MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: GUIMING XIAO
/Studio IX: Good morning, Guiming.
Guiming: Good morning.
Studio IX: So we typically kick things off with an easy one.
Studio IX: What did you have for breakfast?
Guiming: I had Bodo's bagels. Normally it's nothing, and I just have coffee but today I had breakfast with some friends. So this is a 5% breakfast rate and today happened to be one of that 5%
Studio IX: Are you an early riser?
Guiming: Today was also unusual in that regard. I got up at 7:00, to have breakfast at 7:15. Normally, it's probably 8:00. Then I get here (Studio IX) at 9:00.
Studio IX: So tell us who you are and what it is you do.
Guiming: Yeah. My name is Guiming Xiao. I graduated in 2012 and moved to Charlottesville right after. I did a program called the Fellows Program where I interned at Trinity Presbyterian church here in Charlottesville for a year and really fell in love with the area. I really like the culture and the geography of this area along with the big-small town vibe. I randomly joined a marketing startup called RKG to stay in the area after the program ended and now, 6 years later, I work remotely for New Engen, another startup in Seattle. New Engen is more software and consulting focused than my previous company but both are in the same field
Studio IX: What's your exact title?
Guiming: So I'm tasked with building a new capability right now, so it's honestly ambiguous and can change every 6 months based on how we grow. Right now, would say something ambiguous like Strategy Lead or Strategy Manager. Maybe Manager of Client Strategy. It'll be different probably by the time you post this.
Studio IX: What are you passionate about?
Guiming: I am passionate about a lot of things.
Studio IX: Do tell.
Guiming: I really love the church I go to-it’s a very important place for me and a very important community in my life where I feel unconditionally accepted and loved. I enjoy listening to music and playing music. I have also dabbled a little bit in writing music and playing, but not in any kind of serious capacity—mostly just a hobby enthusiast. I love playing golf, playing volleyball, and generally being active.
Studio IX: Yeah.
Guiming: I do also like Charlottesville a lot – I think it’s a special place.
Studio IX: Do your passions play a part in your work?
Guiming: I think somewhat. A big part of my role is helping with sales and marketing. Some company needs help with some problem and I get to come in and help them reimagine what they have and their current way that they're solving it, whether it's how they're physically executing their campaigns or imagining them. I then get to help bring to life New Engen’s vision for how to solve that problem. I generally enjoy mixing tasks that are creative and analytic. And so I get to do that more. I think I’ve enjoyed being able to make visual to bring New Engen’s vision to life as well as generally creating something that's visual. I do some of that. Otherwise, I’d say largely no on the specific hobbies. Golf is almost entirely unrelated to work, writing music's unrelated to work at all, same thing with anything active.
Studio IX: What do you enjoy most about the work?
Guiming: I enjoy that it's new. I'm a very curious but also scattered person. What that means is, though I was an econ major in college, I really did not want to do something where I joined a really established giant company with a really clearly defined ladder that you climb and a very predetermined methodology of how to accomplish whatever they're doing. I love the digital marketing space because it's entirely new and no one has any perfect answers for solving most of the problems. So it's a true playground in that sense. I like the creativity that is both the new problem solving as well as in marketing in general. I love helping solve problems and investigating things that have no blueprint.
Studio IX: Yeah. That makes sense to me too.
Studio IX: What's the best mistake you've ever made?
Guiming: Hard to say. One time I accidentally overspent a client's budget. This was when I first started in this field, so I was first time managing an account. I spent way too much money for them on accident out of just a pure execution error. What I learned in it was, if you're in a services industry, a professional services industry, people value you and your work more than they value the specific results much of the time. The client was of course upset when this happened, but also was okay with it as long as we created a solution for preventing the error in the future. I also got a real live example that when you make a mistake, its important to own up to it, to the client and that ultimately, the truth of whatever happened is the truth.
Studio IX: What's a good day look like?
Guiming: I would say that it is a full day that is also not too full that I have to do anything outside of normal hours. So a good day is, maybe I have a client meeting in the middle of the day. I prep for it. I put in the prerequisite work, it goes well and then I get to leave at 5:00 and go home. I think it's a great day because I think well-run client meetings come from a lot of preparation. And so if you prepare well, you’ll have run through the presentation many times, and you'll really be on the top of your game come live presentation time. I firmly believe you can get a lot done in normal hours and add a lot of value as long as you plan and are efficient with your time. On the flip side, I think a bad day would be a day that's both not full and there's a lot of meetings or something that I have to do outside of hours because we didn't prepare well. Sometimes that happens and there really wasn’t anything we could do to prevent it, but I find that most of the time there was simply better time management or more effective communication/planning that could have prevented it.
Studio IX: Do you have a memorable story you could share? A turning point? A light switch moment.
Guiming: Light switch moment. It's hard to say. We are, background on us, 210 people now. We were fifty people two years ago. I joined a year and a half ago and it was in the low hundreds. So it feels like every day there's a turning point where something clearly pivots.
Studio IX: What's an aspect of your work that might surprise people to know?
Guiming: I feel with the territory of working for a marketing startup in Seattle, people expect everything to be super techy and data science from there. What surprises my friends a little is that most of my work is actually pretty creatively oriented and very relationally focused. I will say my grandparents are generally surprised that I manage people, but that’s because a part of their mind still thinks I’m a cute grandchild
Studio IX: Where do you see yourself & New Engen in the next five to ten years?
Guiming: It's like this is a really fun experience job. I would imagine that I would probably try to not do a remote startup thing again just because it's a really big strain on travel end and then weird hours sometimes. I would imagine company-wise, we’ll be acquired at some point in the next 5-10 years. Once that happens, I think I'd love to pivot from being in the professional services/vendor space and more on the client side. In the sense that right now my job has really helped lots of people with whatever their problems are & I'd love to just find a product or a company mission that I really care for and to be directly involved, basically choosing as opposed to whoever comes in the door. I could also see myself doing something completely unrelated and random.
Studio IX: Let’s jump back to storytelling for a moment.
Guiming: Yeah.
Studio IX: It’s obviously is a big part of marketing, but what does that look like? What are you trying to do? Are you trying to create a world around something that people can drop into?
Guiming: Yeah. You have digital marketing specifically, which is our focus. I think the name of the game is, there's just a complex set of things out there that no one really understands all of. First I think you're inevitably storytelling for a marketing team at the enterprise level, if you work for a vendor as I do. So we're talking to companies that spend a large amount of money and with their teams the story you tell has to captivate a wide range of people and invigorate them and get them to go and make progress. So it's their plan that you are putting in place.
Guiming: So you'll put a plan in place that tells a high level story for the CMO. But you also have to talk to someone about the details of how we're going to reach each of the individual channels like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Pinterest, whatnot. And then there's also going to be a tech person. So you have to weave all that together into a clean 50 slide or under deck in an hour and a half.
Studio IX: Wait, what did you just say?
Guiming: Deck.
Studio IX: A fifty slide or under deck?
Guiming: Fifty slide deck.
Studio IX: What is that?
Guiming: A deck is a euphemism for a PowerPoint presentation.
Studio IX: Got it.
Guiming: Like a deck of cards.
Studio IX: Yep.
Guiming: And so it's fun because really what it is, imagine if you were describing to someone how you build a house for them or plan their wedding. There's a lot of details and ultimately the details are what can get in the way, but the best wedding planners are going to be people who really get to know the people they're working for. And then it’s how they communicate, how they tell the story of what's happening on this day, how they even take the vision and they cater to it really well. And it’s the same thing for us. That's also what we do. Figuring out what all of the personalities care about and how to make them feel heard? What gives them value and then pulling that together into a story.
Studio IX: Last question - What do you enjoy about being here at Studio IX?
Guiming: So we have an office in New York now that has its own dedicated space but used to be in a co-working space and honestly that space, along with most spaces, feel very cramped or soulless. I think Studio IX on the other hand is very vibrant and definitely creates a collaborative environment. Theres a “we are here together all trying to be creative and add something in the world” vibe that isn't well executed in most co-working spaces, at least the ones I’ve been to in other places. I love the art on the walls and I love that it changes, that you can see a variety of work all the time. I think the space itself in terms of the physical architecture is beautiful and then there’s always a variety of people walking around that makes it feel like there is somewhat of a community in this area, which I like.
Studio IX: Yeah.
Guiming: Good coffee that Greg makes. Great coffee.
Studio IX: I wish I could take credit for the blend, but Virginia (Milli Roasters) did it.
Studio IX: That's it!
Guiming: That's it?
Studio IX: Yeah. Thank you.
Guiming: Thank you.