong. It’s always stress, it’s always chaos. The courier never gets there on time. It’s just problem after problem. I have the utmost respect for full-time event marketers. 

Barrie Seppings (09:59): 

Question four, control, alt, delete. What’s the one career move or a moment that you wish you could go back and undo? Or perhaps in that moment, you realized, “Oh, I’m getting taught something really valuable here. This is a lesson. This is a moment.” 

Stephanie Challinor (10:16): 

I have so many of those, but the thing that I think resonates the most for me is, and I hope no one at my last job listens to this, I love them all and I love what I learned there but I stayed there too long. I got stale and I was unhappy, and my work suffered. And I didn’t really realize that until I left and I joined AC3, and I looked around and went, “Wow. The quality of my work is so much better. Maybe the problem wasn’t the business. Maybe the problem was me and the environment that I was in.” And that was eye-opening and confronting, but also really helpful to learn that I actually do my best work when I’m happy and engaged. And the quality of my work goes up so much that it’s something that’s really stuck with me. 

Barrie Seppings (11:16): 

And did you get a tap on the shoulder to go or were there rumblings from other people, or this is all purely just you coming to this conclusion? 

Stephanie Challinor (11:23): 

Yeah, no. No tap. I was very happy there. I was, I think, still adding a lot of value, but when I really reflect on it, I was adding value at the acceptable level. What I know I could have done was 110% above that. So I was still definitely giving it my all because that’s the sort of person I was, but instead of giving it 110%, I was giving it, I don’t know, 85%. And just everything was happening and the results were there, but in terms of what we could be doing, even now I think about it. “Oh, we could’ve done this, and this idea would’ve been great and I should have really pushed this. And here was this idea that kind of got shot down, but if I’d positioned it differently by doing this and doing that, we could’ve got that off the ground and that would’ve given such a different result.” 

(12:14): 

So it’s more of those kinds of things, and feeling inspired and passionate changes the way that you advocate for your ideas. And not every idea is going to be right, not every idea is going to get off the ground. But when you’re stale and you feel a bit disenfranchised or whatever it might be, your ability to advocate for what you know is valuable, and to articulate your ideas in the best way and to add enough kind of meat to the bone before you hand it over to someone, it totally disintegrates. 

(12:47): 

So working in a place where you’re happy and connected to and all of those things helps you do that in a much more effective way. So I think about that a lot because I’ve been at AC3 for a long time, so I’m constantly thinking, “It’s coming up to eight years. Do I have the seven-year itch? Am I still adding value? What should I do to keep things interesting? Am I still engaged?” It’s always rolling around the back of my mind. 

Barrie Seppings (13:14): 

Question five, shout out. Who have you learned the most from in your career? And perhaps even if it wasn’t what to do, you don’t have to name names, but who were the people that led you? 

Stephanie Challinor (13:27): 

That’s so easy for me to answer that I will shout out, and it’s definitely a what to do. My first boss, my first CEO was a gentleman named John Goddard, and he’s fabulous and he’s super smart and he’s super wacky, and he’s just a great guy. He took me under his as a 21 or 22-year-old and mentored me. Threw a massive test at me to start with and kind of gave me this project. I had no idea what I was doing, and he waited till I was about halfway through. We were having a status update and he looked at me and said, “You know this is a test, right?” I said, “Oh, well, I suspected, but now that you’ve made it that clear to me, I’m even more nervous now.” 

(14:13): 

But he was just a very intelligent guy that thought about things in a really simple way. And because I like to say I grew up with him, there were such formative years in my career that so many of my character traits in the way that I work, idiosyncrasies, all of it, all come back to John and the way he taught me to work. I mean, I still pull it out now. He’s a big fan of Peter Drucker. And I have, as a result, read many, many, very dry Peter Drucker management books, and just that very famous quote of the purpose of a business, “The purpose of a business is to create and keep the customer.” 

(15:01): 

And it’s just so simple and so relevant that everyone should remember it, even if they don’t want to read the 300-page book that goes with it. And for anyone that’s maybe looking inside themselves on what’s kind of working and what’s not, there’s also, it’s a micro book. It’s such a tiny book. You could Google it and find it. I think Harvard Business Review published a version of it, but Peter Drucker wrote Managing Oneself. It’s all around self-reflection and what makes you tick, and what you enjoy doing to help add the most value, and that concept of, what are you good at, and focus on those things, and what are you not so great at to find your purpose and passion? And it’s very, very insightful if you want to do some self-reflection. 

Barrie Seppings (15:46): 

We love links and recommendations on the podcast here, so we’ll put that in the show notes for those couple of books. Question six, the only constant is marketing cliches. So, in technology and general business as well, the rate of change is accelerated. We talk about innovation, the fetishization of that. You spoke before about humans being kind of risk-averse, and humans also don’t really like change if we’re honest, and yet we’ve got to cope. How do you cope with constant change? How do you keep up? 

Stephanie Challinor (16:19): 

Well, I’m human, so I hate change too. I think it’s super normal, right? So the best way that I like to deal with it is that, I don’t know if this is cheating but I try and always put myself in a position where I’m leading the change rather than waiting because I know what I’m like. If I wait for someone else to try and drag me along on the chain, it’s just so much harder. I’m human, I don’t like it. No one does. So if you push yourself to be part of the change, be at the forefront. Try and be the person that’s advocating the change or being a change agent and look for the benefit in it. Make it your own decision. 

(16:54): 

And I’m not going to send this to my partner to listen to because he’ll say, “I told you so,” but I don’t like being told what to do. I like to tell myself what to do. I know that about myself. So if I can try and be in a position where I’m helping to bring other people on the journey, that works for me, personally. 

Barrie Seppings (17:15): 

All right, question seven, here’s to your health. What do you do to stay physically and mentally healthy in a job like yours? Because A, it’s a difficult job, challenging job, complex job. You sound like a high achiever by your own standards. You’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself. How do you counter all of that? How do you keep that within a healthy range? 

Stephanie Challinor (17:34): 

It’s really hard. I’m a perfectionist. I’m glass half empty naturally, so I work hard to top that glass up. So, lots of strategies. I think the thing that is most important is I stopped having three meals a day at the office. Put a stop on working those kinds of hours and doing those kinds of things because physically and mentally, I was really suffering for it. 

Barrie Seppings (18:01): 

What did that turn in? If you put hours on a clock, how many hours a week were you putting in? 

Stephanie Challinor (18:05): 

We had a point in time where we were exceptionally busy, and it wasn’t just me by any means. We were all exceptionally busy. We just bought a business, and I would say on average, minimum 70 hours probably. 

Barrie Seppings (18:18): 

Wow. Yeah, okay. 

Stephanie Challinor (18:20): 

Yeah. 

Barrie Seppings (18:20): 

And how long did that go on for before you decided you can’t keep it up? 

Stephanie Challinor (18:24): 

A while. 

Stephanie Challinor (18:26): 

I would say it was probably a solid year of really tough late nights. Saturdays were a regular. It got too much. 

Stephanie Challinor (18:37): 

I decided to prioritize myself. I decided to prioritize eating in my own home and home-cooked meals, and I decided to prioritize exercise. Decided that I needed to look after my health, and there’s always going to be things at work and I couldn’t let that get in the way. So that was a big change in terms of everything that comes along with better sleep and eating better and exercising and all those physical benefits. 

I’m still working on keeping mentally healthy. I’m not good at switching off. I’m exceptionally bad at switching off, actually, so I’m very lucky to have my other half who’s much more zen than me, and he’s great at helping encourage me to do that. So, I’m learning to meditate. It’s a real journey for someone with a very active mind, so I’m learning to do nothing, which is a journey. It’s really, really tough- 

Barrie Seppings (19:41): 

Yeah, I hear that. 

Stephanie Challinor (19:42): 

… to do nothing and keep your mind open and have that downtime, but it’s so important. And it’s paying dividends already, but it’s definitely a journey. 

Barrie Seppings (19:53): 

Yeah. And what do you do to break a sweat? What’s your favorite kind of exercise or sport? 

Stephanie Challinor (19:58): 

I lift now, Barrie. Yeah. I can- 

Barrie Seppings (20:02): 

As in, do you even lift bro? 

Stephanie Challinor (20:06): 

Yeah, I never thought I would. I’ve always been more of a cardio kind of person. 

Stephanie Challinor (20:12): 

My friend encouraged and encouraged and encouraged me to come and join her gym, and a shout-out to the guys at The Foundation in Surry Hills. If anyone’s looking for a fabulous gym, that’s it. And it’s all very functional exercise, so it’s not about getting stacked. That’s not my goal, but being able to open a jar when I’m 75 is pretty important to me. Having a better posture is pretty important to me. All of those things that actually lifting weights and resistance training help with. So it helps with the mental clarity for sure, but physically, in terms of all those things, you sit at a desk all day and that sort of thing. It’s made a big difference and it’s fun. It’s fun to feel strong. 

Barrie Seppings (21:02): 

And is there a bit of a tribe as well? Have you found a little bit of a community there? 

Stephanie Challinor (21:05): 

I have a fabulous community there. It’s a lovely place. Everyone’s very connected, and I’ve got a couple of really good friends that I train with every morning, so it’s nice to start the day like that. I used to wake up and look at my phone. The alarm would go off and I was looking at emails, phone in my face in bed to start my day. That’s my time now. So I go and I train, and I come back home and have my morning routine, have breakfast, all of that. And once I’ve done that, then I’ll look at my emails. 

(21:41): 

The value that I’m adding to my workplace is minimal in those two hours of reading the emails. The only thing it’s doing is making me stressed. These are all the problems that have popped up overnight that I have to deal with today. It doesn’t make me any more efficient. It doesn’t make me better at solving those problems. It just brings me down and increases my stress. So I’m finding it’s actually I’m more effective if I can have that time, look after myself physically and mentally, and then be really prepared to start my day when I’m ready to start my day. 

Barrie Seppings (22:16): 

Question eight, unique snowflakes. Now, almost every audience segment or geography or culture, or however you want to cut it, thinks that they’re different and they need to be marketed to differently. In your experience, are there any that are unique and you really do need to take the time to understand them and talk to them differently? 

Stephanie Challinor (22:36): 

I think this is a hard question. I think, honestly, and this might sound like a bit of a cop out answer, but I think most are the same in the way they are different. So, I think the biggest difference is everyone thinks they’re different and they just want to be spoken to like you’re speaking to them, because there are differences between, you could say every CTO is facing the same challenge, and they are. They’re all generally facing the same or very similar challenges. But if I’m talking to a CTO in the FS&I space and I’m starting to talk about complying to APRA regulations, then they automatically think I understand them. If I’m talking to a CTO in the government space and I’m talking about meeting essential aid obligations, they think I understand them. 

(23:23): 

So I think everyone is the same in how they are different and they just want to feel like we understand that. So there’s definitely nuances. If you’re in Australia and you’re trying to market into New Zealand, you need to be conscious that there’s nuances. But it’s almost a formula, and you just kind of fill in the blanks for each depending on how you’re selling and who you’re selling to. 

Barrie Seppings (23:45): 

Question nine, green with envy. You spoke before about having that passion for your ideas. You’re an ideas, self-described ideas person. What’s the idea or campaign or launch or ad or anything that you’ve seen that stuck with you as, “Oh, I wish I did that”? 

Stephanie Challinor (24:00): 

I love watching the Hungry Jack’s campaigns, and it’s got nothing to do with what we do. I will never be a B2C marketer, even though I hold the deep down dream to be able to do that because it just seems like more fun. Much harder work, I think, but is also a bit more fun. Watching Hungry Jack’s just constantly rib Macca’s, and coming up with the Big Jack, and just constantly running those challenger campaigns, I love those. I wish I could be part of something like that. 

Barrie Seppings (24:31): 

They’ve got the annoying little brother persona down pat, haven’t they? 

Stephanie Challinor (24:34): 

It’s so good. 

Barrie Seppings (24:34): 

It’s relentless. 

Stephanie Challinor (24:34): 

They do such a good job of it. 

Barrie Seppings (24:39): 

Yeah, I agree. I think challenger campaigns are almost always better because it’s almost like they’ve got nothing to lose, and that brings a certain confidence to a brand. 

Stephanie Challinor (24:47): 

Yeah, it’s like having no budget. 

Stephanie Challinor (24:49): 

You have to come up with something creative when you have no money to spend. It has to be something interesting and cool. And there’s so many people I don’t want to listen to this podcast now because I’m going to get myself in trouble, but I think budget makes you lazy too. So we definitely don’t want Simon, my boss, to hear that, but the more money you have, the lazier you are. Like, “Oh, it’s a boring ad, and I’ll just do this and I’ll keep this going.” Whereas if you take all of that away, it forces creativity. 

Barrie Seppings (25:15): 

Question 10, that really gets my goat. What’s the one thing in this industry, and it’s either B2B tech or it’s marketing or confluence of the two, your choice, that’s gone on for too long and needs fixing? 

Stephanie Challinor (25:28): 

If one more person calls me the marketing girl, my head might explode. I think it’s such a common misconception, and we might want to call it more of the kind of IT industry. There is that persona or that misconception that marketing is just a group of young women running events, and that it’s not a profession that should be taken very seriously and can add a lot of value to any business. It’s not just around spending MDF from a vendor to run a round table. 

If you let marketing have a seat at the table, their role can and should change, which is exactly what’s happened in my role in AC3. I started as the head of marketing and now I look after the marketing team, the partner alliance team, the product team, and the customer experience team because I was given a seat at the table to add value beyond running events or round tables and things like that. So, I feel quite passionate about that one. 

Stephanie Challinor (26:40): 

Yeah, I mean, there’s too many dudes in IT. Yeah. Yes, too many dudes would be the technical term I would use. It’s definitely starting to change. There’s more of an uplifting of different generation and more women in the industry, there’s so much support for women in the industry, but the reality is there’s just not enough of us. 

Barrie Seppings (27:01): 

Yeah. Is that a pipeline problem or is it an appeal problem? From the outside, does it still look like not an appealing industry for women? 

Stephanie Challinor (27:09): 

I think that’s part of the problem. I know when I started in this space, I went to my first conference with my boss, and I looked around and sent him a text from across the room saying, “The only other woman in this room is the person organizing the event.” And he had sort of said, “Yeah, that’s unfortunately the way it is. Welcome.” So I think lot of… And I have lots of conversations. I run our networking group here at AC3 and I talk to lots of people about this. A lot of people get intimidated by that and they think that won’t be a welcoming place for me to be, but I think it is also a pipeline problem. 

(27:42): 

We talk about the gender pay gap and all sorts of things. I think having more young women join technical roles and not just supporting roles in technical companies. So, not just filling in the marketing roles and the service roles, but actually being on the tools, technical engineers. We need more women coming into that space, which is changing. The STEM programs that they’ve rolled out in schools and things these days, tech is more of an acceptable kind of career choice for young women as opposed to many years ago when it was only young men that opted for it. So I think once that pipeline kind of comes to fruition, we’ll see a bit more change. 

Barrie Seppings (28:20): 

Question 11, truth serum. What’s the one question you’d ask an agency if you knew that they had to tell you the truth? 

Stephanie Challinor (28:28): 

What can we do better? No agency’s ever going to answer that truthfully, because everyone’s trying to be polite and political and we don’t want to upset the customer. I would love, and I would love particularly for you to do it, Barrie, because I think you’re a really smart guy, to rip apart what we’re doing. Feedback has to be critical. You’re inside the jam jar and there’s other priorities. There’s 100 things I’m working on that take my attention. If someone that is just completely from the outside said, “These are the 20 things you need to change immediately,” I would find that so valuable. 

Barrie Seppings (29:01): 

Question 12, better together. You lead a team or several teams under your remit, and obviously, lots of people in there are doing projects under your direction on your behalf. As a perfectionist in particular, how do you draw that line between, “Okay, let’s collaborate,” and it’s like, “Get out of the way. I need to finish this myself”? 

Stephanie Challinor (29:27): 

It’s an interesting question and I’ve definitely evolved my approach, but I believe in giving someone enough rope to swing. Not to hang themselves, but to swing. I think if you can let someone do their thing, let them go on the journey and collaborate with the map points in time, you’re probably going to get a better result. If you collaborate from the get-go, I mean, sometimes a project calls for it, but if you’re constantly there collaborating, managing, micromanaging, whatever that looks like, you’re probably never going to get the best from that person in terms of new ideas. You will influence their behavior and their ideas too much. And sometimes you need to kind of bring someone on the journey and get them to do something, but you lose the ability to get something new and different and fresh that you wouldn’t have thought of. 

(30:16): 

I don’t know everything. I’m not an expert in everything. I don’t come up with the best ideas all the time. I need the people around me to do that, and that’s how we get the best result. So usually at some point, if it doesn’t seem to be going well, that’s when you can lean in more and collaborate and help them feel supported, if it’s not going particularly well. But yeah, I think kind of letting people go on that journey to start with on their own, and just being close enough that they know that you can help if needed. 

Barrie Seppings (30:42): 

Is that a matter of maintaining your availability or an appearance of availability so people have that confidence? Like, “Yeah, I’m going to give this a go, but Stephanie’s there and if I need help, I can call.” 

Stephanie Challinor (30:53): 

Yeah, it’s kind of setting that expectation up front. Have a kickoff session, make sure the expectations are set, and then set the expectation that, “You’re on your own with this, but I’m here.” And so when someone asks a question here or there, give them the airtime that they know that they’re not on their own. 

Barrie Seppings (31:10): 

All right. Question 13, change your mind. What is a long held belief about marketing or something that you thought was conventional wisdom that you now think, “That’s not right,” and what caused you to change your mind? 

Stephanie Challinor (31:22): 

I think for a long time, I thought we could control our brand, and I really liked brand marketing. And so for a long time, I think I thought we could control it, and I think to an extent, you probably could at one point in time. But our consumers, whether we’re B2B or B2C, there’s so much information available now. The concept of online reviews, I think, has changed the game. And I think no matter what story you might think you’re telling, you don’t always have control of it. But I think that in particular was probably a really difficult thing for me to accept because I was such a big believer in if you just manage the brand, everything will follow. I just don’t think it’s true in today’s world anymore. I think we have less control over our brands than we think we do. 

Barrie Seppings (32:12): 

Question 14, put your money where your mouth is. In terms of effectiveness and ROI, what are the tactics or approaches that have been working well for you or better than expected, say, over the past sort of six to 12 months? And where have you pulled back from because it doesn’t have juice anymore? 

Stephanie Challinor (32:27): 

We’re spending more time going deep on particular industries. So, less time doing generic above the line. Less time and money, more time getting deep, getting to a point where we can do some real account-based marketing, having some clear focus in terms of messaging and spend. We talk about every CTO has the same challenge, but really, just focusing on trying to get connected with CTO in industry A, B, C so we can get a bit more cut through. 

Barrie Seppings (33:01): 

All right. Question 15, overhyped- 

… and underrated. What buzzword or concept is getting far too much airplay, is getting played out, is losing its meaning? 

Stephanie Challinor (33:13): 

Dare I say AI? I guess it’s probably a toss up between disruption and AI. AI has its place and it’s amazing technology and we can do all these wonderful things with it, but if I sit through one more meeting where it’s like the leading pitch of, “We’ve got AI,” but it’s not actually anything meaningful, it’s getting a bit old. We need practical applications and it needs to be a clear value prop to pass on to customers. And I think any marketer out there will be sick of the word disruption. 

Barrie Seppings (33:46): 

And where do you think customers are at with AI? Are they also feeling the fatigue or are they just still confused, or are they starting to also want something pointy? 

Stephanie Challinor (33:55): 

I think it’s a mix of the latter. I think they’re confused in, “We’ve got so much stuff and we don’t really know where to start,” but they also want to do something with it. So they know or they might have a point solution that they want to get to, but how to get there is confusing. And it can be such a big conversation. 

(34:17): 

I had a really interesting conversation with the chief revenue officer of Microsoft. He approaches the conversation with potential prospects who are not interested in AI with, “Tell me what bill you hate paying the most. What invoice do you hate paying? And that’s what we’ll automate. That’s what we’ll use AI to solve for you. We’ll take that cost out of your business with AI.” I think that’s a very simple, powerful approach, but I don’t think that’s achievable for many smaller scale businesses, and customers kind of can’t make that connection yet. It’s just a lot of talk and not a lot of action. I loved it. 

Barrie Seppings (34:52): 

All right. Question 16 is the supermodel question. Linda Evangelista once famously said she wouldn’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day. Adjusted for inflation, we believe that’s around $47,600 now. Stephanie, what do you get out of bed for? What motivates you beyond getting up to lift with your lift buddies? What brings you to the office and back to your job every day? 

Stephanie Challinor (35:16): 

I come to work so I can come up with ideas that make money. That’s my elevator pitch, that’s my core purpose. That’s what makes me happy. If I can come up with an idea or something new or change something different and it’s commercially viable, which means it has to add value to a customer because if a customer doesn’t want to pay for it, there’s no point, and it can change the business and add commercial benefit, that’s what makes me happy. 

Barrie Seppings (35:46): 

And it’s just the joy and the satisfaction of sort of cracking that nut, or are you getting a cut? Isn’t the money coming to you as well? 

Stephanie Challinor (35:54): 

Look, I wouldn’t come if I didn’t get paid every month. I think most people would agree with that. It’s more of a competition with myself. It’s that perfectionist thing. I like to challenge myself and I feel like I’m beating myself when I come up win-win something like that. So I absolutely have targets, and I have that kind of commission structure based on how the business is performing. Not generally on individual things, but for me, it’s about achieving that goal. It’s a constant competition with myself. Can I do it? And then that satisfaction when you tick the box and you get something done, it feels good. It’s the thrill of the chase. 

Barrie Seppings (36:35): 

You should have a little celebration. 

Stephanie Challinor (36:35): 

That’d be a way to start my day. I should do that because my problem is once I achieve something, I don’t celebrate it. I just move on to the next thing. So it’s a constant, what’s next? So you can’t always sprint. 

Barrie Seppings (36:46): 

Oh, wow. So you and our previous guest, Kimberley Marlay, who is with Kyndryl, she also looks after alliances and partnerships and finds that part the fascinating part of her day. Almost identical. She’s got to stop and celebrate the wins, particularly with her team, but she’s already thinking about the next thing. And she’s got people around waiting to high-five her and she leaves them hanging because she’s already off to the next project. Word for word, she said almost the same thing as you. 

Stephanie Challinor (37:12): 

I’ll have to meet her, as long as we don’t enable each other. 

Barrie Seppings (37:15): 

Question 17, this ain’t happening. What’s the most unexpected or unusual situation you found yourself in due to work? 

Stephanie Challinor (37:24): 

How weird do you want me to get, Barrie? 

Barrie Seppings (37:25): 

Super weird. We’ve got a high tolerance for weird on this podcast. 

Stephanie Challinor (37:30): 

At the time, I found it a really challenging experience, and my dear mentor, John, said to me, “You’re going to have a great story for the rest of your life, though.” I went on my first overseas conference trip, and overseas was to Auckland, so it wasn’t very far. I was very young, 22, 23 maybe. I was so excited. It was such a big deal. And in the middle of the night in my hotel room with a faulty door, one of the other conference attendees got a bit confused leaving his room half asleep, half drunk to go to the bathroom and ended up in my room. And so I woke up in bed with thinking, “Oh. Did I just feel someone get into my bed with me?” I thought, “No, you’re hallucinating. You’re asleep, don’t worry about it. It’s all good. Just relax, go back to sleep,” and then I felt someone roll over in the bed. 

(38:21): 

So it was confirmed I was not alone. So anyway, long story short, it was completely innocent. He made a mistake. The door was faulty. He was in his striped flannelette pajamas and was looking for his wife. I said, “Look, that’s not me. I’m not your wife,” and shuffled him out of the room. And then for the rest of the conference, the adrenaline had obviously left my body then and the tears started and what could have happened and all of that, but for the rest of the conference, the real fear as I was working our booth, that I would run into him. That he would come and spin our prize wheel or whatever we had. I spent the rest of the next two days basically with my hand covering my face being so terrified I was going to run into this man. 

Barrie Seppings (39:10): 

Question 18, home alone. Stephanie, what was the pandemic and lockdown experience like for you, and what did that end up changing for you in terms of work-life balance or the way you run your work style? 

Stephanie Challinor (39:26): 

The pandemic was interesting. This is an interesting question. I found lockdown was really tough in my household. At the time, I was living with my sister, so before her big move to Melbourne, and she’s a wonderful chef. She was leading up a very successful restaurant in Sydney and they had to close down for the first lockdown. And that was really tough for her to not… Because she’s a bit like me. Works a lot, high achiever, all of those sorts of things. And all of a sudden, she wasn’t working and she was getting her JobKeeper and feeling like she was not succeeding in life because she was here getting government benefits. Spiraled a little bit, and then she decided, and I’ll share this because she’s talked on lots of podcasts and television shows about it, she decided to stop drinking. She recognized she had a problem with alcohol and decided to stop drinking, which is great. Wonderful. 

(40:25): 

She’s made so many positive life changes. But when she went back to work and she was probably doing about 90 to 100-hour weeks for the first period of time, going back to that stressful environment of running a kitchen without the outlet or her only known method of reducing stress, which was drinking, was really tough for her. And living in such close quarters, I was part of that journey with her. So it was a really interesting experience because I was more concerned with someone else than myself during lockdown. It was really tough, but it was, oh, absolutely worth the journey to see her where she is now, and we’re all really proud of her. But I think that the biggest thing I learned out of that was for myself, I need people for purpose. And not having those people around me, working in isolation, the work that I was doing became meaningless. 

(41:23): 

It sounds so clinical, but it held no value to me anymore. I felt like I was doing it for nothing. I wasn’t part of the team. I wasn’t part of any team. And we were all the standard things. We were having stand-ups with our team. We were having virtual drinks and all that stuff, but not working as a part of a community and not feeling like we were doing it for a reason and we were all in it together, it was really, really tough for me. And I’ve realized that I can’t work in isolation, and I come to the office five days a week by choice now. 

Barrie Seppings (42:00): 

Yeah, okay. What’s the policy at AC3, though, for work in the office? 

Stephanie Challinor (42:05): 

We are at 50% of the month. 

Barrie Seppings (42:09): 

Okay. 

Stephanie Challinor (42:09): 

So the idea is, let’s give people flexibility as much as possible. If you want to come in two weeks on, two weeks off or whatever that looks like, but be here to connect 50% of the available working days in the month. 

Barrie Seppings (42:20): 

Yeah, and how is that working for most people? How are they arranging it? 

Stephanie Challinor (42:24): 

Most people are really happy. There was push back in the beginning, “Oh, I’m never going to be able to make this work,” where everyone was a bit concerned, “Will we have a retention issue?” But everyone’s gotten on board with it. Most people do two or three days a week every week. We’ve got a couple of people that have arrangements with kids and things like that where they do two weeks where they don’t have their kids and that kind of thing. But everyone’s found a way to make it work and people are seeing the benefits. We’re seeing an absolute change in customer feedback. We’re seeing really positive changes in reducing silos in the business as well. 

(42:58): 

Just being able to pop up and ask someone a question, especially when we’ve got so many different teams that are working on the same customer. If we’ve got a problem in a customer environment over here with the network, it actually could be related to something completely different and it’s a lot easier to answer that question when the other team is sitting right there. I know it sounds a bit like an excuse to get people back in the office, but we asked people to come back to the office knowing that efficiency would probably drop. And we were happy for that to happen because we thought we could still deliver a better service and feel more connected and a team and all of those positive things that come with human beings being together. 

Barrie Seppings (43:39): 

When you say efficiency was going to drop, as in the output per hour of people who are just at home and focused on that? As opposed to, “Oh, I’m going to wander into the kitchen and see who’s there.” 

Stephanie Challinor (43:48): 

Yeah, exactly. We were encouraging people to chat. There’s always the outlier. Not everyone was at home working 38, 40 hours a week, whatever we asked them to. Lots of people, I’m sure, were at Bunnings or the supermarket and doing those sorts of things. That happens, but efficiency went up. We were more productive when we look at closing tickets and delivering things, but I don’t think the tolerance for other people wasn’t there. And that sometimes affected the service, I think, too. 

Barrie Seppings (44:16): 

Question 19. 

Barrie Seppings (44:20): 

All of me. Plenty of businesses say they want their staff to bring their whole self to work. Is it something that AC3 says deliberately? And then for you in particular, do you feel like Stephanie at work is the same as Stephanie at home? Is there a little bit of a difference when you’re off the leash? 

Stephanie Challinor (44:36): 

We do. AC3 does ask and encourage everyone to bring their whole self, and I think we’re very good at accepting everyone’s weird and wonderful quirks. We want people to be comfortable bringing those to work. I think I bring my weird and wonderful, and maybe not so wonderful quirks to work and I feel comfortable doing that, but I’m not the exact same when I’m at home. It’s come up a lot, actually. It’s so interesting because I’ve been having a few conversations about this at home, but I’m also writing a personal brand workshop for our high achievers club at AC3. They’ve asked me to do that. 

(45:14): 

And I think it’s about dialing up certain aspects of your personality, which is definitely what I do. I dial up certain aspects at work, and part of that is the everlasting imposter syndrome. You’ve got to kind of find a way to get past that because I think I’ll have imposter syndrome for the rest of my days. I think there’s also, it’s really interesting, I’ve spoken to a couple of our other female senior leaders about this recently, dialing up the more masculine parts of your personality when you’re working in a male-dominated environment. But definitely, I think I’m much softer at home. My personal life, all of that gets dialed down and I’m a bit more soft and cuddly. 

Barrie Seppings (46:01): 

A little bit of armor on to come into the office? 

Stephanie Challinor (46:04): 

Yeah, yeah, which you don’t want to have to change too much. But definitely, I pick the traits that I emphasize at work, which I do think is part of personal brand, though. Personal brand, it’s such an overused word, but I think just reflecting on, how do I actually want to be seen at work? 

Barrie Seppings (46:25): 

Is it more of an issue for women? Do they have to change themselves more in our industry? 

Stephanie Challinor (46:31): 

Oh, that’s such an interesting question, Barrie, because I think the most women do, but I don’t think we have to. I think we think we have to. I had a really interesting conversation a couple of weeks ago. We were doing a working group as part of our senior leadership team. There was three women in leader roles, senior or executive leader roles, and there was one of the men in the room that said, “Oh, but you three all have really strong personalities.” And I thought he meant it in a positive way, but if I was a man, would I be told I had a strong personality? Probably not. But are we trying to dial up always trying to be heard because we think we’re not heard? 

(47:13): 

And we think we’re too soft or something like that when there is much benefit to the different way that we think and there’s nothing wrong with having a softer personality or anything like that. So I was just reflecting on that and looking at my colleagues thinking, “I think the three of us are generally, fairly strong in our personalities,” but I think the three of us also feel like we have to turn it up to compete with the other voices in the room, which becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy then. 

Barrie Seppings (47:42): 

Question 20, secret weapon. Do you have a secret weapon in your career or have you had one? And if you do, will you tell me what it is? 

Stephanie Challinor (47:50): 

I’ll absolutely tell you. I used to think it was anxiety, to be honest, but what it actually is, is the thrill of trying something new. I tend to do my best work when I feel like I’m walking that tightrope. And on one side is comfortable, “I know what I’m doing, I’ve got this,” and the other side is, “Holy moly, I’ve got no idea what I’m doing and I’m going to fall flat on my face.” And walking that tightrope and having a little bit to rely on, and a little bit of that, “This is new ground. I don’t know what’s going on,” that’s thrilling and absolutely creates some anxiety, but the anxiety is not the superpower. 

(48:32): 

Not knowing what I’m doing and not knowing if I will succeed, and the thrill of trying to figure it out is when I do my best work. “Am I going to be able to figure this out? I don’t know.” Fear of failure definitely kind of creeps in there as well, but having a tight deadline, not knowing how it will work out and if I’ll be able to do it is thrilling. And that is absolutely when I do my best work. 

Barrie Seppings (48:54): 

And that was 20 Questions, the interview game we play with all our guests on the Plugged In, Switched On podcast. Those answers were from Stephanie Challinor. She is the general manager of customer experience and alliances at AC3. Before I let Stephanie go, I asked her about her all time favorite desert island movie. 

Stephanie Challinor (49:16): 

I watched that movie on repeat with my cousins. My cousins used to sleep over almost every weekend, and then my dad would take us out on his boat, and we would watch Dirty Dancing almost every weekend. And Barrie, I was probably about five. And I watched this movie so many times that when I watched it again as, I don’t know, maybe in my late teens after not having watched it for many, many years, I turned to my mum and said, “Mum, how on Earth did you let me watch that when I was five or six years old? I thought Penny just had a cold. I didn’t realize what was going on.” 

Barrie Seppings (49:50): 

And before we unplug for this episode, thank you so much for listening. Splendid Group, where we make this podcast and where I am the executive creative director, is a pure play B2B tech marketing agency. I want to say it’s a place where I work and we make the podcast. There really is no where. We are a 100% remote, globally distributed agency. We’ve got people now in Australia, through Southeast Asia, in the UK and in Europe, and now in America. If you are interested in joining a team like ours and doing excellent work for fabulous clients like Stephanie and others, you should head to splendidgroup.com. Have a little look around and get in touch. 

(50:35): 

I have been Barrie Seppings. I was talking with Stephanie Challinor of AC3 in what has been a 20 Questions episode of Plugged In, Switched On, the podcast about conversations that matter in B2B tech marketing. If you have reached this point in the podcast, I’m going to assume that you like us. If you like us, hit Subscribe and we will automatically pop up in your podcast subscription platform of choice next month. Thank you for having us in your ears. We’ll see you next time. Plugged In, Switched On is generated by Splendid Group. Thanks to our executive producers, Ruth Holt and Anna Isabelle Canta.