Kate Jacoutot, ModusMark

[00:00:55] Sanjay Parekh: Today's guest got her start in marketing when she was just 14 years old and joined an emo band. Unfortunately, the emo band didn't quite work out, but in 2020, Kate Jacoutot decided to open ModusMark, a B2B go-to-market consultancy. Kate, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:15] Kate Jacoutot: Thanks, Sanjay. 

[00:01:16] Sanjay Parekh: So, I'm excited to have you on because I'm pretty sure you're the very first emo band member that we've ever had on the podcast.

But before I start asking questions about emo music, give us a little bit about your background and what got you to where you are today. 

[00:01:33] Kate Jacoutot: I love that's the bio that they pulled for me. Those people, that's like usually like a fun party trick to pull up, when you're-

[00:01:41] Sanjay Parekh: No, we go for the weird, we're all about the weird.

[00:01:44] Kate Jacoutot: Yeah. So, yes. Was in an emo band at 14, that was the first time I ever tried marketing, I had to develop the brand. I had to do our merch. I had to do our website, taught me a lot. Like you said, didn't go the distance, but that's okay. We all have successful failures. So, I went to college actually for music business and marketing because I was so in love with music.

Then I realized that I'm not in love with the music business and thankfully I had that backup plan of marketing, another successful failure. And, so yeah, I got a marketing degree from the University of Georgia, graduated. Did a very short stint in sales and now I have the most respect for sales people because I am not a very good salesperson. And then I started my own consultancy.

That's not ModusMark, actually. That was called Throne Marketing. It was basically me just freelancing and trying to gain a bunch of skills so that I could actually get hired by a marketing agency or a brand. And I did that for a few years and actually was making more money than I would have made if I did work at the agency or the brand.

So I was like, "Huh, I don't know that I want to stop this." Fell into it almost, but yeah, eventually I was just like, I hit my ceiling where I was like, I need to learn from people. And I got hired by one of my clients actually full time, became their director of marketing.

And that client was a client that did outsourced business development for marketing agencies. So that gave me like all these connections to like the top agency owners in Atlanta. And it taught me about the agency-client dynamic. And so, I knew from that experience that I wanted to start my own marketing consultancy marketing agency one day, I just didn't know when.

I eventually left that company and did a short stint at a marketing agency, then had to resign out of necessity. And that was when the pandemic hit. So, April 2020, I decided to start ModusMark. That's where I got my start. 

[00:03:50] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. Great background. Before we leave it, I gotta ask you, most favorite emo song? Like were you the songwriter? You got to tell me a little bit here. 

[00:04:04] Kate Jacoutot: I don't have a most favorite emo song. I was a big fan of The Used and Brand New when I was younger. Those were like my emo staple bands. I guess Brand New kind of has all sorts of genres. Anyway, yeah, I still love emo music to be honest. 

[00:04:21] Sanjay Parekh: So that, was your very first entrepreneurial venture or was there something before doing the emo band that you did that was entrepreneurial?

[00:04:28] Kate Jacoutot: That's so funny. I don't even identify myself as an entrepreneur because I'm like so risk averse. And I'm like, I’m not an entrepreneur, but that was my first one, but I've had several other experiences. 

[00:04:40] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. It's good being an entrepreneur and being risk averse because, you know, when you have a job with somebody, it's pretty risky because you never know when you might go in and not have a job anymore. As entrepreneurs, we're the only ones that can fire ourselves, so it's actually a really good job when you're risk averse to be an entrepreneur.

[00:04:58] Kate Jacoutot: I couldn’t agree more. 

[00:04:59] Sanjay Parekh: Flips that idea on its head a little bit. Okay, so the emo band was the first thing that you did there. How did you figure out to do all of the marketing and all that stuff when you were doing it that first time? At 14 years old? 

[00:05:16] Kate Jacoutot: I was so into the community around music. I think a lot of people fall into this, people will do their church bands or whatever, or, people get involved in chorus or whatever it is, people just fall in love with the community aspect of it.

And then, you learn, pick up things here and there, learn from your peers, that's definitely been my experience. In the emo band and in business. 

[00:05:41] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So before we leave the emo band, you got to give us the name of the band because you haven't said that yet. 

[00:05:48] Kate Jacoutot: I just want to let everybody know, not that they're going to be racing to go check them out, but MySpace deleted our profile because it was that long ago when we only had our stuff on MySpace, but we were called Meadowwood. 

[00:06:03] Sanjay Parekh: Meadowwood. Okay, I love it.

Too bad that MySpace is not really a thing anymore because we could all go check that out. But there you go. So fast forward to four years ago, 2020. You're in April and trying to figure this out and you love entrepreneurship. Why do you with everything that was going on at that point, why did you think that was the right route versus trying to find an actual gig somewhere? 

[00:06:33] Kate Jacoutot: Yeah, everyone thinks I’m crazy for doing it right then and there. Honestly, I didn't have much of a choice. So, I knew I wanted to start a business It wasn't like I was forced into it. I was definitely like I want to do it someday.

I was only 26 at the time. So, I was pretty young to be like, I wouldn't think I had the, chops to start it. But frankly, I was interviewing at MailChimp. I was interviewing at some of these other larger Atlanta companies and hiring budgets were frozen. I had a mortgage to pay and about six months of savings in the bank.

I was like, I can't count on these businesses. I can't count on the world. So, let's see if I can. It was kind of, the decision was made for me and I think it was a blessing in disguise. 

[00:07:18] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah, I've got to imagine that was very tough time to interview and I'm sure the interview process was weird too, because maybe you couldn't go in, and we didn't have all the webcams and all that stuff really set up at that point. Even that process probably must have been very difficult for you. 

Was there an aha moment in that process of where you were like, okay, I can't count on … you mentioned you can't count on them, you can count on yourself. Was there a moment that just everything clicked for you like, I'm giving up on this and doing my own thing? 

[00:07:54] Kate Jacoutot: I can't think of anything that comes to mind but what I will say is that I had I journal a lot. Religiously, I journal. Because it helps me. Your thoughts are like all over the place and journaling kind of helps you lay them out and really understand your thoughts more effectively. And so I was doing like pros and con lists, like what if I were to build a company, what would it be like? What do I want it to be like? 

I think just slowly, but surely. And also just, it was like doors would open. So for example, one of the companies I was interviewing for, they actually became a client because I was just like, your hiring budget’s frozen. I'm about to go do this freelancing thing. Do you guys want to be a client? And getting a contractor is way less expensive and way less risk for them than hiring an employee. So, they were like, yeah. And yes, it wasn't, like one moment, but it was like a thousand little moments. 

[00:08:48] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. That's an interesting little hack there. And I think that's a good piece of advice for other listeners out there. If you want to have maybe a company be a client, maybe go in an interview for a job and then tell them like, "Oh, actually I'm going to just do my own thing. You want to be a client?" That might be a great way of bootstrapping a business right there.

I've never heard that idea before, okay. So, when you were starting this was there anything that made you particularly nervous about doing this or was it like "Hey, this is what it's got to be. So it's got to work." Or was there something that kept you up at night? 

[00:09:25] Kate Jacoutot: Oh my gosh, everything.

I never slept. I was just constantly in like high stress. My shoulders were perpetually at my ears just protecting my neck. I'm just kidding. Plenty of things made me nervous. The big one that comes to mind is charging my worth. Or just figuring out what is my worth. That's a really hard thing to quantify.

And you want to strike the balance of, especially when you're coming in at that time, global pandemic, everyone's budgets are cut. I had to be scrappy, but I also needed to make enough money to make a living. I wanted and I had every intention of hiring employees. You need to make a certain margin to do that.

And one thing that was really, helpful is my fiancé, then boyfriend now fiancé, he's also a business owner. And so, he'd be listening in on my calls and during the pandemic and he would just be like, "Double it."

Women have a tendency to undervalue themselves. And so that was a really helpful force that I think I definitely needed. 

[00:10:33] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. And I think you're right about women, but I think also in general entrepreneurs. We, especially early on where it's honestly more critical that you price appropriately, we tend to undervalue the things that we're doing for people. So you had that person in the house then that was helping you. Was there anybody else that was helping you along nudging you in the right direction?

[00:10:58] Kate Jacoutot: I'm fortunate enough to have multiple entrepreneurs in my family. My dad was like a very late blooming entrepreneur. I think he started his first business in his fifties. And so, he has the before and after aspect of working for the man and then starting his own thing. And then my brother is also an entrepreneur.

And having them as a resource to call up and be like, how do I even hire? Like, how do you do a W2 employee? How should I run payroll? I was literally my first employee. I would write them checks out of my personal banking account because I didn't understand how to do it.

I needed a lot of help. 

[00:11:41] Sanjay Parekh: That's story is every entrepreneur the first time they become an entrepreneur and do things. That is not unusual I would say. Maybe not payroll like that, but it's other things. Quick question your dad and your brother what kind of entrepreneurs are they?

What kind of businesses do they run? 

[00:12:01] Kate Jacoutot: So, my dad runs a management consultancy and it's also like a sales training company, so they'll go in and train your sales teams up. And then my brother owns a healthcare staffing company. 

[00:12:14] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. Okay. Awesome. So, both people-heavy businesses as well. And so having to deal with things like payroll, it's good that you had that there.

[00:12:27] Adam Walker: Support for this podcast comes from Hiscox, committed to helping small businesses protect their dreams since 1901. Quotes and information on customized insurance for specific risks are available at Hiscox.com. Hiscox, business insurance experts.

[00:12:48] Sanjay Parekh: Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about the stress of doing this and owning your own business, because presumably you're working at home. Work can be all the time. So how do you deal with the stress of having a business and starting it up, especially during the pandemic, and dealing with family life and personal life and all of those things?

[00:13:13] Kate Jacoutot: I almost said I'm fortunate enough to not have kids, but that's not what I mean. I just mean like I have a little bit more bandwidth because I don't have kids yet. The fact that both me and my fiancé are business owners, yeah, it's definitely balance is always an ongoing challenge for us.

In terms of like how, so many parts of my business have been challenging to me and I always refer to it as like my sole curriculum. I'm like, this is how it was meant to be. I'm supposed to be learning these lessons. I value doing a good job in my job, for sure. That's really, really important to me.

But I also value balance and mindfulness and connection with friends, family, community. I guess the best way to describe how I balance the demands is just you have to set boundaries and that's why I say it's like part of the sole curriculum. I'm a people pleaser I am terrible at setting boundaries But it I mean you are forced to when you're in this spot.

[00:14:15] Sanjay Parekh: Right, yeah. So you and your fiancé are both business owners. Do you do boundaries around when you're allowed to talk about work business, like our weekend sacred, is there any line? Or is it, "Hey, this is a free for all, this is life, and we talk about business whenever it comes up?" 

[00:14:32] Kate Jacoutot: It's a great question.

We used to not have any limits on it, and I think it, it can quickly become like, okay, "Let's debrief after your work day." But we actually read this book, and I highly recommend it for all couples, not just entrepreneurs, but couples in general, it's called Eight Dates. It's by John and Julie Gottman.

Anyway, we read this book together, as we were moving in together. And one of the recommendations that I had was like, have one dedicated date night per week where you don't talk about work. You don't talk about logistics of your life. You're just focusing on each other, being curious about each other.

So that is something that we do every week, even if it's something like going on a walk, okay, fine. That's a date, that works. But it's just having that. I think the big thing with entrepreneurship is, because you don't have so much structure around you, you have to have intention and build in that structure into your life.

[00:15:29] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, that's a really good piece of advice and I might have to pick up that book as well. I've never read that before. 

[00:15:36] Kate Jacoutot: It’s great. It’s excellent. 

[00:15:39] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. What else do you do to keep yourself on a routine or do you have a routine, for your daily work life, regular life? Is there a certain time you go to bed, wake up, things that you do during the day?

[00:15:52] Kate Jacoutot: Yeah. I want to just say this for all of the people like listening to this because I am not an early riser and I feel like every entrepreneur I know is like "I'm up at 4 a.m. and I’m working out" and I'm like, no that is not me. 

[00:16:06] Sanjay Parekh: I'm with you, Kate! 

[00:16:08] Kate Jacoutot: No, yeah, I think I mean my routine has evolved over the course of the last four years. I think I didn't have much of one. I lived in the middle of midtown Atlanta. Whenever I first started the business, my dog helped me because I was like, she's got to get outside, like we got to go walk. So I would do like lunch walks or whatever. And then over time, it slowly evolved to where I actually do have a routine now.

I have a lot, I've got exercise incorporated every single day, but it has been a journey getting there. But in terms of routine, it's just waking up, making sure you have time for yourself in the morning. Then it's, going outside, letting the sun hit your face. I know that's very minor, but it's it really does make a difference.

And then, doing your work, taking a break periodically. It's really hard to do for me sometimes, but I hate myself for it afterwards if I don't. You just get crankier. But yeah, then after work, it's just having some sort, especially since you work from home, it's like you have to have some sort of delineation between the work day and the home day. So I'll either do a walk or I like to cook dinner most nights, so it's like that, you're doing something with your hands versus looking at a screen. And then, I don't do any screen time or whatever after, really, 9 p.m. I try to read every night. 

[00:17:29] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, your exercise routine; is that at a specific time every single day? Is it consistent or is it just gets fit in wherever it is? 

[00:17:38] Kate Jacoutot: Right now, it's getting fit in wherever I can because my schedule — I’ve got a lot of clients that have client calls. So they sometimes pop up, but like I said, this has been an evolving journey for me and it's like I every intention of having that structure built in. I just need to keep working on it.

But yeah, it's gotten so much better than when it started. 

[00:18:02] Sanjay Parekh: You mentioned you read after nine o'clock. Is that's a part of your routine going to bed? Is there a consistent time that you go to bed every day? 

[00:18:12] Kate Jacoutot: It's like usually between 10:30 and 11:30, I'm definitely more of a night owl.

And I think sometimes if, especially if I don't take breaks during the day, I want to stay up all night. Because I'm just like, I want to play. I want to have fun. You know what I mean? I try to have that routine so that I'm well rested the next day and then I can take breaks.

[00:18:34] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. You launched it in 2020 as a sole founder, sole entrepreneur, is it still just you or do you have a team as well? 

[00:18:45] Kate Jacoutot: Oh, yeah, I have a team of four right now. 

[00:18:49] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, so you've grown the company. But when you started or even now, are there any kind of technologies or apps or systems that you put into place that have helped you grow into this and manage the growth? 

[00:19:05] Kate Jacoutot: Sure, yeah, I use a like a project management tool called ClickUp. That one's really great for just keeping track of everyone's workload, making sure that nobody's completely overwhelmed, seeing where projects stand with various clients.

I also use Headspace, which isn't really like necessarily a work management app, but it's a meditation app. Because again, I think with entrepreneurship the name of the game is intention, having intention, setting intention. And Headspace has just been such an incredible app for me just to have a practice every day.

And this is like very like basic, but I really use my, I'm an Apple user and I have the notes app and I have every aspect of my life in the notes app. I have folders for each client. Each employee has a folder, my health has a folder, my wedding planning has a folder, everything has a folder on this notes app and it's just, you get these ideas throughout the day and you want to jot them down.

It's just a really easy way to quickly jot them down and then be able to revisit them later. Like I just have different categories. I have a thought leadership post idea. It's boom, put it in there. 

[00:20:19] Sanjay Parekh: You sound like the, the digital version of Monica from Friends, with her wedding binder that she started, you've got the digital version of that for your wedding.

[00:20:29] Kate Jacoutot: I do. I hate that, but I think that's probably right. 

[00:20:33] Sanjay Parekh: I think that's a good thing. I think it keeps you very organized and that's a great thing. I am very envious. I'm not probably nearly as organized as I should be. That's a great thing. So, you've been doing this now for a few years and knowing what you know now, is there something that you've now learned that you wish you would have known back then? Or that you could have gone back and do differently knowing what you know? 

[00:21:00] Kate Jacoutot: I feel like every single mistake I've made has helped me. I don't think I would be where I am without them, so it's like hard to say. But what I would say is that as somebody who's very risk averse, as somebody who, I think I'm just very self-critical and I think that if I had one thing I would do differently, it’s just be a bit kinder to yourself.

When you're first starting a business, you just see the mountain ahead of you like, "Oh, if I want to get to a million dollars in revenue, here's what has to happen. Oh, I'm never going to get there. How am I supposed to operationalize this process, whatever, like, how am I supposed to make something rinse and repeat, scale it, nurture employees, make sure that they feel fulfilled in their jobs?" All of those things feel like an impossible mountain to climb. And I think if you compare your chapter one to somebody else's chapter 20, it can be really, really discouraging. And I think that's probably my own worst enemy is me.

[00:22:00] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, and I think we see that a lot in the media too; highlighting these entrepreneurs who succeeded and everything, but they don't show what happened in the early days because nobody knew who they were in the early days. So, nobody was writing stories about them back in the early days.

And so, entrepreneurs that are starting out now, you're still in your early days and nobody's writing the story about you because it's not interesting yet, and it's only going to be interesting later. 

[00:22:29] Kate Jacoutot: So I feel like everyone always says, Oh yeah, the highs are high and the lows are low. It's that intellectually when you go into entrepreneurship, but then it's like, when you actually feel those highs and lows for yourself, they take on a life of their own.

The lows are those moments where you're just like, "Oh my gosh, I'm never going to be able to do all this stuff," but then it's like the highs, you almost get like egotistical because you're like, "Wow, I did that. Wow. That's amazing." And then it just kicks you down back to the low because you're like, big head, too big for your britches. 

[00:22:58] Sanjay Parekh: And I think it's important to have either a team around you or somebody you can bounce things off of, because yeah, it is super easy to have people around you when the when you're on the highs because everybody wants to party. But nobody wants to be around what the lows hit because that is not a fun scene and as entrepreneurs, that's the scene that we have to live through.

And that's the scene that you're actually getting, you know, that's where you make the money. That's what we get paid to do as being entrepreneurs. With that in mind. What's some advice that you'd tell somebody who's thinking about taking the leap and starting a small business like you did?

[00:23:39] Kate Jacoutot: There's probably two things I would say. One is, if you solve the problems of whatever customer base you're serving, you're going to solve your own problems. That's a lot of businesses get, again with the egocentricity of sometimes entrepreneurship can bring to it. It's very easy to be like, "I know how to do this and I'm the expert here." And it's like no, no, no, you're here to create value, whether that's a product or a service. So I think that's a really important thing. Just keep your business customer-focused and your problems will probably solve themselves.

The other thing I would say is, it's really easier said than done, but trying to strike the balance between focus and flexibility, because it's not an easy one to strike and it's hard to discern the right time to pivot versus stay the course. For example, with ModusMark, whenever we first started. I was like, I was a marketing generalist. I worked in startup B2B marketing, so I knew a lot of little, I knew a little bit about a lot of different areas of marketing and I was a generalist. So, every, but when I was talking to agency owners about what should I do to start this business? They were like, find a niche.

And I was like, okay, yeah. Let me just do that as a generalist. I wasn't quite ready to define my niche. But I knew it was important. So, I was looking for it, searching for it. And then, we got, like I said, we found that niche in cybersecurity. That wasn't intentional.

It was me being open and being like, we're good at this. Let's keep going down here. And then it's okay, say there was like a, I guess this is a recession, it's okay, when do we say maybe we want to open it up to another vertical? It's just trying to find that balance. But I think it's an important thing to think about and also, just stay true to your values. I think that's also helpful with that. 

[00:25:43] Sanjay Parekh: That focus in on that one area, cyber security. How soon into building ModusMark did that happen for you? 

[00:25:55] Kate Jacoutot: One of our first clients was a cyber security client. I wasn't convinced that was our niche at that point but what happened was, I got the opportunity to basically redo their brand and one of the things with cyber security marketing is like, marketers just think of this very like a caricature of what cybersecurity is.

They always have the hacker guys with the hoods and the Guy Fawkes mask. That's like all of the marketing and cybersecurity. So, it's just wow, a lot of people are missing the mark here on this. And it was just also, you think about 2020 cybersecurity businesses boomed in 2020 because of all of the cyber attacks, right? 

It was a huge time for people moving to remote work that was challenging for bigger companies that had all their stuff on prem and they had to move to remote. Great opportunity for hackers to come in. So, I was just like looking at I guess the market context and then the need in that market because there was not very good marketing in that area, and then our skill set. 

[00:27:11] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, that's interesting and very fortunate timing, I suppose that you started the company in 2020 just as everything, everybody went online?

[00:27:21] Kate Jacoutot: Yeah. 

[00:27:22] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, Kate, this has been absolutely fantastic. Where can our listeners find and connect with you? 

[00:27:30] Kate Jacoutot: Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn. Also, my website, katejacoutot.com. If you can't spell my last name, that's okay. Modusmark.com is where katejacoutot.com redirects to, so I would say our website and then on LinkedIn. 

[00:27:48] Sanjay Parekh: Awesome. Thanks so much for being on today. 

[00:27:50] Kate Jacoutot: Thank you, Sanjay.

[00:27:55] Sanjay Parekh: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit Hiscox.com. And to hear more Side Hustle to Small Business stories, or share your own story, please visit Hiscox.com/side-hustle-to-small-business. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find out more about me at my website, SanjayParekh.com.