Editor’s Note: This transcript was created using AI transcription and formatting tools. While we’ve reviewed it for accuracy, some errors may remain. If anything seems unclear, we recommend referring back to the episode above.
Episode Trailer
“After a long day, how do you unwind? Oh, I don’t think I’ve ever actually shared this—I love crocheting.”
“If you wanted to start working out and you started with four or five times a week, you would stop after a week. If you wanted to start with having an organized backlog, prioritizing everything, doing this for every single area, you’d be exhausted after week one because there’s so much organizational change.”
“Doing the final peak part of Kilimanjaro—almost 6,000 meters—it was minus 50, my water had frozen, my food had frozen. It was like 3 in the morning and I was just like, ‘If I can do this, imagine what else I could do.’ I think it’s finding something like that that gives you confidence.”
“When I was starting out and there weren’t many growth resources versus now, I was going to CRO conferences, I was learning about CRO because it had a lot of the same mindset and approach things that I feel fall under growth too.”
“You shouldn’t run a marathon for the sake of running a marathon. I really enjoy running, I was doing it naturally, so for me that challenge made sense. It can also be learning a new language, it can be traveling alone for the first time, it can be starting to post on LinkedIn. It’s just finding something that scares you a bit and then learning to push through that.”
“I feel like with the women in experimentation and growth, because we all struggle with a lot of the same challenges—struggling with getting paid less than our counterparts or being able to speak up in male-dominated environments—we all group together and back each other up so much that I have a whole group of incredible women that have helped me.”
Introduction
Welcome to another episode of the Women in CRO series by VWO podcast. This series is an ode to the contribution of women in the CRO industry.
Before we speak to our special guest for this episode, here’s a quick summary of who we are and what we do: VWO is a leading experience optimization platform that helps fast-growing brands optimize their digital experiences. Using our latest product, VWO Insights, you can understand user journeys and identify conversion roadblocks on your website and mobile apps.
So without any further delay, let’s jump right into the conversation.
Guest Introduction
Jomol: Today we are delighted to have Daphne Titman, a seasoned growth advisor and consultant based out of London, England.
Daphne’s journey is nothing short of inspiring, starting from her role as a sales assistant to coaching D2C brands on holistic growth strategies. Throughout this diverse career, Daphne has worn many hats, including being the head of growth and a growth hacker, where she’s orchestrated remarkable transformations, ensuring that businesses propel to unprecedented levels of success.
Her expertise is not confined to just boardrooms, but she’s also deeply invested in nurturing and mentoring budding entrepreneurs through platforms like Growth Mentor, ensuring that she offers her invaluable insights into growth strategy, idea validation, team development, and conversion rate optimization.
So join us as we dive into Daphne’s world of experience in CRO and learn more about CRO.
Main Interview
Morning Routines and Personal Life
Jomol: Hey Daphne, welcome to Women in CRO powered by VWO.
Daphne: Thanks so much for having me. Looking forward to chatting.
Jomol: How’s your day going so far? How are you feeling today?
Daphne: I’m good. I started with a run and enjoyed a podcast of course on the way, and then had two client meetings. So we’re well into the day, but it’s been a fun one so far.
Jomol: Would you be open to sharing some of your morning rituals that get you up and about for the day?
Daphne: Yeah, so I am a morning person for sure. I’m absolutely useless in the evening, so I try to get all the key things done in the morning. So I usually always do a workout in the morning, because full honesty, if it’s an evening I probably wouldn’t do it.
I also always walk my dog—I’ve got a little Pomeranian, he’s four years old. So unless I’m running like today and it’s too far for him to run with (because he does run with me usually if it’s a shorter distance), I will always walk him too.
And then another really key thing for me is just always having breakfast and coffee with my partner. I think it’s just a really nice way to start the day, and we often—this is gonna sound really cute—but one of us will always bring the other person coffee in bed. It’s just a little thing that I feel like always is a nice way to start the day, and it just depends on who’s more awake that morning.
And then I try to, but definitely don’t do it every morning—I also try to do a little bit of either journaling or gratitude or meditation. It won’t be all three, it’ll just be whatever I feel like I need on that day, because again, I find it easier to take the time to do that in the morning and it just puts me in a good mindset for the day.
Jomol: These are really inspirational words. I mean, all of us keep complaining about not having time, and you find the time to keep your body, mind, and soul healthy, and you also find time to equally share with every member of your family. And I’m glad to meet another pet parent—I have a cat myself.
Daphne: Yeah, I think mornings are a nice place to do that. My coach also had given me the advice—and today is an exception—but usually I just also don’t plan a meeting before 10, because that also means that even if I need to sleep out a bit later (because I’m a really big believer in “don’t get up early for the sake of getting up early”—sleep is number one always), so even if for whatever reason I need to sleep later because I’ve had a bad night of sleep the night before or I got home a bit later, I can still have that time for myself.
I think that was a really good tip for me to not let others decide my schedule but just make sure I try to have that room most mornings of the week to be able to do it. And also being okay if it doesn’t happen and just being like, “What are the one or two things I do always do, and what are the okay things to miss?”
Career Journey and Background
Jomol: That really shapes our way of thinking and then the way we bucket things in our life as well. So I’m curious to learn what inspired you in your career of growth and CRO, and how has your journey been so far?
Daphne: Yeah, so I’m quite unusual in the sense that I started out in growth back nine years ago when growth wasn’t that big. I think you already mentioned it—it was actually called quite commonly “growth hacking” back then, and I try to avoid the term now because I feel like it has really this idea of these one-off kind of trick things, and I’m like that’s really not what I stand for. But yeah, that’s what it was called when I started.
I basically had done a master’s in finance, really loved the data, the numbers side of it. I’d always been good at maths at school—that was my favorite subject. I don’t think a lot of people say that, but it was. But I realized doing finance, all anyone cared about in my degree was money, and it was really weird doing a finance master because people come to our lectures in suits, it was 90% men who just wanted to work at a big bank or investment company. And I was like, “Oh, I do not feel comfortable here at all, and I don’t feel like this is me. I don’t actually care about money in that way—that’s not the most important thing to me.”
And then I was running a student association for startups at the same time and doing the marketing for them, and I was like, “I really enjoy this. I love startups, I love the idea of having a smaller team where you get more responsibility, more diverse things.” But I didn’t enjoy the brand side of my marketing role.
And so when I came across growth where I was like, “Hey, there’s that creative side which I do enjoy and that isn’t maybe my top strength but is still something that I want to have, combined with this data side focused on startups,” I was like, “This makes sense.”
And I just basically stalked the agency that I wanted to work for, emailing their founder nonstop like, “Oh, are you open to an internship? Can we talk? Can we talk? Can we talk?” until he finally replied and got the job like that.
Defining Growth vs Growth Hacking
Jomol: So you just mentioned how you refrain yourself from using the word “growth hacking.” So how would you introduce then the concept of growth to our audiences who are maybe just starting to explore business success?
Daphne: Yeah, so for me, growth is less a department but just a really disciplined approach to how you grow your organization, and it’s a way to bring your organization together in a systematic way to approach experimentation.
I think that’s where it has also a lot of overlap with CRO. And when I was starting out and there weren’t many growth resources versus now, I was going to CRO conferences, I was learning about CRO because it had a lot of the same mindset and approach things that I feel fall under growth too.
It’s more just this broader perspective of how can we systematically look at our organization as a whole, bring together our organization to run experiments to move the needle on just a few key areas.
Approach to Growth Success
Jomol: Given that in mind, what do you think would be the best approach to define growth success?
Daphne: So I think it always starts with just aligning on “Okay, what is actually the most important metric to our organization?” and it starts with that. A lot of organizations might get focused on things like revenue, but I always really try to focus on something that drives value for the customer and for the end audience.
You know, whether you call it a North Star metric—people have called it “one metric that matters”—that kind of idea of having this higher-level goal and then working out what are then the key areas that we need to really improve on to get there, to move closer to our goal.
And when people are starting out with it, I also suggest don’t try to do it organization-wide. Whenever I also would work with a bigger corporation, we just start with one smaller part of it where there was a high potential and just start getting into the habit of tracking the things that we were doing as experiments, really thinking about what are the hypotheses, how are we measuring if it’s successful or not, and building it up step by step to be able to do it rather than doing it in one go.
I have a course on setting up a growth experimentation process, and I compare it to workouts in there. If you wanted to start working out and you started with four or five times a week, you would stop after a week. If you wanted to start with having an organized backlog, prioritizing everything, doing this for every single area, getting everyone involved, you’d be exhausted after week one because there’s so much organizational change.
And so you just need to really focus on the different steps each time to get one step closer to that. Maybe you don’t even work with a backlog or prioritization framework to begin with because that’s not your biggest pain point, but your biggest pain point is the fact that you’re not sure if the things that you’re doing are actually working and you want to measure that in a more systematic method.
Jomol: That makes sense as well. So when you start small, you be very specific about the problems that you are solving, and then that will help you also learn and unlearn and apply those successes as well and scale it.
Daphne: Yeah, and get buy-in to drive that change. Because if people are seeing—that’s how it worked when we were doing it for this big media company in Belgium—we started with one of their products with one or two areas that were within our control and we started doing that there. They were seeing the success of that, of the improving results, and then they wanted it for a different website that they had that was focusing on a different audience. And then they gave us more control of the rest of the original project. It just builds up step by step versus trying to push it.
Jomol: Yeah, it’s exactly like how we create our CRO roadmap. We look for the higher potential areas and then we move on.
Daphne: Yeah, I feel like that’s why CRO and growth have so much overlap. I think that they have a lot of the same mindset kind of approach, and I always love it when someone comes actually from CRO—because you get people coming from product, from marketing, from CRO moving into more the growth space—but I always love it when it’s someone who’s focused on CRO before because they already have that data-driven approach.
Notable Projects and Achievements
Jomol: So you’ve now worked with maybe over 200-plus brands and that’s really amazing. Would you be open to sharing a specific project or an achievement that you’re really proud of?
Daphne: Yeah, I mean, I’ve had the joy of working with so many different brands because I spent quite a long time at an agency and I was leading with the agency, so I was helping out with so many of the different projects of my team members and also as a consultant.
I think the biggest achievement for me is always just when I see a specific brand get out of a growth slump that they’ve had, or also an individual flourish. I think that’s just as impactful—seeing business growth as individual growth.
I think a specific project I’m proud of is actually two brands I’ve been working with now for a year and a half, both of them. One’s called Clarix CBD—they do a range of science-backed CBD products. And the other one’s called Huel, which does a superfood meal shake. Since starting working with them, they’ve each grown respectively so much, but they’ve also gone through tougher periods where things that were working stopped working or they had to change their approach.
I think I’m really proud of both of those projects because I think it’s a challenge as an advisor, as a consultant, to when you already know the brand for a longer period of time, to constantly have to up your game of “Okay, what got us here won’t get us there.”
One of them I had the meeting with also this morning before this, and it’s like, “Okay, February didn’t go how we wanted. What are we going to be doing differently? What can we do in March? What have we learned?” and taking it all together. I really enjoyed that because I see the difference.
And the other one I can’t mention the specific name because of privacy, but I feel like I’ve worked recently with sort of an individual and an organization, and just seeing her confidence grow, seeing how she’s changing her approach—and you know, that’s impacting the company’s growth. I can’t take any credit at all for that growth of that company because it’s all her, but just seeing the change in confidence and stuff. I think that’s also just been a really rewarding experience, and I really love that side of it too.
Physical Challenges and Mental Growth
Jomol: Thank you for sharing these two experiences. I mean, it clearly lets us understand the importance of learning and unlearning and also retrospecting. So we also learned from your LinkedIn post that you are going to run for the Rotterdam Marathon in April—touch wood if my injury doesn’t come back, everything is going to be fine, don’t worry about it. So but firstly, congratulations and I hope you nail it and all the very best.
And in that post I remember you highlighted how you overcame your physical pain so that you can continue your practices, and we’ve also noticed that you apply a similar psychological principle, which is overcoming fear of growth, in your approach to work as well. We believe that especially for women who have so many inhibitions, this is something that they could learn from. So what inspired you to adapt to this approach?
Daphne: So I think it’s definitely a learned approach versus always being this way. And yeah, just to clarify, I would definitely not say go through physical pain, but go through fear. I think that’s the really key thing of it—not letting fear hold you back. Because it was a fear of physical pain, if that makes sense, but it wasn’t that I was running through pain at that point, because that’s risky. But more like not letting that hold me back.
And I think I really got into this after I left Huel as head of growth. At that point in time, it was a very intense journey at Huel, and I was just feeling really burnt out and quite low also in terms of self-esteem. I think that’s something that a lot of women struggle with—self-esteem and imposter syndrome. So my confidence was really at a low time.
And I decided—it really just became this thing where I was like, “I’m gonna do this, I don’t know why I want to do this, but I really want to do this. I’m gonna climb Kilimanjaro.” And so I signed up for this trip, and just the training itself was so empowering, just knowing that I could walk for hours and that my body could do that.
One of my things in my training was I did a 40-kilometer hike over three peaks, and my knee gave way a bit like 25 kilometers in, and I would just kind of hobble these last six hours of it to do the last 15 kilometers. But it just gave me such a feeling I could do anything.
I think that’s also when I decided—when I was doing the final peak part of Kilimanjaro, almost 6,000 meters, it was minus 50, my water had frozen, my food had frozen. It sucked, I hadn’t slept, it was like 3 in the morning, and I was just like, “If I can do this, imagine what else I could do.”
And I think it’s finding something like that that gives you confidence. And that’s how you grow that mindset—when you have these moments of fear, when you have these things that challenge you and get you out of your comfort zone, it helps show you that you’re so much stronger than you actually realize.
And it doesn’t have to be a physical challenge. I think that’s really important to say, because you shouldn’t run a marathon for the sake of running a marathon. I already had done a half marathon before, I really enjoy running, I was doing it naturally, so for me that challenge made sense. But it can also be learning a new language, it can be traveling alone for the first time, it can be starting to post on LinkedIn. It’s just finding something that scares you a bit and then learning to push through that.
I help think that helps build that confidence and that mindset. Like I said, I don’t even know if I’m going to run the marathon. I signed up last year for the Berlin Marathon too, I sold my spot because I got such bad tendonitis that I couldn’t even walk, let alone run. But I just don’t let it deter me from trying again. Yes, it scares me, yes, it makes it harder to get out sometimes, but I just try to think, “You know, there’s some shots I’m going to miss, some shots I’m going to hit, but let me just—the only thing I can control is to keep trying.” And also just enjoy the training and the process of it, that even if I don’t make it, it’s been amazing for my fitness the last few months to be able to get back up to 27K of running.
Comfort Zones and Growth Zones
Jomol: That’s a really interesting perspective of how it’s the thoughts that’s actually shaping us, and it’s the thoughts that are actually holding us back from what we can achieve. And we shouldn’t fear from that section of our life. Instead, try harder and never fail to remember that you need to try. If you fall, you get up and then you run another mile, in any area that is.
Daphne: Yeah, when I’m doing workshops on growth mindset, I always talk about there’s different zones—we have our comfort zone, we have our learning zone where we’re starting to learn, we have our opportunity zone where we can grow further, and we have our panic zone. And that panic zone is that moment we’ve all known it, when we’re like, “I can’t do this, I feel so uncomfortable, I can’t sleep.”
And if you’re in your panic zone all the time, which is what a lot of people think pushing through fear is, you’re not going to be happy either. But if you systematically choose things that are in your learning and your opportunity zone and occasionally mix in a little bit of the panic, you actually grow a lot faster than just going panic.
You know, if you want to get into physical challenges—I’m really aware of this—it might, you know, don’t if you’ve never run before, don’t do a marathon. Start with a 5K, start with, “Hey, I want to be able to run 5K in less than whatever, 35, 40 minutes,” and just start with something that feels like a leap but doesn’t feel like it’s absolute panic. Because I think that can also deter you from it, and that’s why sometimes these things are scary and hard to do, is because we’ve had one or two times that we went in our panic zone, it didn’t work out how we hoped, and we’re scared to do anything with it.
Future of CRO and Growth
Jomol: That’s a really good perspective as well. It just blew up my mind in terms of how do we even for the smallest thing where we have procrastination involved, that’s also a form of fear that’s dwelling inside of you, and it’s just your thought process that you need to change there.
Coming back into the CRO world as well, what do you think are the predictions for the future in CRO?
Daphne: So I think that one thing will be interesting to see is I think CRO and growth are going to come closer together again. I think growth really leaned on CRO in the beginning to learn the approach, and CRO is also developing. You have a lot of people who are like, “Okay yes, CRO—you know, we shouldn’t call it that anymore, we should call it experimentation. It’s broader than just the conversion rate.”
And you see also at CRO conferences more people talking about this approach of looking more holistically at your whole business. And then I just find that funny when people present that as a new thing, because I’m like, “That’s what we’ve been doing in growth the whole time, it’s kind of how we’ve always approached it.” But you know, it’s I think that kind of idea that CRO is moving to more organization-wide, striving for a center of excellence, not having it in one department—you know, marketing or product—and I think it’s just moving more. It’s the exact same idea as a growth team.
And so I see all these overlaps, and I think that’s just going to be growing more and more in popularity of “Let’s not just look at website optimization, but let’s really look broadly at the whole organization, how we can systematically test around the areas that are holding us back even if that’s not on the website.”
Jomol: That makes sense as well, because end of the day, a business would want to increase their bottom line or they’ll have X and Y goals, and that can only be achieved if you have a cumulative approach and it’s not just stuck at experimentation.
Daphne: That’s right. I do see now in different talk shows and even different webinars, people refrain from saying “conversion rate optimization” and they just say “conversion optimization” or “website improvement” or “growth marketing.”
Daphne: Yeah, because it is also just such a tricky metric, because there’s so many influencing factors. And I’ve had it before too of the client I mentioned earlier where he’s like, “A conversion rate has dropped 20%, what’s going wrong?” And I’m like, “No, we’re just still—we’re a startup, you know, we’re not getting millions of sessions, so smaller things can lead to a change, and it doesn’t mean that that drop is bad. It just means we might have a different traffic source that is slightly less qualified but also comes at a cheaper cost that is just dropping it down, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.”
And so I think that’s also why people are getting more hesitant to use it, because it gets focused on this metric that can be swayed by so many different things and even be swayed by things that aren’t on the website—by you know, what is the content in the emails that you’re sending to the website, what is the content in the ads that, you know, it’s hard then to get focused on this metric that might not always be the deciding or the most important metric to optimize for.
Women in CRO Community
Jomol: So I’m curious to learn about a female personality maybe that you admire in this field of CRO, particularly in their field of professional achievements and success in breaking glass ceilings.
Daphne: Yeah, am I allowed to mention more than one? Because when I was thinking about this, I was like there are so so many. I think that’s what I love about the CRO field too, is because I feel like—and I’m not saying that there aren’t also men that have been so supportive of my career, like for example, Ton Wesseling has been huge in helping me break out as a speaker—but it’s like I feel like with the women in experimentation and growth, because we all struggle with a lot of the same challenges like imposter syndrome—I think you talked to Eden about perfectionism—you know, struggling with getting paid worse than our counterparts or being able to speak up in certain male-dominated environments, that we all group together and back each other up so much that I have a whole group of incredible women that have helped me here.
Which is all to say I still haven’t named a woman, but I will start with Luisa Fernandez. And the reason why is because she was the one who started the Women in Experimentation idea of this community and this list of having female speakers to get more diversity at conferences, at podcasts, and everything. And I’m really proud of what we’ve done together to have a community of 500-plus incredible women and to see also the impact on them.
There was one woman in the group who joined in an imposter syndrome session and was just really struggling with imposter syndrome, and in that session I encouraged her to apply as a speaker for the conference, for the summit we’re now organizing. And then just seeing her actually apply and get through—out of 70 speakers, being in the top 10. I’m like, she almost didn’t apply. She’s now speaking on stage. I’m so proud.
And so like, you know, I don’t want to name her just because of her—yeah, the imposter syndrome is quite a personal session—but I think that’s really cool to see the impact we’ve made together. And also with Trina from Convert who’s sponsoring the whole summit and making it happen, that on the 6th of June we have a free summit where we have a hugely diverse list of incredible new and existing speakers coming together. I feel like both of them have been really influential for me.
But yeah, like I said, there are so many that have—that I owe so much to, from Ella Arts who’s also an incredible speaker and also gives so many women a leg up, to so many others. There’s just an endless list, and that’s what I also love about the community—I feel like I would do anything to help them, and vice versa, they’ve done so much to help me too and be there for me when I need them.
Jomol: And that’s what I love about the CRO world as well. I’ve seen this where everyone lifts each other up, irrespective of gender.
Daphne: Yeah, that’s why I wanted to make it clear—even though I love that community, it’s not limited in any way. I think it’s just like I said, for certain topics it’s been really helpful because they struggle with similar things. Again, men can have imposter syndrome too, men can struggle with perfectionism too, but just having that similar kind of context of where it’s coming from—through gender stereotypes, through how you’ve been treated in certain work situations—is really helpful.
Advice for Newcomers
Jomol: So what advice do you have for the newcomers in this field, everything in terms of what to keep in mind, how to prepare yourself for the role?
Daphne: I think I would just say really be true to who you are yourself. I think sometimes when you come in, you get really swept away by how certain people act or present things, and you feel like, “Oh, do I have to be like that too?” And I think one of the most important things I’ve learned—and this doesn’t just apply to CRO but in general—is to stop getting caught up on “What are my weaknesses and trying to change them?” to acknowledging “This is what my strengths are, this is what I’m naturally good at, this is what I enjoy. How can I use that more and put myself in situations where that can be of use and I can learn to work around that?” versus trying to fit myself into a certain box.
If I struggle to brainstorm on the spot, that doesn’t mean I’m not good at my role. It means I need to ensure that when we have a brainstorm session, I know up front what we’re going to talk about so I can have some time to think about it and present better ideas, because I will actually come with way more in-depth ideas than if I’m just put on the spot.
And I think just learning that about yourself and not being afraid to have a slightly different approach versus trying to catch up with how someone else is doing it is so important.
Personal Relaxation and Hobbies
Jomol: And before we conclude, I was just wondering maybe if you could share—after a long day, how do you unwind and how do you relax?
Daphne: Oh, I don’t think I’ve ever actually shared this, but I love crocheting. It sounds really—I don’t know, for some reason I associate it with older women, which is really stupid because that’s a stereotype I’m making. But I think because I’m so much behind the screen, having something to do with actually my hands—and I basically make projects for people that have asked me to make something for them. So friends who say like, “Oh, I’d love a scarf in this style,” or “I’d love a beanie that looks like this that has this color.” And then I just make basically that for them.
And it’s like for me—because I’m very much, you can tell with coffee in the morning, I’m an acts of service person. My way of sharing my affection for other people is doing things for them. And so for me, it’s such a nice way to just do something that isn’t about my work or anything, is so different from what I’m doing, but also I know brings joy to other people because I only ever make it if it’s something they’ve asked me for, they’ve said like, “I saw this, could you make that?”
And it also keeps it interesting because every time it’s a completely different project. I never make the same thing twice. So that, and dog walks are definitely how I unwind at the end of the day. And cooking—I love to cook too, so I love to just take some time to make something delicious.
Rapid Fire Round
Jomol: It looks like you are just describing an empath. I mean, that’s really cool. I really love how you build a language that you can share, and I really don’t think it’s an old woman’s hobby. I think it’s really cool. I know you’re much awaited for this round, and I know this is going to be the rapid fire round.
Q: Three apps that you cannot live without? A: I would have to say Calendly because it just makes my life so much easier because I hate going back and forth around scheduling things, so just being able to send a link—absolutely love that, makes my life so much easier. I’m going to do a non-work one, and it’s going to be like very unproductive, but honestly, Instagram. I like being able to send funny things to friends and also with people I don’t see as often. I think we always hate so much on social media that I think it’s good to remember that hey, it’s okay to just occasionally have a little mindless scroll and enjoy that. And then what would be the third one? I think I would say Figma, because even though I’m not a designer in any way, I just find it so helpful to be able to create visuals to explain what I’m trying to say, and I found Figma’s just so easy to use. And I feel like if I look at also my growth on LinkedIn, it has come through just taking the time to put together things in a visual way on Figma. So I’ll give that as the third one.
Q: If a movie was made about your life, what would the title be? A: I think it would be “Figuring It Out” because I feel like that’s sometimes just been my life—not knowing certain things and just trying to find a way to figuring it out. Like whether it’s figuring out I have ADHD at the age of 25 when I’ve managed 25 years without knowing it, or figuring out how to deal with a sudden change, or to work for myself. It’s just figuring it out as we go.
Q: One thing that you’d like to change about the CRO industry? A: This is slightly broader to the growth industry, but the focus on big B2B SaaS brands. It really bothers me that so many examples and also courses and stuff are just focused on these same 10 examples—you know, “This is Slack’s story to success,” “This is how Canvas scaled up”—but it’s just always these same kind of tools or B2B businesses that I feel like it’s just not relevant. I would love it if we shared more smaller examples, more relatable examples, and focused also on the things that didn’t work, the things that didn’t go right, instead of just focusing on these huge examples that are so far removed from the average business.
Q: What’s the most random fact that you know? A: Sorry, I’m completely blanking on this one. I’m trying to think of what is a really random thing, but I just don’t feel like I have anything super random. I don’t really read random fact things.
Q: What is your guilty pleasure TV show or movie? A: Oh, I really shouldn’t share this one either… Love is Blind. So bad that it’s good. It’s again one of these things where I just have a few friends who watch it too and just absolutely dissect it. And it’s an experiment, and it’s such an intriguing experiment of “Could you actually marry someone without seeing them?” And the answer is clearly no. I saw this post once that was like, “I love how after six seasons we know love isn’t blind, but we still watch.” So that’s definitely my guilty pleasure. I think it’s one of those things where people don’t expect of me that I really like bad trashy TV, but I think it just allows me to switch off. And I also love reading romcom kind of books and murder mysteries because just losing myself in someone else’s story.
Q: If you had a podcast, who would be your first guest? A: I feel like there’s so much pressure on who you bring on first. I think I’m guessing it’s a CRO kind of growth podcast, right? I think I’d like to double back to one of the women I mentioned—I think Ella Arts I’d love to have on because I think she’s so brutally honest, so open, and she’s focused on user research, and I’m like everything we do should start there. So why not also then start the podcast with focusing on the research and getting that right? And I think she’s also just someone who’s helped so many people, lifts everyone else up, that I think she’d be a really inspirational guest to have on there.
Q: Would you recommend any three books to our listeners? A: Yeah, I think because we’re focusing on women with this, I think one that has been so incredibly helpful to me—it’s not a CRO book at all—is “The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control.” It’s such an interesting book because it talks about five different forms of perfectionism and how with each one you can not see it as a bad thing but use it to your advantage and learn to better work with it. So I’d really recommend that book for anyone who thinks they might have perfectionism. I didn’t think I was a perfectionist because I’m so bad at the details, but it actually showed me, “Oh no, I’m not that kind of perfectionist. I’m a different type of perfectionist in how I approach things.” So I thought that was an incredible book, and I’ve recommended it and given it to a few people too.
Another one that I’m reading right now is “The CLV Revolution” by Valentin, and I really love that book because it’s so practically talking about how we can focus on customer value. I think so many things get caught up on focusing on the acquisition side and the front side, and I really like how he’s taken a really data-driven, practical approach to optimizing for customer lifetime value.
For the third one… I think another book that’s had a really big impact on me is “4,000 Weeks,” and what it talks about is this idea that we only have 4,000 weeks to live and how that results in us trying to do more, more, more to get more out of it, but at the same time that actually ruins it. So I thought that was also a really interesting book of this debate of “How do we get the most out of it without running ourselves ragged but also enjoying the moment?” I think Eden also talked about that, and I’ve talked about it too, about having these goals and these things outside of work because you can’t just work towards something—one, you might never get there, and two, you end up not enjoying the process. So I think that’s another really great read for anyone to check out.
Q: What is one superpower that you would love to have? A: I think it’s going to be a bit cliché, but I would just love to be able to transport to places because I love going to places. I have family all the way in Australia, but it’s like I can’t see them as much as I’d love to. So to be able to just transport myself to anywhere in the world—not only would it take all the hours of traffic out, but it just means that I get to see a lot more of my family and friends. Because I think that’s the challenge also living in London—I have to make a choice every time: am I going to go back for certain events in the Netherlands? How often do I go back to Australia to see the family there? So I wish I could just transport myself anywhere—that would be great.
Q: One thing that you are tired of explaining to your boss or your clients? A: Growth isn’t marketing. Luckily the clients I work with usually have worked this out, but I definitely had it in my old role—I was head of growth and I ended up just getting the full marketing responsibility. And I also have it sometimes with leads and stuff who reach out who are just basically looking for someone to do marketing but also focus on the growth side of it and just do everything in one. And trying to explain like, “Hey, they aren’t the same. You know, growth is so much more than just the marketing side. It’s more like an approach than a department.” That’s something that I feel like I wish more people would understand, and I post quite a bit about that because I do find it a really important distinction also to set your organization up for success.
Q: What is one goal or dream that you would like to achieve in the next three years? A: Oh, I really want to go to Antarctica. It’s just crazy expensive, but I feel like that’s something that’s definitely been a dream of mine for a while—just this obsession with actually seeing the edge of the world and seeing such a different environment and the nature of it. I get a lot of peace when I ski—skiing for me and being surrounded by snow is very relaxing. So I can just imagine being there and actually getting to experience that would be incredible. So whether it happens in the next few years, the next 10 years, it’s definitely a goal to get there eventually.
Jomol: That’s really cool. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who has this goal. I mean, that’s really cool.
Daphne: It’s going to be a lot of saving first—first getting a house, and I’m getting married next year, so we’ll focus on that first.
Jomol: Yeah, it’ll all happen, don’t worry. How was your experience on the podcast?
Daphne: Yeah, it was good. I really enjoyed it. I’m so bad with the rapid fire round. The worst thing was that I knew what was coming and then I still blanked on the weird fact, because I literally thought about that after Eden’s interview. I was like, “I need a weird fact. I don’t have a weird fact. What is a weird fact?” And then I came with no weird fact, and I’ll probably think of something later. So sorry I couldn’t answer that one.
But no, it’s been fun chatting, and I love that you’re doing this series. I’m still going to check out some of the other episodes, but I had seen Eden’s post about it and I was like, “I really want to hear an episode,” because she is such a lovely person. She was on my list of people I mentioned.
Jomol: She’s amazing. Yes, I do agree, and you were great as well. I mean, I loved conversing with you, and I’m sure our listeners had a fun time as well. Thank you so much for your time.
