---
title: "The Marketing Skills You Already Have, You’re Just Not Using Them Internally"
id: "18437"
type: "podcast"
slug: "the-marketing-skills-you-already-have-youre-just-not-using-them-internally"
published_at: "2026-09-29T03:15:00+00:00"
modified_at: "2026-09-09T13:19:37+00:00"
url: "https://kulapartners.com/thekularing/the-marketing-skills-you-already-have-youre-just-not-using-them-internally/"
markdown_url: "https://kulapartners.com/thekularing/the-marketing-skills-you-already-have-youre-just-not-using-them-internally.md"
excerpt: "Marcelo Kreindel took an unlikely route into manufacturing marketing—from an Argentinian software career to fifteen years running a wholesale gelato business to building North Shore Steel’s marketing department from scratch. That winding path shaped a rare kind of patience, and..."
---

#### Episode 410

**September 29, 2026**

Marcelo Kreindel took an unlikely route into manufacturing marketing—from an Argentinian software career to fifteen years running a wholesale gelato business to building North Shore Steel’s marketing department from scratch. That winding path shaped a rare kind of patience, and it produced the insight at the heart of this conversation: the message discipline marketers apply to customers is exactly what they fail to apply to their own sales teams and leadership. Rather than complaining that the organization doesn’t appreciate marketing, Marcelo turned the lens on himself, treating internal misalignment as a communication problem he owned. It’s a candid, empowering look at how personal responsibility, continuous learning, and trust move marketing from tolerated to understood.

##### *The Marketing Skills You Already Have, You’re Just Not Using Them Internally* Transcript:

**Jeff White:** Welcome to The Kula Ring, a podcast for manufacturing marketers brought to you by Kula Partners. My name is Jeff White, and joining me today is Carman Pirie. Carman, how you doing, sir?

**Carman Pirie:** I’m doing well, Jeff. How you doing?

**Jeff White:** I’m doing great. Thank you.

**Carman Pirie:** This is gonna be a good episode, I think. I find that every so often you get the opportunity to chat with a marketer who just brings a, a refreshing way of thinking about some of the challenges that they encounter in their role or, just an approach that I feel others would benefit from hearing about and learning about.

And I think today is one of those, one of those times because I think, the number of manufacturing marketers that I speak to in the run of a week or a month that feel that… I mean, they’re not being critical about their organizations. They don’t wanna suggest in any way that they’re being negative against their leadership.

It’s more that they’re just – they recognize that they work in an environment where marketing isn’t the most appreciated skill set. It maybe isn’t even the most understood one, clearly . If it’s not appreciated, it’s very hard for it to be understood. They need to find a way to navigate within that and to deliver impact.

And it’s really easy, I guess maybe because I’m, maybe I’m a bit more of a complainer at heart, Jeff, but I think it’s easier to… Sometimes easier to fall into the trap of bitching and complaining a bit. If I’m being honest. It’s easy to be like, and maybe I’m projecting too much, but it’s easy to just say, “You know what?

They just don’t get it, and they’re never gonna get it, and maybe I should have another Negroni instead.” Now I’m really projecting. But you see my point, and I think that’s one thing I loved about, when I first met today’s guest is I feel like there was a real inclination to not take that easy victimhood path, which I just loved.

**Jeff White:** 100%, yeah. The notion of personal responsibility and ownership.

**Carman Pirie:** Yeah, and just like maybe we need to figure out another way here, and it’s not just about people not agreeing with me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

**Jeff White:** So joining us today is Marcelo Kreindel. Marcelo is the marketing manager at North Shore Steel. Welcome to The Kula Ring, Marcelo!

**Marcelo Kreindel:** Hi. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

**Jeff White:** Oh, it’s wonderful to have you on the show.

**Carman Pirie:** It’s great to have you on the show, Marcelo. Thank you for joining us. Let’s get an introduction to the company right off the bat, if we could. Could you tell us a bit about, the firm and what y’all are up to?

**Marcelo Kreindel:** Yes. North Shore Steel, it’s a family-owned business. It has been in business since 1955, so last year we celebrated 70 years. We are a steel service center and we are located in Houston, Texas. We do different what we call pillars of where we win. We do steel distribution, mostly in the Houston area, and we have a satellite location in Beaumont.

Then we also do value added which is processing different steel shapes, mostly plate for different industries. And we also do what we call advanced manufacturing, is where when you need project management on those value added services that you do on the plate. And lastly, we do specialize in wear products, abrasion resistant steel, for the mining and quarrying industries mostly.

And we also had a sister company that it’s steel related as well but it’s a tolling company with slit and coat steel that is not called Norsor Steel but it’s part of the family companies where it’s customer owned material

**Jeff White:** Hmm. Really cool. How did you end up there, Marcelo? Tell us a bit about yourself.

**Marcelo Kreindel:** Yeah, it’s amazing to see how, in my life I had to adapt from one position to another. Sometimes from one country to another . So I am an Argentinian. I don’t know if my accent tells you that right away. Of course, it’s not a Native American or an American-born and raised, speaker.

So I was born in Argentina 1975, long time ago. And I was working for a software company in Argentina where we sold, software to Compaq Computers back in 2001. Compaq Computers used to have their headquarters here in Houston, and it was a software related to business process management. At that moment, it was a trendy type of software used in those industries.

And we say, “Okay, we have a great, eh, opportunity to expand our business in United States.” Now we have Compaq as a customer, let’s grow that, that business. And I was transferred here to look for other, lookalike companies like Compaq to roll the, that software that we develop in Argentina. At that moment, Argentina went through a very big crisis.

Argentina used to have big crises. So the company didn’t continue pushing that hard the expansion of the American, North American market. So couple of years from there, I was missing the gelato that I used to enjoy in Argentina every day, and I couldn’t find a great gelato store here in Houston. Again, this is 2004.

Now we have a lot of different options. I said maybe this is an opportunity for me to use my entrepreneur skills or experiment or test and fail. This is a good moment in life to, to fail and see what happens. So I decided to have, my own business, and it was a company that used to manufacture and wholesale Italian ice cream to the Houston market.

And I was saying about adapting, so I was working in Argentina, then I was working in Houston, then I was working as an employee, and now I started to work as a self-employed or entrepreneur. And I want to open a gelato store but there i- I knew but I didn’t realize that Houston, we don’t walk too much from places like we do in cities like Buenos Aires, New York, or cities where you can walk and say maybe Having a retail store is not the best for a destination place like a gelato store.

I didn’t wanna spend or invest a lot of money in a great store and then closing it in less than a year to pay high rent, you know? But I still wanted to continue with my own business related to gelato. So at that time, the chefs were or Becoming celebrities. And Houston, it’s a foodie city, so the local chef community welcomed me to work with them and create flavors for their restaurants, coffee shops, catering companies, farmers markets also where I was…

That was my storefront basically. So for 15 years, I had my business, manufacturing and wholesaling Italian ice cream gelato to the Houston restaurant, and supermarkets as well all over Texas. At that moment before COVID, when you have a company, the idea is to continue growing your business.

I wasn’t able to grow it and bring the company to the next step where it require a lot of investment, big investment to win in the supermarket market. When you have 400, 500 stores and then you need distribution to warehouses all over the country, and we’re talking about full truckloads, and then discount coupons, marketing expenses, demos.

I wasn’t ready for that. So I say maybe it’s time to go back to the corporate world. And then that was just before COVID hit because COVID affected the restaurant industry a lot.

It was lucky in a way that I decided to sell the company at that moment. Then through a friend that I w – that works at Norsk Steel, eh, Norsk Steel had a need at that moment where… So it’s my history started like 2001 when I moved to Houston. Well now we are in 2020 or end of tw- 2019. Eh, and they needed excuse me, they needed to develop a portal to say steel, to sell steel online. And I was invited to, to analyze that opportunity because my background skills, my entrepreneurship, eh, may-, ma-maybe I can be the one and we developed that software to sell steel online.

And also it’s a customer portal that allow customers to see order status and access, eh, order information. And that’s how I, eh, started to work with Norsk Steel. And during these six years in the company, I wear different hats. So I was related to, we call it Swift. That’s the name of our customer portal and online, site.

And then I did customer experience and then we needed to build – We, we did have a lot of marketing related activities or tasks or even people working in but we didn’t have a marketing department per se. I was assigned to create that marketing department for the company, and that’s basically how we are.

**Carman Pirie:** A fascinating story, Marcelo. I like it, I’ve gotta say, I think you’re the first person we’ve interviewed on the show that the path to the job came via gelato.

**Jeff White:** I mean, there’s been a few stories of folks who have had more entrepreneurial careers before moving into marketing roles within larger manufacturing organizations, but not at this level and not this different a thing.

Ice cream to steel. Yeah. Yeah, Beats to sugar, sugar to steel

**Carman Pirie:** And, and Marcelo, you know, not to date myself too much, but you and I are of the exact same vintage. We were born in the same year, and…

**Jeff White:** I’m sadly even older.

**Carman Pirie:** But I can remember you mentioned Compaq, and I’m just like, it was a huge blast from the past because I remember one of my early jobs, I was the first person in a 3,000-person company to have a Compaq iPAQ, the handheld stylus-driven personal digital assistant.

Man, I felt so cool, and that thing was so useless by comparison to what we know today. It’s fascinating.

**Jeff White:** My, my first job out of university was at an IT implementer systems integrator company that was also a compact distributor, and, I was the one guy in the office that had a Mac, so

**Carman Pirie:** Marcelo, it’s a fascinating background and I can’t help but think that that has contributed to what I perceive as being a more patient and understanding approach that you bring to working with a sales organization. And frankly within, a m- an organization or manufacturing enterprise writ large that, maybe doesn’t always have marketing as the first thing on their mind.

Help our listeners understand that, that challenge a, a bit more if you would. I wanna reiterate, in no way are we looking to, to beat up on the company. I’m more trying to understand and just help our listeners understand that we get, that a lot of you all, when I say you all I mean our listeners, work in organizations that aren’t always marketing centric and they need to fight for their place at the table a little bit and think about their role a bit differently.

Can you talk to me about that challenge a bit? Does that resonate with you at all?

**Marcelo Kreindel:** Absolutely. And I will say that it started with me because my understanding of what marketing is in 2024 when I started on creating this marketing department, it was totally different of what I will say that what marketing is right now. So even though I was executing a lot of marketing related activities without calling them as being as part of the marketing department, eh, it was important for me to understand the right terminology, the right vocabulary, eh, understand the processes behind it, the methodologies, the best practices and industry standards, the KPIs, and all the different areas where marketing touches within the company and also from the company to their, eh, outside, yeah, maybe customers or even vendors or partners.

So it was a learning experience. It still is a learning experience. Eh, in my case, eh, it was hard for me to understand at the beginning that Maybe an example works. I am very, I give a lot of importance to what is the message saying? Why it’s relevant to the person who is getting that message? When to send it?

Who to send that message and what do we want that person to do when it’s a potential customer? But sometimes I don’t think the same way with that messages internal sales team or C-level or general manager a-and that was an ’A-ha’ moment for me because we want that person to get a message.

It doesn’t matter the channel. It could be a social media channel, it could be in email that they get exactly o-or engage in that email, for example right away and do something with it but sometimes it happened when I was creating the report or I was working with a sales team for a particular project. I didn’t think about that way.

I assumed that they understand exactly what I meant, that I didn’t need to use that, the same weight of communicating to that person and that creates you know frustration, miscommunication, we are not aligned. So that, that’s kinda how I experience it myself.

**Carman Pirie:** That’s fascinating, Marcelo, ’cause it’s… on the one hand, I expected a bit of that response, but on the other hand, not at all. Because basically what you just said is you’re telling marketers that they already have the skill set to navigate this. They just need to use it, and you often think you don’t need to use it internally, but you do.

That’s hugely empowering.

**Marcelo Kreindel:** Yeah. And because I learned about all of those things a few years ago even though I knew them but I didn’t know that I knew them. Because sometimes you do think about all of those aspects of key things internally, but you don’t put names or you don’t identify them. But then I was working with sales and they needed a campaign or they needed help to promote a type of product and I assumed that they think the same way that I expected them to think And-and I assume that they should share that with me or when I ask for information to make the campaign as much effective as possible, I assume that they should know this

That-that was kind of–I learn also the hard way.

**Jeff White:** It, in that situation, are they raising their hand and saying, “Marcelo, I- I’m not sure what you mean by MQL?” Or is it the case that you’re looking at it and everybody’s got that dog watching TV look and they’re just like, “I have no idea what you mean,” and you have to figure out that you’re not explaining things in a way that they understand?

**Marcelo Kreindel:** Yeah. And this is what makes it so exciting and challenging and fascinating, because you have all of the different situations. You have people that they-they are willing to learn, and they have the time or they are happy to spend some time and say, “Okay, let’s talk about this.

What do you mean about that?” Then you have people that complete silence, no response, so you don’t know if it’s understood or not. Then you have people that can say… I’m not saying that this happens in my company but i-in general also, “No, I don’t have time for this. Eh, figure it out.” Also it was a, a journey to understand, to read, and to identify all the different scenarios and also when.

When and how? How can we communicate better internally? Other factor that helped me a lot is creating the weekly or monthly report. You just mentioned MQL. And I laugh because In theory, we all assume that what it means is what it means. But sometimes i-it’s not what we think that it means for different people within the company.

Then, the way to present that number, is that number a photo of a specific, period of time? What, what happened with the trend? What happened previous month? Is this related to a product or service that customers buy frequently, and that frequency, it’s monthly? It’s daily? It’s yearly?

It’s so different in order to add value when you show that number, to tell a story, not just showing a number with a green or red color and with an arrow facing up or down. What that number means? What do we want to do when we sh-share that number? We wanna, change, behavior. We wanna give an insight that it’s useful to the person that get it in a report and do something about it.

Or we just wanna say, “No, we just got this number. It’s good. Here it is. We did what we did. That’s it. We are done. Now it’s your turn. Continue doing what you do, and I continue doing what I do.” And I like that in North Shore Steel we care a lot about that, that not only the messages that we say to our customers – that we send to our customers, but also the communication that we have internally.

When we send an internal report, what are you saying with that report? You put a graph there, like a chart, or a pie or… What do you wanna say? What does it mean? What insights are we providing? What behavior we wanna change? And that’s a learning experience because once you, get to that level, and it’s something that amazes me, you start to see things differently, and then you have a new challenge.

Okay, go to the next one.

**Carman Pirie:** I have – this might be a weird question, Marcelo. I don’t f-fully know where I’m going with it, but it seems to me that, one of the reactions people can have in that kind of situation is they can think: “What I need to do, like w-what I’m communicating is fine. The problem is that people don’t know.

So I need to educate them on what an MQL means or what have you, and then I can continue to report the same way I was reporting before,” but now people are, and I put air quotes around this, “people are now smarter because I’ve educated them, and therefore they can understand what I’m saying.” And then I think the other approach is that people look at it and say, “This isn’t necessarily about me educating the recipient of the information.

This is maybe about more about me changing the information I communicate or how I communicate it.” And I appreciate that there’s, shades of gray between the black and white that I just discussed, but I guess reflect on that a bit for us if you would. How much of your success in this do you think has been about educating the recipient of the information versus changing the information or changing how it’s communicated?

**Marcelo Kreindel:** I think that, it’s not easy because in my case, my first reaction, like the instant reaction, it’s like again or

**Jeff White:** How come you guys don’t know this?

**Marcelo Kreindel:** Yeah, that’s like my initial… And then I need to – Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes I’m not even, sometimes I’m not capable of doing it at that moment.

I say: “Okay, wait a minute. What? This is not personal. This, this, this – There – Maybe this is an opportunity to be better in the way that I communicate and maybe I’m not listening, and I’m not understanding exactly what the other s-party is saying.” And that was part of my journey as a person adapting to so many things. I was forty-five years old, and I had to go back to the corporate world after having a gelato business for fifteen years. So I didn’t have weekly meetings, with different managers or departments. We had our meetings, but it wasn’t as formal as was a small business. And then, you know terminologies, reports, meetings and meetings and meetings and meetings and agendas and outcomes and a lot of things that I needed to adapt or look for another job. A-and I say: “Okay, the only way that I can do this is starting by adapting myself.”So I was forced into this.

**Carman Pirie:** It’s the power of the realization that it’s not up to others, it’s up to you. That’s the thing I think if I had to pick one thing that I want listeners to hear from this, and I feel like the lesson that I’m learning from this, it’s that because we all get frustrated, we all especially – I would almost suggest that the more sophisticated you are as a marketer, the better you are as a marketer, the more success you have a ma- as a marketer, the more you will scratch your head and say, “Why the F doesn’t this person understand what I’m saying?”

I guess hats off Marcelo that you didn’t let that rule your brain. You were able to, move past that and say, “You know what? That’s not about, it’s not about them, it’s about me. And I can actually… I, I have some agency here to change this rather than just being a victim about

**Marcelo Kreindel:** Yeah. And, that’s true and other thing that helped me a lot was studying continuously, studying and learning, and be hungry for learning more. I took different types of trainings and courses. I am now at an MIT program, nine months program related to agentic AI and digital transformation.

And the first two months of the training we did not talk about technology at all. We talked about communication, all the soft skills in our culture, leadership, innovation, and basically it’s communication. And I was happy that, oh, everything that I learned the hard way now I have all the theory behind it and understand more about it.

I say, “Oh, if MIT is teaching this in a very technological advanced AI – agentic AI training,” I think that I’m in the right path

**Jeff White:** Do you, think as we’re drawing to a close here. D-do you think that you’re kinda like, “Okay, job done. People understand me now, and now we get on with the marketing,” and I explain this or, or, and expect that people are on the same page as me as I report on what I’m doing?

Or is this a continuous process where as you learn things, whether it’s with agentic or other platforms, that it’s still your job to teach as much as you inform?

**Marcelo Kreindel:** Yeah, and it’s both way because, things that I learn and I share that help them to teach me their perspective, what their customer needs, where- what they need to communicate better with their customers. Also, once you have a better connection with the person and the level of trust increases, and we also feel a little bit more vulnerable, not just we put like a shield, and this is my border or my limit, and from here you continue, and where you open and you say, “Let’s experiment together. Let’s learn together.” You listen, you, and you see their perspectives. They get engaged because they are cr- they create also and innovate because they have their own ideas or initiatives, and they are willing to share them because there is a level of trust. But it takes time, and it doesn’t happen with all the people at the same time.

I need time myself, so I cannot expect the other people to just get it the first time that we say, “This is an MQL. I don’t wanna repeat to this to you anymore because I already said no.” I need seven times to really put it here in, in my head. So yeah.

**Carman Pirie:** Well, Marcel, I wanna thank you for this kind of, in some ways, a glorious reminder that this isn’t just about always teaching and informing others. So much of this is about adapting and, evolving your own understanding and your own approaches. I just think it’s a really powerful lesson for those listening to h- frankly, help folks be better in, in their careers and, and to deliver more impact.

I wanna thank you for joining us today. It’s been really great to have you on the show.

**Marcelo Kreindel:** Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I enjoyed it a lot, and thank you for the opportunity to meet you and to be in your show

**Jeff White:** Oh, it’s been wonderful. Thank you.

[Read Full Transcript](#podcast-transcript)

[« Episode 409: Running a One-Person, AI-First Marketing Team as a Startup Scales](https://kulapartners.com/thekularing/running-a-one-person-ai-first-marketing-team-as-a-startup-scales/)

#### Featuring

### Marcelo Kreindel

Marketing Manager, North Shore Steel- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcelo-kreindel)

Marcelo Kreindel leads marketing at North Shore Steel (NSS), a Houston-based steel service center. He heads NSS’s marketing team and is responsible for bringing the company’s lines of business together under a single, unified NSS brand. Beyond traditional marketing, Marcelo drives NSS’s internal AI adoption and governance initiative, putting practical AI tools to work across the organization.

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The Kula Ring is a podcast for manufacturing marketers looking to enhance their impact and grow their organizations.

Hosted by Jeff White and Carman Pirie, it features discussions with industry leaders who share their experience, insights and strategies on topics like account-based marketing (ABM), sales and marketing alignment, and digital transformation. The Kula Ring offers practical advice and tips from the trenches for success in today’s B2B industrial landscape.

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Kula Partners is an agency that specializes in maximizing revenue potential for B2B manufacturers.

Our clients sell within complex, technical environments and we help them take a more targeted, account-focused approach to drive revenue growth within niche markets.