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Want a peak behind the curtain into one of the best places to work in cybersecurity and the minds of the innovators behind the industry’s leading security operations platform? Tune in to The Howler podcast!
Hosted by Chelsea Lowman, People Experience Specialist, and Mary Newville, People Experience Senior Manager, the culture duo connects with pack leaders on leadership insights, mental health and overall wellbeing, and how they lead their teams to advance our mission of ending cyber risk.
Episode 11 transcript
Chelsea Lowman 0:00
Hi, welcome back to the Howard Podcast. I'm Chelsea.
Mary Newville 0:03
And I'm Mary.
Chelsea Lowman 0:04
And we are on episode 11. So this is very exciting because next episode so our September episode will be our one year anniversary of the Howler podcast.
Mary Newville 0:22
So cool, so cool.
Chelsea Lowman 0:25
And to celebrate, we are going to do a special one year anniversary live recording of the Howler podcast. So if you are a current PAC member, you will be able to either tune in live in person, if you're here in Minnesota, you can join us in the cafe, or you can join us on Zoom, and you'll be able to be a part of the podcast as we record it. So really excited, kinda nervous, but we'll be able to edit it. If we mess up.
Mary Newville 1:01
We'll get the inside view of like bloopers and things in real time.
Chelsea Lowman 1:05
Literally. And speaking of bloopers like we have some fun little segments planned for the one year anniversary, some blooper reel, some highlights just some fun stuff. So really excited to celebrate one year we we did it we've been doing this for Wow 12 months. One year
Mary Newville 1:31
well, I was just gonna stay in when Chelsea says if you're a Pack member, you could be part of the recording we really mean at work. ideating a little bit around like do we bring up some like Howler guests to like, share a favorite moment or just be part of it. So if you come, you won't be you won't get to share and also be on the podcast. Yeah.
Chelsea Lowman 1:53
Which again, these are external podcasts you can become a superstar you never know. Like you could become famous. So join us for the holler live. For Pack members invites will go out very soon if they aren't out already. And also speaking of our listeners, Mary and I have been thinking about how we need a fun name for our listeners of the Howler podcasts. And our brains immediately went to the howlers but that's kind of boring, like it's called the hauler podcast. We don't want to confuse everyone and be called the haulers. So if you have a I mean, we're open to it. If that's what the people want, we'll give the people what they want. But if you have any son ideas for what the podcast should be named, we're gonna do we're gonna put a little prompt in the the Howler Slack channel. And if you want to respond in the thread if you have a fun name for our listeners, yeah. For the community, for the community a name? Yes. So get excited for the one year anniversary. But before that we've got an episode for you right now. And we've got a really fun guest. Yes,
Mary Newville 3:09
we're super excited for our conversation with Dan Larsen, Dan's our chief marketing officer. He oversees corporate marketing, brand communications, Technical Marketing, demand generation enablement, product marketing and marketing technology. His background includes 15 years of sales product and marketing leadership experience with a proven track record of building powerful technology brands by establishing best in class market positioning, competitive differentiation and product messaging.
Chelsea Lowman 3:39
All right, welcome to the podcast. Dan. Thanks for joining us.
Dan Larson 3:43
Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.
Chelsea Lowman 3:46
Yeah, so we are very excited. And we always start all of our podcast episodes with a fun little game based off what we know about the guest. So what we know, I mean, we know many things about you, but we thought it would be really fun. Knowing that you developed our mission statement and cyber risk to play a little game to see if you can guess the marketing slogan. Okay, so I'm gonna read this in and you just have to guess what brand or company it is.
Dan Larson 4:21
Okay, I'm ready. Let's go.
Chelsea Lowman 4:25
I talked about finding really obscure ones. And then I couldn't even find obscure ones on the internet. Like they only wanted to give me the most famous slogans of all time, so I'm sure you'll get these but some of them stumped me. So I don't know. Some might be a challenge. Okay, we'll start, but you can't eat just one.
Dan Larson 4:50
Huh? That's sort of like once you pop you can't stop, which is Pringles Okay. Who is the gift can't match Kenny just one? Um I don't know. Let's go Skittles
Chelsea Lowman 5:10
here's the thing with that slogan it can apply to so many things Oreos Skittles like anything you can think of that I like I can't eat just one of them but no it is Lay's potato chips man. That was one I didn't know either. So
Dan Larson 5:25
oh oh four one
Chelsea Lowman 5:29
okay fly the friendly skies
Dan Larson 5:31
I don't even know if this is a current one I feel like I remember this from the 90s I'm gonna go American Airlines
Chelsea Lowman 5:40
United dang it
Dan Larson 5:44
Mike that was saying United my brain was saying American
Chelsea Lowman 5:51
belong anywhere belong
Dan Larson 5:52
anywhere? What helps you fit in? Some kind of camouflage anywhere well wait, it's probably a membership program. Maybe like, like Amex.
Chelsea Lowman 6:12
Okay, that wasn't good. I love the thought process and reasoning. Although that is incorrect it is Airbnb.
Dan Larson 6:20
Oh, that's such a good one. Good job, Airbnb. I like that one.
Chelsea Lowman 6:25
Okay, because you're worth it.
Dan Larson 6:29
This is some kind of luxury good. Like a like a diamond. Like yeah, let's go do beers.
Chelsea Lowman 6:40
No, but what's funny is De Beers is gonna be my next one. Because there's diamonds are forever. Oh, right. But this because you're worth it is L'Oreal. Oh, okay. Yeah.
Dan Larson 6:52
I guess I have one weakness in my marketing game is cosmetics. Got to study up. Snap, Crackle
Chelsea Lowman 7:01
pop.
Dan Larson 7:03
Rice Krispies. Hello.
Chelsea Lowman 7:05
Correct. Ding ding ding okay. I didn't know that one. Did I just live under a rock? I don't remember that
Dan Larson 7:11
big part of my childhood was commercial go everywhere. Like in the 80s.
Chelsea Lowman 7:16
Okay, just a few more. You're in good hands. with Allstate. Correct. Obey your thirst. Oh,
Dan Larson 7:26
I think it's Sprite. Correct. Okay, now
Chelsea Lowman 7:29
you're on a roll.
Dan Larson 7:30
Yep. Just had to get warmed up. Yeah, exactly.
Chelsea Lowman 7:33
Okay, last one. That was easy. Whoa.
Dan Larson 7:38
Hold on. That was easy. Oh, wait. Staples. They made the easy button. Yes.
Chelsea Lowman 7:45
Job. I didn't know that one. But now that you say the easy button. That makes sense. Staples. All right. All right, fine. Well, this was I feel like I learned a lot when I was researching these. Because I don't know if Yeah, like when I think of Airbnb, I don't know if I've heard like, belong anywhere. Like I don't know if people are really,
Dan Larson 8:06
maybe new.
Mary Newville 8:08
Well, what's interesting is that for so many of them, I thought of the competitor like for because you're worth it. I was like, oh, that's Maybelline? I know. This one. That
Dan Larson 8:17
one? Maybe it's Maybelline?
Chelsea Lowman 8:20
Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline? Oh, yeah, I
Dan Larson 8:23
forgot. But
Mary Newville 8:25
then also the one that was like, four, you're in good hands. My brain said StateFarm. Ah,
Dan Larson 8:34
no, it's harmless. They're
Mary Newville 8:37
like slogans as a marketer? Is that something you think about like that your slogan actually connects to the wrong brand? mitigate that? Yeah,
Dan Larson 8:48
I mean, that's what you're supposed to do testing. You know, catch your blind spots, stuff that maybe you you overlooked. But also, like in those hyper competitive industries, like insurance, like, they also advertise next to each other all the time. You know what I mean? If you watch any sporting event, it's like, there's five commercials in the break. Two are for trucks and three are for insurance. So I could see how they're just by adjacency they like blurred together. Okay,
Mary Newville 9:15
well, speaking of marketing, we want to know about your journey to marketing it's not typically when you ask kids when they're in preschool first grade, like what do you want to be dropped off and not like I would like to be a field marketing manager or a CML so we would love to know well, firstly, this too, I you know, I heard you on another podcast that I really like armchair expert and learned that you were a pizza delivery driver. So we know that that was in the mix at some point but how do we get from what what was the kid dream? Like? If we asked you in kindergarten, what did you want to be? What would that be? How do we get them from there to being a pizza delivery? Boy to then now a CMO? The first
Dan Larson 9:59
answer to the question And then I can remember, there was like a project in elementary school, I think it was third grade. What do you want to be when you grow up? And my answer that question was I wanted to own a ski hill, or like ski resort. Incredible. That was my dream because I was really big into downhill skiing. And also, you know, my, my dad was a small business owner, he was a dentist who owned his own practice in the small town. So I was just like, I thought when you grew up, you just like own the business. Like, that's what everybody did. All of my goals were like, own your own business kind of stuff. And then when I got like, a little older, you know, like, 12, when you're first, like, have some agency and you're like, I want to make some money, too, so I can meet up, buy a new bike or whatever. Yeah, we're just do everything. And also, like, grown up in a small town, like made it easy. You know, I can just go knock on people's doors a bit. Can I borrow your lawn? Can I shovel your driveway? You know, all of that stuff. And my parents kind of encouraged that. I also had an older brother who's pretty entrepreneurial. So we were always coming up with different, like, money making schemes.
Mary Newville 11:14
So what were some of these themes? Well, there's
Dan Larson 11:17
a period like before I could drive so like 1314 Were like, the big, cool new thing to do was like to play paintball. So we were into it, you know, teenage boys running around shooting paintballs in the woods. But me and my older brother figured out that there weren't any, like stores anywhere nearby to get the supplies. So we borrowed money from our parents to basically become the local, you know, supply depot for all the stuff you need, like safety masks, and wow, because my dad was a dentist, he had the you know, you use co2 gas to power the paintball guns, so we can fill up people's tanks for him. You know, charge them five bucks. So it cost us eight cents. Now, that was one and there were just several after that, like, in high school. Me and some of my friends like we won a statewide business plan writing contest to manufacture hammock stands. Like at the time, eBay was a new thing. And I remember like, oh, man, I want to buy one of these really cool big Mayan hammocks. They're like the king sized bed of hammocks. Nobody was selling stands on eBay. Some stands.
Mary Newville 12:38
didn't do that. Like he's
Dan Larson 12:40
there. We did that for a little while. But basically until we went to college, and then we shut it all down.
Mary Newville 12:46
Oh my god. Yeah, well, and I want to know was in the door to door door phase of your career? Like Were you already starting to hone your craft in like a compelling mission or trying to convince people to let you mow their lawn? Like what what did you any learnings from those days? Oh, well,
Dan Larson 13:04
I mean, maybe it's because it's so obvious. But I came with references like, Hey, I'm already mowing your neighbor's lawn. While I'm doing layers, I can just do yours too, because I'm here on the mowers gassed up and ready to go. So that that was probably the only tactic translates in any way to
Mary Newville 13:27
and then how well so you are you always had like an entrepreneurial spirit. Yeah, what essentially like interested you in technology and then marketing specifically,
Dan Larson 13:37
I'm well in like the late 90s, you know, I was in high school and I was I started getting really into like photography and video production. And at the time, like buying a Mac computer was just like completely out of reach, you know, cost wise. And I learned that you could like build a PC for a fifth of the cost. So I kind of, I was like, Okay, I want to do all this stuff, but I can't afford the computer to do it. I'm going to take my money, I'm going to build my own PC and I'm gonna start doing my like digital photography and video production stuff. So I got pretty like technical pretty fast. And then that kind of got me into it jobs and college. And then the IT jobs, got me into technical sales, I kind of started my working on the vendor side and cybersecurity as a sales engineer. And then once I was doing that, I realized that the part of the job that I really liked was understanding the customer needs understanding the market and then kind of figuring out how to how to pitch it. I would keep finding myself in these situations where I was doing like the sales enablement or the partner enablement. And once I figured out that, you know, that's not the you know, that's part Have an SES job, but it's really a product marketers job. And once I had that kind of eye opening moment, this is around 2010 2011, when I was still at McAfee, it was around that time, I jumped from the sales side to the marketing side as a product marketer. And then it just, it just went from there, I fell in love with the other aspects of the marketing discipline, and just kept having really cool opportunities. At the time, you know, McAfee was still thriving, they're always buying new companies. So I gotta kinda got to be like the new company guy, alright, we're absorbing this new company, we need to understand what it does and how to be successful selling it. So that was my role there for a while. Then I kind of took all those skills, and ended up leading the product marketing department at CrowdStrike for five years. And then when it came to Article, if I wanted, like a bigger challenge, right, didn't want to just continue in the in the vein of Product Marketing. And at the time, that kind of like product marketing, security expertise, or something that articles needed more of, so I was a good fit. And then, you know, Nick Schneider was willing to give me give me the opportunity to lead the other functions of marketing. And it's been a real pleasure to do so for the last four and a half years. It's
Chelsea Lowman 16:21
always just so fun hearing everyone's journey from like, wanting to own a ski hill being the CMO cybersecurity company. I'm curious, there's there's obviously pros and cons to being an entrepreneur, there's pros and cons to being in corporate, do you have any regrets? Not like pursuing your entrepreneurial passions? Or do you think that's maybe something you'll do again, later in life?
Dan Larson 16:47
Not really regrets, because I'm really, you know, delighted with the way that the like, corporate path, you know, worked for me, I think having an attitude of ownership and kind of an entrepreneurial, you know, zeal or approach to it is probably one of the best things you can have when you're when you're on the corporate path. So, yeah, I'm really happy with where my career ended up. I do still have a little bit like, you know, someday before I fully, you know, retire, I want to have one, one of them. That was mine, you know? Yeah, it's like, it's like on my dream board. You know, it's not like that, like my current priority, but I think, you know, some someday, someday, it's still something I want to
Chelsea Lowman 17:36
do. Okay, love that. Well, we will, we obviously don't want you to leave articles. But we'll help you manifest that when the time comes.
Dan Larson 17:46
Thank you.
Chelsea Lowman 17:48
So we have Steve Craig on the podcast last month. And he was talking about the close relationship between sales and marketing, and how you collaborate here at active low. So could you maybe dive a little bit deeper talk about the way the two teams work together? And how that is like a differentiator for us and how that makes us stronger? Yeah,
Dan Larson 18:10
I see it all the time. Like one of articles superpowers is the is the good working relationship, and the productive collaboration between sales and marketing team, it's, it's the best I've ever seen in my career. And to be perfectly fair, to the leaders who came before me like they deserve most of the credit. Like I say, a lot of it. I've said it many times that having both two of my current VPS Megan Flanagan and Megan are Shawn here before me, you know, they've both been here for over five years. And they had close working relationships with Steve, and will and Nick Schneider. So they were already sort of like a pretty tight knit, tight knit, well functioning group that was already kind of like they had the DNA, you know, they were, they were like the double helix had already been formed. And that was like the foundation for success. And then everything after that is really just a matter of kind of mindset. They've done a good job, and other leaders have done a good job. And now most of the marketing team are really, I think all of it, they're, they're kind of unique in that they're hungry to hit the number and they're motivated to hit the number just like the sales team is. So when you have both people pushing that hard in one direction, that's how you get, you know, really good outcomes. And underneath all of that there's like the technical operating layer of how we report and the meetings that we have, you know, to constantly you know, fine tune and check in on the on the well being of the go to market engine. And I think that's that's the other thing like we don't think of it as sales and marketing. They're really just a single go to market engine that has to work well together and fire on all cylinders. So it's a combination of the relationships, the good leaders, you know, that that came before me. And now, just sort of the operational rigor and discipline that we have around one shared goal, you know, which is, which is to hit the number every quarter. So there's, you know, I'm very happy that it was that way, when I came to article, I think we've made it a lot better in the four and a half years that I've been here. And I know now, we're just kind of beginning as the portfolio expands more, we're gonna keep demanding more and more of that engine. And to me, that's an exciting opportunity, because I know, the you know, the engine is ready for it. I'm not nervous about it, like, ah, you know, is this ready to, you know, expand or pivot or move in a new direction, though, like, it's good to go, we just need to add more fuel to the engine, you know, whether it be new products, new GEOS new routes to market. And we're ready to go. Yeah,
Mary Newville 21:00
that's awesome. Well, speaking of fuel, and engines, we wanted to talk about our exciting partnerships that we have with Red Bull Racing, and Meyer shank, tell us a little bit about how you decide who to partner with and create the marketing strategy around that. Yeah, so
Dan Larson 21:18
at the core of the decision is, you first have to just make the decision that you, you would like to have a brand program. And four and a half years, when I got here, we did not invest in brand at all. Instead, they article wolf built its reputation in kind of the grassroots way, which is through the reseller channel partners, right, which is, which is that's kind of what I always say is the second magic of Article flick. The first one is, is sales marketing, we're working together in the go to market engine. And the second piece is the degree to which we have committed to the channel as as our primary go to market or as our primary route to market. Because that gives us incredible reach the status like a year old now, but I was looking at some some partner stats, it says we have, you know, article is still employee count wise, we're in like the mid 2000s. But there are 40,000 individuals who have been trained to sell article. So that's, you know, 40,000 people that if we weren't working through the channel, you know, probably wouldn't know who we were. So that was sort of like step one of articles brand journey was go be successful in the channel, get these key players in the industry to know who you are and to go advocate on your behalf. But then if you if you want to go beyond that, that's where like full on brand marketing comes into the picture. And one of the first things you have to consider is kind of the the reach the audience, like how far can your brand go by that channel? And there's lots of ways to do that. Right? You can, you can do traditional media, billboards, you know, out of home, radio, advertising, TV commercials are the one everybody always brings up as like a Superbowl commercial, right? There's like, you know, 120 million people watch the Superbowl and you know, you got to pay $10 million for a 32nd spot. You know, so why don't why don't we have a Superbowl commercial? Well, my take is that a brand program also needs to you know, awareness is good, but pipeline for the sales team to go work is even better. And it's really hard to link, you know, traditional advertising to anything other than awareness, right. And awareness doesn't necessarily put new leads and opportunities in the funnel for the sales team. And that's why these sponsorships work really well. So f1 I think is the best in the world. Because there's 2223 Formula One races throughout the course of the year, each one of those races has 120 million people watching it. So it's like 20 Super Bowls, or 23 Super Bowls every year. So if you can get yourself on a prominent car, like we are currently with, you know, the number one team for the last three years Red Bull, so we get it, you know, it's like we get 22 Superbowl commercials a year for a fraction of the price. So that's on the awareness side, but then remember, because it's an event, we can host guests there. So if we have you know, prospects that we're trying to win a deal with, we can build better relationships by taking that person to the event which is something you can't do if you're spending your brand dollars on radio or billboards or or you know other more traditional avenues so that's why we are in the game with Sports Team sponsorships because they give you that unique combination of reach and visibility to a wide audience. But they also come with benefits that enable our field and event marketing teams to contribute to the, to the sales engine. I
Mary Newville 25:17
feel like this is going to be a masterclass for any other marketers and listening. It
Dan Larson 25:24
all kind of depends, right? It's different too, because, you know, we're, we're business to business company. Whereas, you know, if, if you're Nike, you don't need you're not trying to, like hosts your buyers in a suite somewhere, right? Commercial. If you're a b2b brand like us, you gotta you got to do both.
Chelsea Lowman 25:45
That's so interesting. I did not realize that many people have you. And watch a Formula One race, like I'm sure gets right now, as they say.
Dan Larson 25:57
But it's, it's a global audience. And as
Chelsea Lowman 26:01
I was about to say, Yeah,
Dan Larson 26:03
time we were looking at doing some brand deals was the exact same time we're expanding to Europe. And since then, we've also expanded to Australia and New Zealand. So really, it just it ticked a lot of boxes. From like, an ROI, like a provable ROI perspective, it just means the pants off of, you know, like, traditional advertising.
Chelsea Lowman 26:27
Yeah, yeah, you took the words right out of my mouth, because I was gonna say the Superbowl is definitely more obviously geared toward an American, North American audience. I mean, some people tune in, but f1 is so much more global. So the audience
Dan Larson 26:43
is different, the audience is more aligned to ours, like to our ideal customer profile. So you know, it's no secret right other high performing cybersecurity companies it's it's a familiar play, like many of our competitors sponsor other cars, and it's, it's a reason. Yeah. And then with a Meyer shank, f1 Or sorry, IndyCar is more North America centric. All of their events are here, like the downside of f1 is, you know, on the North American continent, they're only here four times a year, whereas with IndyCar, there's like 20 races all in the USA, or there's one in Canada. So for more field activations to take both our our sales team and their customers and our partners. IndyCar has a lot more local activation opportunities in the USA,
Mary Newville 27:41
let someone on our team shout out Jenny, put a picture in the HR slack of a T shirt, she brought from Abercrombie that had the Red Bull Karana, which of course has our logo on it, she's like never thought I'd see on a shirt at Abercrombie.
Dan Larson 27:56
Last year, they also Red Bull put their car on their cans, the of the beverage. So our logo was on like a billion Red Bull cans around the world, which is pretty cool.
Chelsea Lowman 28:09
Okay, we were wondering if you could share a little bit about your creative process, when you are trying to think of like, out of the box ideas like you're bringing the marketing team together? How are you all attacking a brainstorm thinking of new strategy, etc.
Dan Larson 28:30
Like, my own personal tendency is to be a study or I'm a I'm a leave no stone unturned guy, which is both good and bad. It means my research tends to be very comprehensive, but also often very slow. And at some point, it gets pedantic and you have to go okay, let's just resurface a little bit here. So I actually just had an off site with my leadership team and I, every person had three bits of homework that they had to do so that we could make the meeting more productive. So that's part of I just believe in, you know, do the homework, you know, study your competitors, study the industry handleless reports know your customer, right, that's marketing's number one jobs is to know the customer. So I start, you know, when it's time to tackle a new problem, you know, how are we going to go international? Or how are we going to win in this new market? At least step one for me is to do your homework. You know, study everything that study bubble. This is also why I think generative AI, you know, AI chat GPT is going to be so helpful, especially for marketers, a lot of reports are saying that marketing is sort of the number one function of the business that can benefit from generative AI for this exact reason, right. It's already read the whole internet. Instead of me having to go read 50 reports. I can have a conversation with Jeff up to you to figure stuff out. And if you you know, if you know how to, you know, do your prompt engineering properly you, you can get good results. So step one, do the homework. Step two, I try to really get diversity of opinion in the room. Sometimes I'll go as far as to assign a designated naysayer. So that we all don't fall in love with like the first idea of their loudest idea. I will use you know, some of the tactics people are familiar with, like you like break up into groups, put your ideas in, post it notes, let's come back, and we'll work on the post it notes. So when I'm working with a group, I, I do try to use some of the most more like formal and like well known techniques. For me, personally, I, I read this book called lead yourself first, which is all about, like practicing solitude. And I still tried to do that once a quarter where I will, like, I will do all my homework, sometimes they'll bring homework with me. And then I'll just like, go rent an Airbnb for like, two or three days. And it's like my research retreat. I mean, Bill, Bill Gates famously did this first. That's that was the first shoot, what did he call them, it's like a thing companies do now where you, you have a it's like think week or something like that. Used to bring a bag of books, go to his cabin for a week, read them and like come back with with big ideas. So I tried to do a mini version of that once a quarter. Because if you don't like make the time to think strategically, and like, let your brain you know, process everything it absorbed and then turn them into ideas, then you don't have them. You just find yourself stuck stuck in the grind and years past and you're like what the heck happened? So I think you have to, for yourself, you got to carve out the time. And we're near getting the teams together, you got to kind of be formal and intentional about, you know, trying to get the creative outcome that you want.
Chelsea Lowman 31:59
Hey, I love that. You said the book is called lead yourself first.
Dan Larson 32:03
Yes. Yeah. It's basically leaders, business leaders, military leaders talking about how they would actually get the opportunity to have like solitude. So they can basically there's it's hard in modern life to have any kind of solitude, especially if you get your phone in your hand.
Mary Newville 32:25
Well, I know there's like examples. I like Ryan Holiday with stoic meditation, but he like lists a bunch of like leaders that intentionally block their calendars every morning, and they just buck the system of like, oh, no, I'm in meetings all day of like, No, I leave these huge companies. And I purposely, I'm not I don't start my day with meetings. So I can?
Dan Larson 32:47
Yep, that's hard. I think it's, it's, you know, part of the, I think a lot of people ascend to leadership, and they like, you know, use all their old habits once during the leadership role. And I think you have to actually develop some new different habits around, you know, strategic thinking, and, you know, fostering the big ideas that would like to take the company to the next level. And if you're booked eight to five, back to back meetings, and you're not going to be doing the more important leadership work?
Mary Newville 33:15
Well, this is the perfect segue because we want to talk about leadership. So when you, you know, you talk about you, when you get into those leadership roles, there's often new skills you need to learn, I would love to hear about maybe some of those skills that you have found have been really helpful in you leading your teams. And also, what are some great leadership advice that you've been given over your career that has been helpful? Let's
Dan Larson 33:42
see. The first like practical one, I can remember my very first job out of college was working in, I was actually in like a leadership program for GE, like one of those rotational things read every six months, you do different job. And one of the leaders, I think it was the CIO. In one of his first meetings with a sudden, he who reads the manual is the expert. And I thought, What are you talking about? Like, we aren't assembling Ikea furniture? Like what you will, what do you even need. But over time, that has become more clear. Because what he really meant was, a lot of people are busy. A lot of people just roll into meetings, like not really prepared. They don't have the context. They haven't done their homework. And they just like they're they won, it's hard for that person to be like a meaningful contributor to the meeting. And if you want them to do something big, like be a change agent, you know, like, drive some new initiative or change the way certain thing is done. If you haven't done your homework, if you haven't read the manual, like you're not going to be successful. So that one stuck with me. That's probably why I'm still such Should homework doer and, and the reader like that one is, is very practical and I've seen it play out like time and time again. And like, you know, every once in a while you'll see some like Jeff Bezos, you know how he runs meetings at Amazon. And I feel like it's, it's similar to this concept, right? Like, they're they don't allow PowerPoint, you have to write a memo that says what you want to do, like with your proposal in it. And it's all very, it's kind of like academic, you know, it's like, you got to do your homework, you have to write your proposal down, you have to, you have to justify it with with evidence and that sort of thing. So I think that just that wavelength of, you know, be prepared, do the homework, read the manual, come ready, that affected me a lot. You always want to be the more prepared person in a meeting, not the less prepared. So that one was, that was a good one in the early days. And then at least when I was, you know, starting to step into leadership roles, a book that really helped me a lot. It's called multipliers. And this one, this one has stuck around, like they just released a new addition to and it talks about the practices of leaders of how you're either a multiplier or diminisher. And, you know, things like micromanaging or what diminishers do, and things like building a high trust, but high accountability model is thing that multipliers do. And I, I do think that at the end of the day, as a leader, you know, my job is to get the most I can out of my team, so that we can have the most positive effect on the business. And it's like, okay, well, how do you do that? Well, if you multiply the impact that each one of those can, can each individual can have on the business, that adds up, you know, to a exponential increase in output if everyone was, you know, five axing their output. So that was another good book that helped a lot. And then, you know, today, I really rely on two philosophies. One is the damn pink, Daniel Pink, the author, he did a TED talk, where he talks about how, like, what motivates modern knowledge workers. And it's three things, it's mastery, autonomy and purpose. And I think for us, especially in a, you know, a technology company that's in a highly competitive space, we're all knowledge workers. And my job as leader is to give them the autonomy, they need to like feel that they can own and do their work without, you know, being micromanaged. I think purpose just like comes built in with cybersecurity, you know, we're doing like meaningful work, we're keeping the lights on so paychecks can go out to people who work for companies. And then mastery is really you know, if you're a professional, you probably, you know, desire to, to grow. To grow in your field, you know, as an expert, you want to build new capabilities. So this is about, you know, enablement training community, you know, everyone's on their own path, like, maybe you want to be the greatest copywriter in history, well, if you're on my team, we're going to find a way, you know, for you to build that mastery, you know, a little bit every year. So those are the the three tenants I rally around now. And for anyone who's been through onboarding articles, you hear me talk about the magical power of the RACI chart, responsible, accountable, consulted and formed. Because one thing I remember from like organizational management in college is that, you know, matrix organizations, you know, have have cross reporting lines, and everything breaks down if people don't understand who owns what, who's responsible for what. And it's I don't know, if it's human nature, or what it is about people just not wanting to explicitly say, user, or you have the of all the stuff we've been talking about today. You own this one. And that's something I'm pretty every project that I'm involved in here, we always take that step.
Chelsea Lowman 39:11
Never skip it. Wow. Amazing. I love even just hearing you talk about leadership, you can tell that you do your homework, because your ability to like recall the books you've read and the things that have impacted you. They've clearly stayed with you. And you take the leadership responsibility seriously. So back to your homework analogy, you can tell that you've done it. Speaking of kind of going back to the lead yourself first book, jumping over to wellness, we always like to ask how you prioritize wellbeing for not only yourself, but how do you model that for your team as well. My
Dan Larson 39:55
approach is just to like set limits. So I, for example, I have slack on my phone, but I don't have notifications turned on. And like, everybody knows that I tell I tell my leaders, I tell my peers to tell everyone and say, you know, if it's, you know, after hours or whatever, like, I don't pay attention to Slack. So you can call me like, if it's really important, you know, call me text me, whatever. So I try to find different areas where I can like set boundaries, it gets harder and harder, you know, as a leader, because, you know, think about if some catastrophic event happens, like the outage that happened last Friday, you know, if you're a C suite executive, as a company, it's hard to say like, Ah, sorry, I'm on the beach, today, I'm not going to help with this global crisis, or it's taking, you know, airlines and Starbucks and everything else. You set the boundaries, like where you can, like, with exceptions, and I also think for me, like, at least personally, you know, like, you run the risk of having a very upset husband or wife or significant other, you know, if you're trying to be on the beach, but you gotta be on the phone, because the, the whole IT infrastructure of planet Earth is falling apart. But I think, for her, for my wife, Megan, you know, she, she'll kind of know that, right? She's like, okay, he's gonna have a bad workday today, but at least they'll make up for it, right, like Friday is gonna be a total disaster, he'll take Monday off. There's just kind of like, you know, it's the same with like, trade shows and stuff, if you got to be gone, it takes a big chunk of your time. But you got to kind of, you know, balance the scorecard out a little bit by saying, to be gone five days a week, last week, you know, maybe it'll take Monday off to, you know, go reset and reconnect on the home front. And I think, you know, depending on what role you're at, in the organization, you know, is like, you know, you can unplug when you're on vacation for a lot of roles at this company. But I think that's part of the difference between a more senior leaders and younger people at the company. And I don't know, I think that the people on my team know that, you know, I want them to take their time off, I educate them on the fact that like, people who take their time off, you know, they stay at companies longer, they perform better, right? It's good for you, it's good for me, like, we should do this, I don't want to create an environment where you feel like you'll somehow be punished if you use the benefits that this company gives you. Right? That's kind of absurd. So yeah, I encourage people take time off, I encourage people to work, you know, we're lucky to have like a flexible work policy here. Like you don't have to be in your chair at 8am and leave at five you can, you know, if you get to drop your kids off in the morning, and you want to show up at nine and clock out at four, but you know, do a couple hours from six to seven or whatever. Like, that's, I just think that's from my perspective. That's just how modern work is done. Right. And everything is more kind of like flexible now. And as long as we're getting the outcomes. I'm less worried about you know, the manner in which it's done. I'm more worried that you know, people are happy, fulfilled, capable, and hitting the note.
Mary Newville 43:21
Dan, were you trying to spend the day with the family on the beach on Friday that fell in reality?
Dan Larson 43:29
No, I was okay on Friday. That was going through my head. Because my wife is actually traveling right now. Oh, man. If I if I had tried to parlay her trip into vacation, it would have been a very bad
Chelsea Lowman 43:45
did she get stuck or if she
Dan Larson 43:47
were gonna find out she's supposed to fly home tomorrow. Okay,
Chelsea Lowman 43:51
okay. Sending good vibes her way. Yeah, I did fly this weekend. But thankfully I didn't have any issues. So I lucked out.
Dan Larson 44:01
Were you flying southwest? Apparently they're like the only airline that impacted by this. Yeah,
Chelsea Lowman 44:07
yeah. No, I was flying Delta. But I flew Thursday so that was before obviously and then but I flew Sunday and it was fine although getting to Minneapolis Airport it was like the wild wild west when I landed it was it was interesting in there
Dan Larson 44:24
especially sensitive Delta hub and they got hit really hard by this thing.
Mary Newville 44:28
Well I love you hate talking about just the realities of like the check pattern of checks and balances is the right phrase, but like I don't feel like people talk about that often of like, when you're in a really high demand role and like it does take away from your I mean, it gives a lot to your family and the people who care about but also takes away just like the intentionality to think through like, Okay, I was gone like the whole week, but I'm gonna be intentional.
Dan Larson 44:51
Yeah, I think it's just an adjustment you gotta make and if you plan for it, it's just, you know, you can make it work you Just gotta be intentional about it. And
Chelsea Lowman 45:02
I love hearing you talk about the ways that you're able to set boundaries where you can because again, that just is so important for your team to see you model that so that they are given permission, you know, to do that themselves. So yeah, I just loved your take on on well being. Mary, anything else before we get to rapid fire,
Mary Newville 45:26
I really want to know, I know, we're getting close to time, but I think was sometime I really want to know, Dan, your, your 10, or like, your key ingredients, if you will, or your recipe or your tips for people that like are building a brand, whether that's like, for a startup for their business, or for their personal brand, like what are the key elements to a brand.
Dan Larson 45:51
I, for me, the litmus test is, you know, like how people talk about you when you're not in the room. And that's hard to know. But you can you can see the effects. Right, because if you're a person that people like, speak highly of, you'll get more like new people, like either trying to connect with you, or engaging with you, or whatever. And my approach. As always, just to be like, if you're involved in any project, anything. You know, like, be a driver, not a passenger, try to be the person who, like, you know, a couple years from now they're like, man, every time. Every time Susie gets involved in a project, like the project just ends up way better, everything she touches turns to gold. Because if you do that for a sustained amount of time, you the natural effect, will be a good personal brand. Right, then, like once, once it exists, and it's of high quality, then you're in a position to talk about like promotion techniques, you know, like, either like self promotion, or you'll get recognized for certain things. But I feel like a lot of times when people are talking about personal brand, they skip to that second part of like, how do I promote myself more? And I feel like they forgot the first part, like, what have you ever done? You know, like, you forgot you forgotten the accomplishments part. So I, I just tell people like it's it's a slow process it's earned. And I don't know, maybe there's like a generational gap here. But I feel like it's hard to have a personal brand, if you haven't been in your career for like, less than five years. Because what would you have, like meaningfully accomplished in that time? And I'm sure there's exceptions. I'm sure there are people out there, doing amazing things early. But a lot of times I get asked this question. That's my first thing like, oh, like, what, what do you want to promote other than your name? Like, what would your tagline be for yourself? So I see it as two parts like first bank bunch of accomplishments, and then to like how to self promote you can you can Google that or I bet the chat GPT answer is pretty darn good. That
Mary Newville 48:17
sounds like the key. Well, it makes me think because you were talking about when you were you know, selling your lawn care services door to door, you would like show that you're trusted by the neighbor to do the lawn. And I know you talk all the time about the importance of trust. So it kind of sounds like a key ingredient is just like, obviously having a brand is that like quality product, if you will, and the trust.
Dan Larson 48:42
Yeah. Like here's another lens. Look there, I just had a friend do this. He you know, he had a couple successful exits for big cybersecurity companies. So it's kind of ready to retire. But he kind of wanted to stay in the game. So he decided to make himself a part time or a fractional Product Marketing Manager. And if you want to, so imagine you were going to do that you were going to take your discipline and say, You know what, I'm gonna go as a freelancer. I'm going to do it part time. How many people after you announced this on LinkedIn would come to you and say, oh, sweet, you're available now. You know, I'd love to get you involved in my project. Yeah. And if that if it's a low number of people, then you have a personal brand problem. You should work to make that a large number of people.
Chelsea Lowman 49:38
What if they liked me but they just don't need my services?
Dan Larson 49:45
You can see I'm wearing my entrepreneur hat again, I'm not about being liked. I'm thinking about turning it into dollars.
Chelsea Lowman 49:54
Okay, that's an interesting thought to ponder. Okay, we are at our final questions. These are our rapid fire questions. Just fun, easy. First thing that comes to your mind. Okay, best concert of your life.
Dan Larson 50:14
Tenacious D opening for Weezer in 2001.
Chelsea Lowman 50:19
Whoa, Tenacious D opening for Weezer. That's fun. I didn't know. Wait Tenacious D is Jack wack right? Yeah, I didn't know he went on tour.
Dan Larson 50:32
It's a thing. Okay, fine.
Chelsea Lowman 50:35
Okay, what's your favorite word?
Dan Larson 50:38
Congratulations.
Chelsea Lowman 50:42
Really? Congratulations. Okay. A place on your bucket list.
Dan Larson 50:49
Lake Como Italy.
Chelsea Lowman 50:51
Huh? What's something that people often get wrong about you?
Dan Larson 50:57
They think I'm a big racing f1, IndyCar fan, because we sponsor them. I like I kind of became a fan and I pay attention because of the sponsorship. But I am not. Before the sponsorships. I was completely neutral. And now I'm my fan status is casual.
Chelsea Lowman 51:20
Okay. And finally, give us a snapshot of an ordinary moment in your life that has brought you joy. Well,
Dan Larson 51:28
just this week, well, my wife's been gone. I've been solo parenting our one year old. And she I think she's starting to answer questions. So I was like, Oh, are you ready for some food? And she goes, Yeah, it's like, it's happening.
Chelsea Lowman 51:44
I wasn't sure we were where we were going there when you were like, I'm solo parenting our one year old. Like, is this gonna be a funny answer or
Dan Larson 51:54
experience? That's adorable. He's doing milestones and I'm there to be a part of it. I just
Chelsea Lowman 52:01
love that. That is a reoccurring theme. Slash answer to this question is seeing your child like reach milestones and achieve things? I just love that. Okay, Dan, you survived. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. It was so fun to just get into the mind of a marketer hear about how you prioritize well being the way that you lead your team. I'm really excited for both our Pack members and then externally, the public to be able to get to know a little bit more about you. So thank you so much. Yeah, it
Dan Larson 52:40
was an honor. Thank you. Okay,
Chelsea Lowman 52:43
another great conversation, another podcast episode in the books, our final episode of our first year of the podcast. I just want to keep repeating that all podcast,
Mary Newville 52:58
season one, season one,
Chelsea Lowman 53:00
yeah. Season One first year. Okay, well, as always, thank you all for listening, continuing to listen. Please share any fun takeaways in the Howler Slack channel. If you are a Pack member, we have some fun things coming up to close out the summer. In August and September, we have our summer madness, which there's a lot of elements of the madness. We've got our in person cornhole tournament for those that are in offices that signup has already gone out in our last Howler newsletter, but it will be in the August Howler newsletter as well. We also will be doing a remote summer madness, coffee connection roulette, which those details those details will be in the holler newsletter. And also I will share it in the remote office Slack channel. And finally, as Dan was sharing, we have our lovely Red Bull Racing and Meyer shank partnerships. And we are going to do some trivia throughout the five weeks of summer madness with the opportunity to win some cool Meyer shank and Red Bull Racing swag. So be on the lookout in the holler Slack channel. For the trivia related to summer madness. We also in September, we'll be hosting our fourth annual run with the Pack 5k. So please make sure to sign up and register for that by August 28 so that you can get your T shirt in time. And again, this is just a fun run or walk whatever feels comfortable to you that we've done in the past four years. And we also will be fundraising for some cybersecurity and tech nonprofits as part of our training, so to find more you can go to the run with the Pack 5k Slack channel or Confluence page.
Mary Newville 55:04
Yes. And then the other really exciting thing we have going on in August is we are doing our Now that's what I call a top workplace celebration because we've been named a great place or a top workplace for millennials buy great places to work United States. In addition to top workplaces for technology, Canada, Best Place to Work San Antonio and Best Place to Work Minnesota so lots of exciting Pack winds around the globe. I also forgot to mention were named or certified a great place to work UK in the UK for the second year in a row. So internally, we'll have a millennial themed celebration with everyone's favorite nostalgic snacks like Dunkaroos and Sunny D. And roll up so look forward to that internally we can celebrate this the unique community we have and all of you that are part of it. And if you're not part of the Pack, but you would like to be come part of us and help us advance our mission of ending cyber risk. You can check out our open positions at Arctic wolf.com backslash careers. We will see you in September. With our fun one year anniversary celebration with some behind the scenes tidbits. Some bloopers and maybe some you'll get to meet some members too from around the Pack.
Chelsea Lowman 56:25
Yes, thanks for listening. See you next time.