Hey there and welcome back to the Bringing Business to Retail podcast. I hope you had a fantastic Christmas. We are nearly there. The end of the year is just a couple of days away, and here we are talking about business. If you're like me, then business is as much of a hobby as it is what you do for work.

But if you're listening to the podcast, I know that you're probably thinking, huh, 2026 is coming up fast. I probably need to be thinking about that. And if you are like many of the retailers that we work with. 2026 is probably the point where you're starting to think about upleveling. Now, the last couple of years have been challenging, and sure there's been growth, but we've had to navigate a lot of stuff no matter where you are in the world.

So if I had to guess, one of the things that is on your mind is probably marketing. You've probably exhausted yourself from all the marketing that you've been doing in peak season, and you. I just wanna take a breath, but here is Sal talking to you about 2026. Now, when it comes to marketing, maybe you've been doing it yourself and you're exhausted, or maybe you've got a junior person or an intern or a part-time person.

Maybe you know that deep down, whoever you've got doing your marketing isn't going to take your business to the next level. It's just not going to cut it anymore. What got you here won't get you there. And perhaps you've looked at hiring a full-time CMO or full-time marketing strategist and thought. Wow, that is a lot of money and I don't know if I actually need someone full-time five days a week.

Here's the thing, there's a point in your business where you get totally past the DIY phase, but. You are also not at a point where you are ready to build out an executive team, and marketing is usually where that tension shows up first. You know, it needs to be strategic, but then you're stuck being both the strategist and the person who is either uploading posts to Instagram or the person who is overseeing everything.

And you and I both know that as your business grows, that's not sustainable. So today I'm bringing back this conversation with Jessica Shira, who's a fractional CMO, or Chief Marketing Officer, and before you tune out thinking this is not going to apply for me. Hear me out. Because Jessica has worked with brands like Lululemon and Pottery Barn, running global campaigns with some very serious budgets.

But what she's going to do is actually break down what those big brands are doing so that you can implement it in your business. You're going to hear about push versus pull marketing, and I guarantee you, most of you are heavily weighted to one side, and you are wondering why. Your marketing isn't converting the way it used to.

You'll hear about a simple campaign that Lululemon did that hit their two week goal in just a couple of hours, and that teaches you the strategies behind all of this. So Jessica breaks down how to think about marketing at your level, not like a startup who's scrambling for attention, not like a corporate giant with unlimited resources, but taking what the big brands do and putting it into your business.

If you are going into 2026 thinking. I need to get strategic about how I grow my business, but I don't know what that looks like. This episode is a little bit of a roadmap, so let's dive in. Hey there, and welcome to this week's episode of the Bringing Business to Retail podcast. Now, I know that having a marketing person in your business full time is the dream for so many retail and e-commerce store owners.

The simple fact is for a lot of us, we either can't afford or don't even need a full-time marketing executive. So what do you do when you want a marketing person in your business but you don't have a role for them full-time? Well, the answer is a fractional CMO. Now, you probably have heard if you listen to the podcast for a while, that I have a fractional CMO in my company.

And today, Jessica Shira, who is a fractional CMO, is gonna come on and talk to you about what that model looks like, but more importantly, how you can steal the secrets of some of her top clients that she's worked with, like Lululemon and Pottery Barn. She's gonna give you the insider behind the scenes secrets and show you how you can put those into your business.

Now, this is the great thing about having a fractional CMO, is you get all the experience. Of someone who has worked with much bigger clients or even in a different industry, and they get to put all of that knowledge into your business for a fraction of the price. Welcome to the show, Jessica. For having me.

I'm excited to be here. Oh, I'm excited about talking about, I just call it ality. I dunno if that is actually a word, but we have fractional CFOs. We have fractional CMOs, like fractional CEOs. Basically what it just means is like a part-time person inserted into your business, but. It's, they're not an employee as such.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I know the model, sort of the fractional model has been around for a while when it comes to CFOs. Typically, when I, when I talk about it in that way, people, something kind of clicks, they're like, oh, yeah, okay. I've heard of it. But it's definitely new when it comes to the rest of the executive team.

There's been a, a big growth, the fractional CMO role, fractional CEO roles and, and fractional executives as a whole for sure over the last five years. So what made you jump into inserting yourself into so many businesses? Because my brain just feels like that would be a little bit exhausting because you have to put your all in as if you were working in there.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's honestly a little bit how my brain works. I really, I've always really loved variety and thrived on. Like lots of moving parts and like fast-paced roles. And so this feels like a really natural fit and I generally do well with context switching. And I, I have, I can really, really focus and kind of like, you know, when I'm working on one thing, I'm, I'm really deeply in it.

So I think it is partially how my brain works. I don't think it would be for everybody. But the other side of it, like the more kind of human emotional side of it is I had my daughters. And my oldest is five, almost. My oldest is five, and my youngest is turning three soon. And after having them, I just, I couldn't really see a world in which I went back to a traditional Monday to Friday, nine to five.

I love working and I love what I do. I'm super passionate about it, but I also just wanted the balance to be able to pick my kids up or have take them to an appointment if I needed to, and just have that flexibility in my life. So I, I started out consulting and kind of fell into this fractional CML role almost accidentally actually.

So tell us about that journey, because you have worked for some very big names. Like, I am so excited to hear about what we're going to steal from the big guys and. It's so easy for us to compare ourselves as business owners to companies that are so much bigger than us. And I always say build a brand that chain stores can't compete with because you are never gonna be able to compete with their marketing budgets and you know, their teams of people and their multi-store locations and you know, fulfillment centers all around, all those things.

But what you can do is take the things that they do well. And turn them in, put them into your business or exploit the things that they don't do well. And those two things will be the reason that people will shop with you rather than going to a big box store. So tell us about your journey to getting to here because you have a wealth of experience.

Thank you. So I started out actually in this startup space, which was a great place to be, just to learn like all areas of business, sales, marketing. I moved over into the tourism industry for a time. Moved over to agency where I got to work with tons of different brands and working on all sorts of projects, and that really gave me exposure to like varying sizes of budgets, strategy from all sorts of perspectives.

Loved that so much. And then I worked at Lululemon for quite some time as well. So there I was running their global marketing campaigns. So the, the biggest campaigns that they were doing, I was in charge of those with massive teams, massive budgets. It really was like, what, you know, younger Jess would have said is like my dream job.

It was, it was fantastic for that phase of my life. Then I had my first daughter and went on maternity leave and again, like I was mentioning, like things just shifted for me and I, I needed a change. So I ended up doing some marketing consulting and found the, the world of fractional CMO and I, I really love it.

I think my favorite thing about doing this work now is being able to draw from my experience with working with those huge brands with huge budgets, and I loved what you said about, you know, taking lessons from them or cues from them, but then also leaning on the things that they just like can't do and can't be because.

It's almost like their strengths or their weaknesses at the same time. So I love being able to take the learnings and experience and, and, and strategies from that and like right size them for my clients. Now, what was your most favorite campaign that you've ever worked on? Probably when I was with Lululemon.

I worked for the girls brand for a period of time. When I worked there, that brand was called Aviva. And we did some amazing, amazing campaigns with them. One of them was, we did their first ever, like literally first ever as a brand giveaway. Like Lululemon hadn't done one, Aviva hadn't done one. They had just like, at that point in time, marketing as a whole, you know, kind of push marketing for Lululemon was new.

Like they, they'd have, they'd showed up on social, they'd done the community side of things for a long time. But actually showing up like. Doing intentional sales emails and paid marketing on, on social media and, and doing things like contests to build their email lists like the, the kind of like true marketing.

It was new. So we wanted to, within this Aveva, Aviva was a field, kind of felt like working for a startup inside of Lululemon. So like, well-funded, lots of amazing brains on the brand, but you're in this like. Nimble, agile kind of cool environment where you can like move really quickly. So we did this contest and we had this, this goal to grow the email list, I can't remember the number now.

I wanna say like 10,000 or something over the duration of two weeks. And we hit that goal in a few hours on our first day. Oh. So that was such a cool experience, just being able to like build that out. It being the first time they had ever done that, seeing us hit our goal. Just that quickly. It was really amazing.

And then we did, I did a lot of other campaigns with that brand, and I loved it because as you know, Lululemon is very like brand forward. They're, they're, they're always about like, who, how are they making people feel and what's the community impact and like, and, and that element of it. So working for the girls brand was really cool because we were able to support and impact girls who were, you know.

Like tweens kind of, and younger, a really impressionable age. Yeah. So it just, it just was really cool. We did a lot of campaigns that had like empowering messaging and I, it just was a, it was a really cool place to like kind of have a meeting of like brand and marketing and just be able to experience the impact that you can have on a big scale.

Awesome. Now you said something in there which I would love to dive in deeper if it's okay with you. You said push marketing. Now that's probably a term that most people who are listening haven't really heard before or maybe don't un, maybe they've heard it and they don't understand it. So can you kind of dig in a little bit more as to what that is?

What does that look like? Maybe give us some examples of other push marketing that you've done. Definitely. Yeah. So it's funny, it's making me think of like my university days and learning marketing definitions. So there's push versus pull marketing. And pull marketing is like. As a brand, you're gonna go on social media and show up and you're going to like, it's softer.

You're going to be like, okay, if you're Lululemon, like maybe showing somebody running, like you're showing them living lifestyle. So you're, it's softer, you're not like direct selling, almost like the inspirational side of things. Totally. Like the, the brand side. So like who are you are as who, who are you as a brand?

What kind of experiences and feelings do you wanna create? Like. That's kind of like the, the pull, so pulling, thinking like you're attracting people to you. The push marketing is like the, the more like go out and get them like a little bit more aggressive and, and a little bit more pointed. So the idea of Lululemon, like, like trying to build an email list was like actually a new thing.

Like they, they had, they were Lululemon and they grew from being a brand and being a movement that people wanted to be a part of. So they hadn't really up until this time. Dabbled in like literally paid marketing, which is like, you know, paid marketing is probably like the, the strongest form of post marketing where you are.

The way I like to, to think of it is like you are infiltrating into someone's world or space kind of uninvited really in a way because they're just, you know, scrolling their social media or doing something and you're like. Right. You know, there would be a little bit shouty. Shouty, yeah, yeah, totally.

Instead of them coming to you, to your website or your Instagram or your, you know, channel or your store. So it's, it's just that, that, and I think both are equally important, but it was so new for them at that time. So it was an interesting time to be there. Now I know this is not gonna be the Lululemon show, but I would love it if like a lot of people will know the brand all around the world.

And I've heard some stories about how they got started. Like I have heard that they got their first original brand awareness by giving out gym wear to a whole bunch of teachers and getting people to call up and say, you know, to to retailers and say, do you stock Lululemon? I would love to know the real story behind it because it's really easy for us to think.

Oh my gosh. You know this, this brand became so big and they're also community focused. We use them quite a lot in our case studies because they've done an amazing job of building a brand that is very purpose-driven and community focused. But the reality is there's money there right from the beginning.

So can you maybe give us just a little bit of background so that people understand when we are talking about this, that their drivers at the beginning were very different to probably our drivers of the, the people who are listening to this podcast? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I will say, I know that even at the very, very, very beginning of the company, there was a function and like technical importance placed on product, which I personally think.

Separates them from I, I won't say everybody 'cause there's lots of brands doing what they do now as well, but I still don't know that many brands are on par with the like research that they put into fabrics and use of fabrics and just like the innovation, like they have an entire innovation team. I think they renamed it, they were called whitespace when I was there.

But they have a whole team that literally just does innovation. And of course they didn't at the outset, but I do know that. The idea came from. Chip Wilson doing yoga and being like, okay, I'm sweating and uncomfortable in this like hot cotton outfit. Like there has to be a better way and kind of solving a problem for himself and saying like, let's try all of these fabrics and let's see what's comfortable, what's breathable, what stretches, what washes well, what lasts.

And I think that they always have held onto that at their core when they make products and they're expensive, like people are the, there's so many complaints. You go online and. Social media team, like there's, there's a big department around that, like the complaints about pricing, but it's, it's kind of warranted because there's, their quality is there and the, the science that goes into what they create, like they fit past things and they, they don't just put it on a model and zip it up.

It's like they put it on the model and then the model goes and rock climbs or like runs on the treadmill for an hour and a half, or like they're putting these things to the test. They, they've always held true to that, which I think is really cool. And, and I know that that was there from like day one. So why was push marketing not like, not at the forefront?

Because, I mean, everyone listening here now knows that one of the first things that you should do is build your email list. And so why was that not a focus at the beginning? Yeah, I mean, I think a couple of reasons. I mean, obviously the, the marketing landscape and how you market has changed massively since they, they started it.

It wasn't what it is today at all, by any means. I also think too though, that they grew, they had like this really grassroots community approach. I don't know if you were to start a company today, if it would work the way that it did then. So I think it was a little bit of like timing of where things were with technology and with marketing strategy at the time, but then also the founders and the founding executive teams just had like the, I know that Chip doesn't always have the best reputation, but that aside, like he is.

Like a magnet for great talent and just people who are just geniuses in their craft. So the people that were like part of building that, like his, his ability to select the right people, I would say was like, what grew them, because the community piece was it, but it was like how they did community and how they built relationships and like there was, it was coming from a face of like.

Deep desire to connect with people and build something bigger than an apparel brand. Alrighty, my friends. The last episode for 2025. Let's bring this one home because whilst Jessica just shared amazing tips on marketing strategy, what I'm hoping you picked up on was about how you structure your business once you've reached specific levels.

Now, here's what Jessica's story shows us. There's a model that gives you access to executive level expertise. Without the full-time commitment or the six figure salaries, you get someone who has worked with major brands, who sees what works at scale, who can bring strategic thinking into your business, but you are not locked into that full-time hire, which let's be honest, it's scary when you do the full-time hire.

It is particularly daunting when you're having to put all this money and time out and you don't know if this person is going to produce. So honestly, this is a model that makes sense for many of you listening. You are past the point of interns or juniors or contractors, but you're also not ready to build out an entire C-suite.

The fractional model gives you exactly what you need, serious expertise, strategic thinking, and someone who is actually in your business working with you, not just giving you advice from the sidelines. The other thing I love about the fractional model is that you're not just getting one person's perspective when you work with.

A fractional C-M-O-C-E-O-C-F-O, you are tapping into everything that they've learned across multiple businesses, across generally different verticals and that cross pollination ideas that is gold. And if you're listening to this thinking, you know what, maybe I need to explore what this fractional.

Concept is, I want to give you a heads up that in January we'll be opening just a handful of spots in our five X framework program. This is a fractional strategic consulting program, specifically designed for retail and e-commerce stores. You get your own personal strategist who works directly with you.

Plus access to our entire board of advisors. So when obstacles show up and you and I both know they will, you've got a whole team helping you tackle them in real time. If that sounds like exactly what you need to scale in 2026, head on over to selena knight.com/five x to find out more and to get on the wait list.

And if this episode shifted how you are thinking about building your business, I would love it if you could leave a review. The more retailers who find the show. The more independent businesses that we can help scale. You'll find me on socials at the sali night. Come and tell me if you're thinking about bringing in fractional support or if you've already done it, and what has changed for you, my friends, you didn't get here by accident.

You've already proven that you know how to build. Now it is time to put the right team around you to take you to the next level. I want to take this time to say thank you, thank you, thank you so much for listening to the podcast and sharing 2025 with me, and I look forward to helping you hit your next level in 2026.

Stay safe and I'll see you in January. So that's a wrap. I'd love to hear what insight you've gotten from this episode and how you're going to put it into action. If you're a social kind of person, follow me at the Selena Knight and make sure to leave a comment and let me know. And if this episode made you think a little bit differently or gave you some inspiration or perhaps gave you the kick that you needed to take action, then please take a couple of minutes to leave me a review on your platform of choice.

Because the more reviews the show gets, the more independent retail and e-commerce stores just like yours, that we can help to scale. And when that happens, it's a win for you, a win for your community, and a win for your customers. I'll see you on the next episode.