The Unscripted Leader: Revenue Over Random

In this episode of The Unscripted Leader, host Steve Margerin sits down with Jennifer Zick, founder and CEO of Authentic®, to discuss the journey of building a values-driven business and the evolving role of marketing leadership in driving revenue growth. Jennifer shares how losing her corporate job led her to launch Authentic in 2017, what inspired the company’s commitment to authenticity and healthy business growth, and how the fractional CMO model helps companies move beyond random acts of marketing toward strategic, sustainable results.

Throughout the conversation, Jennifer and Steve explore the importance of aligning sales and marketing, the power of values-driven leadership, and how experienced fractional executives can help organizations navigate growth, complexity, and change. They also reflect on leadership lessons, the weight of executive decision-making, and what it takes to build strong teams and long-lasting client partnerships.

Watch the Full Episode

Key Takeaways

• Most companies struggle with random acts of marketing. It’s part of the entrepreneurial journey of moving from founder-led, sales-driven, to strategic growth.
• The most effective revenue growth happens when sales and marketing operate as an aligned revenue team focused on the entire customer journey, not just lead generation.
• Fractional executives provide value because they can bring experienced leadership, objectivity, and strategic truth-telling without internal politics or organizational bias.
• Modern marketing success requires moving beyond “little m marketing” (sales support) to “big M marketing,” which connects brand, customer experience, retention, and advocacy into a full revenue growth flywheel.

Resources Mentioned

• The Components of Authentic Growth® Methodology
• Authentic in the News
• Why EOS® Companies Struggle with Marketing: The “Little m Dilemma”

Full Transcription

Introduction

Steve Margerin: Welcome back everybody to the Unscripted Leader with your host Steve Margerin. Thanks for joining us today. I am really excited for our guest, Jennifer Zick. Jennifer Zick is the founder and CEO of Authentic and also serves on the board for the association for Corporate Growth in Minnesota. Everybody knows the well known M and A community with chapters around the world and also serves on several corporate boards. And in 2024 she was named Woman in Business award for from Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal and Enterprising Women magazine. In 2023 added Jennifer to the list of Enterprising women of the year. And if you don’t know, Authentic, it was recently named number 12 business journals FAST 50 and in 2025 named to the Inc. 5000 list representing one of the fastest growing private companies in America. 

And all the while Jennifer somehow was able to earn the awards for best places to work in both 2023 and 2024. So authentic founded in 2017. 2017. And if everybody just please join me in welcoming Jennifer Zick to the show. Welcome Jennifer. Thanks for having, thanks for being here. 

Jennifer Zick: I’m delighted. Thank you for including me. 

Steve Margerin: Yeah, for sure. And you know, this is an exciting one. You know, we’ve talked a lot about leadership and obviously in talking about Authentic, you know, I’m really excited to hear a little bit about the genesis of Authentic and a little bit about the values. Right. Because number one on the value list is Authentic for authentic. And we love talking about authentic leadership. So tell me a little bit about, you know, the genesis and how you came to Those values. 

Jennifer Zick: Yeah. Thank you. Well, like you said, Authentic was launched in 2017, and it was a venture born at my kitchen table with just me, myself and I building a business plan, arguing over my values with myself. And I started the company not because I had some like, long calculated plan to be an entrepreneur, but because I had suffered the greatest blessing ever, which was losing my job for the first time on my corporate climb. 

And when I lost that role, I was kind of faced with evaluating my life and taking stock and inventory. And nine years ago, I was a mom of three littles and middles at that point, and I was really exhausted being on airplanes and being away from my family, which is my number one priority. 

So I just recalibrated and decided I wanted to take everything I had learned up to that point, put a bet on myself and build a company that would allow me to love my life and love my work and be present in a way that I could build a family while building a business. And so I was really blessed to do that. 

And like you said, authenticity is the first among our five core values. And as I was at my kitchen table writing this business plan and trying to think of what I would name the company, I didn’t even know what the model would be yet. I had a hypothesis of some of the things that I wanted to work on solving in the world. But I knew more than anything that I wanted to help build healthy, profitable, values driven authentic brands. 

And so that was where it came from. I didn’t want to have any hand in forcing unhealthy, unnatural growth that hurt cultures and minimize the value of humans. I wanted to build healthy businesses that do things the right way, authentically, and tell a story that’s real and can deliver on that brand promise. So that was the beginning. And that’s our name. 

Steve Margerin: Yeah. And you know, 17 years later. Right. Or however many nine years later. Nine years later. Right. I’ll work on the math. 

Jennifer Zick: Carry the one feels like a couple lifetimes on certain days, you know. 

Fractional CMO Business Model and Market Evolution

Steve Margerin: Yeah. Sometimes it feels like 17 years. Right, it does. So how has that progressed or evolved? You know, that from. I can think of, you know, I sitting down 15, 20 years ago, thinking through values and thinking what that would, you know, how that would evolve and what that means to me. And obviously for myself, that’s evolved a little bit over the last 20 years or so. How has it evolved for the company? 

Jennifer Zick: Yeah, well, we’ve always been very anchored in our values. And our five values are authenticity, wisdom, humility, passion, and generosity. And those Five values are the same today. But what I started to discover as our team grew and our national footprint grew, is that five words, even with a few definitions underneath them, weren’t quite enough to fully articulate what I wanted our business to be and how to behave and what the culture behind those values needed to be. And so several years ago, there was a speaker who came to my then Vistage group talking about how to operationalize values in the business. And I took that system and I built out what we now call our Authentic actions. So While we have five core values, we have 25 detailed Authentic actions. 

And if you were to go to our website, you would read about them. And it really brings to life how we live this out every single day. And we’ve embedded this within the operating rhythm of our business. So every single week on Monday morning, a different member of our team reads out the Authentic action of the week, shares a video on our Slack channel. So our values have continued to evolve in terms of the depth and the personal meaning that they take on for all of our staff. So it’s been really amazing to watch that grow and change. 

Steve Margerin: Sure. And you know, we’ve talked a couple times on the podcast about, you know, how do you institutionalize authenticity? And I love that, you know, you have the team engaging in kind of the, what does this mean to you on a, I think you said a weekly monthly basis, having them read through those actions. And that’s awesome. How have you seen that impact the culture or engagement from partners out, you know, peripheral from your organization? 

Jennifer Zick: Yeah, well, obviously we can’t mandate that everyone we ever work with has the same values that we have. But we are very clear seeking relationships where our values align. And as an example of that, our value of humility in the work that we do. My business is a fractional chief marketing officer firm. And so we have very senior level marketing leaders who work with growth companies as their heads of marketing. They sit on the leadership team and they lead that marketing strategy and the team and the execution forward in the work that we do. We approach our work very humbly. We bring humility with the confidence of experience. 

But we have a lot to learn from the clients and we need to work with clients who have enough humility to also recognize what they don’t know and to trust our role in that partnership and make space for that. And so as an example, you know, we’ve learned how to, first of all, kind of sniff out the right kinds of clients and partners where values align and can make our partnership effective. And I’ve always been very quick to lovingly disqualify or even fire relationships that are anti values where we simply cannot be effective because we’re bumping heads on things that at the core we’re not going to find alignment. 

So it helps us be really selective and thoughtful about entering into relationships, whether it’s who we hire, whether it’s the clients that we serve or the partners we collaborate with, making sure that we understand the core of each other’s values. And they line up. 

Steve Margerin: Yeah, and that came over time, I’m sure. And there’s probably some fun or not so fun horror stories. Whatever the case, I really like this idea of humble confidence. And I’d love to kind of hear the genesis of that. You know, certainly, you know, it’s clear in your current format or your current size and scale that you know, that has an impact as you’re talking with clients and as the CMOs are engaging with clients. But what was the genesis of this humble confidence? Because that’s a little unique, right? 

Jennifer Zick: Yeah. Well, in the marketing space, things move and change really quickly. Okay. And my career, my early career was in sales and then in sales management, and then I migrated over into marketing and I learned marketing the way a lot of early stage marketers learn it through trial and error and hit your head on a wall and then change direction. Right. Which is what we lovingly now call random acts of marketing. There’s no guilt or shame about committing random acts of marketing. It’s part of every company’s journey. But eventually, for those of us like myself, who were able to get through that phase and learn and grow and become senior level marketers, it’s important to bring confidence to that role because you’re an orchestrator of many hundreds and thousands of moving pieces. 

But it’s really important to bring humility to that role because there is no marketer that knows it all. No marketer that, despite their years of tenure and experience, can possibly know all the things in every situation and have all the answers. And so the way that we’ve adapted our business model to foster humility and confidence at the same time is that all of our CMOs, they’re W2 employees and they’re very committed to our clients and to our team. And we meet regularly through a group that we call mindshare. So all of our CMOs lay their armor down at the door, come into their mindshare meeting with their peers. There is no stupid question. It’s like, let’s learn from each other in real time and help unlock. 

When you’re meeting with 20 other CMOs from many industries and business models, you might not have the answer, but somebody in the room has seen something like that before. So we get to help each other and we get to bring that expertise, that exponential confidence to our clients. And so we can’t bring that if we’re not humble enough to first ask for help. 

Steve Margerin: Yeah, I love that. I love that. And let’s talk a little bit more about the fractional piece because I think, well, you and I, we could talk about that forever. Right. My part of my work is fractional. And you know, you’ve now grown certainly nationally. Let’s talk about this real opportunity in the marketplace that both you and I are seeing of the fractional marketing exec, or in my case, you know, fractional sales exec. You know, fractional as place, you know, has, you know, filled a real gap and that gap continues to grow and the opportunity for the use of fractional seems to continue to grow. There’s a new use cases and new places where it makes sense. How did you decide on fractional and how does that set up today? And then we’ll talk a little bit about where it’s going. 

Jennifer Zick: Yeah, well, this has been a fast changing ecosystem since my start. And like I mentioned, when I first started my business, I, I had some theories and hypotheses, but I didn’t have words to define my business model. I knew from my own experience of committing random acts of marketing and then leading teams away from random acts, I knew that most small to mid sized businesses don’t know what they’re doing strategically when it comes to marketing. And in the very early stages, that doesn’t matter as much because you have to be sales driven in order to achieve having a business. Right? But eventually you need strategic marketing, working with sales in order to grow and scale a healthy business. 

So my hypothesis in the beginning was if I can bring the experience and wisdom of a real orchestrator, an executive, to the table in a way that a smaller business could afford it flexibly, part time, we could help them overcome random acts of marketing and waste less time, waste less money, go through less churn, like just get them there faster with more confidence. And so that was where the model was born. And I still didn’t have the word fractional nine years ago. There really weren’t a lot of people in fractional sales marketing nine, ten years ago. But I started networking and talking with my peers about this is What I want to do, I want to bring senior level marketing leadership to businesses part time. And I learned the word when I started meeting fractional CFOs because they’ve been around a lot longer. 

I’m like, so for about six months I thought I invented fractional CMO.

Steve Margerin: And then they started popping up, and started realizing they’re out there. 

Jennifer Zick: There were a couple other organizations dabbling in it, which actually when I discovered that, made me feel good that okay, this is a marketplace and were early pioneers in it. And so it’s changed a lot because the first three years of me building a fractional CMO firm was about educating the world about what is a fractional CMO is and how Authentic uniquely delivers this service. And then during COVID and since everybody is familiar now with fractional CMO, but there are many different modalities and models of it and they are not all the same. So we can go there next. 

Client Segments and Strategic Advisory Roles

Steve Margerin: Yeah, for sure. And in fact, you know, one of the things that I often talk with business owners about is, you know, what is the difference between, you know, consulting or a strategic advisor who will give you a nice little, nice report. Right? Hey, here’s what you need to do and a fractional who actually implements and works along your team to make sure that you get execution and you get the results you’re seeking. So I assume you’re seeing that same conversation, right? 

Jennifer Zick: Absolutely. Yeah. So we’ve always been operating leaders at Authentic. We’ve never been there for like, let us come in and do a strategic plan and hand it back to you in high hopes that you can do something with it. Because the fact is it’s most likely going to collect dust or be met by people with good intentions who don’t have the experience and skills to guide it forward. And I always say that we’ve never wanted to be your next 90 day experiment in marketing and more money you spent and didn’t get to do anything with. So our approach is all about matching the right fit CMO to the company, to the client’s business model and their situation and then being with them on the journey. 

And this is where things have changed in the fractional world from my vantage point. Initially when I started the company, I thought that our role would maybe be about a 12 month horizon because we also have a proven methodology that we bring that teaches and embeds a marketing operating system for companies. Right. We call it Authentic Growth®. My original hypothesis was we’re going to get in there and be the operating Leader of the marketing organization for about 12 months. We’ll move them through several quarters of building this methodology and then we’ll either help them to promote somebody into the role or hire the right person full time. And nine years ago that model made sense because every client had that expectation. We’re going to bring this on full time once we know what it is. And that has shifted dynamically. 

We all have been living through a world of less and less predictability, a lot of turbulence and volatility. And what business leaders have come to understand is that it makes sense to maintain flexibility and to really focus on the core operating foundation of your business. That’s where your employment base should be focused. And anything that is outside of that core focus, having outside expertise with some flexibility around those roles is really helpful. 

So we have started to see our client engagements go much further than 12 months. A couple years ago they started being two to three years long. And now the clients we’re bringing on have the expectation that Authentic is really going to be a forever partner with them. And what we’re going to be doing as the CMO orchestrator is helping them now to build the modern marketing teams. 

Modern marketing teams can be much more effective today than they could have been nine years ago with the right combination of CMO leadership in house, kind of coordinator and program management and then the right agencies, contractors, offshore resources, AI solutions that create more productivity for every member of the team. So you can get a lot more bandwidth now through fractional leadership and you can get much further down the road than you could before. So it’s a pretty exciting time to be in this space. 

Steve Margerin: Yeah. And you know, I’ve seen that as well in my engagements that, you know, a lot can happen even in a year. Right. So over 12 months, the dynamics of markets and the levers of competition can change. That requires, hey, you know, I know we’re talking about a year, 18 month engagement, but there’s stuff going on that I want your senior level expertise on to help us kind of, you know, shepherd through this time before, you know, we look at a less senior person that doesn’t have this experience. And as that, you know, and then as that six months comes up, something else, you know. Right. So there’s this continual volatility that you know, that very senior folks like your cmos. Right. Can help stabilize in and amongst all the chaos. Right. So yeah, I’m seeing that as well. 

And I think that is a real lever point for small businesses that like you mentioned earlier typically may not be able to afford or invest in the type of senior leadership that you know, a fractional CMO at the level that you’re placing folks or that I work with clients at, that’s not something that’s on the menu for them typically. 

Jennifer Zick: Right, right. And there’s another interesting dynamic that we’ve been observing over the last two years at Authentic which is even though we’ve historically served small mid sized business and that’s still our core focus, businesses between 10 million to 250 million in revenue, that’s our sweet spot where if we come in as a fractional leader, we can truly own that seat, direct that department, all facets of it. But in the past couple years we have actually signed on several much larger companies that are over 500 million in revenue, all the way up to over a billion in revenue. 

And the dynamic that’s happening there is that there are some very established business ecosystems that have not traditionally done strategic marketing, whether that’s in construction and those industries that have been very sales and biz dev led or like third and fourth generation family owned businesses that have been very sales driven up until now. And these businesses that have achieved incredible success and breadth and girth but have never had a truly strategic marketing focus and they don’t know how to exactly build that team and that capability doesn’t mean they’re not spending money on it. 

So we’ve been engaging with much larger businesses and coming in now from that more strategic advisory role but as a long term partner with them because turning the, you know, turning a large ship takes more time than turning as you know, the small one. 

So having a long term strategic advisor because many of our CMOs have come out of large corporate as well as worked in small business, they understand both sides of that coin and it’s really rewarding to be able to impact healthy business growth and like the next generation of taking these businesses and these brands forward. 

Steve Margerin: Yeah. And you know, family business comes up. I was recently at a local university in the family business center and were hearing conversations, you know, about, you know, generation, you know, G3 or G4 has very different ideas based on the progress of the business or how they grew up about what success looks like going forward from a marketing and sales standpoint. And it made me kind of think that over my 30 year career and same with you’ve probably seen this, the necessity that continues to grow of marketing and sales being more and more intertwined. And today it’s almost there. After we get past the strategy, you know, the execution becomes very, the line is almost gray. Right. And that’s true even in B2B, you know, field sales driven organizations where that line is blurred. 

Sales and Marketing Alignment and Revenue Strategy

Steve Margerin: What do you see that looking like in the next three to four years, whether family business or big business or you know, as. As scaling businesses start to develop their plans. 

Jennifer Zick: Well, I love this question because as someone who considers myself more of a sales persona than a marketing persona and I’ve gotten to play on both sides of the revenue coin, I have a deep regard and respect for the whole picture. It takes the entire revenue team to make a company healthy. And so when I think about a revenue team, I’m thinking about every person and function in the company that touches the client experience and the customer experience. And that can be from marketing through to sales to customer success to product development to ops and delivery. All of those pieces touch the customer journey. And if any of them fall short, that erodes brand confidence and trust and repeat business or retained business. 

And so at Authentic I’ve been speaking this past year on a topic that I call the Little M marketing dilemma and by contrast the big M marketing opportunity. And the difference there is how businesses think about marketing as a support to sales versus thinking about marketing in its highest power which is the thread that binds the customer experience. So you’re absolutely right that when sales and marketing are aligned strategically they become one revenue organization. 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean they should have just one revenue head of sales. Right. It’s really important to maintain the balance of a sales leadership position which is always looking at real time conversion and short term goals and a marketing leadership position which is looking at long term brand credibility and quality and experience and every piece of that. So there’s a lot I could go into here. 

But to sum it up, companies that operate in little M marketing mindset tend to pigeonhole marketing as creating brand awareness and demand and lead gen. So sales have more at bats and that’s really important. But it minimizes the function of marketing and it doesn’t give its fullest impact for the business. Because big M marketing doesn’t just help bring opportunities into the funnel, it helps support successful onboarding of new clients and retention and growth and development advocacy and building raving fans whose voices are your best salespeople really. 

And that’s flywheel for healthy revenue growth. So that’s what we think of when we think of the role of marketing and leadership. Of course we’re going to care about demand, of course, but we can’t lose sight that, like, the most important revenue in an established company is retention and growth while adding new business. So it’s the whole picture. 

Steve Margerin: I love that. Early in my career, it was one of my first sales leadership roles. I was at a table and was discussing the inside of a unit who owns retention. And, you know, this is 26 years ago or whatever. And it was interesting, as I think about it today, because now we have language around this stuff, right? We understand customer journeys and these kinds of things. But back then it was like, well, I mean, I’m keeping up with, you know, as a sales leader, right? I’m keeping up with my current clients because I want to sell them more stuff, right? That’s kind of what we’re doing. We want them to be happy. We want to have a good experience. But I’m not necessarily commuting, brand communicating, brand messaging, right? I’m not communicating aspirational messaging to my clients. 

I’m, you know, trying to get a lunch or a meeting to talk about, you know, ancillary portfolio and. And other things that would. That would benefit them and those kinds of things. But that was a. That was a conversation. This was, you know, like I said, probably 25, 26 years ago. And now we have the language around it. It makes a lot more sense, right? And for sure, there’s this alignment that needs to be really clear between, you know, sales and market, the whole organization, right? Because, you know, there’s all kinds of conversations we could have about operations, having the, you know, having the same message and alignment on. On who we are and what we’re delivering. 

One of the interesting conversations I had, interestingly enough, with a fractional CMO that I’m working with in a client is we’re kind of going back and forth of, you know, hey, you know, we want to build out this ICP. We need it, right? The client doesn’t have clarity there, and we need it for the sellers. And, you know, we’re kind of bouncing back and forth like what part of it should. And I was like, I don’t necessarily need to know who or I don’t need to define who. I trust that you’re going to define who and what messages resonate with them. And I’m going to translate that into how we execute that in the field, right? What does that message look like? How do we say that? What are the steps we’re taking? And I want your help there. 

So we were kind of sorting through exactly what you were talking about, this difference between sales and marketing and were doing it on the fly. But there is some good clarity when you start having those conversations of, you know, what really is sales executing on and where, what is marketing’s role in that and everything else. 

Jennifer Zick: Yeah. And it can’t just be marketing that defines and drives it over to sales to execute and deliver on. It has to be a two way connective tissue there. Because often, you know, we as marketers do the best that we can do from the seat that we sit in with market research and competitive landscape and understanding what we’ve done historically as a business. But we might bring an icp, that ideal customer profile or some assumptions to you in sales that when you bring them to market toe to toe with the buyer, they don’t resonate or you discover that there’s a different buyer we haven’t tapped into that’s much more profitable. So all of that like on the ground field level input has to come back and has to be connected to somewhere. 

And that’s where I see the biggest breakdown where in companies that lack sales and marketing alignment is either marketing’s up here on their ivory tower giving over what looks like nice neat messaging and. 

Steve Margerin: It doesn’t work delivering it right. 

Jennifer Zick: It doesn’t work in the real world, in the seller’s world. And so then sellers have to become mavericks and then you’ve got 45 different versions of your message out in the market. So creating that connective tissue is so important and it’s impossible to really create that kind of alignment if you don’t have the right leadership seats at the top that are empowered to create peer to peer friction that’s appropriate, the tug of war and exchange of information that is all about creating one strong unified revenue organization. 

Steve Margerin: Yeah. Going back to that humble confidence you were talking about. 

Jennifer Zick: Exactly. 

Steve Margerin: And you know, I’m really lucky in the places that I work and typically because we’re working with similar size organizations and type of organizations, typically I’m working with a fractional CMO. And you know, I think just the idea of, or just having had, you know, multiple clients and working with multiple different folks, it’s immediately a good connection. Right. Because we both, you know, we both come from very senior backgrounds and are working with stuff that we know right and left and we know what good looks like and I think there’s a bet there’s an opportunity inside of the fractional space that we don’t necessarily talk as much about. And that’s a little bit of. And I want to make sure we phrase this correctly and not incorrectly, but there’s a little bit of detachment. Right. And it’s subtle. 

But if I work with multiple clients, my entire emotional well being is not necessarily wrapped up in one client. And that’s good. I can make, in my opinion, more rational decisions. Right. And have more productive conversations, you know, potentially, with conflict. Right. But we can turn that into, you know, this positive conflict that becomes productive rather than, you know, me worrying about, I really need this job, if that kind of makes sense. And I hope I’m saying that right, because, you know, we care about our clients, you know, sometimes maybe more than they do. I won’t say that. No, never. But you know what I’m saying, right? 

Jennifer Zick: Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And we talk about this all the time. And it was fascinating for me when I started Authentic, because as I was building the model and starting to build a team alongside of me, I was also consulting. I wasn’t sitting in a fractional role. I was taking on some consulting projects to fund building a team. And as a consultant, right away I recognized, oh my gosh, these business owners and CEOs take everything I say seriously and they hear me and they value it. And it’s, you know, it’s not fair, but it is true that when you’re the outside expert being brought in, you’re being asked to come to the table because they know there’s something they don’t know and they need you to speak that truth openly and clearly. And so that is a gift that we have. 

And it is a requirement of our role. And part of our values is like, speak the truth with love because you really care. Right. And we get to be efficient with our time because we’re not playing politics, the posturing and preservation of our full time role. We just get to speak the truth because we really want to see that client succeed. And so it’s really liberating and it’s a big responsibility. 

Steve Margerin: I was gonna say there’s a weight to that, right? Yes, there’s a weight to that. And actually that’s a little bit of a segue, if you don’t mind. No, because you and I at one point had talked about as we moved into, you know, more senior leadership and in your case, you know, leading your business, as you scaled the weight of our own words. Right. We started to feel this weight of our own words. And, you know, I’m a brainstormer Right. That’s the way I communicate. Right. And I’ll be like, hey, what do you think about? And there was times when I was saying that to the exact wrong person who, you know, later I would learn was up the entire night wondering what the heck I was about to do. But, you know, it was offhand and casual to me. 

And I think you and I had talked about, you know, kind of that, you know, how do you manage that and that realization that shoot my words mean, you know, carry more weight than I expect. 

Jennifer Zick: It’s really real. And I’m a verbal processor. Like, even in my marriage, God bless my husband of 28 years, because he’s an internal processor. And so he still has a hard time, like, if I’m just saying something out loud about, like, what’s on my mind that needs to get done. He thinks I’m giving him a to-do list. Like his honey list is never done. Because I am a verbal processor. In reality, I’m just saying it because I’m recognizing it. Not because I’m expecting anything, and this is true in my business, but even more so because I’m the CEO and the founder and so and I’m visionary and what I’m thinking tends to come out of my mouth. So I have had to bring good coaches around me. I have a great integrator.

We have one-on-one every week where I can say whatever I need to say and she understands how to filter it and manage it into the company. And I’ve had to develop my own EQ about what room I am in right now and how do I make sure that I don’t cause anxiety for people. Just because something’s going through my head, it doesn’t mean that it’s something I’m mandating right now. Yeah. We run on EOS here at Authentic. And every year we set an intention because our peers on the leadership team give us feedback, like, here’s what you should start doing or stop doing and here’s what you should keep doing. 

Steve Margerin: Oh, beautiful. Yeah. 

Jennifer Zick: And last year I got some feedback that maybe I needed to say less things out loud. And so my whole intention for the year was I am going to be more clear with my leadership team about when I’m asking for them to take action or whether I’m just asking them to brainstorm with me. 

Steve Margerin: Yes. Yes. And that probably took a little bit of time, right, for folks to trust that or to understand that. 

Jennifer Zick: Yes. And I gave them permission to ask me, like, if you hear something come out of my mouth and you’re not sure if that was a directive or a thought, just ask me and I will let you know. Yes. 

Steve Margerin: God, that’s so fun. One of the. And I don’t remember if we talked about it, but one of the struggles I had as I was kind of making this shift for me was, am I being. Is this being authentic? Because that was something I really wanted to make sure I was being myself. I saw other leaders around me and. And that had this duplicity about them that just really felt wrong for me. It didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to go that route. And so I had to. I remember going through this. Is this being real? Am I acting? And I came to this epiphany, conclusion, idea that, you know, authenticity. Authenticity, easy to say. Authenticity is really about being true to my values and how I. And how I display an exhibit and stay true to those. 

Not necessarily about when I say, what when. Because what I say, what when is part of my value of kindness. Right. There are things that I might want to say, and somebody would say, that’s being authentic, saying what you want. I disagree. Right. My value is kindness. There’s probably some things I really shouldn’t say when I think about them. 

Jennifer Zick: So true. That’s so true. And today I just put myself on a Facebook fast and deleted the app off my phone for a while because I want to be true to my values, which for means, you know, really being thoughtful about who I’m going to say what to, and who are the people I can trust to interpret my heart with the things that I need to say and speak about. And I have to recognize that in every moment, I’m not just representing myself. I am representing my brand and all the people associated with it. And I carry that. 

And I need to be very thoughtful to distinguish between when am I speaking as Jennifer Zick, the individual who’s a wife, a mom, a person of faith, a volunteer, and when am I speaking as Jennifer Zick, the CEO who’s not a different person, authentically the same person, but it’s a different role. And so I think part of being our authentic selves as leaders is being okay with the fact that we have to continue to grow and grow in our EQ, grow in our wisdom, grow in our discernment. And sometimes that changes our behavior, but it doesn’t change who we are. It’s just us becoming a better, sharper version of ourselves, even more understanding of ourselves. We can be more authentic when we have that discernment. 

Steve Margerin: Yeah. Somebody explained to me or phrased it as being context aware, and they said, you know, hey, it’s not being inauthentic. You wouldn’t phrase the same thing too. My kids are now 15. My twins are 15, which is crazy. They’re getting their driver’s license in the next couple months. 

Jennifer Zick: God bless you all. 

Steve Margerin: Yeah. Right. So I wouldn’t phrase necessarily, well, my kids are different, but I would phrase something different to my kids when they were younger than I would to my wife. Right. And that’s just being context aware. It’s not. I’m being less authentic to one or the other, and I really like that. Right. Context awareness. That resonated with me. 

Jennifer Zick: Yep. I think it’s really true, and it’s important. 

Growth, Team Development, and Future Focus

Steve Margerin: So all these awards, I mean, you’re on one right now. I mean, it’s exciting times for Authentic. So I’d love to hear, as we kind of wrap up here, I’d love to hear what’s next for Jennifer and what’s next. What’s. What’s coming ahead for Authentic?

Jennifer Zick: Yeah. Well, thank you. It has been one of the greatest joys of my life to build this business full of people that I truly love doing work that fuels us and is deeply meaningful for our clients and for us personally. And the awards were never something that we set out to chase, but they are a reflection of the heart and soul that my team put into the work that they do every single day. And so my team has deserved it. And it’s been a joy to celebrate those moments with them. And. And I didn’t go into entrepreneurship thinking like, I’m going to be an example for women entrepreneurs everywhere. 

But as I got further in the business, I started to understand and learn the data behind women entrepreneurs and how many women entrepreneurs will build a business past a million or ever receive outside capital investment or, you know, all of these. And I feel like it’s a real privilege and a gift to be able to encourage other women, business women who want to go into business, like, yes, you can. And I’m a kid who came from nowhere who had, you know, just the blessing of good people around me at every step of the way and was willing to take some risks and take some steps. And, yes, you can, too. So I do hope that some of the accolades that I’ve had as a woman in business are inspiring to other women who hope to do the same. 

But, yeah, what’s next for me and Authentic? So I am Steve, my youngest is 16 now. He’s my baby. And he does have his driver’s license, which is crazy next level for me because I’m a hockey mom. And went from being everywhere in our car driving around to him taking himself to practice. And I, for the first time in 22 years, because my kids are 22, 19, and 16, I have some extra capacity. So I started an actual hobby for the first time in a long time. 

Steve Margerin: Better finish that basement. 

Jennifer Zick: Yeah, that’s happening. That’s happening. My husband let me finally hire a general contractor to just get stuff done, you know, but I’m actually starting to do some creative hobbies in art, which I love. And I am just so blessed by the leadership team that we’re building here at Authentic. I actually just appointed one of our CMOs to be fractional CMO for Authentic. So I am shedding the skin of being our own fractional CMO, which is scary, amazing. I’m ready for it so that I can focus on my highest impact for this business, which is, you know, opening doors and building great friendships that create new opportunities. And we are just hiring really exceptional CMOs. 

Our team is across the country, but here in Minnesota, we’ve been building up a really robust team and it’s been exciting to be closer to people too, and feel like our culture is, you know, bringing amazing talent our way and amazing clients. So we’re just going to keep doing what we’ve always done, which is set out to serve our clients really well and provide world class leadership for them. And the rest happens when they’re happy. Right. So keep our clients and people happy. 

Steve Margerin: Yeah. Focus on the clients and good things happen. Right? 

Jennifer Zick: Yep. 

Steve Margerin: That’s really exciting. And, and I love to hear the growth, certainly nationally, and if fractional comes up, your name does too. So appreciate you leading that charge, but really exciting and it’s inspirational for the business owners who turn in the podcast that you’ve scaled the business super fast growth and you’re still able to have hobbies. Right. A lot of the folks that I end up working with are folks that are so trapped in their business that they’d love to be able to structure correctly and scale correctly to have a hobby or two. So congrats on all the success, Jennifer. 

Jennifer Zick: Thank you. Thank you. Every day is a real blessing and I’ve learned how to hire really exceptional people around me so that I am not carrying the whole burden myself. So it’s amazing when you get the right leaders in place, what’s possible and you can really love being a visionary. 

Steve Margerin: Yeah, yeah. And structure, right? Comes down to structure and great people. So, Jennifer, thank you very much again for joining me on the podcast. I’m sure we’ll have lots of folks interested in reaching out and they can reach you at Authentic, right? 

Jennifer Zick: Authenticbrand.com and then I can also be found on LinkedIn. Jennifer Zick, Pretty easy to find. I’m out there a lot so I’d love to connect. 

Steve Margerin: Yeah, great. Thank you very much. And please, listeners, reach out to Jennifer, host of lots of wisdom as we’re looking at scaling businesses. And I really appreciate you being on the podcast, Jennifer. I look forward to catching up with you soon. 

Jennifer Zick: Thank you, Steve. This has been fun. 

Steve Margerin: Thank you very much.