Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Crafted Journey podcast, where we talk to really cool people about their really cool careers. We elicit their superpowers, and we find out fun facts about them. So tune in. You are in for a treat. We have Kay Walters here with today to talk about something really awesome. But I will spoil it not at all. I am gonna ask her to introduce herself, share what she's up to, and then we'll get into her journey. Katie, welcome. Thank you. Yeah, I'm Katie Walter. I'm the CEO of the Fractional Conference and a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer in St Paul Minnesota. Excellent. Well, take us way to the to the way back. Tell us where you grew up, what you studied, and why. Yeah, I grew up in Northern Minnesota, in a little town called Nevis. We, three thirty people. There were twenty five kids in the graduating class of my public high school, and, and so that was fun. But it was fun, I mean it was fun. We had a lot of lakes and played outside a lot in the winter in the summer and winter, and then I went to college at a liberal arts school for women, that had a men's university attached to it, so there was it was the best of both worlds, co ed when you wanted it to be, and and women specific when you didn't, And and then made my way to the Twin Cities after college. So I've been here for for the past twenty five years and married in in two two thousand five, so we're coming up on our twentieth anniversary. Congratulations. Thank you. I studied English as an undergrad, and, and Asian Studies because I loved reading, and I studied abroad in China, so the minor was kind of a no brainer. Wait. Do you speak Mandarin? I I spoke enough Mandarin. I learned enough Mandarin to get myself from Tibet to Hong Kong and get Wow. Yeah. So you I think you speak more than I do. Oh, well, was Cantonese. I was in Hong Kong for four years, and I mostly know the swear words. Okay. That's not beautiful. Yeah. You don't have to know Chinese or man or Cantonese to live in Hong Kong. It was great. It was I mean, it was lovely. We worked for an international company. So we were expats, which by the way, I'm not Catherine gets a chance to be an expat. Go be an expat. It's like it's like heaven. But that's a subject for another podcast. We're talking about Katie here. Now I would like to know, can you drop the name of your university? College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's in Collegeville and St. Joe, Minnesota. Fantastic. And a fun fact, I grew up in a town of three zero five people. So Okay. Yeah. So you know? I do. I know. I think I'm related to at least ninety percent of them. So that was fun. We played they played nine man football at my school and did they just won the state tournament. Well done. Two years ago for nine man football. But my kids play city play go to a city public school now, and there are as many kids on my hometown football team as on my kids football team in Saint Paul, because no one plays football anymore. They don't play football like they used to, especially in the city. They all play soccer. So that's interesting. That's interesting. Oh fun stuff. Well, but back to career. We're here to talk about career journeys. Now your first job, what was it and how did you get it? And and what did what did you like about it? My first grown up job was as a communications specialist at a trade association for debt collectors. Oh. And, so it was deadly boring. There was not forty hours worth of work to do. And so like but I it was to the year two thousand, like, I had to sit in my I just had to sit at my desk so the best thing about that job was that I met my husband there. Yes well that's that's a benefit. That was a benefit. Yes. Okay cool so well all right so let's we we won't delve into that particular, but but I would love to hear about some of your favorite things that you've done, that you've accomplished, and please do drop the names of those companies. Yeah. Yep. So I, so I was at that company for two years and and then, I worked I did some work in politics for about six months, and then I was at Thomson Reuters for sixteen years, which was great, and I learned so much there. I worked in communications, and then strategy, and then marketing, then back to communications, and then back to marketing, so it was sixteen years of a lot of variety, and working with a lot of really great people. I got my MBA from the University of Minnesota during that time. And so, I just I got to learn how a business works, how a how, you know, understanding, like, how the business makes money is drives everything. How the sales channel gets paid is kind of everything. How I mean, I just didn't know. Just didn't know anything. I you know, it was just such an amazing learning experience kind of coming into that environment and just understanding how much heart people put into those corporations. Then getting to understand B2B in a way of like, we're here, yes, we're here to help companies, you know, grow revenue and reduce risk, and we're here to help them save money. Yes, all of those drivers, but at the end of the day, I also think we're here to help people do their job better. Yeah, right? There's a, there are some emotive levers there that we can pull on in, B2B marketing, and that sit at the heart of why B2B companies and the, you know, the engineers and the, the people building those products, what they get excited about every day and what we're selling. So that gets me excited too. So some of the most exciting things I got to do launching launching new versions of platforms or projects, Thomson Reuters, the flagship product is Westlaw. It's one of two legal research platforms in the legal industry, so it's a duopoly between legal, LexisNexis and Westlaw, they're both just, you know, loved and hated in equal measure within the legal space, and, getting to be a part of up the first step forward in that legal research platform in fifteen or twenty years, and then seeing it get relaunched and relaunched a couple times as technology took these massive step forwards was really exciting. Getting to be a part of, you know, the change. I was the director of law school marketing in my last role there, and that was really fascinating because law schools were were in real trouble in the mid-2010s when they were looking at declining enrollment. There was a massive surge in law school law schools between nineteen seventy and twenty ten. We just kept building law schools and law firms kept hiring lawyers and then at two thousand and eight financial crisis, law firms stopped hiring lawyers. They see on your face that you know what I'm talking about. So these law firms, these law schools were worried about going out of business. We thought, and we thought we were going to see a pretty significant loss of schools. And they were so they were looking at reinventing themselves. What do we do? How do we survive? And so to be a part of partnering with them in their reinvention and their quest to, stay relevant and stay solvent and kind of weather that. In the time that I was there in those three years, we didn't see law schools close in the number that we had expected, or dreaded, I shouldn't say expected. So that was a pretty cool movement to be a part of. And then, I left at the end of twenty eighteen and kind of moved into a whole other chapter of my career. Well, we'll we'll talk a little bit more about that. What what I would like to do, that that sixteen years, so I'm guessing it was in person and and pretty formative. We we love to give a shout out to mentors and people who really Yeah. So if there's any people that really made a difference for you, love to hear what you learned from them. So say their names and then Yeah. What you learned. Well, I always, always, always have to talk about Kieran when I, when I talk about mentors from Thomson Reuters. She hired me into my first job there. And of course, I applied just through the Internet in two thousand two to that job and got an interview, like, that worked back then. Think it still works for some people now. My first job in two thousand, I applied from an ad in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Like, I mailed in a resume. Anyway, Karen was my boss a handful of times in those sixteen years, and even like, I had a question about a position last week, and I was texting her about it. So she's just sort of helped me all along on questions and sort of my relationship to work. She's been a cheerleader and sponsor and mentor to me for now twenty three years. Kathleen Minor is another person who I met at Thomson Reuters and has been sort of on my side for seventeen years, eighteen years. Andy Martins was a senior executive at Thomson Reuters and has been, again, on my side. That is fantastic. Yeah. Lots of people. So too many people to name. I I know. It's like the Oscars. Right? I always when we put these podcasts out, I'm like, damn it. I forgot to mention this wonderful Yeah. And so I will typically then just send them a LinkedIn saying, if I had thanked you, it would have been for this. So Yeah. You know? That's fun. Great. So, Katie one of the other things that we talk about here, actually pause. So Katie I'm going to ask you when you get excited sometimes you lean in. So this is a note from my editor here at twelve twelve. I've lost the top of your head a few times. So just, you know, when you lean forward, make sure you stay in frame. Okay. Yeah. It's not a big thing. We can, you know, do stuff. But anyhow, back into back into regularly scheduled questions and answers. Well, you've had, good times working for other people, but now why don't you tell us what you're up to now both agency wise and the frack? So I, in twenty eighteen, I left Thomson Reuters and, with a nice severance package, which was great to have some time to decompress, and figure out what I wanted to do in the next phase of my career. My kids were seven and ten at the time, and it was just a really good time to explore self employment, and what would it look like to work for myself, and have more control over my time, work less, travel less, work from home. It was pre pandemic, so there was, still the resistance toward Yeah, I remember. Working from home, right? And that idea that, I mean, you didn't, if someone was local, you would never Zoom with them. You wouldn't have a Zoom. Everything was in person. So, the tax, or the burden of always having to get in the car and drive places and be places was just really real. And so, tested the waters on consulting, and contract work, and somewhere along the lines, I found fractional chief marketing officer work, and really had had no idea about how small businesses worked, and and what they were sort of getting by without, in terms of strategic leadership. Yeah. And, you know, it's the founder and some really smart people, but they didn't necessarily have experienced marketers or experienced HR, experienced technologists. They had people that were really good at a lot of things. They maybe hadn't seen some of the things that I had seen, or that exec you know, that you just it's like Thomson Reuters was just really good training. Yeah. That that's how I felt about intel. My first out of business school job, intel's like, okay. What do you what is your objective? What's your vision? Yeah. A strategy. You can't do them all. And then strategy, what are your tactics? Right. And and what I find when you work with a lot of small businesses and, you know, feel free to jump in is the urgent. There's always the urgent, but then there's the important and how do you make sure that you're, you know, getting Right. Important stuff done with all the urgent hair on fire stuff. Right. And there's, and, and, and that exists in large businesses too, but we would just have more of a framework to come back to. And then there's, there's always the force of personality, exists in small business and large business, but, there's maybe more a governing force on that force of personality to sort of balance things out. So having seen a lot of scenarios, I can come in to smaller businesses and say, Oh no, actually you don't have to guess or you don't have to just listen to the agency that told you this is the way to do it. I can bring some, I've done this fifteen times and I've got no skin in the game whether you buy HubSpot or you buy this other thing. So yeah, it's I mean, that has served me well for these last six years, is kind of working in that mode of, of part time leader within a business, and, and and getting to to find balance that way. Then, two years ago, I started working with a few partners on the fractional conference. So we're coming into the third year of the conference in Minneapolis, October twenty seventh through twenty ninth in Minneapolis, and we're expecting a crowded hall downtown, and looking forward to just getting people together, and they often tell us, I've found my people! It can be kind of, you feel like a weirdo sometimes, when you go to networking events, and people say, fractional? What does that mean? What exactly is that? I don't get it. And so here is a place for fractionals to come together, and and be seen, and understood, and grow from a place of of commonality. I'm coming for the first time this year. I can't tell you how excited I am. So thank you for that. Yes. Well, listen. We've we've taken up your time. This has been great getting to know you a little bit more. One thing since, you know, we want people to get to know a little bit more about Katie, is there a fun fact that maybe not a lot of your work friends might know about you? One fun fact, my first job was as a playground supervisor for community ed, which was also my mother's first job as a teenager. That is pretty how old were you? Like thirteen. Okay. And, were were any children, you know, particularly troublesome or did you have them well in your in your grasp? Piece of cake. They were all easy, easy, easy peasy. Well, is that that's brilliant. I'm glad that you had that. Lovely, lovely memories. And overall, Katie, just thank you so much for sharing your time, sharing your story. You know, for a lot of young people who are just getting started, it's nice to see how a career unfolds, how you look at it. So, thank you for being on the podcast. Thank you. Thanks. We'll see you in a few weeks. You will indeed. Alright, my friends. Thank you for joining us here today on the Crafted Journey podcast series. Tune in next week for more great people and great stories. Thanks.
