Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to "Visionary Voices" the podcast where we dive into the minds of business owners, founders, executives, and everyone in between.
Each episode brings you face-to-face with the leading lights of industry and innovation.
Join us as we uncover the stories behind the success and the lessons learned along the way.
Whether you're climbing the corporate ladder or just starting your business journey, these are the conversations you need to hear - packed with visionary voices and insights.
Let's begin.
So thank you for joining me on today's episode.
Could you give us a top level overview to what it is that you're working on right now and
your journey so far?
Yeah, absolutely.
So great to join you.
I'm working at MediaLink, which is a boutique advisory in the media and marketing space.
It's owned by UTA, which is one of the big talent agencies globally.
And mostly I work with uh CROs, CMOs, CMOs, CROs, CEOs, and CMOs on the uh best growth uh
strategies and trajectories for their business right now.
can either be looking to go out and acquire a business, it can be growing a new division
or vertical of an existing business.
um And it also touches on day-to-day problems that uh they might be seeing within the org
or new uh tactics that they want to employ uh within their current company.
So ah it's been an exciting time, certainly one that's uh had a lot of senior leaders
asking for...
what new areas they could get into.
And also there's another side of our practice which focuses on transformation.
And as I'm sure you can imagine with everything that's happening in the marketing
landscape right now, transformation is a hot topic.
Yeah, no, for sure.
And completely agree.
I think right now in the industry, there's so much changing overall, especially with
technology and the tools that we have available to us.
I mean, I'd love to go back to the start of your career.
So why did you choose to get into the marketing space and what's the journey there?
What's the story there on how you got into the industry?
Yeah, absolutely.
my first first job was actually uh interning at ESPN during the World Cup and that was
fantastic and a lot of fun.
I have a sports background, I've always loved sports.
And um so that was a huge thrill to kind of get to work in one of those moments with some
really talented people.
uh And then I went to Fox Sports, actually on the sales side after that, and um followed
some other ESPN people over at NBC News where I started to...
studied the streaming landscape a little bit and look at what streaming could look, look
at what news could look like in a streaming environment.
And from there got tapped on the shoulder to move over to a group that was looking at
streaming for the broader NBC portfolio and that turned into Peacock.
And so that was a fun time to kind of be at the start of a streaming service, albeit one
that probably came to market a few years too late here in the U.S.
uh But certainly something that
was an incredible moment uh in my career, then went towards the startup path for a couple
of years in growth and strategy roles, and now find myself at UTA Media Lab.
Amazing.
How do you find the, I guess, working in kind of larger businesses versus the startup side
of things?
Cause I know I've worked in both and obviously have a startup now.
And so it's interesting to see how different it is working in there.
my, personal preference is in the startup environment, you can really see the impact of
your work a lot of the times, whereas in slightly larger corporations, it's sometimes more
difficult to see some of the work that you actually do and then what results from that.
So, mean, what's your take on that and what was your experience with it working in both
sides?
I think it's important to get big company experience because you learn how, um you really
learn how to interact with people because you actually aren't moving the needle as much on
a day to day.
So there's so much more that you need to learn about um how to convince someone that your
idea is a good idea because candidly, the ship is gonna go on without you, right?
And so there is a...
Building personal equity, building relationships internally at large corporations, I think
is really important.
And you also learn how to do a few things at a really high level because the ship is
moving on without you one way or another.
At startups, you learn how to actually get things done.
And you learn how to put your hands on a keyboard and make something important happen
today.
The highs are really high in startups.
The lows are really low in startups, as you know.
um In big corporations, it tends to be kind of much more of a steady state.
uh The steady state can be boring, but the lows in startups can be really low.
So there are pros and cons of both, for sure.
no, absolutely.
The lows in startups is definitely there.
And sometimes it would be nice just to have that baseline of pieces, let's say, which I
guess comes from working in these larger ones.
Amazing.
And then in terms of your current role and what you currently work on, I guess, what does
the data here look like for you right now and what things are you working on?
Yeah, of course.
There's a fair amount of research that goes into it, understanding what the market is um
looking like at the moment.
I would say the best part about my role right now and kind of where we sit is we get to
talk to some of the smartest, most influential people in the market and hear what their
problems are, but also how they're approaching it, right?
And so um our ideas are based on our research, but also based on an amalgamation of
talking to the people who are at the forefront of many of the issues that may not
necessarily show up in earnings yet.
They may not necessarily show up um publicly, uh but you kind of get to be the tip of the
spear in the marketplace from an intelligence perspective.
uh And so that's what we spend a lot of our time doing.
We spend a lot of our time, you know, whether that is on a call with 10 people or getting
coffee with one senior leader.
I think that
um Especially as we've all kind of come to the other side of this post COVID era and also
just the tail end of I think uh a period where we put a lot of time and effort and energy
into digital relationships.
think building personal relationships even though we're through a screen right now, think
building personal relationships in person um is the most important thing we can be doing.
And so I think we spend a lot of our time doing that uh in a variety of different.
capacities, whether that's at an event or just a one-on-one conversation.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it's so different being in person versus virtual, right?
And just the relationships you can build.
100 % I'll fly out to sunny Manchester here in the north of the UK and you can, you can
come in, can, yeah, we can record an episode.
But I completely agree.
You build such deep relationships, let's say, when you do meet in person and you do have
these conversations and you build up rapport, which you can't always build virtually or to
the same extent as you can in person.
I guess with the marketing strategies and that you're currently working on all the
problems, let's say, from the people that you've speaking to, what are some of the most
prevalent marketing uh tech problems that you're seeing right now out there?
Because I think one of the big things that I've come to realize from speaking to guests on
the show is they were all trying to figure out this AI question on how they need to
implement AI.
And obviously there's no right solution.
How far into AI do you move the business into?
What strategies and methods do you move to AI?
Which ones do you keep in human connection, human contact?
And so people are trying to find this balance.
And that's the big question that I see through this podcast itself and the conversations,
but it'll be interesting to see from you, what are some of those biggest challenges that
you're facing or that the people that you speak to are facing?
Well, in a funny way, think this all comes back down to what I was just talking about with
personal relationships.
Because at the end of the day, we can talk about the technology all we want, but it's
people who govern the decisions about whether or not the budgets get allocated, right?
And I do think that there is this um chasm right now, this internal fear, uncertainty,
doubt of
Sure, I will go and pilot something, right, and spend 10, 20 grand and see if this works.
But I'm gonna spend mid six figures or seven figures on something that could put me out of
a job in three years.
I think that's an existential question that a lot of folks are wrestling with right now.
They don't even know if they're wrestling with it, if that makes sense, right?
They see the writing on the wall and they see how powerful some of these tools can be.
But I also don't think that's where this is all going.
I think that from the positive side, so much of what is going to be implemented is going
to take away the grunt work.
Now, there will be employment implications, most likely more the junior level.
But in terms of people in seats today, don't think that there is this, I don't think we're
going to realize the huge swath of folks who all of a sudden are.
Optimize out of a job by an agent tomorrow.
I think it's actually going to be spending less time in spreadsheets or back-end systems
looking for you what was that query or how do you pivot that table and That's going to
make for actually a lot more strategic work and that's going to make for um It's actually
once people get to the other side of this is something that's really powerful for me um I
think that we're gonna see a whole
uh host of adoption relatively quickly.
But right now people are kind of wrestling with, uh hey, this model jumped this model last
week.
What does that really mean for my business?
And uh the pace of AI and uh that acceleration is happening way faster than the pace that
people typically adopt tools and software.
And so that combined with the fear, uncertainty and doubt part of it has just kind of
mucked up the works a lot in the market right now.
But I do think that
we're going to get to the other side of that relatively quickly.
It's just going to take the next 6-12 months.
Yeah, absolutely.
And what you mentioned about it replacing certain roles or speeding up at least some of
those, those grunt tasks, as you said, I completely agree there because I think it's going
to open up a whole level of, of new types of roles where it is more strategic, where
you're working on that higher level thinking, you know, that strategy rather than, yeah,
as you said, how do you pivot this, this spreadsheet and show these numbers in the right
way, right?
Which can take hours sometimes trying to figure it out.
And so completely agree with you on that, on that side of it.
And it's gonna be interesting to see what jokes.
else different.
I was looking at a JD for, you know, just popped up on LinkedIn the other day.
it was a legacy JD, or it was something that was written as if it were 10 years ago.
And it said it required extreme competency in these four systems.
And I was like, how much longer is that going to be put into a JD?
Right?
Like, I don't think that we're going to require like,
15 years of managing Excel and SQL and all these other things in two years, that actually
has cut down the amount of available talent because you're looking for someone who knows a
system, not someone who knows a business.
And I think that that's a really important thing that we're gonna get to the other side on
is we're gonna actually want generalists who understand how uh revenue is generated and
how operations work, not folks who check a box about whether or not they,
understand where to pull the data from.
just is such an old world thinking.
I caught myself saying, really think we're going to optimize out of that job description
world within the next year.
uh So I hope that person finds their role.
But anyway.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I mean, the pace of changes is interesting and exciting for sure.
And I do think when we are adopting some of these technologies is, you how far do we adopt
it?
And as I mentioned before, that's something that I hear time and time again of people
trying to wrestle on what they do.
And we went down the rabbit hole at the very start of kind of track GPT and when the APIs
came out and using it, I mean, like, cool, we can, you know, AIFI our whole business.
And, uh, you know, that whole service theory is part of it.
But then what we found was actually certain elements in there where you do need that human
touch, a checkpoint, right?
To check the work that's being done or to have a human interaction or intervention, let's
say.
Um, and so, you know, we had to pull back a little bit more from that.
And I think people are kind of testing the waters to see how far they, how far they can
take it.
Um, but the other thing that that's quite interesting on in the marketing space is the
amount of new tools that are coming out every single, every single day, the amount of new
startups, lots of money flowing around.
And they're all solving very interesting tasks.
And so it will be, I'm very curious to see over the next five years when the dust settles
a little bit, you know, which of those players are still standing, which ones are actually
providing enough value where it becomes, where it makes sense essentially for people to
keep buying from them and growing with them as well.
So I think that's also going be an interesting development, especially in the marketing
space.
Cause I feel like there's a new B2B to haul out every other day, you know, to optimize
some type of process.
And there's definitely going to be some creative destruction in there.
That's not a bad thing.
mean, think from uh a business standpoint, wanting to use these new products and have them
in hand, this is an incredibly powerful moment because you get to test a
Again, there are folks every single day who are trying to leapfrog one another at the
model level, which is extremely powerful.
And it's a moment, right?
I think that what we're also seeing right now is so much of um energy, so much time and
energy is being spent on product development and not necessarily as much on the
go-to-market side.
we're seeing some of the smartest people in the world solve product problems that have
never been taken on before, right?
But we're not seeing the same amount of energy go into the go-to-market, the sales motion,
the making sure that this product really jumps out there.
uh And that's really where this is going to be won and lost.
Because the amount of traction that you can get from a revenue standpoint, not pilot
revenue, not an individual test, uh is going to make the difference.
Because the people who are buying these tools don't want to track the
product leap frogs on a weekly, monthly basis, they want to lock in and feel like they are
comfortable with the best product in the market.
Now, some of that time and energy is going to go to the biggest model providers, like the
open AIs and the Googles of the world.
And that is fine in the way that a lot of markets are structured, where incumbents end up
taking a significant amount of market share.
There's also going to be a side where a lot of startups
come in and just create something newer and better, and that's amazing.
And there are going to be some that don't make it.
That's how markets work.
Now, the folks that I think will get to the other side are going to be the people who
focus on um the amount of time and energy it takes to spend with a buyer of that
technology and not just say, my product is better and here's the paper that proves it.
um
So one of the things that I'm seeing in that space is that people are spending uh more
time and effort in what would more traditionally been called a sales engineering type
capacity, right?
Like a consultancy or a consultative sale that says, we're going to actually sit with you
and hold your hand on this a little bit uh to help you feel comfortable, acknowledge that
it might take a little bit more time, but we can't just dial for dollars at this moment
because that's what everybody's doing.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And it's interesting you mentioned that because, know, we've noticed again with the
clients that we have and the kinds that they're selling to and everything is sales cycles
seem to be getting longer and longer in the B2B space.
That's definitely something that we've picked up as well.
And I think it is a case of there's so many options out there right now.
And, people do need to be handheld a little bit now through, through, that software.
don't just sign up for free trial and go, right?
You have that demo call, that introduction call and that training call, whatever it's
going to be.
And, uh, and it's interesting to see that transition.
So completely agree with, with all your points on that side of it and the future of AI, I
guess, as well within your, within your current role, then the types of marketing
strategies and GTM strategies that you're working on.
mean, what's some of the most exciting and most impactful ones that, that you, that you've
worked on and that you've, you've come up with as well.
and why is that as well?
Yeah, I would say that some of the most exciting are how bring people together, actually
in a physical space.
And it's less about, you know, either B2C or B2B, here's the traditional campaign, here's
how much money we're going to put against it, here are the platforms that we're going to
spend against.
And it's more about, at least on the B2B side.
But you also see this from an event standpoint.
My wife was just watching.
BravoCon clips all of last week, right?
uh People want to get together with other folks in person around things that they actually
care about.
And I think that whether or not you see any one of a number of uh B2B events, there's
this, we're in this moment right now where people really find value in uh not just the
stages, because I think that's always been valuable and it's always kind of been a bit of
a subculture, but more in the,
beer at the bar afterwards talking about what's actually plaguing the industry, right?
And I think that there's a ton of value that comes from just getting together, um but not
at 5,000 person conferences, at 100, 200, 300 person conferences, where it feels, and that
also happens at a dinner basis too, right?
And people don't want to go to the 250 person dinner, they want to go to the 20 person
dinner, right?
And I think that that feels really, um
not just safe, but it feels like I'm actually going to sit next to someone and learn
something.
And I do think that that's what a lot of folks are thinking about right now.
So it's not necessarily marketing in a uh traditional sense on the B2B side, but it's
events, budgets, and it's travel.
um But that is a form of personal marketing, and it puts you out there and it puts the
business out there.
um
And I think that's been really effective for a lot of folks.
Yeah, it's interesting because as you're saying that, and then also thinking of the flip
side of what we're seeing in the market where there's all these AISDRs, AI tools and doing
your outbound for you, no human element completely.
Whereas the other side of it, which does really work on what people do want is that human
connection, that human to human contact, that conversation.
And so it's interesting, we have like these two very different ways of doing it.
But as we know, the relationships element of it does really work and that's something that
we're a big proponent of as well.
is that relationships is what closes deals.
And so you want to really build as many relationships as you can to a deep level.
And that AI, SDR, AI, BDR side of things, it's going to be interesting to see how that
works out for people from what we've seen.
It doesn't quite work out for some kind of service.
I've it.
and one's going to drive the other, right?
I mean, I think at some level, I already regret two years from now having an inbox full of
AI SDRs that have loaded me up with 100 emails before 9 AM because I clicked on one thing
somewhere once, right?
Like, we're going to enter that phase where it's already going to be filtered out.
um Now, that doesn't mean that it can't help optimize other tasks for.
SDRs or AEs in the near term, but also on the consumer side.
It's like the ability to create content and create AI content is going to be incredible.
uh And it's going to help make certain individual creators or just individuals prolific.
But how far down the doom scroll are people going to get, uh whether that is on TikTok,
Instagram, or even...
in the music space?
How far are you going to get in an AI playlist if you can't name a single individual
artist?
I don't think we've figured out what that right balance is yet, but I do know that there
is a world where, whether it's consumer or B2B, it ends up just saying like, no, I know
this person, whether it's an artist or a creator or a seller, and I'm going go talk to
them because
I can't actually sort out the wheat from the chaff and everything else.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And that's where, as we said, those relationships are going to really come into fruition.
It's essentially that first party data, right?
Where if you own that dating, have that first party data where they know you, whatever,
then that's what the future is really going to be.
And to your point as well, I was also thinking about this with the business that we have,
right?
Where we build these podcasts and we invite guests on all these different things, is how
that's going to change over time.
And what we've learned ourselves is we do need to essentially change a little bit and move
more into that first.
party data where we have, you know, a list of people that are ready to go on, onto
podcasts rather than the outbound motion, which we have to do because we agree in the next
kind of two to three years, those will automatically be filtered out.
And you know, it's going to be very tricky to land in the inbox.
It already is, but even more, even worse then.
So, um, yeah, I do think that first party data element is going to be interesting.
Um, and the relationships will obviously back that up as well.
I guess with your own personal development as you've grown in your career and how you've
changed over time, I mean, what's some of the most
pivotal moments, I guess, through your career and what really changed you as not only a
person, but also a marketer as well, right?
What insights did you develop over that time to really shift your perspectives?
Yeah, I would say that, you know, the working at Peacock at that moment where it was just
a code name on the bed and floor in 30 Rock was certainly foundational for me and
something that honestly helped me see how so many different groups could work together in
a tight time frame to launch a new product in the middle of the pandemic.
So there was a lot there that just, um you know, helped me think about um
how important collaboration is and how important, um also how important incentives are,
right?
We had a very um motivated group at that time and uh the way the company was structured,
we were all incentivized to work with each other and to actually help get this done.
So I do think that corporate incentives end up being meaningful, especially in space like
the marketing space where um it's not as clean cut as
you know, uh X, Y, Z, P, L, right?
Like if you have to uh motivate people to work with one another, different types of
incentives actually are very impactful, um especially if they're not necessarily tied to
revenue.
The other uh moment that was certainly foundational for me was uh I spent a year as a
founder and had to work across a number of different people in a highly specific market
about um
getting everyone to buy into something that didn't necessarily exist yet.
And I think that in that moment, it was as much about marketing myself, how to position
myself to both raise money, but then get other people to believe in what the vision was.
And I think that uh a lot of people think about our day jobs and think about the uh work
that we do without necessarily thinking about how it all ties back into a marketing vision
for ourselves.
when we talk about these events and how they're B2B marketing, they're actually, you I say
this about canned lions every year, it's like that spending five grand on the plane ticket
just to go is probably the best personal marketing that you can do because you can walk up
and down the closet and see everybody in the marketing landscape that you want.
you know, there's a certain signal that that sends.
um Whether that's always the right signal or not is debatable, but
It certainly puts you on the radar.
And so I think I've thought a lot about kind of, you know, how to think about my own
personal reputation and everything like that coming out of being a founder.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Amazing.
mean, being a founder is definitely an interesting, very interesting experience.
It really is.
It really is.
But yeah, the lessons that you learn along the way is very, it's just incredible.
Right.
And I feel like it is like business itself is just personal growth.
Like that's pretty much all it is.
Like as you grow as a person, the business actually grows as well.
That's been an interesting insight that I've learned, but I agree.
think that year, as you said, is definitely a pivotal moment because you learned so many
lessons.
I guess what's one bit of advice you'd give to new marketers entering this space and want
to build a name for themselves and do really well in their careers or in the business that
they run in the marketing space.
What bit of advice would you give to them?
Because I think right now, because of all this change, there's a lot of questions about
what does the future of marketing look like and maybe some apprehension around that.
So yeah, I'd love to get your take on that on what bit of advice you'd give.
Yeah, I actually was just uh talking to someone last week about this.
And I hadn't necessarily crystallized the idea until we were talking about it.
But um if you think that you are a creative or you think that you are a traditional
marketer, make sure that you are an operator first.
Make sure that you can actually get something done and you don't just go to meetings and
um answer emails.
Because I do think that in this next era, uh
with AI being right by our side.
um There's gonna be so much of that busy work that gets automated away that I do think
we're gonna find out who are the people who can actually move the ball forward on a
project, have the vision to plot it out, but then get the right stakeholders around the
table to say, what is your decision?
What is your decision?
Did you finish that action?
And I think that there's actually this overall migration of marketing to be more of like a
cross-functional go-to-market job.
where it more signals um we can finish all of the external marketing spots and dots and
all of that planning can be automated.
uh But what is our vision and then can we get that done?
I think it's almost more of an operations type role.
And it's more of a strategy and operations type.
then I think we've actually kind of fully grasped.
And I think that's a really good thing.
I think that actually brings more generalists into the space.
But I do think that as an industry, there have been a lot of gatekeepers who've kind of
thought of the business in a specific way, who just want to go to meetings and sound smart
every once in while.
you know, the...
current of their day to day just kind of pulls them along.
And I think that what we're really going to see is that all of that groundwork is going to
be automated.
So who are you at the end of the day?
And can you actually pull the business forward?
um Which I think is going to be amazing.
I think that that is a bold case for marketing is that like you can actually fill it with
doers and not people that just, um you know, maybe are there because they took a certain
track or trajectory and signaled the right things on the way to them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the fact that I might know some technical knowledge on how to automate this one thing
or do whatever all that's going to be done.
So going back to what we said at the very start of this is, it's that high level work that
people are going to be working on that strategy, that operations to your point.
And um so, yeah, I completely agree there.
And it will be interesting to see how it evolves over the next three to five years as the
dust settles with AI a little bit.
when, those roles are then created and moved around.
you know, what the space is going to look like.
But it definitely is an interesting time for sure.
But I think the biggest takeaway from, from this conversation for anyone listening will be
the relationship aspect of it, right?
Is to make sure we're still building those relationships because that first party data, as
we said, is going to be very, very important over the, over the coming years as it has
been for the last few years as well.
So one of the, one of the final questions we always ask guests on the show is if you can
go back to your 18 year old self and only take three lessons with you, whether it's some
philosophical knowledge, some business knowledge, general advice, can be anything.
What would those three things be and why would it be those things?
Yeah, I would say, you know, even at 18, I wasn't as focused on building relationships as
I probably was shortly thereafter.
And so start to build your network right out of the gate because that will be the most
important thing that you'll take through your career.
The second part would be you don't have to be right.
You don't have to be 100 % right all the time.
And I think that there's a component that I certainly learned over the years, which was
Sometimes you may be 100 % right, but the market is only at 75 % of what you think.
And you have to just be just smart enough to get them to the next marker.
be 80 % right and get them to 80%.
Then be 85 % right and get them to 85%.
Slowly bring them along in a way that doesn't make you sound crazy right out of the gate.
Because if you're at 100 % and they're at 75%, there's a chasm there that they're never
going to get to cross.
And then the last thing would just be to uh continue to experiment different types of
jobs.
I don't think any 18-year-old really can read a job description and understand what that
job is at the time.
um And I certainly learned the hard way, and many of those lessons were incredibly
well-earned, but about what certain roles were.
uh And so ask.
ask more difficult questions right out of the gate about what this job actually does and
does that align to something that you actually want to be doing or um is it just a job
that sounds really cool but at the end of the day it doesn't ladder up into how you see
your...
Amazing.
Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this knowledge.
There's definitely been some some golden nuggets in there for everyone, everyone
listening.
So thank you so much for taking the time.
And yeah, thank you for joining us on the show.
Yeah, sounds great.
Thank you.