How Maresa Friedman Became the Executive Cat Herder We All Need

[00:00:02] Hector: Hello and welcome to another episode of the how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Santiesteban and our special guest today is Miss Maresa Friedman. And she is someone who has quickly become a favorite person. I got to tell you though, Marissa, I don't know. And I get this often too. People get like a weird initial vibe of who I am.

[00:00:22] Maresa: Mm

[00:00:22] Hector: then once we kind of connect, they're like, oh, okay, you're not who I thought you were. Right. and I don't know if it was the cat herder or just your role in having like, you know, you're that you're the name of your business is the executive cat herder, which is like totally spot on.

[00:00:36] Hector: Cause it's exactly what you do. And, and also, you kind of are forced to play the bad guy, I would imagine in a lot of places or be the adult in a lot of, environments.

[00:00:45] Maresa: well, so depending on the level of the podcast, if it's PG or R rated, right? I'm a

[00:00:51] Maresa: mean mommy or I'm a, business dominatrix. It's like one or the other because I'm literally either. My thing is, is like, I can be the vendor's best friend in the world. They've got to trust, though, that I'm going to ask questions because, like, if I'm coming in to manage fractionally someone's marketing team or all the different pieces, right, I got to know what everyone does.

[00:01:12] Maresa: So that's my first question. Everyone gets all offended. It's like, dude, like, I'm just coming in trying to assess.

[00:01:18] Maresa: And I was

[00:01:19] Hector: Well, yeah, after that, after we realized that, you kind of worked with our staff, our head of staff, Kevin, our head of production. And I was like, Oh, this is going to be great. like, we love what she

[00:01:28] Maresa: just want to put in a process. I just want to make sure that like, everyone understands what they're getting and, you know, the expectations because I think you see this too in the work that you do, right? people bet on like, this is the thing that's going to make me do the thing. And it's like, no, it's it.

[00:01:43] Maresa: Piece of many pieces that leads to building the bigger puzzle. But it's, it's the idea like everyone wants to go viral. And it's like, that's not how it works. Number one. And number two, God help you if you do, because if you don't have your systems and everything in place, you're not going to be able to capitalize on it.

[00:02:00] Maresa: you're not gonna be able to take advantage of it. And my job is just to come in and assess, see what's going on, find out what everyone's doing, get everyone on the same page, avoid people having to duplicate efforts, which I think you and I've run into that, like, you don't have to have four or five people doing the same thing.

[00:02:15] Maresa: If we've got an outside team, that's an expert, let them do the thing. And that's my position. But I think because of the directness of how I come in, like, I don't have any time to waste. and I promise a lot to people in the first 90 days that I work with them, I just don't have time to waste.

[00:02:30] Maresa: It's like, if people get all defensive, I'm like, dude, I don't have time for this. like, like, can be defensive all you want, but I'm going to decide, to a certain extent what we do. And you're either like, get on the

[00:02:40] Maresa: bus or or I'm going to push you out the back, right?

[00:02:43] Maresa: No, just kidding.

[00:02:44] Hector: One of the things that I was trying to do at the beginning is to provide some context. And I, the thing that, comes to mind is like when I used to walk into my grandma's house and she's like, just below what would it make the show hoarders, right? They would look at her and they'd be like, you're not quite bad enough, but, but way above

[00:03:02] Maresa: there. This is their immigrant vibes. I'm feeling it,

[00:03:05] Hector: She, well, she's, she's got some like Mexican, like native, but they just drew the line on the wrong side. And, you know, that's, that's kind of that, but,

[00:03:16] Maresa: where it's at.

[00:03:16] Hector: but to that extent, to the reason I'm bringing that up is I got to imagine that when you come into certain businesses, it's a lot either like that, or you're walking into a 12 year old's bedroom or what is it like

[00:03:28] Maresa: it's like going through someone's house. It's like being invited into their home and

[00:03:34] Maresa: like open, open, yeah, like, or they've cleaned up and I'm opening drawers and I'm looking under the bed and I'm looking behind, and it's like, invasive in some ways, people don't hire me to feel comfortable is definitely the thing that's going to happen.

[00:03:48] Hector: Are there typical issues or when you look under the bed or like when you are, there's certain things that you see more often than others

[00:03:56] Maresa: a thousand percent. So, one of the things, to know about me, right, is I'm a person that likes puzzles. Okay. and that's, you know, I'm on the spectrum. So pattern analysis is something that is very natural to me. It's been natural to me since I was a kid.

[00:04:09] Maresa: Right. When I was 15, I was recruited to work for the Department of Defense. one of the things that I'm really good at is I can see where we are today and I can see where someone wants to go and I can determine based on everything that's going on right now. What needs to happen to, to make these goals or these kind of dreams as people have come to life.

[00:04:29] Maresa: And part of it is cutting through the BS that people are telling themselves, right? There is a lot of entrepreneurial kind of martyrdom right now, really over the top performativeness. And it's like, no one cares. And here's what I mean by this, I do a lot of work with LinkedIn, like the company, and then with people that are trying to go viral on LinkedIn and do stuff in that nature.

[00:04:51] Maresa: And what, we find is not everything has to be this big, dramatic, aha, uncovering. Sometimes the simplicity of something you can teach someone is more important than the over reliance on story and martyrdom that I see in entrepreneurs. If we just break it. Back, right? Entrepreneurship was not sexy, Immigrants became entrepreneurs because normal businesses would not hire them, I'm, Filipino. I'm Irish and I'm Mexican. Okay. There used to be

[00:05:21] Maresa: signs in New York. Yeah, it's, it's very, it's also why I'm so light skinned, right? Lightest person in my family. But I think part of this is understanding that because those jobs weren't sexy, you know, they had to work really hard.

[00:05:34] Maresa: at any rate, part of where, when I'm looking through things is I can go through all of the things and find immediately like, Oh, someone's got money wounds. They've got money trauma. They've got trauma around scarcity. Oh, this is why they do this. This is why they nickel. And I'm like, I'm really good at spotting this stuff.

[00:05:50] Maresa: And it's like, if we don't address some of that stuff in the beginning, it doesn't matter how much money I help them make. They'll still always be broke, There's somebody that I worked with. I won't name names in the past couple of years, added a couple of million bucks to their business per year, right? Like squandered it. and there's some deep, deep money trauma and wounds. And when I see that. sometimes I feel like I'm a football coach because I need to call my different coaches into work with people like, okay, this is a special teams moment. This is an offense moment. This is a footwork,

[00:06:21] Maresa: so for business owners, I feel like it's the same thing. Like, how dare you think you can do this whole thing on your own if you haven't really done the work deep to figure out like, Ooh, where do I really suck? And I'm really good at noticing the suck. where does somebody suck? Like they're saying this, but all of the actions and all of the organization tells me something different.

[00:06:40] Maresa: And so when I'm peeking around everywhere, what I'm trying to get to is, are we doing the right amount of things? Number one, are we doing too many things? Are we buying, are we entrepreneurial ADV and doing all kinds of stuff and it's not translating? Or my favorite thing is people love to talk about ROI, but they didn't come up with a lead generation strategy or anything else.

[00:07:00] Maresa: And they're talking to people about ROI. And it's like, you've no business. Throwing out terms that make no sense when you didn't even create a baseline of expectation. You decided, for example, you wanted a podcast and then you wanted to hire someone to shoot your TikTok content. now you want the ROI on all this stuff, but you didn't start there.

[00:07:17] Maresa: So sometimes it's about pausing and saying what do we need to do? And who do you need to be to accomplish the thing you want? And that means authenticity, not the faux authenticity that we're seeing. I saw a post that was so shitty the other day on LinkedIn. And it was like a B2B sales rep talking about his proposal to his wife.

[00:07:40] Maresa: And Attribution in a sales process over time. And I was like, what are you doing using your wedding pictures? So gross. And I was like watching the comments and it was going viral in a bad way. And the guy ended up deleting it. I'm like, that's not what you need to do. the first thing's first, do people want what you have?

[00:07:57] Maresa: Second thing is, if there's a need, cool, let's figure out how to address the need. And I think my backgrounds in data and operations are very different than most people in the marketing industry who are siloed. I meet a person that's a copywriter, they've only ever been in a copywriter. I meet someone that's a web designer.

[00:08:12] Maresa: They've only been a website. I meet someone that's a coach. They've only ever done that, but they haven't run a business. So the challenge is, is a lot of people are good at a thing. They're not good at running a business. And so that's where me and a fractional team come in to help them figure out, like, where are you good in the business?

[00:08:27] Maresa: Where are you not good? What's what's plan of attack? And. Cash is like oxygen to a business. So I try to figure out a cash injection in the first 90 days. Like, what do we need to do to make as much money as possible in the first 90 days of an engagement? And that's why people stay. That's why they continue to work with me because like we bust our asses, but there's a willingness that someone has to have to go on this journey.

[00:08:50] Maresa: Cause it is, it's intense. It's not particularly fun in the beginning, but once they get a rhythm down smooth sailing, dude, it's easy.

[00:08:58] Hector: trifecta? Well, I'm glad you brought that up because I thought the focus of this conversation was going to be on, operations and, you know, whatever that sort of Side of it is a, because I'm very, ignorant, I guess the best word to that. That's just not my strong suit. God bless me with other, sort of talents, but, but I'm, I'm perhaps even more curious before we get there, you talked about how there's sort of these deeper wounds I would have to imagine that most people who hire you don't come in going, Marisa, I've got, Money wounds.

[00:09:28] Hector: Can you, you know, come in and heal those like, like, so I'm, I've got to imagine that's the vitamin that they need. And you kind of got to wrap it in. I'm curious, the symptom that they're experiencing, what initially draws them to you that they're having this problem where something is going on.

[00:09:45] Maresa: I have spent most of my career, especially as an entrepreneur, connecting with powerful people who have better skill sets than me in some areas, I would say when it comes to sales, which is how I get into most people's companies. I am not great at like selling myself, I have very binary.

[00:10:06] Maresa: It's like, this is my process. This is what I do buy it or don't write. That's literally my sales call. It's like, this is how much it is paid or don't, but I have partners have worked with me and seen me grow and scale other people's companies. And so I have a network of about 10 partners that refer me about 80 percent of the business.

[00:10:24] Maresa: Because they know they're like, a lot of times they'll come in and just bring me in on the assessment and they're like, what are you seeing? And I don't necessarily tell people like Oh, I've identified your money wound. Oh, I've identified this. But I just pay attention to the patterns and the word tracks and things that people are doing.

[00:10:39] Maresa: Again, what is someone doing versus what are they saying? And then how does that show up when they're challenged? And so you got to imagine when you're in the position of having to challenge someone, all these feelings come out. And so how someone handles when someone challenges them, I can tell a lot, I can tell one, are they comfortable? I'll assess like, Oh, It's easier for them to accept a challenge. If it's from a man, not a woman. So sometimes the partners I have predominantly are males. I'll be like, Hey, you need to bring these things up. And then I give that to them to deliver. I'm smart enough to recognize what is the messenger need to look like.

[00:11:15] Maresa: Sometimes it's not me. And I'm okay with that. Sometimes, middle aged white dude needs to hear it from another middle aged white dude. Or sometimes in Indian, it's like, it's just a mirroring of culture and among other things, like it's in it. And to not acknowledge that people go, well, that shouldn't be necessary.

[00:11:31] Maresa: And you should be mad. I'm like, who's smarter? If I can get the message across and we can enroll them into this project, they're going to get what they want. And I didn't hurt any feelings. Part of it is, Great example would be like when you grew up was money scarce to do parents talk about money, not growing on trees and all that kind of

[00:11:49] Hector: right, right.

[00:11:50] Maresa: Yeah, you heard that right? Money

[00:11:52] Maresa: doesn't grow on

[00:11:52] Hector: lower, lower middle sort of.

[00:11:55] Maresa: right? Like you're shopping at, you know, like my mom is like coupon person, All of these things. All of those are subconscious indicators and what I call everyone's backbone. So we have a backpack. People shouldn't have backpack. They put all kinds of stuff, right?

[00:12:08] Maresa: You got to be the first in the last out. That was the stuff in my backpack. You got to be better than everyone. Be polite, be respectful, be right. All these things. and at some point I like put the backpack down and took that stuff out because I'm like, this is not helpful. As a business owner, like I'm going to kill myself if I do it this way, No one's going to respect that. And I have to demand respect in a way that works for me. but when I come into a business, the partners do such a great job of setting up what I do that by the time I'm in front of someone, they're already like prepared that it's going to be an invasive process. They know I'm there to challenge them and they know because of my track record and what I've done.

[00:12:46] Maresa: That if they follow along, we're going to get the result that they want. Now, I don't necessarily go like, you've got money problems, But I might ask a series of questions. And through that, I identify, okay, there's probably some real mindset work that needs to happen. And I'm not talking like bullshit, Tony Robbins stuff.

[00:13:02] Maresa: I'm talking about deep, deep work. On acknowledging trauma and releasing it, there's this idea that you're going to get rid of it. It's like it's kind of always going to be there, but how it impacts your life. It's just a new lens in a frame. So we might say, hey, we grew up pretty humble, but now we realize money is everywhere and super abundant.

[00:13:21] Maresa: it's totally within reach. There's no such thing as competition. you can do whatever you want. There's no rules. I say that pisses people off, but it's true. If you think about it, there really is no rules to any of like, you can charge whatever you want for whatever you want. And so once you start believing that and live living in that frequency, something I make my clients do is I'll be like, great, we're going to celebrate at the beginning of the month that you've had your best month ever.

[00:13:45] Maresa: And then what do you know, by the end of the month, guess what's happened. It's been a great month. So we do things on a frequency and a conscious and a subconscious level to just make sure that we get the result. And again, even if you're not good at operations, if you're good at asking for help, that's like a superpower, But you can still be good at the thing that you do, but you also have to have like, who's in my corner, who's got my back, who can see my blind spot for me. and that's my job. My job is to identify the blind spot. That's it. That's the nicest way of saying it.

[00:14:16] Hector: Yeah. I think big thing that a lot of founders go, in kind of the natural progression of, business is that like they have to give up stuff, whether that's like, this being willing to give up parts of the business, right? And some it's easier and some is harder than others.

[00:14:31] Hector: But I would imagine that's something. And then, because on the other side of that, you realize that, you know, think some of the best founders are like, they're the orchestra leader, the guy at the front, right? Whatever his name

[00:14:42] Maresa: They're just directing. You're

[00:14:43] Hector: They're directing.

[00:14:44] Maresa: Yeah. one of my clients, his story is like so great, but I mean, we met in a mastermind that we now own. It's weird. We were both members. Now we own it. So it's very strange like progression, but you know, I remember being in the room when he said he was going to sell his company to the largest client that he had, Someone challenged him to like, you could do it for 2 billion, someone said the billion word and we all just went. the room got quiet, right? And in a three year period of time, I believe he was able to accomplish that. And the thing is that a certain point his schedule was in 15 minute increments, meaning that There was a level of trust he had with people and the 15 minutes was just like, what's on track. What do you need help with? And as a leader, as a founder, that's the transition. It's not telling people what to do anymore. It's hiring good people and getting the fuck out of their way. And that's the hardest thing for most founders because they're in love with their baby.

[00:15:40] Maresa: And they're always going to love their baby more than anybody else. However, you hire at least three or four people that are 60 percent capable of what you're doing. They're still doing more than what you could do on your own. And so that discipline of being like, what do I need to let go of?

[00:15:54] Maresa: And who do I need to be? And that's something that I tell people all the time. It's like the two, Biggest qualities. I think any founder, any company owner, anybody needs is delusion and resilience. The delusion to believe that you can do it, get paid a premium for what you do and the resilience to bounce back when shit doesn't go your way because it's not always going to go your way.

[00:16:12] Maresa: You're always going to have to bob and weave and pivot. And that's why I don't like, there's so much emphasis specifically in the marketing world on like gaming the algorithms and doing things. If you spend your time trying to do content in a way to please an algorithm, you're actually never going to accomplish the goal you need because that's not the goal, The goal is you've got to do the thing and you've got to do it consistently because the algorithm is going to change all the time. It's only getting smarter. It's only learning, different things and all your job is to do is to be consistent, And that I've seen time over time, people that burn out when they try to game an algorithm, they just burn out.

[00:16:49] Maresa: Versus the people that are like slow and steady runs the race like they went all the time and that's just as a founder that's hard because there's a piece of like letting go of this idea that you can trick a system and then just accepting that it's all a process. and it is

[00:17:04] Hector: Yeah, it seems like you are. managing like too bad. I don't say battles. There's those weird words. But there's two things going on, right? There's like an internal world that you're sort of managing and cultivating within both the founder and, maybe even a collectively within the group.

[00:17:20] Hector: And then there's obviously the external operations. And, I don't know that enough people, at least I wasn't connecting the dots because, burnout is, I think, a huge thing that so many founders go through And I think that some see the solution as one or the other. Oh, let me fix myself internally.

[00:17:38] Hector: And then all of a sudden, I won't get burned out anymore. Or let me just go fix my operations with no mindful, you know, to what's going on inside or alignment and such when I think you've stripped that balance and that synergy between both of those.

[00:17:52] Maresa: I would say, it's just an integration, I am a mom. I'm a wife. I have, my son was in college first year at ASU. My daughter's a senior at high school. I've been working. a long time and I've integrated what I do into my family, everyone is enrolled. And what I mean by that is you can ask my husband what I do.

[00:18:14] Maresa: You can ask the kids. Everybody knows. everyone keeps their ears open for opportunities. I brought my kids with me to different conferences and events like I integrate on a level that I don't think most founders do. the reality is that most, not all, there's a portfolio of, executives that I work with that built companies and sold them and now they're building new companies, The challenge is, is the end of that build. They do this really great thing. they're on the ink 50. They do the thing. They've got four hour work week. They've, they figured it all out and they sell to the company and they have the big exit. And guess what? At the end of that exit, they're divorced.

[00:18:51] Maresa: They have no relationship with their children and they're alone with their money. And the way that I. Personally believe anyone that invests in an intersection of personal and professional development and finds a tribe, a feral pack of people that believe the same way, You're going to go 10 times further than those that don't integrate for a variety of reasons.

[00:19:10] Maresa: But one, if your spouse isn't enrolled into what you're doing, They're just going to be like, you're on board terrorists, They're going to be resentful of the time that you're spending at work and doing things right. There has been nights where I've had to work here late, and I'm here and then my daughter will be over here sitting there working on her home.

[00:19:26] Maresa: Like, I just believe that the more you can integrate, the easier it is. I'm embracing that. I'm seeing more of my founders really just bring their partners along to things like immerse them in their world so that it doesn't feel so disconnected, And that integration right in a business, okay, allows for a couple of things.

[00:19:45] Maresa: One, it allows me to enroll someone's spouse or partner in the process. So they're not threatened by me. They're excited because here I am saying like, no, you guys can do all the things. Why don't you come? what do you think? And that makes them more invested, which makes it a lot easier. By the way, it's easier to run a business as a founder and a father, If everyone is on board. If everyone understands the rules of engagement, and I don't think enough people have that conversation with their families, I think they get excited about the thing that they're doing. They become obsessive about it. if I could map it on a graph, it's like, there's this hustle, hustle, hustle, team, no sleep nonsense.

[00:20:24] Maresa: And probably a couple of years later, people realize that's not sustainable. I'm burning out, There's this flat line. so. I usually get people in two ways. They're either in a work obsessed mode or in there in the flatline. And then from that, we architect what would be reasonable, What does it look like for you? Like I don't work Mondays and Fridays wherever possible. I just don't. But I sure as hell bust my ass Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, right? We're having long ass days, but that was a choice, Cause soccer games, sports, all of that stuff I wanted to be there for. So I think it's possible.

[00:20:55] Maresa: I mean, I traveled. Okay. Whew, 2017, no 2016 to 2020, I was on the road, how many days, probably like 265 days. Yeah. 250 days, So everyone had to be enrolled in order for me to do that. And that builds when I was working as the Google brand speaker, right? I was in a different city, but I knew that if I did that, I would never have a hard time.

[00:21:20] Maresa: And I haven't, but everyone has to be enrolled in that vision. And I think balance is kind of bullshit. Like you're never going to. it's not going to happen some days are going to be better than others, but if you integrate, it just feels better in your soul, I think,

[00:21:35] Hector: Yeah, that's been a big word for me recently, integration. So when you, said that, my, inner soul, like picked up and was like, see, see, there it is. There it is again. Uh,

[00:21:44] Maresa: and I'm totally cynical blue. I am totally cynical blue, I got into the stuff unwillingly, But it's been great. I'm data driven. So I'm an analytical. It's like

[00:21:53] Hector: So you, well, me too today. Today, somebody asked me, they said, do you do a lot of spiritual stuff? And I said, only at a self preservation, you know, that's it. Um,

[00:22:05] Maresa: Totally.

[00:22:05] Hector: this has been a great conversation. we're rounding it out here. I'm so glad that I didn't come in with my long list of, we got to hit these bullet points.

[00:22:13] Hector: I got to ask her about that because it went exactly where I think it was supposed to go. But with that being said, was there anything that we didn't cover that you thought was relevant, that you wanted to mention?

[00:22:21] Maresa: I think the thing that I see that people waste time on, where's the biggest time suck and time waste are, and it's two things. It's one, it's the idea of advice versus counsel. and I think a lot of people, get advice and treat that advice as counsel. The difference is, is any asshole can give you advice.

[00:22:42] Maresa: Your friends can tell you how to run your podcasting business. They don't run podcasting business, right? Your friends can tell you how to market. They don't market, right? counsel, seek counsel, not opinion, get the help from an expert that's doing the work, that's done the work, stop asking people that don't know their ass from their elbows and treating what they're giving you as information that they Googled is real.

[00:23:01] Maresa: The second thing that I would say as well. So again, seek counsel, not opinion. The second thing, if you're a founder and you're in a service based business, is stop being of service to your clients. Let's look at the definition of service. let's translate that all the way back in the dictionary servitude, To serve as a servant, being a servant to clients feels heavy and it's awful, And anyone that's been in service to their clients knows that, You're just like, you feel tired and drained. So I tell everyone, that as contribution. I'm of contribution in my clients. And in just that languaging, Are we in service to clients or are we contributing to our clients? We're contributing. And that's where I also say that language is so important, The languaging that we use informs so much stuff that happens in our brain, but also that really subtle shift. Like, you know, Hey, we pride ourselves on great service.

[00:23:52] Maresa: you might as well just say, we pride ourselves on being your bitch, that doesn't feel good. Right. So, those are my two big things, one seek counsel, not opinion and to be in contribution, Not in service, which is probably different than what most people say.

[00:24:09] Hector: Fantastic. Fantastic. And Marisa, if people want to get connected with you, find out more about what you do or, go deeper in your world, where's the best place to go?

[00:24:16] Maresa: Yeah. I mean, you can Google executive cat herder and all kinds of fun things come up or you can hang out with me on Instagram. It's Marissa SD. we have a free broadcast channel that we started where we're just giving. I'm really tired of people charging for silly things. So I go in there like a couple times a week and just give free tips on how to generate revenue for your business because anyone can do it if you have time and focus.

[00:24:39] Maresa: So that's kind of where I hang out these days, Instagram and just the internet.

[00:24:44] Hector: We will link that up in the show notes for your listeners as well. I want to thank all of you for hanging out today. Go get connected and follow Marisa on Instagram. I just gave her a follow as well. And, we appreciate you being here. We'll see on the next one. Later, y'all.