Hear from TREW Marketing Co-Founders and early hires as they share stories about the company and how marketing has changed in the past 15 years.
To celebrate TREW Marketing's 15-year "TREWversary," TREW Co-Founder Rebecca Geier, along with early employees Lee Chapman and Morgan Norris, joined me for a look-back episode. Expect to hear many stories on this episode, including:
Learn more about TREW Marketing here.
Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Content Marketing engineered. I am so excited about today's episode. It's a never before thing here with our 15th anniversary of TREW Marketing.
Whoo.
One five.
So I have brought along three very special guests to help celebrate this, and I'm going to have each of them introduce themselves. So, Rebecca we'll start with you.
Okay. It's exciting to be on the show for the first time. My name is Rebecca. I am wearing different hats right now. CMO of an AI SaaS startup headquartered in London, working still with engineers. I also teach a class at the engineering school here in Austin at UT in the engineering management program. And in my spare time, I've been working on a first ever textbook on content marketing. So that's what I've been up to.
Awesome. And your always title, as well is.
Co-Founder of TREW Marketing.
All right, Lee, how about you?
Hi. Yes. So Lee Chapman, President of TREW Marketing, and don't know what employee number I was maybe like four, five somewhere in there.
Yeah.
So it's been a little over a decade of awesomeness with all the TREW team and so many of us work together, the four of us here, especially at National Instruments. So, Rebecca, I think you hired me in 2001 when we were all back at National Instruments, so I know we'll talk more about that. I won't, wendy steal all the questions before we get going, but that's a little bit about me.
Awesome.
And I'm Morgan Norris, and I have been with TREW for almost working with TREW for almost 13 years, and I am our Senior Brand and Content Strategist .And so just love what I do and obviously love TREW Marketing because I am here and just really enjoyed it.
And once upon a time, you, as well, worked with Rebecca and Lee, and myself at NI.
I did.
Well, those of you that are watching rather than just listening may notice that Rebecca and I are matching today. We didn't even plan it wearing our OG TREW marketing shirts, the very first shirt we ever made, and Rebecca was commenting on where do these shirts come from?
So I think I surprised you with these for our first anniversary, and it was in wendy brown.
Which I'll be explaining absolutely what wendy brown means.
The first and last brown shirt.
Exactly.
Maybe that should be my alias, Wendy Brown.
Anyway.
Well, let's start with a warm up question here. So, TREW marketing was founded by Rebecca and myself in 2008, so I want to go back one year before that. So let's think way, way back to 2007, just prior to TREW Marketing becoming a business. What were you up to? Like, what was your job? What was your life like? Just kind of give me a state of affairs in your life at that time.
Rebecca, you want me to go first? Yeah. Actually, Morgan's probably is more interesting than
Mine, because I'll tell you, and this will jog your memory, because okay, 2007, I was one year out of college, and I had just gotten married, and I had interned at Ni and then gotten hired there. And I started on the PR team. And I was just recounting this to Jen. She was saying some outlandish things she would never have somebody do in an interview. And then I said, do you remember what you had me do in an interview? Jen and Julia had me pick up a phone and pretend call and pitch something that they just handed me to an editor. And I walked out of that room, and I was like, I didn't get that job.
But I did.
And 2007, I think I was kind of finding my footing. I shared a cue ball with Rebecca and I, but I was a little bit finding my footing in that. I started in PR. I loved the writing and content development aspect of it. I did not love the pitching side of it. And so we were looking at kind of how to move me over to Jennifer Dawkins team in content development and case study development. So I lived in Austin. We had just bought a house. I could see, and I from my house, I could go walk home or drive home and feed my dog during lunch. And so it was just my world felt, like, nice and clean and small and very cute.
Yeah, I remember that. I actually am jumping ahead a little bit, but I remember when I called you after we had first started. TREW. I'm like, hey, Morgan, you're on maternity leave. How's that going by then? But anyway, I'm jumping ahead. In 2008, Wendy and I had both had our well, you had your first child, I had my second, and they were three years old. Yeah, well, that's right. Yeah, eight years old. I'm thinking 2005. They were born in 2000, so they.
Were getting those kids. I thought you meant that other kid of mine. Okay.
Yeah, we were pregnant together with our second. With with your first and my second, our boys, and they were getting to be handfuls. Is that fair?
He may edit that part out, but.
We'Ll see being a mom and being a mom of two kids and the corporate kind of pace was a lot, and I was traveling a lot overseas, very extended trips. So I think we were both why don't I speak for you, but I know for me, kind of ready. I had been at Ni 14 years, and I could have stayed there. 14 more is the most incredible career that anyone could ask for. I learned so much, but was kind of feeling unchallenged and kind of ready to do something different. And I think you were kind of ready for a change for different reasons. Anyway, I'll let you take it from there.
Well, I'll tell mine and then I want to hear yours too. Lee so I was in newlywed, so in 2007 was when my husband, I, Randy, were married. So in addition to having those rambunctious kids, had newlyweds that wanted to start a family a pretty good distance from Ni. So the idea of working remotely at least a few days a week was really appealing and that wasn't an option. So that was definitely one factor that led me to want to seek door number three, as I like to call it, in career terms. The other thing I think was so interesting as I look back on those final years in Ni is I was in the middle of this transformation of turning their software products, including Lavio, into a SaaS model. And SaaS wasn't really the word we called it then, but that's exactly what it was. And so I just find that all interesting of, oh, that was SAS. I led a whole SaaS revolution as a company without knowing that that's what I did until now, because we didn't have the nomenclature. We were a little ahead of our time there.
So that was pretty cool. Lee, what were you up to in 2007?
I was about halfway I didn't know it at the time, but I was halfway through my eleven year career at Ni and I had moved from the corporate communications team and managing our corporate content team of writers and community relations team to the corporate design group and managing a group of web designers and developers and project managers. And it was super fun. The beginning of that was fun. The corporate design group had all the budget. They had fun parties. They were like the cool kids. And I was such a dork, and I was trying to be cool and hip and wear cool colors and stuff because I was on the creative team. But anyway, it was a great next step and I learned so much on that team and it was a lot of fun. And I remember Rebecca coming over and she's like, okay, when in our leaving going to create this company, it's cool, maybe you'll come someday. And I was like, that sounds really risky. And I'm, like, risk super smart. I'm sure it's going to be great anyway, and if it works out in like five years when that's safe, then maybe I'll call you up.
And then I did.
One day that phone call came. Let's talk about our crazy name because we hear from a lot of people with the last name TREW and all these misconceptions, a lazy keyboard trick, which if you go look at the keyboard, TREW is like backwards altogether on a cordy. That's right, cordy keyboard. Or maybe it has something to do with our husband's initials and our initials, I don't know. So Rebecca, why don't you clear that up? Where did the name come from?
Yeah, so this is a fun one. So we did, we had a long list of names. They were all taken like Google.
Oh, that's a great name.
And then it's taken. So I had always been a runner and I had a running injury. So I started doing kayaking or crew on Lake Austin. And I was out there in this very docile, wonderful, peaceful experience out on Lake Austin one morning and I was thinking back about this internal training, communications training I had created and was teaching at Ni called. It was just leadership communication, but I gave it kind of a tagline of trust drives, results. And so I was thinking about that and the word trust, as I was thinking about that training, the word TREW came to mind, and it was like, Wait, that's it. TREW with a twist on the word. So the EW instead of the UE gave us not only the original word, but it also helped us incorporate four very important initials. My husband Tim gets the T, you get to the W, and Randy and I, your husband, share the R. Anyway, yeah. And then maybe I'll let you explain the turned up E. Yeah.
Rebecca and I don't have a design background, and we were a company of two. So we turned to a local design firm in Austin and they sat down with us and asked lots of questions about the name and our business, and we're telling them, and we're these excited young entrepreneurs, and by the end of it, they said, wow, you guys have so much energy and enthusiasm. And so that's where we ended up having this upturn e. It's to represent that vibe that they got from us. And it didn't occur to us until much later of, oh, Dell also has an upturn e, and they're here in Austin, so maybe there's some weird subconscious thing there, but it's lowercase, so it's totally different. Okay, so these shirts are brown, which is sort of an odd color for a corporate color, and it's certainly not a color you see on TREW's website today. How do you pick company colors? Rebecca, you had a very formal process for this.
Well, what I remember was I did not have a great idea about colors, and you said, hey, we should both this is so wendy this is so awesome. Rebecca, go home to your closet and pick out the two shirts that you are, like, the few shirts that you love the most, and then we'll just all do the same, and then we'll just like, how genius is that, that you're going to be in your brand colors for the rest of your life? You probably ought to pick a color that you like, and that so smart. So I was like, that's genius. So I went home, and lo and behold, turns out one of my favorite colors is coral, not orange. Anyway, I brought Coral. I think you brought brown. And you had a special aversion to anything orange. Being an aggie so you found yourself constantly correcting people that are longhorns in particular, that is not orange. That is coral.
That is not longhorn orange, not burnt orange. I could show you the PMS color, and I remember thinking, well, I really like brown, but I don't know about it being a corporate color, but it is a color I wear a lot. And anyway, over time, we said, yeah, it really isn't a good corporate color, but, hey, it made these shirts well. TREW marketing has been a virtual business since the very beginning. We've never had a physical office. So what drove the decision to be a virtual company?
Yeah, we tried to find an office tours, but I feel like you were really visionary about this, Wendy, kind of from day one, more than me.
I think you really like the idea of having the big sign out front, the big billboard. But, yeah, it helped that we live on opposite sides of the Austin metroplex, and the in between is the most expensive real estate pretty much other than downtown. So some of it was practical, but very early on, we realized that it was a differentiator it helped us recruit people. It was something that people valued. And so I'm curious, lin Morgan, did us being virtual factor into your decision to join TREW? And what do you think about working virtual all these years later? Because you guys, I mean, over a.
Decade, working virtually, right?
Yeah, I can go first. It for sure played in a big part for me when Rebecca called me when I was on maternity leave. I was kind of oscillating between kind of, what are my options and what's out here. I knew I wanted to spend a little bit of time at home for at least a couple of years while I had little kids, and I didn't want to forego work. And so I was also looking at contract jobs and other things that I could do. But the opportunity to be virtual.
It.
Has given me different opportunities over time, even. I think, for me, initially, it was that flexibility of taking out the big commute or taking out things like that that just put those barriers between you and an office. And then as recently as the last few years, we moved to Washington, DC. And I live in downtown DC. We're here for a few years for my husband's job, and it was, like, no big deal. Just the ease of doing that and the lack of disruption to my work has been really incredible, I think, especially through this time that I have a young family and stuff. And I even think about, we're about to move back to Austin soon. For me, where do we want to be? Do we want to be in this neighborhood or that neighborhood? And there's some flexibility there, right? Because not only is it expensive real estate between Wendy and Rebecca, it's like, insanely congested traffic too. No one wants to cross the river for work, really. Anyway, it's just huge opportunities, I think. And then, of course, we had COVID where everybody had to work from home and then everybody's home in your own workspace.
And I think that was probably one of the most disruptive things. You're like, I know how my home office runs, and now there's all these other people around here all day.
You're not supposed to be here, only me.
But man, when that hit, it wasn't a blip for us at all. Other than that, other than having more human footsteps around my house. This is something we know how to do. We do it really well. It's no big deal for us to pick up the phone or hop on a video call. And so many people had such an adjustment there, and I felt like we could just hit the ground running because there was no adjustment.
I felt a little different in the beginning. I remember kind of feeling like, gosh, but I like going into an office. I don't know if I really want to be remote. My house isn't really set up for me to work from home. This is a whole new thing. And I remember my neighbors saying, oh great, you're working from home. You can pick up my kids from gymnastics at 03:00 p.m.. And there was this whole perception that working from home or working virtually was you weren't really working, you were just kind of collecting paycheck. I was like, no, I'm working like 50 hours weeks. I'm on all these calls. We've got clients all over the country, so it was a bit of an adjustment being at home. But it was ideal timing because my kids were middle school and high school, and so being able to adjust my schedule so I could start my day really early and be finished before they came home, I could drive them to school every day. I could pick them up from school really? In that middle and high school time? It was great to be able to be there and work and kind of have this combined work life balance.
I also didn't miss sitting in 8 hours straight of meetings every day and then coming home every night and then responding to email and doing all the other work that had to be done. It was really nice to feel like you had focused time. You didn't have the commute, you weren't walking back and forth at different buildings. So that was better quality of life for sure, and just more things that could get done both whether you could throw in a load of laundry during your lunch hour or do a walk around the block with your dog. I mean, all of these things, just like I said, it totally changed my life for the better.
Yeah.
I will say some of the efficiencies that we have, we work so much faster, I think, than I remember working in the corporate environment because you're pulled into so many meetings where there's like 15 people around the table and you don't ever say anything in that meeting. Or I didn't, being a new hire. And so some of those just efficiencies gained in how quickly we can work and deliver. For clients. It feels good to be that productive and to be able to turn things around and really get quality work done so quickly.
When I think about the technology that's impacted the craft of marketing specifically.
You.
Know, I've I've had the opportunity to be kind of before Internet marketing and after Internet marketing.
To date myself, I love even the term Internet marketing.
I know I should say marketing before the internet and marketing after the Internet. There's a line in the skin where there was not the Internet and then now there is. And of course you can't even remember back then. But the whole shift toward inbound and content marketing for me, we take it for granted today. It's just how you do it. But that was a massive shift in both the customer and how they went about their buying process and the marketer and how you had to completely shift how you engaged and kind of got found using the HubSpot terminology. For me. And you hear so much about technology, generative AI and all these tools and of course it's huge and we all need to be paying attention to it and figuring out how we're going to incorporate it. You guys have a blog post out right now about it and you guys are studying it all the big HubSpot partners are really helping us. Of course, Paul and Kathy and their team at Marketing AI Institute are really thought leaders in this area. So we look to them. I have part of my team doing their writing course later next month.
Awesome that they're doing. So we've got to stay up on this. But at the end of the day, to me and we're early in this, I mean, literally like months from it, from having tools in our toolbox as marketers to use generative AI. But to me, the fundamentals of how you do marketing in particular, understanding the customer and their challenge and passionately creating content and engaging information that's valued that you build their trust, like that's not going to change with Generative AI. And in fact, I think we even have an opportunity as marketers to even differentiate ourselves further by understanding the customer so intimately. Well that we can as an agency provide much more value than kind of agencies who don't take that as seriously, especially with TREW and our focus on the engineer. The decisions that they're making are literally career limiting decisions. They're huge risk safety, not just careers safety, the risk to brand. I mean, it just goes on and on. That's why they're so skeptical, as they should be and that's why they're so research oriented in their decisions. So it's just even more emphasis, in my opinion, on the marketer and the value of content in particular in building those audiences and engaging them.
To me, inbound and content was this move toward content marketing. We've done it for years. You've done content marketing. I mean, since the beginning of time they've been writing on walls right in hieroglyphics. It's content marketing. You're using art and words to communicate your message. So it's no different. But it's that Internet change. That how the customer became in control of their process, of their buying process and how that changed how we do marketing. That really was fundamental to me and it makes it a lot more fun.
I think tool development has been crazy. And I think to Rebecca's point, we're trying to figure out, yes, how do we use these tools as tools in our toolbox? But to really, truly know and understand your customer and be able to create something that speaks directly to them, it's something that, as a brand, we've done so well as a company, year after year after year. And it looks for us, that looks like having really talented writers who can explain really technical concepts clearly and well and in a compelling way. And it looks like creating brands that stand out and stand above. And I think that that's something we've always done. We've always held this technical content and messaging to such a high, high level. And yes, we've got AI tools kind of in our back pockets, but it's really the kind of creative work that we've done. And I love that generative AI is like such a hot topic, but then we think about just all the AI things that came before, right. It feels new and I think scary to people. But then you're like you've had auto captions on your videos for a long time and those are AI generated.
I've had grammarly plugins for three or four.
Yeah.
Word has been suggesting changes to what you're writing very consistently. So it's new tools, but it's the same core concept of knowing your customer and communicating well to them.
Agree.
Remember the days we used to talk about integrated marketing and try to teach on but even that is still this concept that continues to be core to doing marketing is having understanding that customer and having that central message and then how is everything tied together? So we may describe it in different ways, the de Jor terms, but it's still those same fundamentals, isn't it?
When's HubSpot going to have integrated marketing campaign dashboards? We're still fighting for that, right? Yeah.
As we think about the past 15 years, anything else stand out?
TJ.
Lee mentioned, like, canva, but I think the kind of commoditization of design you think about the first websites that we did as TREW and they were these custom sites and they were so labor intensive and so difficult to fix later and update and change later. And the tools. As far as web design goes, not only do we have so much more insight, but to throw up pages and to put up content that looks good and is branded well and loads quickly, just the path to that has gotten so much shorter. And same thing with design, like Lee said, the path to a nicely designed infographic, it's like, just so much closer.
Than it used to be.
I think analytics is something that just boggles the mind. Like so many different tools, so many sources of data that you can comb through. And of course, there's a big move over to Google Analytics Four that's just coming out. We're trying to wrap our head around that they've changed definitions of things that we've known for decades, and now we're relearning it. It's not like an update, and we keep saying it's an entirely new tool. Of course HubSpot's got their analytics. There's a ton of analytics tools out there that people are using. And so I think that's the other challenge of Marketers Face is what is my source of truth? What tools do I use to go find the right data, and what type of informed decisions can I now make from this data?
Turning back to TREW marketing as a business, and in our final minutes that we have left, there were some pivotal business decisions that we made that really had an impact on our success. And one of these I want to pick on first because I will never forget. We weren't making very much money as a business. And Rebecca comes to me and says, I think we should write a book. Like what you want to do?
What?
Should we just get some more customers first? Rebecca, what the heck was going through your head?
I don't even know why it struck me in that moment, but because engineers are skeptical of marketing and we have such a good methodology, and we take our craft and we take their decisions and the challenges that they're facing really, really seriously. And so I just felt like if we had a book that they could read and it was like with data, then they would have their own space to kind of get comfortable with the idea. And it would be a way for us to just document that proven methodology that we know is effective and that we 100% believe in. And it's not a matter of us believing in it, it's a matter of convincing them to believe in it. And so I just thought that would be a way to do that. But good advice. Let's get some customers first. Hey, held off on that a few years.
What is it?
The genius of the ands we managed.
To pull it all off.
Morgan, Lee, what are some other things that you guys can think of that stand out to you?
The smart business decision, the research, whole educational platform. Right. It started with one book, and then it was two books and then it was a podcast and then Morgan's leading this great writing training where she's educating new writers and strengthening their technical writing abilities. I think that is really a differentiator you don't see a lot of agencies really going all in. And to Rebecca's point, for a discerning engineering audience, they really want to be educated, they don't want to be sold to, and they do want to create, look at content kind of in their own space, in their own time. And now we've got multiple form factors for which they can consume it in. So I think that really stands out to me as something that was pretty instrumental.
Yeah.
And the research too, right? Having annual research, there's so much research out there about what marketers want, what marketers need, who are marketing to technical audiences, but not the research around. What do these technical audiences actually want? When do they want to talk to you? What types of content do they want to see before they talk to you? Just those how long is their buying cycle? Let's understand that. I think doing that, it guides our recommendations that we make to clients and then I think it's honestly just such a great service that we do to the industry as a whole to just educate. It's a win for us if there's better marketing across the board, even if we don't do all of it. We don't want to do all of it. But having committing to that has been such a great stake in the ground for us, I think.
Yeah, absolutely.
I can't tell you how many people I've come across in the US and Europe in particular who know the research. Like they don't even know me or TREW, but they're like, oh, yeah, well, there's this research out there I'm like, really?
Is there? Tell me.
It's globally known and trusted and respected. Wonderful.
I think too. I'll never forget, Rebecca, because you've always been a fan and we're all surrounded by these books, but of book groups, right? And you're like, we're going to read this new book and it's going to revolutionize how we lead our meetings and run our business called Traction and we're going to put in EOS and it's L Ten and it's all these acronyms. But I think that was really a turning point for the business, too, when we implemented that and we were already, what I would say, unconsciously competent, and it just made us consciously competent and it gave us this model and this template. And so I really think when you brought that in and that was all of us, I think, read that and we're like, oh, this is going to be, like you said earlier, game changer, and really created Efficiencies and given us tools and a way to make decisions that I think have really strengthened the business.
So when you think about working with clients, what are some of. The cool areas of technology that you had the opportunity to learn.
I got a big dose a few years ago. Actually, it was like four years ago because it was before I moved. So it was super early in the technology. But around blockchain, we were working with a startup that had a really cool kind of middleware technology and got to kind of walk with them as they explained that to people and explained it to investors. And it was a really challenging time because crypto was like everybody attached blockchain with crypto, and crypto was tanking. But it gave me such a great base layer for things to come in the years that followed. That's a cool one.
Did it make you run and want to invest in crypto or the opposite or neutral?
No. So the cool thing is that's part of it is it's not all just tied to crypto, it's just tokens. And so it's like it's the way that how does everybody who touched a song that got written get paid appropriately? What's blockchain? It's tokens tagged to all the aspects of song writing, producing, developing. And people have different shares of tokens, and that's how they get paid out.
Verification that something is legitimate. I heard that on fine wines that now there's a blockchain.
Interesting.
Say this $100,000 bottle of wine that I'll never buy.
It really is worth it.
It's providence. Yeah.
Okay, cool.
Who knew?
Yeah. I think for me, it's just more of the variety. Like, it's just mind blowing what engineers and scientists are up to and what they're creating. I mean, just what you're just talking about. Morgan. It's so many things that the kind of average human like the four of us that are not engineers and scientists, you don't even understand the complexity of what has gone in. To just create an electric vehicle or a smart meter that's on the side of my house now that digitally reads my gas and gives me a bill that's within regulatory percent of accuracy that engineers had to create that smart meter with the physics of the gas going through and measuring that accurately. So, I don't know, to me, it's just one of the customers that was just remarkable to me was this customer.
Silicon Audio.
And in fact, I was just talking to Neil the other day and that they you know, he had this invention of, you know, kind of revolutionizing the geophone market. And I was like, what's? A geophone?
Yeah.
And then, you know, fast forward three months and we're, like, doing branding on optical seismometers and learning about the old way of how you find energy deposits. And it's pretty crazy how they used to do it and how they still do it and how much more accurate and more cost efficient and yeah, optical seismometers are. And then one of our favorite I should say one of my favorite customers was atl up in Salt Lake City and work that they were doing around medical device connectors and getting all of the data out of the tip, the kind of camera on a tip of doing surgical procedures and the data that you can get out of just through the connector. Mind blowing. It just goes on and on. So I'm fortunate to be working with AI engineers and data scientists, their PhDs in data science out of Imperial and other really amazing places in England. And, yeah, it's just an honor, always has been for me. All my engineers.
I had the optical seismometer down, too, Rebecca. I was like, for me, that was it. It's like the motors that are motors have been around for 100 years almost now at this point, but now they're small enough to go in fans and just it's crazy. The size, the weight, it's all changing. The electric vehicle market, electrification of everything as a concept. And the seismometer, right? Taking a tool that had been out there for years and then making it this optical seismometer. So it's just the genius, like you said, of engineering and just the solving of the grand challenges of engineering right, and helping sustain our planet. And it's just so satisfying. The hardware, the software, the ideation. And then so many of the clients we work with are in the national security realm, or they're designing components for new space. And so there's so many things that they're doing that we can't even talk about because it's so tough.
There are engineers doing innovative things everywhere in the world, and that's not going away. And their need to build trust with target audiences is a key ingredient for their success. So I think you guys have a very bright future globally. Thank you.
I'll take a little bit of a different slice, I'll say that there seems to be a lot of consolidation and mergers and acquisitions of companies that we work with. And so I think we're going to continue seeing that where we started out, working with these smaller five to $10 million Ni Alliance partners. Now we're really seeing that we're working with a lot more global, billion dollar customers. And I think that's just going to continue as this consolidation kind of throughout the technology space continues.
Yeah.
And that also leads into Europe.
So there you go. It's been interesting to have clients who are acquiring other companies and growing very rapidly and us being a part of that journey, not only for branding, but just helping with demand and culture and all sorts of different facets of that. So thank you all so much for being here. Everyone who's listening and watching, you can connect with each of our folks today on LinkedIn and of course, the TREW marketing website. And Rebecca, we're so happy to see your beautiful face here with us. And don't be a stranger. Come back anytime. Next time, we'll bring cocktails and tell more stories.
After hours, after hours of coral. I like that I did find out that coral is in my color palette. So all these years, I was five fighting against the coral, and now I'm all about it. So we could be bringing that polo back. We'll send you one, Rebecca.
I'll take it. That'd be great. There you go.
All right.
Bye, everybody.