My First 100 Days as a CMO — Part 2
— By Roi “Rio” Mit, Excel 2014
I recently began a new role as CMO of Regulus Cyber. Last month, I wrote about my top 5 activities BEFORE joining the team. (Check out the article here.)
Now’s when it gets exciting…my first 100 days on the job! Here are my top 5 activities DURING the first 100 days:
1. DO NOTHING
I kid you not this is one of the best tips I got from another CMO. Making decisions and engaging in action at the start is a novice mistake made by many excited new employees, because they want to make a great first impression by showing they are “doers.” This is especially dangerous if you are a “C” level exec that can make a decision that will affect the entire company.
The right thing to do is to simply watch and learn from your peers for the first few weeks. You will be instantly contacted by many vendors, conference organizers, skilled salesmen, advertisers etc. and they will try to convince you to invest money to start creating traction and brand for your company. Don’t. Wait and be patient, take your time until you understand your market and your team before you start going full-on CMO.
In the picture: My desk
2. FOSTER your relationship — Sit down with every single person at your company.
If there is one takeaway from this list, it would be this. Spend time with as many people at your company as possible in your first few weeks. Learn, ask questions, listen, get to know them, both as an employee and as a person. Ask for the names of their children, hobbies, pets, aspirations, background, other talents etc.
I spent my first few weeks doing meetings with every single person in the company, with my official excuse as providing “social media training” which was true and we did end up with incredible LI profiles for each member of our team. But what I found incredibly valuable was the 1-on-1 opportunities with each employee. Startups are tiny, practically like families, and you are going on a long, tough journey. Developing these relationships proved instrumental in our capability to cooperate down the road on things like the company video, preparing for conferences and participating in Branding\PR activities.
3. BUILD your brand — Your people, New Website, New Video, Social, PR.
This is obviously the main things every CMO is dealing with at some point, but I urge you to prioritize this. When I joined Regulus, I started taking over the website project which was already moving and drafting the company video, the social media strategy and our PR goals for the short and long term.
These things take a long time, and because I started immediately, by CES19 (which was a major and important event for us) we had a powerful brand, backed by an amazing site, an incredible movie, lots of media attention and great social channels to back us.
Also, I made sure to give our founders and senior engineering team as much exposure and stage time as possible. People Brand = Company Brand.
4. MEET the market, understand the structure, the process and the professional terms.
Marketers spend a lot of time in front a computer, they don’t really interact with prospects and leads due to the inbound nature of the job. However, you can’t really market to an industry you don’t understand. I decided to attend at least one conference of each market segment we are targeting, hence I attended conferences in maritime, automotive, aviation and mobile.
These conferences provided me with two crucial insights: First, that each industry has very different reasons for using our product, and the messaging required for each one to highlight our offering to them. And second, prioritizing the limited marketing resources properly to focus on the low ‘hanging fruits’ in the short term while aiming for the high potential ones in the longer term.
I also made friends in each market segment following these conferences, these friends are high ranking executives in companies in each segment which I consult from time to time on which conferences to attend and understanding different industry wide issues.
5. PLAN the budget, the goals, the strategy and the 5-year vision.
Acting with a budget makes life so much easier, you don’t spend uncontrollably and you get a sense of control even when you do spend on new things that don’t always work.
It was very tiring and frustrating creating a massive Excel sheet trying to predict every cost but having one Google sheet where I can find my budget AND my plan for 2019 is incredible. This is my guidebook that I turn to on a daily basis and I use this file often to make purchasing decisions knowing that every choice I make comes at the expense of another.
Also, your activities are going to create a noticeable bump in the company’s burn-rate. I made sure to proactively sit down with my CEO and provided a clear heads up on my planned expenses and to reach a mutual agreement. Trust me: you don’t want it the other way when the CEO suddenly realizes you are shortening his financial runway and he did not plan for it.
Up next… after my first 100 days as CMO! In the meanwhile, contact me at roi@regulus.com if you have any questions. I also welcome any criticism\advice.
Roi “Rio” Mit is a 2014 Birthright Israel Excel Fellow. He is the Chief Marketing Officer at Regulus Cyber, the first company focusing on cyber defense for sensors. Sensors are key components of vehicles on the ground, in the air, and at sea, and Regulus provides cutting-edge technology to protect these sensors that are present in critical infrastructure across all industries and applications.
Roi, a sales and marketing expert, has a background in supporting both corporate and startup companies. He brings years of marketing experience and has held various leadership roles, including Director of Marketing & Sales for ParaZero Drone Safety Systems, as well as Digital Marketing Specialist at WalkMe.
Roi previously worked as a debate instructor, pitch consultant and a tech journalist. He also served as an officer in Israel Defense Forces foreign relations unit, including serving abroad as military attaché assistant. And still serves in the reserve force as a UN peacekeeping operations coordinator.
Roi volunteers as a startup founders mentor in WeWork Labs and InVent Haifa Accelerator, as a speaker for SpaceIL, and as a financial consultant for families in need. In his free time, he is snowboarding the alps, scuba diving the red sea and gaming on his PC (wow,sc2,lol,tf2).
