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Ponderings from the Perch

Ponderings from the Perch

By: Little Bird Marketing & C-Suite Radio
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 Conversations with Priscilla McKinney, founder and President of Little Bird Marketing, an award-winning agency specializing in content marketing, lead generation, branding and design. As a CEO and serial entrepreneur, Priscilla's topics range from marketing best practices, the "stunning discomfort" of entrepreneurship, market research, her love of the autoharp, and other marketing oddities.℗ & © 2018 Ponderings from the Perch Art Economics
Episodes
  • Stop Posting, Start Distributing

    Stop Posting, Start Distributing
    Mar 13 2026
    *This episode of Ponderings from the Perch is brought to you by PatientSight, an agile primary research service providing timely medical insights of interest to your organization.* For most B2B companies, the problem is not creating content. The problem, instead, is distributing content. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing content marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney draws a hard line between two things that are not interchangeable and not even close to the same thing. B2B teams that have published well-researched, well-written, and genuinely useful content only to hear nothing back will recognize the gap most people are too uncomfortable to admit exists in their own organization. Posting and distributing are not the same thing, and the difference between them is not subtle. Most b2b digital marketing efforts are built backwards, and the real weight of a social media marketing strategy has very little to do with what gets published and everything to do with what happens next. Earning the right to ask before ever making an ask sounds like common sense until you look at how few teams actually operate that way. "Content creation is about 30% of the work and distribution is about 70%," McKinney explains. "And honestly, most people are doing it absolutely backwards." Good content and a good audience are not enough if the two never actually meet. That tension sits at the center of every B2B marketing conversation worth having, and it is the one that most teams keep deferring. The content is not the problem. The question is what happens to it after it exists. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Ever feel like your marketing plan is just... meh? You've got the pieces, but are they really working together? We often find that even when companies are doing the right things, they may not be doing them in the right order. The results are, well, no results. Curious how you can effectively evaluate your marketing efforts? Want clarity on your next best strategic move? Take our Marketing Assessment Quiz and in just minutes, discover exactly where you stand – and where you could be going. Click here and take the quiz today and don’t leave success to chance. Ever feel like your company is sitting on a goldmine of opportunities, but they keep slipping away? Most companies already have their next big win hiding in their database. Little Bird Marketing's Revenue Sprint is a proven system that works backward from your revenue goals to create a focused plan for building a sales pipeline and predictable growth. No massive budget required—just strategic execution that delivers measurable results. Ready to turn missed opportunities into new wins? Click here and build a predictable pipeline for sustainable growth.
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    29 mins
  • The Mental Fitness Practice of a World Champion Freediver

    The Mental Fitness Practice of a World Champion Freediver
    Mar 20 2026
    The gap between surviving and performing is not a mindset shift. It is a physiological one. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney sits down with Helena Bourdillon, four-time World Champion freediver and four-time World Record holder, whose path from the depths of depression to the depths of the ocean reframes what it actually means to perform under pressure. Bourdillon's work spans elite sport, clinical mental health recovery, and professional breathwork instruction, and what she brings to high-stakes sector audiences is not a wellness program. It is something far more comprehensive than that. Most organizations address stress at the surface. They offer flexibility perks, mental health days, and well-intentioned check-ins that treat symptoms while the root system goes untouched. But mental fitness is different from mental wellness. The architecture of the practice is built on science-backed tools that retrain the nervous system rather than soothe it. The distinction matters because leaders and teams that skip this foundation do not plateau. They erode. And no marketing performance metrics or customer insights dashboard will surface the real reason why. What freediving reveals is that the body and the mind must be in alignment, or performance becomes friction. Bourdillon speaks to a state she calls "quiet clarity," and what she says next is worth sitting with. "When we can do it from that place we are so much more present for ourselves," Bourdillon explains, "for what we're doing, so we actually get it done a lot faster and a lot better and more importantly we are there for the people around us, some who might really need us." The tools that produce quiet clarity are not complex. That is precisely what makes them easy to dismiss and costly to ignore. Bourdillon's five science-backed tools are the kind of thing a 15-year-old could learn and a seasoned executive has likely never tried. Watch her award-winning documentary Light Beams for Helena and connect with her at helenabourdillon.com. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today!
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    33 mins
  • Deeper, Richer Customer Insights through Conversation

    Deeper, Richer Customer Insights through Conversation
    Mar 6 2026
    The research industry has a data quality problem it keeps politely talking around. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney sits down with Matt Kleinschmit, founder and CEO of Reach3 Insights and part of the broader Rival Group family of companies. With nearly 30 years in the research industry, Matt brings a rare combination of entrepreneurial range and deep methodological conviction to a conversation about what the insights industry keeps getting wrong and why fixing it requires owning the problem from the ground up. Most quantitative research still runs through email. That single fact, unremarkable to many and alarming to few, sits at the center of a much larger tension between how research has always been done and how people actually live, communicate, and share. The gap between a clinical survey experience and a genuine human response is not a design preference. It is a data integrity issue. And in a world where customer insights drive high-stakes business decisions, the cost of that gap compounds quietly until it doesn't. Owning the human source data layer is not a common commitment in this industry right now. Aggregation is easier. Subcontracting is cheaper. And the downstream consequences of river sampling, bot contamination, and unvalidated respondents are someone else's problem until they aren't. "Leaning into the future, but not losing touch with the past," Kleinschmit explains. "[This] is the notion that a lot of the client researchers that we work with, [that] they want to be innovative. They want to bring new things into the organization, but they also have to have trust and credibility that what they're bringing into the organization is legitimate." The brands drowning in AI options, synthetic data promises, and methodology noise are not asking the wrong questions. They are asking them to the wrong partners. What it actually takes to guide a Fortune 100 client through that landscape, with transparency, calibration, and something worth trusting, is a much harder thing to build than a platform or a panel alone. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Tired of generic marketing firms that don't get market research? Say hello to Little Bird Marketing, the revenue generation company of choice for the market research industry. Our "peeps" understand market research inside and out. We know your buyers, craft meaningful messages that move them to buy, understand the competitive landscape and where you fit in the market. We get the industry - from qual/quant to emerging technologies. Why settle for getting the job done when you can soar with marketing that drives real revenue? Click here to get started. Ever feel like your marketing plan is just... meh? You've got the pieces, but are they really working together? We often find that even when companies are doing the right things, they may not be doing them in the right order. The results are, well, no results. Curious how you can effectively evaluate your marketing efforts? Want clarity on your next best strategic move? Take our Marketing Assessment Quiz and in just minutes, discover exactly where you stand – and where you could be going. Click here and take the quiz today and don’t leave success to chance.
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    33 mins
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