Don't Get Catfished By AI with Brian Minick, COO of ZeroBounce

"Curiosity is the number one trait I'm looking for when hiring." — Brian Minick

Jacqueline and Brian Minick, COO of ZeroBounce, get practical about AI's impact on hiring, email deliverability, and Martech operations. They unpack how AI is reshaping hiring, from candidates using copilots during interviews to the ethical implications of automation in recruitment. Brian shares how his gut helped him catch an AI-assisted candidate mid-interview, why curiosity and speed are the real differentiators in a digital-first world, and how he's balancing innovation with humanity at scale. Expect real talk on personalization trade-offs, customer data hygiene, leadership, and why curiosity still beats credentials. If you care about AI, Martech, leadership, and deliverability, this episode helps you cut noise and double down on what moves the needle.

Brought to you by Hightouch, On November 13, Hightouch is hosting Has Martech Failed Marketers? featuring Scott Brinker of chiefmartec and Adam Greco to unpack what's really behind the pain and how fixing your data unlocks cleaner reporting and true personalization at scale. RSVP at www.hightouch.com/has-martech-failed

Timestamps 00:28 — Early Martech Days: Google Ads, Analytics, and the hustle era. 03:12 — AI in Content: great for ideas, never for copy-paste. 04:07 — The New Deliverability: why engagement, not volume, wins. 06:25 — Curiosity-Driven Leadership: lessons from a selfless CEO. 09:37 — Using AI Internally: copilots, data storytelling, and guardrails. 18:35 — The Deliverability Gap: why no AI tool fully solves it—yet. 21:10 — The AI-Assisted Interview: red flags, silence tricks, and hiring truths. 38:23 — Leadership Without Ego: humility, speed, and follow-through. 43:28 — What's Next: AI-generated video and the future of short-form content.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Jacqueline Freedman

What is Making Sense of Martech?

Unfiltered takes on the biggest shifts in marketing technology. We spotlight what matters, who's leading (or lagging), and what's next. In Martech, clarity is power — and we're here to deliver it.

Welcome to Making Sense of My Tech podcast, where we interview leaders and put them in the hot seat. I'm Jaclyn Friedman, founder of monarch and global head of advisory for MarTech weekly. Let's dive in and meet Bryan Minnick. A little bit about him first. Bryan is the CEO of Zero Balance, the email validation platform trusted by brands like Netflix and Disney Casual.

With ten plus years of digital marketing and operations experience, he brings sharp insight into how AI is transforming email infrastructure and team design. As martech grows more complex. Him and his team help focus on what truly drives results. So to start us off, we'll begin with a few quick questions to warm things up. Considers the pre header to our main message.

And maybe we need an AI summary as a result. But we'll start with some rapid fire. But first welcome.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Super excited and glad to continue the conversation that we started to have in person around AI. Different type of stuff and marketing talk. So yes, excited to to chat with you today.

Yeah, so excited for your here. And for those listening, we met at a dinner and just instantly hit it off talking about a certain topic, which is really AI and how that's impacting hiring and growth plans and interviewing. And there's a couple more stories worth discussing for sure. Yeah. But to start some rapid fire, what is the biggest AI buzzword you're tired of hearing?

Copilot. I'm so sick of hearing the word copilot. It's like, can we come up with something else? Or I feel like that's being adopted on many different tools. And so it's like, can we just stick with AI? I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I feel like I'm hearing that so much.

I feel you. I think agents and Agent Tech is getting into that same realm. Yeah. As well.

Yeah, that's definitely up there.

All right, take us back to whenever you're first started in your career, what was the first tool martech tool you actually ever used?

The first martech to ever use. So I'm definitely going to date myself here. But I started very young and have had been doing this for a long time. So the first two I ever did, I started in the web development world and I started building websites. So probably the first martech type ish tool would be like Google Analytics and Google Ads, that's for sure.

But the way, way initial versions where you could do like keyword stuffing, you can get all this stuff done where there wasn't too many problems with SEO and all that, but Google Ads and Google Analytics, I mean, it felt like it drove all of the decisions of business back then. That was it. That was the main bread and butter that people needed to work on.

So yeah, I just had to pick that one up quick.

That's awesome. Yeah. No, that definitely was kind of the original arbiter of growth and success. Obviously now it's Geo and it's evolved. But yeah it's awesome to hear. All right I generated content in marketing. Yay or nay.

So I think it's a yay. But with a caveat. The butt is very important here. Yes I don't think it can be taken a complete face value. I think how the person is presenting the prompts to generate the content is incredibly important. I don't think you can use generic AI driven content. I do think it's good for ideation.

I think it helps kind of potentially add some perspectives and different points of view, but to just copy paste type stuff from AI, absolutely not. Is is my stance on that. If you're a one man show and you really are struggling and you just need some help, maybe it will help get you off the ground. But no, it it is not the the one I'll be all for content.

We're in complete agreement. That's. Yeah, but with a big asterisk.

Yep, yep. For sure.

All right, shifting gears a little bit, what are you most curious about right now? Any topic, anything?

I am very curious on how AI is really going to start to shift the deliverability aspect of email marketing. And so I think we've been experiencing some testing of that to a degree. But and it's and it's been using signals like, if people mark you spam, they start to put you in the spam as a sender. Right. But I think it's going to get much deeper than that.

I think mail is going to move from where it is, which box it's in, if it's in the folder of inbox or spam. I think the behaviors of this, the recency of people actually engaging with you, like, I think all of this is going to compound and really be a game changer that's going to hopefully help recipients. That is actually, I think, the primary goal we should be focused on and tighten up the email marketers to make sure they're really buttoned up with process and all of that.

So I'm really curious to see how this all pans out and where I love it and why I'm just making this a longer answer than it probably should be, is that it just constantly is. Throwing arrows at the statements of like, email is dead or dying or whatever it might be.

I feel like that's such an old fried.

Yes. And I'm glad it's like going away. Right? It's like now it's clear that's not a concept anymore. And so I'm glad. I feel like that's going to be the dagger. Like that's going to be the nail if it's not already.

Yeah. I'm extremely excited that consumer focused benefits are really coming to the forefront. I think we're learning from our mistakes.

And hopefully some regulatory aspects come into play too, because the amount of times I have to explain to someone what they're sending is they're spamming people, they're not marketing and they're not actually selling, they're just spamming. And so agreed. All right. Last question before we kind of get into the nitty gritty, who is someone you admire professionally or personally?

I admire our CEO dearly and our CEO's name is leave You Tenacity. And I admire him because of his ambition to see things at such higher levels. And so I think when you're even at my level, I'm still seeing things, you know, being an executive in a company of over 100 people, I'm still seeing things at a granular level.

But to always take that kind of step back, constantly innovate, constantly try to do new things and you will fail a lot. And the environments that he's created and kind of helped put us all in is is really admirable to me. So 13 businesses he's created very educational base. He sends me to Harvard to make sure we're going to like getting all the new stuff.

And so I just admire that type of stuff where it's it's more very selfless. And so I feel like I've inherited a lot of those traits as I've seen it, as a leadership kind of value. And so I look at at that.

Point, that's amazing. That's kind of a perfect up to a question. Then I realize it's not on here, but alas, I'll start it with, sure. Feel free to take your time. What is your hiring strategy? If you're seeing that from your CEO, you're seeing that as how you want to lead. What are you looking for in your direct reports or more folks at your own company?

Such a good question and very topical for us. By the way, I think I've hired I have three people starting next couple days. I've had a few hires coming in the last week, so it's a very topical question and actually I can give away a secret, but I hope this doesn't get to the audience of someone I may interview.

And then they know my secret. But it is so much to me. Gut feeling plays so much bigger role, in my opinion, of hiring people. Then I think people are paying attention too. I think they get very focused on especially remote hiring, by the way, and I'm sure we'll get into stories there because I've had disasters. But I really am looking for curiosity and people.

That is something that really kind of I've seen it in myself, I've seen it a great other people that we've hired. And so when you're very curious and you are constantly out trying to like, figure things out or you ask really curious type questions or to go do discovery, it really shows the type of ambition that you have, because that's how people learn.

At least that's how I learned, I should say, is their curiosity. And so I'm looking for curiosity and I'm looking for, you know, people that want to do big things is really kind of it. I don't know if that's a great answer, but curiosity is like the number one trait I'm looking for.

I wholeheartedly agree that's my secret sauce as well. I love having very strict rubrics that are completely followed by everyone. But to your point, at the same time that does there is that innate is this kind of work, is this does this make sense? Does this person not only take all of the boxes, but have something special that you can tell?

And so, yeah, there's a reason why I ask the curiosity question. That one's a selfish one.

I get it.

Yeah. We kind of touched on it a little bit. But as we're seeing companies like Zapier and Shopify adopting this AI first hiring practice, how are you guys adapting it for talent acquisition and onboarding processes. Because everything's quote unquote AI driven at this point. And so I'm just curious what in actuality are you doing with it.

Yeah. Good question. So I don't have it as part of where things Zapier, Shopify or some of these other companies are getting a little bit more aggressive as it's a skill set they're looking for out of people to to onboard or the they want to train them. They just want them to have the basics and they'll they'll train them up, which is, I think, a great idea, by the way, and definitely forward thinking.

We have not put that into like an onboarding side because there's we're very cautious on we're using AI, we're building with AI and we use it on a lot of business processes. And I'll talk about some of it, but I'm very cautious to that to be the interface against our customer in any sort of manner. And so we don't train our team to, you know, get all your answers from AI.

But we do have AI bots that we've built internally that are back end only. Only our team can use it, and they can ask questions against it and verify that it's either correct or get maybe additional confirmation or color to help with a response. So it's it's kind of a way to help make sure we get more stuff towards those people.

But on the hiring process itself, no, I wouldn't say we're really using it too much. I will say I've used it a ton to help build these job descriptions that for me are just mentally draining to document. I'm not a great writer. I have lots of ideas, I can talk, but I really don't love writing the qualifications and the description.

And you're going to do x, y, z. It's like if I had a dollar for every person that's doing things completely different than their original job description, you know, like or customer, for each one of those we'd have, we'd be huge. I just feel like it's so adaptive. But to be able to get things quickly is so important.

And so I'm writing job descriptions in minutes rather than hours or potentially days or weeks if I get hung up on the description. So that's something I heavily, heavily rely on it for.

That's super helpful. It sounds like you could really use something like an otter AI where you just dictate what you need. Yeah, I turn that into something too. And so for the homegrown or maybe not homegrown tools that you're leveraging, are they any specific vendors or tools or is it all built internally for the internal chat agents?

So the chat agents we built internally, we staffed and hired people to kind of build AI systems towards our, you know, to our documentation and all this other stuff to to really start to train towards it for the hiring side that is more, you know, ChatGPT the professional version of it or whatnot. Messing around with V3 right now, trying to do that, which I'm realizing I'm not a good prompter.

It's a skill. It's interesting.

It is a skill set, by the way, and it's underrated skill set as of today. And I think it will be college courses, by the way, in the future it would be how wow.

That's that's quite a prediction right there.

Oh I definitely think there's if it's not a college course it's something of this nature. Right. Some sort of professional education towards this. And I'm finding myself now is said, well maybe I should ask ChatGPT to write the video script for this, that I can then modify and input into it. And so I definitely think it's those are some of the tools that, that I'm using today.

And we do also provide some summaries. For example, if people upload their listening to Zero Bounce, we validate the data we have like an AI summary that we are building, all locally done, by the way, because we will not ever send that data out. We're going to a lot of feedback. It's very helpful. So, you know, recommended best practices that are coming out of it, things like that.

If the list is really bad, we're telling the question the entire was completed. Where did you get this from? Why is it so bad these types of things. And so we're trying to do a lot of things to kind of educate, you know, marketers out there, email marketers in some way or another.

And that's great. Yeah. In terms of really leveraging your own product to try to make the education piece, it's so important because having been on the other side, where you're having to internally explain it, it's really helpful to be like, hey, not only is our validator saying this, but also it's validating my personal thoughts and experiences. And so it's a proof point.

Yep, yep.

Which is really nice. Okay. You've seen email technology evolve rapidly over the past. I don't know how many years. What has been the biggest shift you think. Is it AI or do you think of something else?

That's a good question. I think air is playing a role and I think we've had like close to I concepts an email for a while. Right. So like predictable sending these type of things a B testing to some degree. Right. It's like we're making our own watered down versions of intelligence. I wouldn't call it artificial. It's like we're growing our own intelligence.

But whenever something can be made better by data and it can be, I feel like I've been using quote unquote AI for years, even though the concept wasn't really out there. For example, it is. It was human AI in some sort of way where you're transforming. How do you transform graphs, for example, in operations, how do you transform graphs from someone who wrote the data that built that graph and then turn it into the story?

Yep. How do you synthesize what's.

That's the actual thing that people want out of it? The chart is the data. The chart is the notification. Oh, something spiked or something collapsed. Right. But the story what happened to create that. And so I'm most excited about that, especially being in ops. And you know, the size of company that we are in, growing an amount of people, amount of customers to be able to kind of query towards some of the stuff, like, I'm super excited for that and we're already building tools actively towards it.

That's fantastic. Yeah, I'm a huge agreement that AI is definitely not new at all. As long as you've been synthesizing binary data and transforming it into something else, and that storytelling is hard. It's a very hard thing. Not very. It's capable of it. So I'm glad it's becoming more capable. But to that point, as technology, particularly in the marketing space, gets more automated, how do you see operators really keeping things strategic?

And I know you've probably seen the recent MIT study where our brains on ChatGPT is a little lazy, a little less capable. I'm curious how you foster thinking through that.

Depends. Right. So I'm looking at from an executive point of view, we've definitely, you know, drawn conclusions or drawn, you know, potential conclusions based on AI type data. Right. And then it's I think it's the validation around it. So for example, data can tell you one thing, but context can give you something completely different or actual feedback. So for example, if you have this great product in your head, everything's great.

The metrics are growing, but your customer feedback is they're like, this isn't good, but maybe you're spending so much money on ads, it looks good. These are things that I think are very important to be able to like. That part is missing from AI today where it doesn't. I don't know why I'm saying like it's a person, but like it's fault.

It's not its fault that it doesn't have it.

It doesn't need them for sure.

But I think that's also where I see a lot of the future going, is being able to connect all of this into one kind of bigger ecosystem that can actually try to put some of the other pieces of the puzzle together, and that's probably the scariest part at the same time as things advance. But I think we'll definitely get there.

And, you know, if you look at like just how APIs used to connect a long time ago is very hard. Now you have like Zapier. That'll help connect a lot of the business systems together. It's not the best, but it's all right. And I just think we will get to a point of like, data feeds are flying everywhere and it's us going to a central place.

Yeah. I'm intrigued. We need guardrails, but MTP protocols are really gonna.

Be that next wave. I think APIs will be even a thing of the past at some point too soon. Okay. But there's a lot of legacy tech to get there first.

Yep, yep.

Speaking of tech, what is the current martech stack at Zero Bounce and which is your favorite tool amongst it?

Oh my gosh.

Tell us all the secrets.

I'll start this with saying that we are the type of company and cultural company that you have to be trying new things, like it's a requirement of our marketing team. You have a budget, and that budget has to be spent on something absolutely new. And if it fails, no problem at all. Move on. If it's good, bake it into the stack.

And so there's a ton of different things that our teams out here using. Obviously, besides the big ones that everyone's doing, but one of the other ones that we're using, which has really crept up, by the way, as a big help, is like N8. And for data shifting over Zapier, that's been a really good one. Zapier is great, by the way.

We used both for the record, and there's some stuff around that. There's a lot of something that's been very interesting. I don't remember the the vendor name just because I'm not the one using it, but we have been experimenting with, like I ab testing of ads where it's generating new AB tests automatically. It's generating landing pages based on the AB tests.

It's generating images based on this. Just to be clear, it's not fully out there. And this is not how we run our ads, but we're testing it. And it's very, very interesting. And it's just constantly competing against itself and constantly putting new stuff out there. I will follow up with you with the name of that tool, because I think it's pretty interesting.

And there are some others out there. It's not one place that does it, but it's a very interesting concept and it kind of helps. It gives you almost an agency type mentality where they want to be doing all that stuff, but it gives it. On an AI execution level, which again, there's a scary component to that, by the way, where it's generating images and it's generating content for you and it kind.

Of.

Refreshing it, it could go very wrong. And so we test a lot of that stuff. But that's one that's like super exciting to me. And in a sense of curiosity. Right. It's like, is this going to work? Is this actually going to work? Because that would be very interesting.

Yeah, I mean, I think in general we're still all in the curiosity stage and I feel like I say it constantly, but I think every AI platform is in their one year trial period and everyone is passing the tests. And proving ROI.

I like that.

All right. What have been the most meaningful AI applications you're seeing specifically on deliverability and inbox optimization, whether it's what you guys have been building or what you're just seeing in general in the space.

That's interesting in my opinion. I don't think there's a lot of great AI tools for deliverability, and maybe I haven't seen them all. So I will say that if someone's out there, that's great. Please message me on LinkedIn and send me your product so I can go look at it. And I would love to, but I don't know how much is out there that I've been, like, wowed by or something of that nature.

I think it's more about what people can have access to on the on the sending side, where it's kind of baked more into like the ISPs and some of the things they're trying to do. But, I mean, I have an idea and we're talking about and we're building some stuff to, like, have an AI type deliverability, feedback and consulting channel that you can kind of use.

And it's the problem of hallucination is the problem of mis, you know, providing back content that's not very good. And so I hate to answer this with the answer of I don't have one, but I think that's kind of the truth. I don't know what that is like rock star that I would get behind and promote out there and say, this is great, but if you are that person and you're hearing this, please reach out to me and send it to me because I would love to know it.

Yeah, we're in agreement. And also deliverability in and of itself is so complex. Yeah. There's no there's so many variables. There is no one quick trick or fix as no matter what article tries to tell you that.

Yep.

Yep, no matter what singular person, there is an entire industry and specialty because of it. It is extremely unique and ever evolving and changing.

Yes, yes.

Get it?

One of the things that I kind of talk about there a lot is because I constantly get this, like, what's your best deliverability tip? Right? Like a somewhat generic question.

One take away the song. It's like.

What's the one takeaway? And my one takeaway is that it's not one takeaway. And so is this the same principle for business? This is same principle for just general. It is the sum of all these little things that when you continue to build on top of them, they compound and know you have a snowball type effect. And those are the type of things that move the needle.

So it's like dMarc is not the answer to everything. Disney. Mark DeMarco. Absolutely. Is it required? Absolutely. You know, all these things when you put them together. Hygiene matters how you get there. Data matters type of platform you're sending from matters. So you know, you can't just say it's one thing or it's the sum of all of these things.

And I think they get discredited at times because maybe they're just one percenters or two percenters, right?

But two.

Hundred and 40 times and.

They compound.

Compounds and, and they're usually really quick wins. That's where I also don't understand why people don't look into a more like, yes, it's small, but it's small with big impact. That makes a big difference.

Yep. That always makes me think of the Eisenhower Matrix. And sometimes folks just miss attribute the the priority goes to maybe the the size and scope of the actual level. Yeah. No, I'm definitely in agreement across the board with everything you're saying. I want to really dive into AI and how it's impacting hiring. So I kind of alluded to this already, but when we initially met, we were talking about how I was impacting hiring practices.

And so please share your hiring horror story. It's like, you know, ghost story times. And then we can also dive in after that. How it's impacting our industry at large overall.

Yeah. Okay. So this one personally stings a little bit because I've had. And by the way, I think it's grown since then because now I have just in the back of my head everything is is like panic alarms going off in my head queue.

Like the scream image.

Yeah. Right. Right. So so story time on the bad experience that I had. So we were looking to bring somebody in on the we're looking to bring account managers into the organization to, you know, help assist our customers better etc.. So I had great interviews with people and I narrowed it down to like two people. And as I was kind of going through and and really digging in, I started to pay more attention to body language.

I started to pay more attention towards eye contact, towards all of these different types of things. And as I was paying attention, because now it's cultural fit. So if I feel like you have the cultural fits also in the beginning, but if I feel like you passed it originally and now you've gone through like the the experience that you're probably technically able to do the role, then it goes back into cultural again.

So anyway, I was kind of talking to this one person and I just was like, oh, how were these answers so developed? Like they are? They're not human. Something was just feeling off. And I kept kind of digging more into it because I was looking for body language. At this point, I was looking for eye contact and in remote this is very hard and especially with I do really respect the fact that people buy their own webcams, you know, laptops in one screen, but the bigger screens in front of them, maybe it has webcam, maybe it doesn't.

So eye contact can be can struggle there. But I started to kind of internally feel like something was off but I didn't know what. I couldn't put two and two together. So I kept kind of going through the interview. Cool. And then I brought in someone else to do a second interview. You know, it was probably a third or fourth at that point to do an alternative interview, to get a feedback on these two people that I really liked.

And the feedback was, again, the same. Something fell off. The answers were really good, and there was an eye contact problem. And I said, you know, I noticed that as well. Like it was like heads was constantly going left and right when we were talking like literally right now.

So obviously two.

Yeah. So I started to kind of think more about it. And then literally that night I'm scrolling on TikTok and I saw that people like will use these AI copilot will throw that word back in there.

To help your least favorite review. And I literally dumped.

Word doubling so on interviews. And they're like listening to the conversation. They're they're actively providing responses. And I was like, oh my God, this is what happened. And when we did the final round, now knowing this or thinking this, I should say I didn't know this for sure, but I kind of had this feeling this is what was going on.

That was almost where the gut feeling is. Yes.

Yes, yes. And so, you know, something just still felt off. But I was like, okay. And by the way, the other person was good, but still, you know, if you really like both people, it's hard to make that final decision. So I was really looking for that that moment and ended up going back on another quick call. And I found a way to kind of break it.

And that's when the House of cards crumbled and everything.

Let's share your secret, because I think so. Every hiring manager needs to know this regardless of the industry until the guy catches up. Yeah.

It's true. So the few things obviously where the eye contact, the head nodding, that type of stuff that I could kind of see, I'm not the guy that's going to say, share your screen and tell me if there's something on your laptop. I would never do that. But what I started to do was I just started to use nonverbal communication to break it because it's relying on audio, right.

So I would say things like, you know, sorry, not say it. I would give like expressions that would be kind of like tell me more type type things. And it created these incredibly long, awkward, panicky moments for this, for the candidate because it didn't know what to do. And I think it just interpreted as silence. And so it was or one word response.

It's like, okay.

Yeah.

So like just even that it broke like it didn't know how to move the conversation. That's something I think it needs.

A little prompting to do it.

Yes. So I found the less I talked, the more the face started to panic, the more the eyes were rolling quicker. And that's when I started to be like, no, this is 100% like this is it was kind of confirmed. And so I shared this story with our executive team, all hiring managers and you know, all this. And I will say this, I'm not against people using AI in the hiring process.

I actually think that's fine. As a candidate, I think it's really fine. No, it's not fine to use it in the interview, but it's totally fine to get quick research on the company and what are things that might be important to them.

And I got to do.

Yeah, like in the homework stage. No problem. I would encourage it. And you should say that you did it. I think that would even give you a leg up. Makes you feel like, you know, fine. But you have to have.

I didn't Google you. I ChatGPT do you.

That's fine. I would be totally good with that response. Right? It's it's totally fine. It's when you try to kind of trick the system, which, by the way, will catch up to you as a candidate as well. If you do get hired, it's going to catch up to you. So use it as a way to educate yourself on the job or on specific things that they're talking about.

That's fine, but don't try to say, don't try to spoof a hiring manager because you will win. By the way, you will get spoofed as a hiring manager if you're not paying attention. It's just it's that's not a win for anybody. It's just not.

Right. It's almost like catfishing yourself and in a similar capacity. It's like when anyone it's like the new version of bloating your resume of like just over inflation of your capabilities. And now you can do it live virtually. And so not only do you know how to crack the code, you focus on the human side of minimal talking body language, things that are not as interpretable.

Are there any other strategies you can think of that folks can really hone in on? I know I made a suggestion to you of maybe when you're really at the very final, final rounds and you're just trying decide on 1 or 2 people is actually maybe having that in-person interview just for the the top tier, the final final for important roles because it's not realistic, especially for amazing companies that are remote first and yeah, yeah, but were there any other strategies you thought of that maybe are tangible takeaways?

Because I'm asking for that. One takeaway.

Haha. I definitely think being in people in person is obviously it's that's a really, really powerful one. And if can be done, should be done by the way. But man, is there anything else? No. I think you have to use some gut feeling here. And I would say the biggest thing to look out for when you are, because you do have to have real talk and real conversation, by the way, and, and the AI bots will help, you know, facilitate that for candidates.

I think you have to think about the answers they're actually giving you. And is this practical for someone to come off with the top of their head, especially if it's specific about maybe your industry or your business and they don't have all that experience. So for example, as an account manager, they can be an account manager at lots of companies.

The chance of them being an account manager at a deliverability company, and that I get to interview them, is almost as close to zero as possible. It's very hard to find that type of profile.

So you're saying there's so many skills are so important.

The ability for someone to answer like they've been doing it for ten years. That's also off to me. Yeah. And so if you can answer that in real time, that's off. I think it's verbal nonverbal. It's all of the above. You have to put you can't just look at answers and be like wowed.

It's pretty much putting someone in context. So if you're hiring for an account manager and they have five years of account management experience, but it's in a different type of sass product and software.

It should be examples from their experience. Yeah. Helping through that. And like let me tell you about a time where I did this and while I know it's not deliver really specifically but this is how we navigated a challenge etc. etc.. Makes sense to me. All right. So we've been talking about how it's impacting employers. I'm curious on your thoughts on how AI is helping or hurting early career candidates trying to break into the industry.

I know I've already alluded to the MIT study, where it just shows you're not using your creative juices nearly as much, and it's if you don't use that muscle, it's going to weaken. And so I'm curious how if you have any advice for early career candidates trying to figure this out.

Yeah, it might be similar to the previous answer of like using it for the research side. But I think if you're going to do it, I would say put it on your resume is like an expert of this, and you will find companies that are looking for those type of people and, you know, use it in good ways.

I think anything in this world, money is the easiest example, can be used for good things, or it could be used for bad things. And so, you know, use the tools that are out there for good things that can kind of help you. The research or maybe saying like maybe for salary advice, that's another kind of good one that could be really great for people.

If you feel like it's the pays off, up or down, by the way, because you maybe that changes your viewpoint when you're like, wow, these guys are actually paying more than some of the other companies are rare, and I'm very rarely off.

I call a lot of people out.

Fair enough. I mean, I we're like a great paying company. We try because we're looking for a players. We're always looking for a player. C players don't make it. They just don't. And so it's not the environment for that. And so we will look to actually overpay. We do that. But I think to use things of that nature to help you to better educate you is all good.

I would recommend the utilization of it there and utilize it maybe to help find more jobs. I don't know, thankfully. I guess I'm not really out looking for jobs, but my guess is there's some tools that can be used to help you like identify what types of jobs other than you've had in the past that might be good fits for you based on your personality, experience, these type of things that could be very, very interesting for, especially for people that sometimes maybe are lost.

Like if you're just coming out of college or you're just whatever you early in your career and you don't feel like you've really dialed it in. I started as a software developer and moved into systems. Systems turn me into people. People turn me in in the front of the business. I'm part of support and sales. I never would have experienced that in my life.

I never would have predicted that 20 years ago. And I just pushed forward what skill sets that I was good at, but I had to find that on my own. It would be great to have like someone to talk to that could maybe guide you there.

Yeah. And I think to that point or any other alternative can be really helpful for like a mock interview perspective, like, hey, yeah, I want to prepare. This is the job description. This is the company. Could you just you know, I'm meeting with the HR screening. What are some mock questions that you would predict? Because I mean, this is how historically folks prepared for interviews anyway, you would think of mock questions, do actual mock interviews, like why not practice?

And so instead the copilot is your brain ultimately.

And I love that. I used to mock interviews with friends and oh yeah, they wouldn't have a clue. Like it was just it's the saying it out loud is important. It's practice. I see it a lot. Obviously, being in as an executive role, my first thing I do when I start an interview is I try to make the person feel like comfortable and calm, and this is a safe place and this is not like on if.

Only every.

Year I'm the CEO or someone else. Like, no, like I'm a person. You're a person. We have goals. We both have goals. How do we get there? What does that look like? So even if it's just to get some of the nerves off because you've done it before. Powerful. It's very powerful and great for people's self-esteem as well.

Yeah, I'm in huge agreement. They're the best interviews I've ever had. Have been conversations. They're not an interview. And to that point, I used to be a serial applicant on campus, and this is a very different market and environment now. But early in my career I would do 50 interviews, real interviews with companies before I applied to something I wanted that is no longer possible for folks, but that was my personal way of I need the pressure of a real environment.

I didn't care about the company, I didn't care about the role. But I did my homework. So I learned that muscle. And if anything, it's been the most helpful skill set. Because now when I work with clients or when I'm meeting someone at a dinner just like yourself, it's like I can meet you on a personal level. Understand?

There's there's trends. There's trends of like what resonates, what makes people feel more comfortable. So we can have an open dialog. I have no idea how we actually met, except for we just start talking about hiring horror stories and everyone can relate to that. Everyone's had made the wrong choice, and I'm sure everyone has not listened to their gut feeling or had a gut feeling and someone ignored it and were proven right.

Karma always comes back, let's be honest.

Yep. And it should.

All right. So you've talked about curiosity being your primary. Characteristic you're looking for. Are there any other like skill sets specifically or traits that you see as really important and evergreen that you have to have that baseline curiosity. But okay, maybe I'm the most curious person in the world, but that might be because I have ADHD and I have a lot of interests.

How can we hone in or is there another soft skill that's really important?

Really important? Yes. So all right, I'm totally giving things away here. So anyone to interview anything special?

Sauce especial.

Sauce.

The second you'll know if they did their homework first. That's true interviewing with you. So and it could be a positive.

That's true I appreciate that. Speed speed to me speed curiosity these two components put together are generally going to tell me everything. I'm going to end up learning about you. So for example, how fast you reply to an email in an interview process tells me a lot about you. For example, a simple question when's the next time you want to chat?

If that takes you two and a half days to respond to me, I just want you to know you're knocked out. It shouldn't take you two and a half days. That's how it would be interpreted as a client. Oh, hey, I want to, you know, can you help me with some type of a question two and a half days later to get a response like, absolutely not.

And so when I start to see things that almost feel and I don't know how you feel about this, Jack, I'm actually very curious. So I'm going to ask you a question in as well. But like I.

The tables have turned.

The tables have turned. I see email as almost business professional text messaging to a degree. Two yes, obviously short format email to me simple one liners questions these type of things. And so just like a friend if like hey do you want to grab dinner tonight if you got an answer to that two days later, it's like, what the heck, right?

Like, what kind of an answer is that? I think speed is so important, and I really judge people on that, by the way. I really, really, really judge people on that. Now. It depends upon where, right? If I'm talking to our bank and that's a two day response, I'm fine. I'm used to that. But when it's personal and especially in jobs, if you don't respond and like takes you more than a night to respond, it's generally not a good sign in my opinion.

It shows me a little bit, but I'm curious how you like see that as well. And what's your thoughts?

That's definitely one of my also secret special sauce moments. Granted, oftentimes depending on the organization you're working with or at HR, is that in between? So you're not actually involved. But I actively like to be backed by my talent or HR team because I want to see how the candidate is speaking to HR.

Interesting.

I have found like.

That.

That also in addition to speeding is it's one thing if like, hey, we're going to get back to you and like give you some dates coming soon like that endorsement of that versus there's an action item and to your point, like I don't think there I think a one day window is very fair and valid. Nothing weekends. I think that's a reasonable SLA for life.

Like I said, it can be instances like something comes up, you have a family emergency, life happens. There aren't always exceptions to the rule. But similar to the question of like if you're looking to date someone, you're like, how do they treat the waiter? How do they treat the server? How do they treat the bartender? It's the exact same.

These are your potential coworkers. Treat them with the same amount of respect and empathy they deserve in every capacity. And for me, that actually has oftentimes been a disqualifier for some folks, because I actively want to know how everyone in the hiring process is is being treated. Of course, I want the feedback from my team and or the panel.

I want honest, unbiased feedback, but there are just the human characteristics, the nuances you learn about this individual character that you don't automatically know just from their skillset and from what they've already previously accomplished through experience. It's one of my unwritten questions.

It's stolen as of so. Well, I really like it because I think that's so important. And I think, like when we originally talk, when we met, I remember saying these things like, I don't care what my title is, my title has never meant anything to me. It means I have to make some bigger decisions. I understand that from a function point of view, but I don't look at anybody different.

I was the first one to take the trash out in the office. Like I didn't care. This stuff didn't mattered to me. I remember like even in the restaurants when I was coming up in in college, high school glasses would be on the floor. And I have nothing to do with waiter, you know, being in the front of the house type stuff.

I'm still grabbing them. And I actually got tipped once by one of the managers who was a sign. It was. I didn't do it intentionally. Like subconsciously I did it. But it's like, see, this is what I'm talking about. We need people that don't care what their job is here. They care about the overall and overarching business, right?

One way or another. And whether that's through people, products, you know, customers, it doesn't matter. Should all fish all play together?

Yeah. And I guess that leads to the other evergreen component for me is leaving your ego at the door. My previous scenes we've used the phrase like, everyone takes out the trash.

No matter what. Because guess what? People go on PTO, you pick up the work, people get sick, things happen where you have to adjust and be a little bit more flexible as to who can take on what. And so that's where I'm a huge fan of redundancies within teams meaning there's cross training. And no one is too good to do any specific thing.

I hope if any leaders are listening that they take the advice from you in particular, because egos definitely can get in the way of success and it hurts the company more than they realize.

Yep yep yep. I also want to say I totally agree and I just want to add to that some color I had an ego in my younger days. Oh.

What's your first story? I don't.

So I do. I do have a horror story. I'll share it. And it was it was a really good reality check for me, and I'm glad it happened, to be very honest. And so I also want to put out the message that is never to. You can always still make adjustments in your life. I don't care what age you are, you can make adjustments.

And so I always knew like I was highly proficient and intelligent and tech, I just, I was writing.

Must be.

Nice. Well, I just knew it. I was writing software at 12, like I was doing a lot of things that people are like, what are you doing? I'm like, okay, you just don't get it. I'm not even going to explain it. But I got hired into a company based on a conversation. A random stranger I met at the bar that turned into turn brought me into a company, and I had a great relationship there, but I went in hot headed.

It's kind of like one of my first jobs, but I went in hot headed, and I had to evaluate something that was like one of the first things I had to do, and somebody was showing me this thing and it was bad. It was really bad. And even in hindsight, I can still comfortably say it was bad. But I was like, oh my.

Like, I verbally was like, oh my God, who wrote this? Like, who could write such a thing like this? And I kept going on and it was, it was the person who wrote it was the one. Explain it to me. And just ego hot head came in and just didn't. I got slapped pretty good. Not not physically, but I mean, that sunk in my body once I picked up on that.

And then I got a talk from HR, and then I got this and I got to that and it really kind of helped. I don't regret that moment, though. I hate to say that I don't regret that moment because it doesn't make me my future. Yeah.

And it was early on, which is better to get the slap on the wrist early on and you're like, oh, that's the wrong behavior. Yeah. Let me turn on my empathy and understanding. Forgive. How do we get to this? Tell me more. What is the logic? What was the reasoning behind going about it this way? Get to your point.

There's nothing worse than coming in hot and making sweeping changes without context or understanding of the historical reasons as to why we're here, why we made these choices. Because oftentimes it predicts the folks involved, or it's it was a poor decision that they're dealing with the consequences of. And yet, to your point, that's a I'm glad it was early on because yes, it shifts your mindset.

It definitely did. And it also made me slow down mentally. It made me not jump to conclusions so quick, made me to kind of stop and think and ask better questions, let people get the whole thing out. These type of things, I I'm not perfect. They're still, by the way, I think I drink too much coffee for that.

But, you know, when perfect, I try and I just want to say this to anyone else that's maybe out there that's listening. You can change. You can make adjustments like this, and they don't happen overnight, but you can have that pivotal moment. And that was a pivotal moment for me. Like, I will never forget that moment in my life, in a professional career.

Just keep working towards it. When you have that moment, I don't think you should fight against it. Whereas I think naturally you want to.

Easy to get to.

Take it, take it on the chin. If you did it, take it on the chin and just learn from it.

Yeah. No, that's that's excellent advice. I agree and also assume positive intent. Most people are not trying to be malicious. We're not in a Hobbesian society where everyone's nasty, brutish and short like assume positive intent until of course, there's enough data points. Maybe you're proven wrong. And so that's a great way to kind of really enter into your how you perceive not only the world to know we're going get so philosophical here, but also hiring who you want at your company, who you want to work with, etc., etc., who you want in your life.

All of the above. All right, I think back to martech. What is something you are expecting in the next 18 months as either a trend or a big change? It's so unpredictable. There's news every single day about something else happening, new launches, and it's hard to keep up no matter how in the weeds you are or, you know, on the periphery.

It's very difficult. And so I'm curious, what do you see coming?

I think it's already it's already been talked about, but I think it's still early is a lot of the the video creation that's happening when it comes to martech, I think there's I mean, I've even seen at some of these trade shows, I'm seeing things around like AI sales bots, but they're doing human like, it takes pictures of me.

360 and creates videos that are personalized for every single one you want to send out. And just like, oh my god, like this is too much, I think video is really going to be and I think a lot of social media channels have really proven that short form content, short form video is the future and it is it is.

Our attention span is dropping dramatically, which is not good, by the way. I see it in my kids, for example. Their attention spans are very, very short just due to how fast anything they you can't avoid screens. It is impossible. I grew up on built my career on a screen, and so it's hard for me to tell my kids they shouldn't be on screens.

For example, I just try to channel the right way, but it's everything is so short form, and so I think that is really going to be the biggest next. It's already happening, but I think it's going to be in 18 months. You're not going to know. I hope you can know what is what is AI generated video and what's not today.

I think you can in 18 months, I don't know. And that's kind of scary also. But yeah, that's what I think a lot of things going yeah, yeah.

No it's interesting this is where we're at in society because even ten, 15 years ago, the slow art movement in particular recognize folks are only looking at a painting in a museum for six seconds. And that was 15 years ago. That was the start. So I can only imagine where we're at now in terms of we're just all swiping.

We're all, you know, just scrolling instantly, endlessly. And what that long term impact is going to be. It's it's going to be interesting. Yeah.

Yeah.

We got to try to resist but also give in a little to temptation.

Brian you've been an excellent guest. I got one last question for you. Who is someone we should have on the pod.

I have two people that I think you should have on the podcast. Number one is somebody that I have recently found over the last few years, someone local to me as well. We want to compete in high schools. I come to find out. Oh.

Who ball game so good.

That was actually like the big thing. I was like.

I had a field goals.

Competing. So Jace Wells in over at he's at gurus at subject line. There's a whole bunch of different companies outcome media. He is fantastic. He's so creative. He always has so many new ideas. He has tons of stats, which is something that I'm jealous of. Like I don't know.

Where him.

To stats from, and they're real stats that are usable and actionable stuff. So that's somebody I would definitely say. And then also our CMO and Gallucci, who does a lot of the marketing here as well that we do at Zero Bounce. And one of the things that always impressed me is kind of I've traveled to many trade shows.

I'm doing a lot of traveling. Sometimes I have a jacket on that says Zero Bounce, and I've had multiple people on the same flight like, oh, I know zero bounce. I know you guys. And it's like, really like it's shocking even to, you know, myself. And that's due to the amount of effort she puts into marketing. Our team puts in the marketing under, you know, her leadership.

So I think she'd have a lot of great marketing tips for you.

Yeah. I mean, it just further proves how one on trackable marketing is and how important it is.

Yeah, yeah.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Brian, for sharing your wisdom, your insights and your failures that you've learned from. Where can folks find you?

Absolutely. So please connect with me on LinkedIn. I think it's just slash Brian Mitnick at this point, but we will get you a link over there if anyone wants to click it. But please come find me on on LinkedIn. Connect with me. I try to share content and also I'm very accessible. So if you have like deliverability questions or whatever it might be, or you have that great software that I need to see, by the way, you can reach out to me as well.

Awesome. Thank you so.

Much. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

On the.