People First, Always: Leadership Lessons from Madison Riddell
01:02
Mara Kamat
Welcome back to In Her Land, where we highlight amazing women who are leaders in their fields and around the land. We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season filled with friends, time and family, and maybe some fun adventures too. This week we're excited to welcome someone near and dear to our hearts, the president of Vivid Front, which is the studio that we are meeting in now and that we record our podcast in Madison Rydell. Madison has been at vivid front since 2017. Really growing up here within these walls. And we're so excited to spend some time with you today.
01:40
Madison Riddell
I'm so excited to be here. I can't wait to dig in. Hi, great to see you both. Thank you for having me.
01:46
Carrie Aguilar
So, because this will be the first episode into the new year, we thought it'd be fun to maybe start with. First of all, how was your new year?
01:56
Madison Riddell
It was very low key. I have a toddler. Okay, we'll get into that. I'm sure. I have a daughter. She's a year and a half old. So were in bed by 10 o'. Clock.
02:04
Carrie Aguilar
Love that.
02:04
Madison Riddell
I think I rolled over around 11:59 and said to my husband, happy New Year. And he might have grunted something back and then went back to sleep.
02:12
Carrie Aguilar
That sounds perfect.
02:12
Madison Riddell
That's exactly.
02:13
Carrie Aguilar
What about you guys, when we had a two year old.
02:15
Madison Riddell
Yeah.
02:16
Mara Kamat
We had a very low key New Year's as well. All of the Comet family had the flu, so were recovering from the flu. We were in lovely Aspen, which had little to no snow, unfortunately, which was sad.
02:29
Madison Riddell
I didn't catch that part. Little to no snow. Yeah.
02:32
Carrie Aguilar
And I feel like that was my algorithm for two weeks maybe because I talked to Mara about Aspen so many times.
02:37
Madison Riddell
Your phone heard you. Yes, of course.
02:39
Carrie Aguilar
So all I saw was these reels with no snow.
02:42
Mara Kamat
No snow. And then were similar to you in that I think were sound asleep at 9:30 on New Year's. My older one watched the ball drop on the east coast and then went to sleep.
02:55
Carrie Aguilar
Oh, nice.
02:55
Mara Kamat
Yeah, we didn't even get that far.
02:57
Carrie Aguilar
Oh, my God. So mountain time. So she stayed up until 10 and then she's done.
03:01
Mara Kamat
There you go.
03:02
Madison Riddell
What about you, Carrie?
03:03
Carrie Aguilar
Low key as well. My husband and I went to Hex for dinner. Love Hex, which was so fun. It really was. It was like a fun date night here in Cleveland. There was a very bad snowstorm. So it was fun to be out in this kind of crazy snowstorm. It felt very holiday like, as opposed to. I feel like Christmas was almost warm.
03:27
Madison Riddell
I'm so sick of the snow before Christmas and after. Yeah, but not on Christmas.
03:31
Carrie Aguilar
It's so awful. So I felt like, you know, we got the snow that we wanted on New Year's Eve and then this was the first. I have a. Penelope is now 10 and it was the first year that she wanted to stay up until midnight. So we held on. I will say it was like, awkward because she really wanted to watch the ball drop. So we turned on. We don't have cable, so we turned on whatever streaming service showed the ball drop. And the two hours before the ball drop was this like, recap of 2025. And when I tell you guys know what 2025 was like. And my daughter does. Not really. We don't really watch the news with her. She just stared at the television. What the fuck?
04:14
Madison Riddell
This is what happened the last 12 months.
04:16
Carrie Aguilar
And so what we did was we, like, quickly, were like, maybe this isn't the best thing. We'll watch like the 10 second ball drop. And before that we'll watch. I think we actually watched like Lord of the Rings.
04:26
Madison Riddell
It.
04:26
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah, it was nice.
04:27
Madison Riddell
Sweet, memorable.
04:29
Carrie Aguilar
Okay, so before, I guess now that we talked about New Year's, do you have any resolutions?
04:35
Madison Riddell
I do. I have five. Wow.
04:38
Carrie Aguilar
Wow.
04:38
Madison Riddell
But I feel like I have to be able to memorize them. So maybe this will be good practice because they're in the works. But one of them is to be present. As a mom, I think, and I know this sounds corny, but I'm big on priorities, not goals. Because I feel like most of the things I'm prioritizing at the top of the year, I have to continue doing that in perpetuity. Like, I can't really check them off even though that gives me more satisfaction.
05:00
Carrie Aguilar
So, like, the goal isn't being present. The priority is being present.
05:03
Madison Riddell
The priority is being present. Exactly. So the resolution Goal priority, whatever you want to call it, is to be present as a mom and a wife. The second one is I need to be relentless about time management. I really feel like all of the other priorities come back to the time management piece. I got some feedback. We do our end of year off site with our leadership team. We run on the entrepreneurial operating system, or eos, and we have a two day off site and we give each other feedback, the best thing about you, the way you need to grow. And we go around the room, each leadership team member, and tell one another, start doing this and stop doing this. And some of the feedback I got was stop showing up late to meetings, stop running over on meetings, stop multitasking.
05:42
Madison Riddell
Because I'm in so many. It can really throw off the machine.
05:45
Carrie Aguilar
Right.
05:45
Madison Riddell
So that's part of my time management goal. Maybe I'll get through all five. The third one is to find a way to find time for myself again. So my daughter's a year and a half. I feel like my pregnancy was challenging. The first year of being a mom was challenging. And now I'm finally feeling I can. I can carve out time for myself again.
06:04
Carrie Aguilar
Love that.
06:05
Madison Riddell
So I need to figure that out as part of The Time Management 4 is I'm hoping to start. I guess this is fun to share. Baby two this year. Yeah.
06:14
Mara Kamat
Oh, wow.
06:15
Carrie Aguilar
I was thinking the second. You like.
06:16
Madison Riddell
Yeah.
06:17
Carrie Aguilar
Change your.
06:19
Madison Riddell
Gosh.
06:20
Carrie Aguilar
Is this announcement?
06:21
Madison Riddell
No, not announcement, but maybe.
06:23
Carrie Aguilar
Maybe in two minutes. Do you have to do that?
06:24
Madison Riddell
You never know. Yeah, we'll find out soon. But I feel like my first pregnancy, I did not have a great relationship with my pregnancy. I really hated being pregnant, everything about it.
06:34
Carrie Aguilar
And that's why I have one child.
06:35
Madison Riddell
Yes. I love being a mom and I loved labor, actually. But I feel like round two, I need, like a redemption arc with pregnancy. So hopefully, fingers crossed, we're in Baby two season this year and that pregnancy is better.
06:49
Mara Kamat
We'll pray for you.
06:50
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah.
06:50
Madison Riddell
Thank you.
06:51
Mara Kamat
I didn't have a.
06:51
Carrie Aguilar
What is it? T's and peas. Thoughts and prayers.
06:53
Madison Riddell
T's and peas. Thank you so much.
06:56
Mara Kamat
I didn't have good pregnancies.
06:57
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah.
06:58
Mara Kamat
So you do what you can and the outcome is incredible. And that's just what you have to focus on.
07:04
Carrie Aguilar
So maybe it's not a redemption arc. It's just an arc.
07:06
Madison Riddell
I'll pray there will be a literal arc across my body.
07:10
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah, exactly.
07:11
Madison Riddell
But maybe it's just preparing myself for the inevitable. Yeah. So those are my resolutions. What about yours?
07:19
Carrie Aguilar
This year we did Something new we did this summer or summer solstice. Not at all. Winter solstice activity, where you write 13 visions that you want to see for yourself in the new year. So you write them down and it's. It is their statements like, I am wealthy beyond measure, or it's saying in action, so I am already this thing. And what we did was. What you do is like starting on the winter solstice, you burn. You write them all down, you put them in a jar, you fold them up, and then you burn one every single day without looking at it. And then the last one that you are stuck with on day 13 is the one that you have to take care of for the year.
08:03
Madison Riddell
Wow. I love that.
08:04
Carrie Aguilar
And it was. If I just. I'm not a super, like, woo person. I'm just not. I'm very, like, very practical. I'm a Capricorn in that way. But with that being said, my. I had all of the kind of crazy ones, and then I had one that was super tactical and. And it was. I limit my social media to one hour per day. And that was the one I got on the 13th day. And I was like, this is bananas.
08:29
Madison Riddell
So, yeah.
08:30
Carrie Aguilar
So that's the resolution I'm taking on, I guess everybody else. I'll be wealthy beyond measure by the end of this year because the universe provides.
08:36
Madison Riddell
But.
08:37
Carrie Aguilar
But yeah, so that's my. That's mine.
08:39
Madison Riddell
Carrie totally planted asking about resolutions because she knew her methodology was so cool. She. Yeah, I was like. She was like, I'm going to show them off with my burning and my ritual. Yeah.
08:49
Carrie Aguilar
And it's like an activity that I can do.
08:52
Mara Kamat
What's the significance of 13? Where does that come from?
08:55
Carrie Aguilar
I couldn't tell you. I really don't know. But it was really fun, honestly. Like I did with my husband and my daughter and everyone. We got into it. We actually did it late. So on the first night, we burned like nine, and it was so cold. And my husband made us go outside because, I don't know, he thinks we're gonna burn down the house. So we're like, literally outside. I'm in pajamas, which, like, my pajamas are like a T shirt and no shorts. Okay, guys. So I'm in my B backyard in Cleveland Heights, like, burning pieces of paper.
09:25
Mara Kamat
You need that, like, little mini solo stove in that moment.
09:28
Madison Riddell
Yeah.
09:28
Mara Kamat
Yeah, that's what you need.
09:31
Carrie Aguilar
James had that. But then he was outside too. He was like, this will still burn the house. Done.
09:36
Madison Riddell
So that's what husbands are for.
09:37
Carrie Aguilar
What about you, Mara?
09:38
Mara Kamat
So I always appreciate that. Aaron and I try to carve out some time to talk about, to dream about. Like, what does our life look like for the next few years? And when we got married, somebody gave us a gift card and this, like, beautifully written note, like, make sure you carve out time every year to dream about what the next three to five years looks like. Like, my wife and I have always done this, and it's been just such anchoring thing to build our life together. And so we've taken that to heart every year, and we try to do that. So I would say this year looked a little different in the fact that we both had the flu and we're, like, laying in bed doing it together.
10:17
Carrie Aguilar
Just, like, grunting each other, grunting at each other.
10:20
Mara Kamat
Like, we had time, we didn't was like, we feel very blessed and just going through what we want. So for me, mine were. One is similar to yours, Madison, in being present with my kids. I have five years till my oldest is gone. When you put it in perspective. And how do I make sure I'm present for all those moments that matter? And I was talking to a friend earlier this week, and I asked her if her daughter could come. Her daughter is celebrating her birthday. She's a very close friend of ours. We're not going to be in town for her daughter's birthday. I was like, hey, on Monday of Martin Luther King, can I take all the girls to get manicures and pedicures and we can go to lunch and celebrate her birthday? And she's, wait, how do you do that?
11:06
Mara Kamat
And I was like, I block my calendar, knowing that they don't have school. And I am just so committed to making that happen and protecting that time. So that was like, I'm already putting that in action and making sure that it happens. And then my second one was taking care of my health. So being really mindful, I have a big birthday coming up this year. Like, how can I lose weight, feel great? But then ultimately, 25, being thriving, building muscle. And I'm really into this whole idea of longevity, like, how do we live longer, healthier lives? And I'm not sure that I'm doing that yet, but that's a space I want to learn more about so I can adopt more of those practices.
11:49
Carrie Aguilar
This.
11:51
Mara Kamat
And then finally, like, putting out the energy in the world that we want to get back. So we have our family motto. Be smart, be kind, be confident. Like, how do we make sure in all of our interactions that's what we're Putting out. Because sometimes we're humans, and we don't always put the best of ourselves out. So those are the three things I'm focusing on for this year. And I love Erin, so we will continue to spend time as a couple and talk about what our life looks like, but those are just three things that I'm focusing on.
12:21
Madison Riddell
I love it.
12:22
Carrie Aguilar
That's awesome.
12:22
Madison Riddell
Beautiful.
12:23
Carrie Aguilar
I guess switching. Now that we've talked about resolutions and what our New Year's look like, switching back to Madison here. And is it okay if I just call you Maddie?
12:32
Madison Riddell
Yeah, please.
12:34
Carrie Aguilar
So I didn't.
12:35
Madison Riddell
I didn't know if that was like, please, Maddie Madison.
12:37
Carrie Aguilar
Like, best friends levels. Okay, good. So Maddie and I first met just to set the stage in, I want to say, September of 2024 at Ohio VC Fest. And I walked up to her, and I was like, I think you guys were excited about podcasts. And I had just said, hey, a friend and I are really interested in developing this podcast about putting light to women's stories here in Cleveland and leadership. And I just remember you being so excited about it. So you have been, like, OG fans since day one. So I really appreciate that. I love that, and I'm so excited to be having this conversation with you. So thank you. Thank you for taking the time. I know you're so excited. Super busy.
13:20
Madison Riddell
Oh, my gosh. My pleasure. I think that podcasting was a relatively new service for us at that time, so I think we opened our previous studio maybe in 22 or 23, and then we had this studio ready to rack by the time you guys started. But it's been a journey, and I think one of the primary objectives was always to just give more voices to people locally. We have clients all over the globe, but our Cleveland clients and our Cleveland relationships are so important to us. So to me, the opportunity to bring in a Cleveland voice, but also female voices was obviously gonna light me up from day one. But the two of you are so amazing and kind and brilliant that I was excited to be along for the ride. I love seeing what you guys are doing.
14:02
Carrie Aguilar
Thank you.
14:03
Madison Riddell
Thank you.
14:05
Mara Kamat
So when we started, I mentioned that you've been here at vivid front since 2017.
14:09
Madison Riddell
Yep.
14:09
Mara Kamat
And something we really enjoy doing is exploring people's careers and their lives and hearing about their journey. Would love to hear from you. Talk to us a little bit about what your career has been like here at Vivid Front and how you continue to develop yourself and what maybe career challenges that you've faced through your time.
14:31
Madison Riddell
Totally. Yes. Lots to unpack there. So just for the audience who doesn't know about Vivid Front, we're a full service digital marketing agency. So we have essentially three business functions under one roof. We have a web services team, a performance marketing team, and a branding team. And all of those teams work together to help scale brands digitally. That's our focus area. So over the last 16 or so years, we've worked with hundreds of brands across the globe to do just that, to take their digital presence online for the first time with a new website or a new brand, or more commonly, to pour more gasoline on a fire for an established brand. So the majority of our clients are mid market and they're in pretty much every industry you can think of. So that's the backdrop and the context.
15:17
Madison Riddell
Like I said, we've been in business for 16 years, so we're not new kids on the block, but we have a very young and hungry team and that's the culture that has always been part of our fabric, even before I was here back in 2017. So that was just to set the stage, the industry and the climate and the type of company that I was walking into. When I came to Vivitront in 2017, I was a senior in college, so you can do the math. I'm 29 and I was interning. I already had three or four internships, paid internships with larger companies, both locally in Cleveland and in Buffalo, my hometown. Throughout my college experience. I even had a couple of them when I was in high school. I always knew I wanted to be in business and in marketing.
15:55
Carrie Aguilar
So awesome.
15:56
Madison Riddell
Yeah. I dove headfirst right out of the rip and I was interning for UBS big company in a paid internship capacity my senior year. And long story short, through a mutual connection, I found Vivid Front. And I had a phone call with our now CEO and my business partner, Lisa. And we talked about an internship and she said, okay, you're hired on that call. And she sent a follow up email. And there was nothing about pay. So I said, oh, what's the pay? And she said, there isn't any. Do you want to work here or not? And I said, wow, okay, it's a.
16:28
Carrie Aguilar
Yes or no, but something about the.
16:30
Madison Riddell
Universe told me to take the leap. So I left that paid internship to work for Vivid Front for free. And I interned for a year. And then at the conclusion of my internship, I expected like any well studied student with good grades and aspirations, that I was gonna get an offer. But I figured I would decline it because I didn't wanna live In Cleveland. I wasn't from here. I wasn't really connected to the city yet and I really wanted to move to Manhattan, but I figured an offer would come and it would be like a safety net. Offer never came. And the only position that was available was executive assistant to the CEO. So the other intern who was from the same college as me, got the marketing role and I was offered the assistant role. Oh no, just kidding.
17:11
Madison Riddell
Massive jab to the ego. I was like, are you kidding me? They think I should be an assistant. Like I've worked so hard and I sat down with my now like 21.
17:21
Carrie Aguilar
Year old ego, which is like way bigger than it even is today.
17:23
Madison Riddell
Way bigger. And we can talk about my childhood a little bit if you want. But the ego was big, right? I was like tenacious. I was ready to rock. And I remember sitting down with my now father in law. I've been with my husband since were 18 and he was like, I really feel like something is here, like you should just take it. And I credit him sometimes for pushing me. So I took the executive assistant position and the promise from our then CEO and now he's just founder who's involved here and there. Andrew. His promise was, I'll let you be a sponge in every meeting. I'll teach you everything I know about business as long as you're willing to make no money essentially and do a bunch of shitty grunt work.
18:01
Madison Riddell
So I did that and within a year I had fallen in love and he kept his promise and I was just on this rocket ship for growth from there. So that was in my first full year, ended in 2018ish or no, it would have been 2019. And now in 2026 I'm president. So there's been a lot of winding roads along the way. But he kept his word.
18:21
Carrie Aguilar
And can you say what so after your role as the executive assistant to the CEO, was your net, like how did you move up through Vivid Front? Was it on the product side, was it on the sales side? What did that look like for you?
18:34
Madison Riddell
Yeah, great question. So definitely a lot of hats. We were really small. I think at that time we had 12 employees or something like that. This year we'll be in like the mid-40s, probably with number of employees. So we've grown a lot since then. But the team was really small at that time. Our marketing team and our accounts team, our project managers was one team. There was no sales team. Like it was very tight. It was founder led sales. He was doing all the selling. So really in my assistant position, I just did a little bit of everything. A sampling so that I could figure out how to be an operator and a leader. One day, one meeting, I would go to his pitches with him and he walked out, and he was like, you got this during the meeting?
19:11
Madison Riddell
And the client was sitting right there. That was my first sales pitch, and we didn't have a sales team.
19:15
Mara Kamat
Cool.
19:16
Madison Riddell
So post assistant, I think my position was manager, account manager of operations or something. It was like a fake, very fake title. We've never really been into this year, but it was basically do everything. Okay. So I did some marketing execution, like ran campaigns, pulled the levers within the platforms, ran Google Ads, posted on social, managed influencers, came up with media plans. I was an account manager. I was client facing, which was really what I was good at and passionate about. Then I led into sales, and I built. Our sales team was like salesperson number one after the founder. I've always been really into creative. So actually right now I'm temporarily leading our creative team in a creative director capacity. So I've really sat in every seat. Hopefully that answers your question.
19:58
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah, no, I love that.
20:00
Mara Kamat
As you've navigated these different seats and experiences, can you share with us a few things that you've learned from the CEO or from the people that you've worked with that have really stuck with you and have helped to propel you into leadership position today?
20:15
Madison Riddell
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. It goes without saying, but I'm learning new things from all of them every single day. I learned so much from our team, but I think specifically to our founder in that role. One thing he instilled in me and in the fabric of the company was that nothing matters without results. And all the fanfare and the fluff and the excitement that can come in a really sexy industry, nothing matters without results. And that's proven true. Where we've seen most of our competitors locally and beyond have shut their doors entirely, unfortunately, or done major rounds of layoffs or had to niche down because there wasn't that results focus. And I will never be able to operate in a different mindset other than in the pursuit of results because of that. So I think that's the first thing. The second thing is random.
21:03
Madison Riddell
And if he ended up listening to this, I don't know if he would remember he said this, but one of my colleagues, not our former CEO, he said to me once in a meeting, your superpower is that everybody always knows where they stand with you.
21:16
Carrie Aguilar
Is that code for, like, you're a.
21:18
Madison Riddell
Bitch and at first that's what I thought. I'm like, okay, so you think my superpowers, I'm a bitch. But the more I sat with it, for some reason, all these years later, that was like five years ago. I still think about it because what I learned from him is that even sometimes if my approach, I can be a little bit tough. For sure, I'm a tough cookie. I've always been that way. Even if my approach doesn't always feel good in the moment, I think there's value in people knowing where they stand with you. And I think that people appreciate honesty and transparency and that you're not going to tiptoe around them or use politics to get them to do what you want. I've always been a very honest communicator.
21:57
Madison Riddell
And I feel like in that moment I learned from him that it was a superpower, and I never looked at it that way. So those are two things in a sea of millions of things that I learn all the time from them. But I carry those with me, both of them, a lot.
22:08
Carrie Aguilar
So, Maddie, we have lots of listeners who are either in a building phase of what you have done. We have others who are potentially transitioning their careers and looking to make a change. What advice would you give new or newer leaders? Just getting started?
22:24
Madison Riddell
Yeah, great question. I think that being obsessed with being uncomfortable is a really valuable skill if you're trying something new or trying to start something. I still carry that with me now, even though I've been in the same company in similar roles for eight years. I think that if you're uncomfortable doing something, it's probably the right challenge that you're supposed to be focusing your time on. So whether you're someone who's scared to sit down on a podcast or nervous about networking or nervous about leading a meeting or whatever it is, taking a leap with your boss, asking for a raise, going out on your own for the first time. That obsession with can I find things that make me uncomfortable? Is something that has fueled me. I still try and do it all the time.
23:08
Madison Riddell
I could share some off camera, funny recent examples with you, but I think that if you're okay with being uncomfortable and accept it and actually start to want it, those are different things. And the pursuit of it, I think, is part of the fuel that you can drop into your tank to get there. I think that another tip would be to learn to trust yourself, and not necessarily that you're always going to be right. But I do think if you have an inherent trust in who you are, you'll be able to charge into storms more confidently. New things, starting a new venture. Knowing that I trust myself so much that even if I fail at this one thing, I know I'll pick up the pieces. And I feel that way a lot when I take risks is if it feels right in the gut.
23:56
Madison Riddell
And I've been mulling it over for a while, I trust that even if I fuck this all up, I will still figure it out. And I think if you have those two things in unison, you're good with being uncomfortable. You're not afraid to fail because you trust that you have your own back. You can really do anything.
24:11
Mara Kamat
So in the spirit of that, like, doing those two things is not easy. How have you developed, or how do you recommend other people develop the confidence and the resilience to be able to do those two things sustainably?
24:25
Madison Riddell
Yeah, good question. Developing confidence. I think that this sounds a little bit traditional and maybe not something that would come from a millennial, but I do think that I love that you.
24:36
Carrie Aguilar
Call yourself a millennial.
24:37
Madison Riddell
I'm on the cusp. I am not Gen Z. I don't identify as Gen Z. I'm a cusper. We have different personalities. Cuspers for sure.
24:44
Mara Kamat
I value the diversity of people that we talk to on this podcast.
24:47
Carrie Aguilar
I love this so much.
24:48
Madison Riddell
Yes, I'm a cusp, but I'm an old soul for sure. I think, though, that you can't put a price on time spent at something like the very simple answer is the more reps you do at something, the more confident you'll become. But what I will say is as a girl who was 21 with her chip on her shoulder and navigating all this in my twenties, you can spend just as much time on something as someone that's been in a role for five years or 10 if you're cramming more into those weeks as an early professional. And I know that work life balance is all the rage and I value it, especially now as a mom. But as an early 20s, something like maybe don't expect it or have adjusted expectations if you want to be a high achiever.
25:30
Madison Riddell
And if you're looking to build confidence, if you can cram 60 hour work weeks in those first crucial five years of your career, that's going to get you the confidence you're looking for much quicker than if you do the nine to five over five or ten years. So I do think that time helps reps help with confidence. But there's more than one way to achieve time versus Just years of experience.
25:52
Mara Kamat
What's funny, we talked about this a little bit earlier on is when I was in my 20s, I was so confident, and maybe there was a little bit of, like, naivete there, but. And now that I'm, like, moving 20 years later, the confidence piece is something that you would think is inherent because, like, you've grown, you've developed. But I find myself challenging my own confidence more at this stage of my life than I did when I was younger, which I think is really interesting.
26:22
Madison Riddell
It is interesting.
26:23
Mara Kamat
I've been thinking a lot about that. Why. And so I appreciate the whole concept of when you're doing new things and I'm doing a lot of new things personally and professionally. There is that learning curve that we have and that repetition we need until we feel comfortable, but then going back to the centering of yourself. You said this earlier, and you know what you're capable of and rerouting yourself in that.
26:50
Madison Riddell
Exactly. And you, Mara, are a confident person, but maybe when you're entering into a new space you haven't touched, you're not confident in that space. How can you pull from, like, your standing, regular confidence tank, but also recognize you gotta do some reps in the new space. And you said one of your family values is confidence, right? Yeah.
27:08
Mara Kamat
Be smart, be kind, be confident.
27:10
Madison Riddell
Yeah. So I think that's so true. And I actually, I hear my mom saying similar things. She just moved here from Buffalo to be near the baby. She's kind of building her own business alongside some work that she's doing here. And she shares similar things. Like she's been in healthcare for 30 years, but now all of a sudden, the confidence she developed over decades is out the window. I think it's a journey for sure. Just like were talking about earlier, it's a priority versus a goal. You can't really check it off. But, yeah, I think there's a lot of ways to get to confidence.
27:38
Mara Kamat
Thank you.
27:40
Carrie Aguilar
So, pulling from some other sources, so articles that I've read, you've said that it's impossible to find the right balance of people and profit if people aren't first by a landslide. How does that belief show up in your leadership decisions today, especially as the company continues to scale?
27:56
Madison Riddell
Yes. I think this is something that both me and my two partners, Lisa and Joe, are universally aligned on and really passionate about. I think that the first way that you put your people first is by trusting them and listening to them, and the rest kind of falls into place. In our industry, being in professional services, we don't have products or widgets to sell. All we have to sell is our people's time. So they really are our asset. And if you put them first, the profit will come. And we've learned that from day one, really. And our founders started with that mindset, but we've really adopted it and scaled it even more. I think that we could. We don't have to. And you come from the HR space. We don't have to offer benefits in the 99th percentile, but we want to.
28:43
Madison Riddell
We don't have to offer maternity leave and paternity leave and compassionate days and do a state of the company every quarter where we share all the financials openly. We don't have to do any of that. We do it because we come from this mindset of what would we want to receive. And we're all. The organization's flat. Like we all want the same things. So by putting them first, it creates this motivation effect, of course, this force multiplier where everybody's beating to the same drum and rowing in the same direction. Exactly. And if you hide some of those things like the financials or what's the status of the company, there's nothing to gain.
29:20
Carrie Aguilar
Right.
29:20
Madison Riddell
So they can only roam the same direction if you're sharing it and in turn you're listening to their feedback and making changes. And I also think that it's not just what you say yes to. It's not just bringing on the fun benefits and listening to them and saying yes, we're going to offer that to you because you care about it. It's also when they're not in the room saying no to things in their best interest and protecting them. That's our job as leaders, I think. We say no so often and the team doesn't even really see it.
29:47
Madison Riddell
And sometimes we tell them so that they know, but we say no so often to leads or opportunities that don't feel like the right fit, they're not culturally aligned or even if they have deep pockets, we don't think they're going to work well with the team. We have fired clients, not that's our favorite thing to do, but because they don't treat the team well. And at the end of the day, if they're not happy and motivated, what do we have? So the two work hand in hand, of course, but we'll never let profit come before our people.
30:14
Mara Kamat
So we'll pivot a little bit. Yeah, that's okay. Please, we all share that. We are mothers to daughter. And you talked a little bit about Your daughter as well as your mom moving here. But would love to hear from you becoming a newish mom. Your daughter is almost two.
30:32
Madison Riddell
She's a year and a half.
30:32
Mara Kamat
Yeah, a year and a half. Sorry, yeah, no, a year and a half.
30:35
Madison Riddell
Almost two. I guess maybe I don't want to admit it.
30:37
Mara Kamat
No.
30:37
Carrie Aguilar
We're going to end the month. She's 18.
30:39
Madison Riddell
She's 19 months actually we'll keep her.
30:41
Mara Kamat
At 19 months but she actually keep.
30:43
Madison Riddell
Her in my pocket.
30:44
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah.
30:45
Mara Kamat
Becoming a new mom really causes you to step back and think about your time, your energy, your identity. And you talked about before like stepping into starting to create another one and considering a second child. So what has been your biggest personal professional adjustment that you've had to make as a leader in leading vivid front while still trying to be present at home and as a mom and as a wife and all the things totally.
31:15
Madison Riddell
My husband's gonna be like. You went and told everybody that we're trying for a second baby announcement. Yeah. I'll start with the first part of your question which is like the identity part and how it's changed me or pulled out new things. So I think that I mentioned this a little bit but I naturally am a little bit more of a hard, loud person. I can be pretty straightforward, pretty blunt. Like there's certain parts of yourself. Right. We're all self aware that you know are true. Have always been that way. And I think motherhood has softened me in a lot of ways and I think that's a pretty universal experience. But firstly because you just are exposed to this once in a lifetime love that you never even knew was possible. That new purpose.
32:00
Madison Riddell
Like I just love her more than anything in the whole world. I'm so obsessed with her. She's just everything to me. So I think it really helps when.
32:08
Mara Kamat
They'Re only 18 months, you can't really talk back to them.
32:11
Madison Riddell
Exactly. Yes. She's just like when I wake up, she's the first thing I want to see. And when I go to bed all I think I scroll on my phone and look at photos of her. She's just my world. So first it's that it's heart just 10x in size. It's the first part and I think the second part is that through my maternity leave, like the late nights, the newborn stage rocking her to sleep, spending time in the car, driving to and from work. After my maternity leave, like I've had a lot more internal dialogue thinking about what's happening in my life or what I want to Happen or even just doing, like, some internal work, because that time alone in headspace is so rare now. I spend more attention, give more attention to it. And I've realized that.
32:54
Madison Riddell
Not to go too deep into this, but I had a wild childhood, for sure. It was gritty. I definitely saw a lot as a kid that made me some of those things, like, a little bit harsh, a little bit of a harder exterior. There was a lot. My parents were divorced. There was addiction in my family, drugs and alcohol and suicide. There was a lot of really heavy stuff in my childhood, and I was really blessed in a lot of ways. And I'm very close with my parents, but it definitely shaped me to have some of those walls up. And I think that becoming a mom softened those and helped me figure out which pieces and parts of that childhood experience are fire.
33:35
Madison Riddell
Help me be really good at my job and really good at being a mom and a protector and an advocate for her and for our employees. And which parts maybe can I leave behind now? I think a lot of moms talk about, you get a fresh slate with your kids. You get to recreate their childhood. So I've been doing a lot of mental work on that, I think, and being a mom has opened up a little bit more of a awareness of where I came from and how I want to use it moving forward with her.
34:01
Mara Kamat
Aaron and I were talking the other day, and I think in any family, as you grow up, there's, like, trauma you face. Whether it's real or not, it's yours.
34:11
Madison Riddell
You're invented. Yeah. Your perspective. Yeah.
34:13
Mara Kamat
And I said to Aaron, I looked at him, and I go, what trauma do you think we're, like, giving our kids? Like, what is drama? I think that's putting on them. Yeah. Because we all have things that we want to do different in how we raise our kids than our parents did. Even if I have an amazing relationship with both of my parents.
34:30
Madison Riddell
Same. Yes.
34:31
Mara Kamat
I have so much respect for them. I had a beautiful childhood. There are still moments and experiences. Like, I was always a latchkey kid. My parents forgot about me multiple times. Yes. If you're listening, mom, it is the truth.
34:44
Madison Riddell
I know. I'm like, mom and dad. I love you guys so much. But.
34:47
Mara Kamat
Right. Like, my mom traveled all the time. Like, we all have our own things. And so Aaron and I are always reflective on. Okay, so what is the trauma that we are putting on our children and how do we manage that and dialogue about that with them?
35:05
Madison Riddell
I know I'm much. I'm earlier in my journey of Motherhood. But I think about what you just said almost in the reverse sometimes, because I never grew up with a two parent household. Right. And I went through a lot of those things, like I mentioned, and I didn't have any friends with divorced parents. Like, none of our leadership team has divorced. Like, sometimes I'm like, where are all the divorced kids parents at? But my husband and I both grew up with that. Like, some grit to the stories. Divorced parents, blended families. And we have an amazing relationship and this unified house and this beautiful slate. And of course, like, I hope, knock on wood, that all of that pans out. But sometimes I think I'm like, where's she gonna get her grit?
35:44
Madison Riddell
So much of the stuff that I face, though, it was hard, I'm like, so grateful for it. And I was the kid that was, like, suspended all the time and, like, always in trouble and acting out. Like, the stories go on for sure.
35:57
Mara Kamat
Would never know that about Madison. Knowing her today, honestly, I would never know that.
36:02
Madison Riddell
People are always surprised to hear that. Yeah. And it turned into a force for good. It definitely could have not.
36:07
Carrie Aguilar
Right?
36:08
Madison Riddell
And my mom and I laugh about that a lot. But sometimes I think about with Rhodes, my daughter, I'm like, how do I make sure that she has what she needs? And, like, we're a unified household and we do all the quote unquote right things as parents, but leave room for her to have her own trauma. Like, I don't want her to have it, but she needs it. Like, she needs her own version of things that were hard, I overcame and they made me X. I hate to.
36:32
Carrie Aguilar
Say it, but it'll happen.
36:34
Madison Riddell
Yeah, you're right. For sure.
36:35
Carrie Aguilar
Like, it's like the thing that you don't want to happen, but it will for sure.
36:38
Madison Riddell
Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how all of our girls, because even though she's the youngest, they're all relatively young. What are they gonna face? And maybe they'll listen to this in 20 years and they'll be like, oh, you guys thought weren't gonna have trauma. You wait, mom, this is it.
36:54
Mara Kamat
It's funny, though. My kids love listening to the podcast.
36:57
Madison Riddell
Yeah.
36:57
Mara Kamat
And they were on the last one. And so now, the past few weeks, they're like, okay, let's listen to this podcast. I wanna hear this person's story and I wanna hear this and I wanna hear that. And like, I was so excited. Like, now you're gonna get to hear how all of these different people have navigated so many different situations and how they look at life. And it's so diverse and different across the women that we've met and experienced. And everybody's at different stages of life. And so I really appreciate that you've opened up and shared this stage of your life, of what it looks like to have an 18, 19 month old and be stepping into what the next kid looks like too.
37:37
Madison Riddell
Definitely. Yeah, I think too naturally, if I'm sure there are a lot of listeners that are women who are professionals and are trying to balance career and home. And that question comes up so often in literature, books and podcasts and LinkedIn and any source you're looking. But I think that for me, the balance piece, I feel like I have what I need right now, which is really cool this early on. And again, I'm sure it will change. I'm so naive and new to this motherhood journey, but I feel like I have what I need because I tried not to put too many expectations on what the balance was gonna look like and just move with what felt right.
38:14
Madison Riddell
And I know that might be hard to hear if there's other new moms that are in the trenches, that are trying to figure out the first years of motherhood while you're working, but if you're at the executive level or trying to be work, life, balance expectations are different. You're still gonna work late nights, you're still gonna obsess about the business 24 7. You're still gonna think about it on the weekends, you're still gonna wake up at three down. But what works, and I'm sure you guys feel the same way, is when you're with them, you're locked in, right? And everybody has a different amount of time that they're with them. But when you're with them all in, don't multitask, don't be on your phone, don't put them in front of the TV while you're spending your time.
38:54
Madison Riddell
Like that hour in the morning, sacred to me, right? Those one or two hours before bed and bath time, sacred to me. Weekends, sacred to me. So I think the time you spend being quality, I know you're amazing about this with your travels, I think is the most important part.
39:11
Carrie Aguilar
It was such a good. So in our last episode, Ari, Mara's youngest, was talking about how they were talking about they did a digital detox. And she was like, it was just so nice because I'm the only one who doesn't have a phone in my family. And it was just so nice to see everyone's faces and that really resonated with me because I was like, how many times am I in front of my 10 year old with my phone? All the time. Even, like, I can be. I can still be. I'm still, like, listening to her, but I'm also doing something else. And it is just so the last, like, I would say, whatever, four weeks since we had that conversation. I am so much better mindful of. Yeah. Because Ari said she's.
39:53
Carrie Aguilar
It's so nice to not look at everyone else who's looking at their phones. And I'm like, it's one thing when.
39:58
Madison Riddell
You hear it online, but it's another thing when you hear it from the kids. Yeah, I love that. Go, Ari. Yeah, Sarah thinks it's interesting, but I'm pretty ruthless about the screen time stuff. Rhodes did not see a single screen once her whole first year and a half of life. Now she has since watched two movies because we travel to Europe on a plane.
40:17
Carrie Aguilar
Yeah, I was gonna say travel, Will.
40:19
Madison Riddell
Italy. That was a change. But I was really locked in about two things. Screen time and sugar. And you call me crunchy. Everyone's got a different point of view on it. But I do think, whether you're extreme, like I've been, or a somewhere in the middle, like acknowledging their screen time and yours, and just even if it's not screen time, whatever it is, that's a distraction from quality time, I think is a good place to look if you're trying to find a resolution.
40:45
Mara Kamat
Stay strong on the sugar.
40:46
Madison Riddell
Yes.
40:47
Mara Kamat
It gets harder and harder as they get older.
40:49
Madison Riddell
And I'm sure the screen time will too, once. I keep thinking about, like, when all the kids in her class are constantly on their phones. What am I gonna do?
40:56
Mara Kamat
But, yeah, you set boundaries. You take it away. You have digital detoxes. Olivia, on the last podcast, she was talking about how she doesn't have any social media, and I was like, it's because I love you.
41:07
Madison Riddell
Yes.
41:08
Mara Kamat
You don't have social media because I love you. What else is there to say? I think we all face that as parents. In making the decisions that make sense for your kids and your families, how you want to live, combined with the stresses and pressure of the worlds that we live in today.
41:25
Madison Riddell
Yeah, we can only protect them so much. But. But I totally agree.
41:27
Carrie Aguilar
Or you could be like me who sticks her nine year old in front of a recap of 2025. Well, at least her head explode.
41:35
Madison Riddell
At least she saw the ball drop after you.
41:37
Carrie Aguilar
Thank God.
41:37
Madison Riddell
Thank God for that.
41:40
Carrie Aguilar
Okay, so. Whoops. I just hit this. Sorry about that. So I guess pivoting just a little bit about motherhood. How, or have you seen it impact the way you lead?
41:52
Madison Riddell
Yeah, I do think I'm softer. Like I said, not just at home, but at work. I'm definitely more empathetic. I. Sarah's nodding her head. My assistant, Sarah, runs the show. She's. Yes, you're more empathetic. She came one or two months before my maternity leave, and she didn't realize, fun fact in our virtual interview, that I was pregnant. So when she made it to the final round, duh, she came in and she was like, oh, my God, you're like eight months pregnant. Where are you going? And I hadn't shared that on the first call that her job was gonna be to keep the lights on in my absence. But anyway, surprise. Sarah, thanks. We love ya. Yeah, I think it's made me softer for sure.
42:30
Madison Riddell
And I think that hopefully I'm still working on this per some of the feedback I got from my fellow leaders on the team. But I think it is forcing me to be more intentional with my time during the workday because I know that if I want to get home to her and spend that one or two hours before bedtime, I have to be really intentional with what I get done during the day. But, yeah, better listener, softer, certainly more empathetic, and hopefully a lot more things as she grows.
42:57
Mara Kamat
So before we close out, we want to ask you some tactical questions on the marketing side. Yeah, I know Marketing has changed so much in the last few years and continues to change so much right now. AI and the introduction of new tools, different changes to social media platforms and algorithms. You know, we've had quite a few listeners who are on their own working independently. What advice would you give to solo entrepreneurs, early founders, fractional consultants like myself, and how to spend their time in the marketing space?
43:31
Madison Riddell
Yeah, great question. I would say my number one and then maybe number two top tips would be first to treat marketing as a variable cost, not a fixed cost. I think that it's really easy for a company at any stage, startup through Fortune 500 to say, our marketing budget for the year is X, our marketing budget for the month or the quarter is X. And you really see traction when you view it as a reinvestment of the prior month's or quarter's success into the next month or quarter's future. Okay, so we've run into that so many times where we have brands that are shoehorned by budget because they're viewing it as a fixed cost. And if you're investing. Just think about it logically.
44:16
Madison Riddell
If you're investing the same amount of dollars in your marketing every single month, and then it trickles into marginal increase the next year, where are you going to see the growth? You're inching along, you're placing small bets, you're just feeding the machine. And in digital marketing, all of us know that marketing costs are always increasing. So the CPCs, the cost per click, which is the unit of cost for an advertisement, has only been on a steady incline in the last decade, and it's only going to continue going up. Cost per clicks increase as more people enter the market. As we know, there's millions of new businesses that enter the market every year. So it's only getting more competitive to get your voice out, especially with things like AI, making marketing and starting a business more accessible, especially with new platforms and algorithms.
45:03
Madison Riddell
So truly, if you don't have a variable mindset of reinvestment, you're going to just have micro growth. So that's the first thing. The second thing I would say is maybe a little bit contradictory to what other thought leaders might be saying right now. I really believe it to be true, which is to invest in creative. And with the dawn of the new age of AI, so many teams, those agencies that are local or beyond that I mentioned, are doing layoff rounds specifically with their creative teams. Because the thought is AI Image gen can do it. They can create graphics, they can help me with copywriting to tell a story. I can replace some of those functions. In my experience, the opposite is what should be happening. And Vivid Front's actually doubling down and investing more in creative.
45:50
Madison Riddell
In 2026, we invested a lot in 2025, interestingly, we invested a ton of money in AI building our own tools and a ton of money in creative in parallel. Which sounds like counterintuitive, right? But in this digital age of so much AI, we're not sure what's real and what's fake. The brands that are going to last and stick have real compelling stories. And those creative strategies come from true creatives, not from AI. You get your best results from AI generated creative when a creative strategist is feeding or prompting the AI. So if our project managers, for example, are feeding AI and asking it to create images, the outputs are never as strong as when I ask one of our designers to prompt it because they understand the language of design and creative thinking.
46:37
Madison Riddell
So I think that's a really easy way to stunt the growth of a new brand or an existing brand is to say, let's loosen the reins on creative because all the headlines are telling us AI will take care of that. Not in my opinion.
46:49
Carrie Aguilar
And then what is one thing that you do to stay ahead or at the cutting edge of the marketing changes so that you can continuously build value to not only your clients, but internally, to your team?
47:00
Madison Riddell
For sure. Lots of ways. We are obsessed with the industry. We have to be. It moves at the speed of light and if you can't stay up to pace, you're out. So it's a constant machine of always being plugged in, whether it's social media consumption, which sometimes I don't want to do, but I know I need to stay up to date, listening to podcasts from other agencies and thought leaders, reading books, listening to clients. I talk to new businesses every single day. So when I go into those meetings and I'm thinking about them as a prospective client, I'm not just selling our services. In fact, most of the time I'm listening to them and the challenges they're facing in the market, how they've tried to overcome them, those challenges, what hasn't worked, what has worked.
47:40
Madison Riddell
And those are all little tools I'm adding to my toolbox every single day with my ear to the ground on what's working in our climate. And the other thing that I mentioned earlier is trusting our team. So, you know, they're the specialists, the ones making the moves and the platforms every day. And if we do our jobs right, we're creating an environment as leaders where they are sharing peer to peer and bottom up. Hey, here's what's working in my craft. Running on Eos. We have weekly meetings at all these different departments where there's a dedicated section to the meeting for just that. So I think you gotta stay plugged into what's happening digitally across all those different channels I mentioned.
48:14
Madison Riddell
I think you have to use your interactions, whether that's with clients or networking, to do less talking about yourself and more listening about what's going on with those businesses. And then three, trust the people that you've hired or that you're working alongside, that they're going to share meaningful information with you if you're giving them the forum. Thank you. Yeah, these are great questions.
48:36
Carrie Aguilar
I love it. This has been amazing. We always like to end the show with two questions. The first one, if you could have a conversation with your younger self, what advice or direction would you give her?
48:49
Madison Riddell
I think based on what I shared earlier, I would say don't get quiet, stay loud. I think I always knew what I wanted to achieve and not necessarily how I'd get there, but I always knew what I wanted the end goal to be. And I would just tell her to stick to it because you're getting there. Yeah.
49:16
Mara Kamat
And one last question we always love to ask what is bringing you joy right now in your life?
49:22
Madison Riddell
Of course, the obvious answer is my daughter, Rhodesmary, my girl, she is bringing me so much joy. Her and my husband. Just this new chapter has brought the next level of joy. You can't even describe it, as you guys know, so 100% her and this journey in motherhood.
49:37
Carrie Aguilar
Beautiful, Madison. Thank you for sharing this time with us. Before we wrap up, where can our listeners find you? What's the best way to connect?
49:46
Madison Riddell
Yeah, you can reach out to me via email, mridelividfront.com R I D D E L L or you can find me on LinkedIn or you can check.
49:55
Mara Kamat
Out our website, vividfront.com madison thank you so much for spending this time with us today and sharing your insight and enthusiasm for leadership and life and motherhood with our listeners. We so appreciate it.
50:11
Madison Riddell
Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast.
50:13
Mara Kamat
And thank you for believing in us, joining us, promoting us to have this podcast in Her Land and just spending the time with us to curate these ideas that we had and make it into this beautiful podcast and giving back to other women.
50:32
Madison Riddell
Thank you for doing what you're doing and giving back to those women and in her land, to the moon. I believe in you guys.
50:38
Mara Kamat
Thank you. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in to In Her Land. If you love this conversation, share it with a friend, leave us a review and keep following along at inherland.com where we highlight more incredible women making an impact. Until next time, thank you for tuning in to In Her Land. If you love this conversation, please share it with a friend, leave us a review and keep following along@inherland.com where we highlight more incredible women making an impact. Until next time.
