Q2 • 2023


07


to quickly get things up and running?


Make the time to focus on hiring, because nothing will change the game faster than getting the right team in place.


FL: In the short term, we had to execute the activities the company was committed to, but in the long term, I had to build an engine to help fuel growth. In my previous job, I had built a 17-person team, so I knew the reality of how time-consuming it can be to hire. We did not have the luxury of time at PERSUIT, so we relied on freelancers to fill the positions we needed immediately: a designer, an event sponsorship expert, and a marketing ops person to help ensure we had the data and tech foundation to be able to measure any activities, from in-person events to paid media. Our CEO was great about giving me the reins to hire. I’ve been at organizations where you start with junior staff, but I wanted to hire more senior people who could run their area and build teams as we scaled yet were still willing to get their hands dirty.


Q: Hiring can be a long and arduous task. What were your secrets to getting the right team in place quickly?


“The company was putting an [automated] technology in a place where there was nothing before,” says Leighton. The old-school way to obtain outside legal help was for these companies to seek out people they knew, but there was no technology to help with the selection process. For Leighton, PERSUIT offered an appealing role because the company was in a category-creating moment, and he could build a state-of-the-art marketing department to support it. “My history was in B2B marketing and also on the sales side,” Leighton says. “My previous jobs would be some form of a mess that needed to be cleaned up. This was the first one where I got to come in and build it—to make the mess, you could say.” How did he do it, and what can you learn from his experience? We sat down with him and asked.


Q: The opportunity to build a marketing organization from the ground up is unique. Would you have welcomed some established guidelines to rely on, or do you think that a blank slate makes things easier?


Forrest Leighton: Well, it was not exactly a blank slate. There was marketing happening, but it was absorbed by other functions and not consolidated under one clear structure. The company also had great subject matter expertise in the form of lawyers, so there was a lot of gold hanging out there. I needed to figure out where the gold was and how to pull stuff from those other departments and utilize it in our marketing.


Q: You used a number of freelancers early on. What was the strategy behind that, and what types of roles/talents did you bring in


FL: I learned from a previous manager that no matter what you have in front of you, [you should] make the time to focus on hiring, because nothing will change the game faster than getting the right team in place. People underestimate the time it takes to hire the right person, but if you focus on it and push for what you need, your organization will be much better off in the long run. I had a clear picture of the profiles I wanted. Also, for our CEO, marketing was a new area, so when he asked me what jobs needed to be done, I had to clearly solidify the profiles we needed, and that helped me be precise. I like this about start-up land—our recruiting team understood that once we had the candidate, we could not hesitate. It took about six months to get people in and feel like we were building something, but we were definitely building the plane while we were flying it.


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