Meet Carrie Phair of Stated
Carrie is the founder of Stated, a marketing consulting firm partnering with small and medium-sized clients to create smarter, insightful, and compelling outreach at every stage of the funnel. Inspired by two entrepreneurial parents, and governed by efficiency and efficacy, she was attracted to the rules of supply and demand and the challenges of everyday business. She received her degrees in economics and MBA and went on to consult locally in San Diego before joining the team at HP. She worked across elements of global integrated marketing before heading up both marketing and education at Nordic Naturals. In the years since she has grown her own sole proprietorship focusing on assisting emerging and national brands to find their purpose and state it clearly and simply every day.
Great question about the road leading here! At a macro level, I’d relate the professional journey to that of a drawn-out road trip. You know where you want to land, yet the route certainly isn’t as straight as the crow flies. But that’s a good thing! Like most creatives, marketing professionals are bored with monotony, repetition, and following a set itinerary. So most of us do a good deal of training, due diligence, and analytics-building but ultimately throw out the map and navigate with our gut and a little GPS. We are not necessarily looking for one direct path, but rather intrigued by the billboards, side attractions, and the experiences that make the journey far more colorful.
Marketing has so many different facets and the ability to learn the different segments, tactics, channels, and methods at each stage makes it richer. Over the years, I’ve found that the more diverse the conversations, and the greater the degree of difficulty found in each opportunity, the more it has forced me to develop, think harder, and grow my marketing toolkit. That goes for content as well as clients. Sometimes those clients who are trickiest to work with are also the ones that elevate our game exponentially and urge us to consider our words and our underlying assumptions.
Bottom line, I wouldn’t want that straight path and would caution anyone entering the field to think twice about their preferred level of risk and tolerance for change, because marketing is not formulaic.
Stated is the sole proprietor marketing and strategy consultancy I started in 2018. I was hungry for three things: bright minds to work with, products and services I love, and adding in a net positive of good to the world. To clients who meet these criteria, Stated offers a simple and focused approach that puts the customer front and center. Based on deep listening, lots of questions, and a collaborative approach, Stated’s services distill a brand’s objective and bundle that with the right set of tactics to cleanly, efficiently, and creatively appeal to their exact audience.
We won’t boil an ocean, instead, at Stated we incite action in customers while we K.I.S.S. We’ve become known for just that: keeping things simple. There are so many choices for marketing endeavors- be it online, offline, social or digital, events-based, direct or 3rd party, etc.- that it can be overwhelming. However, given a brand’s specific objectives tied to real metrics, it becomes easier to prioritize and narrow the scope. We all have a limited budget, even the big guys and via appropriate resource planning, we can make those dollars work harder. I work to help brands declutter their to-do list and focus on the elements that have ROI and shelf the distractions.
The wins over the last few years are those moments are quarterly when a client hits goals reinforcing that smart work leads to good results and good feelings. I love it when a client writes an email or leaves a voicemail just to share a recent victory. Or take the moment this morning with a brand when we both realized we have so much to learn from each other that the conference could have gone on all day, but we’re going to increase the scope of work just to ensure we have more collaborative opportunities. The best and truest marker for me though is repeat business and referrals. These are better than gold because inherently you know you’ve established a trusted and worthwhile relationship where the client is gleaning value and the cherry on top is that there’s so much extra goodwill that they want to share you with friends.
This question used to feel daunting. I’d listen to Tony Robbins and feel pumped up to make the most of my life, but somewhat bewildered by how. I’d see wonders like Oprah having such an impact that a single flip flop recommendation could send sales into the millions, and wonder if that’s the very meaning of success. Then I’d look at my own parents and think what they’ve achieved and wonder if they too felt they’d been successful in their businesses and how about in their efforts to raise my sister and me?!
All this comparison can drive a person nutty. But then I heard someone say, there’s no script to life and everyone else is improvising just as much as I am. This was liberating! With that background, here’s how I now define success in tiers. To start with there’s day to day wins of pleasing clients, paying forward unexpected gifts, and having the freedom to enjoy a good run and sunset. Then there’s year goals of hitting financial numbers and exceeding ROIs. Long term my wish is for my life to add up to a net positive impact, to live by the golden rule, and to have the luxury of leaving the organizations I cherish financially better off.
