Marketing Leader Amy Bailey On Her Exit from Telarus, and What’s Next

At the beginning of August, Telarus senior vice president of marketing Amy Bailey said that she was moving on from the technology solutions brokerage (TSB). Bailey, a marketing leader and seven-year member of the Telarus family, announced on LinkedIn that she was set to leave the company on Aug. 19.

Amy Bailey

“I am so grateful for all I have learned over the last six years,” Bailey wrote in the post. “I appreciate all those who have contributed to my success.”

Bailey came to Telarus from VXSuite, which the TSB acquired in 2015. Bailey had been working as VXSuite VXTracker’s vice president of marketing. She earned the promotion to senior vice president of marketing for Telarus in 2020. She said Telarus was employing around 50 people when it acquired VXSuite, and just four marketers. Since then, Bailey’s marketing team has grown to 23 people.

Since officially exiting, Bailey has let Channel Futures in on what her next steps are. 

The Next Chapter

For Bailey, who has watched Telarus grow from a “fierce few” to an established many, it’s about getting back to the “build.”

“When I started [at Telarus], it was me and three people on the marketing team, so we were scrappy,” Bailey told Channel Futures. “We all got a little bit of everything; it was kind of that startup feeling at that point. It has now grown into a very different, larger organization, which is great. But what I came to realize is, I missed the scrappiness. I missed that entrepreneurial side.”

Bailey started in the tech industry working for her father at Connections (callaccounting.com). She recalls her entry into the channel not being a straight line — as is often the story. You have to be willing to zig and zag, and to try different things, stresses Bailey. This is what the industry taught and impressed upon her early on, a notion that has stuck with her and is guiding her path now.

“This is me … following my own advice and trying something new,” says Bailey. “It’s me getting back to what I want to do, charting my own course. It also came from watching partners want to do more with their marketing and not having a lot of choices in the channel to help them do that, especially around events. There are a lot of companies that are really focused more on the strategy and implementation of channel programs. They’re not typically as focused on the partner. And even if they are, they often don’t want to touch events. I love the events; I love creating unique experiences for people. And that’s something that I want to marry together.”

One of Bailey’s main goals is to work with suppliers who need to augment their marketing team. Whether it’s setting up a partner advisory council, or a President’s Club or a lunch and learn, the idea is to put together an event kit in a box. 

‘Unusually Unusual’

And thus, Bailey’s new adventure became clear, and was born in the form of a consultancy  that aims to create those unique experiences. Appropriately and delightfully dubbed Unusually Unusual Consulting, the firm is a unique mix of event planning and content strategy. 

“My inspiration for the name of the company came from an old Lonestar song with some quirky lyrics that really spoke to me,” said Bailey. “It just seemed to fit, given my goals and this new direction.” 

This channel is about relationships; it’s about getting in front of people, Bailey emphasizes. It’s about those shared experiences, and doing something that’s different. And that’s what she hopes to achieve.