Devin Bramhall is a Business Growth Advisor and a leading voice on the strategic role of storytelling in business.
With over 15 years of marketing and leadership experience across startups, agencies, and large corporations, Devin helps companies increase their revenue and build stronger, more authentic brands. She is the former CEO of Animalz, the leading content marketing agency for B2B SaaS companies, where she doubled revenue to nearly $12M in two years. Devin also served as Executive Director of Boston Content, where she more than doubled both membership and revenue through community-driven programming. She is set to release her first book, B2B Content Marketing Strategy, later this year.
How did you land your current role? Was it planned?
My most recent fractional gig landed on me! It’s your typical network story that culminates over years.
The CEO of Everest, Jenn Sammarco, landed in my inbox via Naomi Walker, who I met through Jordan Wan, founder of CloserIQ (now Formative Search Partners) years earlier while I was running Animalz. Jordan reached out to me in early 2023 and asked me to join a conversation with him and his team for a casual growth mastermind sesh. Naomi was the Director of GTM and Ops at CloserIQ at the time, and we hit it off. Months later, she reached out when she joined Essence VC as Head of Platform and began referring clients to me from their portfolio. My first call with Jenn was November 2024 – I spoke with her from my hotel room while at Marketing Profs’ B2B Forum in Boston. I had just started writing my book and was on deadline for my next batch of chapters, which were due like the next day.
Everest is an emerging leader in the fractional executive assistant space, offering a premium service to C-Suite leaders and other high net-worth individuals. In a space crowded with virtual assistants who focus on basic administrative tasks like inbox management and calendar scheduling, Everest hires experienced executive assistants who offer a broader range of services and a more white glove experience. Similar to Animalz when I joined, they’re the right product at the right time and stand to win big.
They needed someone to come in and stand up an end-to-end growth motion that included CX, marketing and sales. Many companies over-segment their customer journey in part by creating different departments for each of the three functions. They create a journey they want their customers to follow rather than observing where they are engaging naturally and building around their organic behaviors. Everest understands that effective – and cost efficient – growth strategy is built on a single customer experience story that is built around their real life behaviors, intrinsic motivators, challenges, desires and vision for their future.
In three months, I created their growth motion that consisted of CEO-driven customer acquisition and team-driven brand awareness among EA community to build talent pipeline. To fill in the gaps in expertise, I hired specialized contractors to execute the growth functions I included in my plan like an integrated PR/SEO agency that specializes in thought leadership and a LinkedIn strategist to create CEO-driven customer pipeline. Finally, I optimized their business model for higher gross margins and made minor adjustments to the team to increase productivity through role clarity, goal and expectation setting, and aligning with each teammate’s intrinsic motivations.
What are the key roles in your field of work, and why did you choose your current expertise?
If you’re climbing the marketing ladder and want to get to the top, you’re going for Chief Marketing Officer, but I’ve never wanted that job. Once you get to CMO, you’re basically executive middle management. You’re creating and managing budgets, making countless decks to present to stakeholders to get approval. You’re in countless meetings with the CEO, CTO, CFO, Sales, etc, re-convincing them that the plan and budget they agreed to is working and should continue. You’re hiring teams, assigning targets, and attending more meetings to ensure they’re on track and on budget. That’s never appealed to me, because you’re operating just one cog in the growth wheel, which consists of CX, Marketing, and Sales, so you’re job is basically negotiating up, down, and sideways all the time. Meanwhile, you’re less effective because you spend all your time getting alignment. And when it comes time to report on your KPIs, no one remembers the hoops they made you jump through, so you’re held responsible by your C-suite peers, all of whom decide you’re a terrible CMO. And on top of that:
- The CEO continues believing that marketing “takes five minutes” and that they know how to do it better than the CMO because “anyone can do marketing.”
- The CTO is vindicated because they said all along that the product sells itself, and they know how to market it better than the CMO anyway.
- The CTO is psyched for a line item to come off the P&L. They don’t know how marketing works, and that’s just fine with them, because ultimately they just care about having a “logical” budget that appears to cover necessities at the lowest cost possible.
The Chief Growth Officer purview includes sales, marketing, and CX. Having all of those functions under one roof makes execution easier and more cost-effective. As I’ve considered a few CMO roles that have come my way, they just looked boring and like child’s play in comparison. It was like deciding between a management job and a visionary job. I chose the latter.
Did you (or do you) have a role model in tech or business in general?
Me, finally. It took me 42 years to believe in myself, and I’m never going back.
What are you most proud of in your career, so far?
The people I helped.
What does an average work day look like for you?
I don’t have average workdays, and that’s one of my favorite things about my job. While routine is helpful, I get burned out when my days are too predictable. That’s why I like working in the C-Suite. Most days, I’m working with a CEO on strategy and planning, sharing information back and forth from the team and the board, and solving issues no one else could solve.
The problem-solving is really my favorite part. For me, it’s like making a puzzle rather than putting an existing puzzle together. I have all these elements like constraints, blockers, desired outcomes, time, people (in different roles) and their emotions, motivations, triggers, etc. It’s like drawing the picture of the puzzle while I’m putting the pieces together and I don’t know what it will look like until I’m finished.
Are there any specific skills or traits that you notice companies look for when you’re searching for roles in your field?
Yes, but it doesn’t matter. Most companies don’t know how to break down what they want in their minds into criteria in a job description, so they copy other JDs or use a template. Those are all generic and don’t do a great job filtering out right and wrong-fit candidates. Just apply for the jobs you want and see what happens. Just please, for the love of happiness and fun, write an interesting cover letter. Don’t repeat what’s in your resume; tell me a story. Show me you want the job. Surprise me. Make me laugh. Just stop trying to do what everyone else does, because it doesn’t help you stand out, it just makes you look boring.
Has anyone ever tried to stop you from learning and developing in your professional life, or have you found the tech sector supportive?
Yes, they have. No, I haven’t.
I’ve always said that the tech sector is where good behavior goes to die. I learned a TON working in this industry because of its Darwinian environment – that was part of the fun. It also led to some of the worst days of my life.
Although I can’t say for sure that I would choose another path if I had the chance.
Have you ever faced insecurities and anxieties during your career, and how did you overcome them?
LOL. Yes, obviously! I remember when I became CEO of Animalz, I thought I was a total imposter, because I was homeschooled, went to a no-name college, and didn’t go to business school. I decided I needed some CEO friends, so they could fill me in on all the things I didn’t know. I remember presenting a challenge to one of my new CEO friends, sharing my proposed solution, and asking what they thought.
“Yeah, that sounds right,” they replied. “Sounds right?!?! You mean you don’t know??” I asked. They laughed, “No, of course not! None of us do!”
Everything is made up by a human person at some point and some of it becomes popular and then everyone just does it that way for some reason. There’s no God of Finance or Marketing (though if you’re in the legal profession, I suppose there’s a little less flexibility…or more, I never can tell). It’s just brains and bodies making stuff up all the time and acting like they did it on purpose. Realizing that made me way less concerned about the “right way” and “wrong way” to do things, and instead, I learned to use my brain to come up with ideas that seemed logical to me.
Entering the world of work can be daunting. Do you have any words of advice for anyone feeling overwhelmed?
If you’re overwhelmed, you’re probably pursuing something that doesn’t serve you. Listen to your body, your heart, and that voice you keep ignoring. The people who make others feel like they “should” do anything are insecure and extremely emotionally stunted. Why would you want to follow in those footsteps?
Listen to your gut. Try things that interest you. Waste time. Remain curious and call on bravery when you need it. Learning is uncomfortable, so be prepared. But if you’re overwhelmed, then it’s worth paying attention to it. Take it for a walk or out for coffee. Ask it questions, and then more and more. Don’t judge it or try to change it. As my mom always told me, when you fall in love with the parts of yourself you want to change, like really adore them and giggle about them “oh, silly you, you did it again, lol” you’ll wake up one day and realize that whatever it was went away all on its own.
What advice would you give other women wanting to reach their career goals in technology?
I wrote 10 answers to this question, and each one was so depressing that I had to delete them.
Here’s the thing: nothing has changed. It’s still a boys’ club in tech, and misogyny is thriving. Most men and women are so completely unaware of their bias and bad behavior that when you attempt to address even the tiniest thing with them, they get really angry. It’s weird.
Women are still “hysterical” when they are calm and speaking in a relaxed tone. Tech and VC bros, well, they’re still around, and they still don’t operate on logic or reason. And they definitely think you’re dramatic.
So here’s my advice:
- Don’t believe a single thing anyone says about you. Listen to it with the objectivity of a scientist. Document it (record all your calls). Ask follow-up questions requesting even more detail and examples of whatever they are saying. I call this asking into a corner. Your goal is to appear genuinely curious in whatever bullshit they just said by asking for examples, “helping you understand” what exactly you said that indicated to them you were yelling. Or, point to the conversation in Slack in which you said whatever the heck they are falsely accusing you of?
- Don’t ask forgiveness, say “you’re welcome”. You know what you’re doing as much or more than any of the rest of us do, and if you sit around waiting for tech people to get their shit together, you’re never going to get anything done. If someone gets pissed off, that’s ok. They’ll be pissed anyway after they’ve ordered you to do something stupid and it doesn’t work. Sure, you’ll piss some people off. Men, especially, are so emotional and it really comes out sideways at work. Just remember: you don’t have to stay and listen. You can politely leave the room or the Zoom and offer to chat when they are ready to have a professional conversation.
- You’re not stuck, you’re just making up stories. This is tech, not the ER. You’re not dealing with real-life gunshot wounds; you’re dealing with real-life inflated egos. You have more power than you think. You’re also less important than you think (which is a good thing), and realizing that puts you in a strategic, problem-solving mindset vs whatever BS you’re telling yourself about how you “have to”, “don’t have a choice”, etc. Those beliefs are useless, and frankly, they are on you. Change your attitude, change your life (just don’t expect it all to happen immediately. You’re in an infinite game, not a finite one.)
- Stop being so judgmental. Yeah, you do it too. Judging is not strategic. And anyway, unless you’re in the C-Suite or above, you don’t have all the context, so you’re definitely more wrong than you know. If you’ve closed your eyes to any possibility aside from what you’ve decided, you’re going to alienate people, and you’re kind of a monster, too. Focus on the outcome you’re trying to achieve. Be curious about the behaviors and motivations of others. Develop relationships with everyone you can. You’ll have a lot more leverage to get your way than standing on your soapbox with your gavel, Judge Judy-ing everyone.
Most importantly, remember that you’re working in an industry that trades in beep-boop-bop, 1s and 0s, and lately, a whole bunch of desperate ideas that are really just the next “Uber for…”
Try to have fun. And if you’re not, go work somewhere else. Most people in tech are doing really boring stuff that doesn’t matter, and the reason they get money to do it often has little to do with the quality of the idea anyway. Go find something you like to do, and remember there are tons of “boring” industries that also pay well. Non-boring ones too.
You’re on the right track, even when it doesn’t look or feel like it. Trust me…just don’t believe me 😉
