079: From Microsoft to Mentorship: Jeremiah Andrick’s Journey of Lifelong Learning

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Welcome to the Digital Marketing Mentor.
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I'm your host, danny Gavin, and, together with industry leaders and marketing experts, we'll explore the meeting point of mentorship and marketing.
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We'll discover how these connections have affected careers, marketing strategies and lives.
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Now get ready to get human.
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Get ready to get human mice and software.
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Jeremiah has almost two decades of digital marketing experience.
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He started his career with Microsoft in 2007 as a webmaster and tool developer and has since worked with other big names, including Logitech, htc Vive and VCIS Inc.
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He's now at SteelSeries.
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He's also a passionate volunteer and mentor.
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Jeremiah is currently volunteering with Seattle Startup Drinks and the Boys and Girls Club of King County.
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Today, we're going to talk about a bunch of different topics, from mentorship, building teams, lifelong learning and so much more.
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How are you doing, jeremiah?
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I'm doing well.
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Thank you.
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So I know I give you like an official intro, but now I want to give the unofficial intro.
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So let's go back 10, 15 years.
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Danny Gavin's like this 25-year-old marketer, you know, doesn't really go to a lot of conferences.
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There's this one really cool conference in Houston, texas, put on by the I think it was HIMA and you know we were lucky to get like people, speakers all around the country to come in, which was really awesome.
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And here's this really cool redhead guy, jeremiah Andrick.
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He comes in, his presenting style is so different than everyone else and he's really cool and it's like man.
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I just wish I could sit next to him during lunch so I could talk with him.
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And I actually got to do that and got to have like this little rapport.
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And you know, sometimes the people on the stage are like kind of untouchable, but Jeremiah was just so cool and so inspirational and he's someone that I've watched and followed for years, so it's a big deal to have him on here today, so welcome.
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Well, thank you so much.
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I appreciate it.
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I'm glad to be here.
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I remember, I'll tell you, I remember that conference really well because I got to experiment a lot too and people were so generous and I went I think I spoke like four years in a row there, which was pretty cool, getting invited Houston's so hot, even in February, and I was always just like as long as I could stay in the conference rooms February, and I was always just like as long as I could stay in the conference rooms.
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I was fine, so I love it there, though People were so great.
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Yeah, good times, let's start off?
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Where did you go to school and what did you study?
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Actually, you know, my college education was a little strange because I got out of high school and I didn't really know where I wanted to go and originally I'd gotten accepted at Baylor and Laterno in Texas, both of those schools.
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I grew up in North Dakota.
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I also looked at University of North Dakota and I had a great uncle who, at the funeral of a great aunt, was the head of the church that I grew up in.
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He said to me all those places sound really nice, but it'd be really great if you went to Evangel University in Springfield, missouri next year and I was like, okay, I was pretty malleable.
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I'm like I guess I'll go there.
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And in spite of not having any scholarships or anything, I dropped everything, changed my plans and went to Evangel University in Springfield, missouri.
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Sight unseen, I had seen all the other schools and I had scholarships and I just dropped everything and went and it's a liberal arts private college.
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They have about 1600 students there.
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It was a pretty good experience for me overall, other than the fact that it's related to the Assemblies of God church and even though I grew up in that church, my parents were liberal in some unique ways, I would say.
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They were very much like you've got to sort out religion stuff for yourself and encouraged us to embrace religion.
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But it was still one of those things you have to sort out on your own and to go to a religious institution.
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I was very much in culture shock.
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I did not fit in.
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I grew up joking like you don't drink, you don't dance and you don't go with girls who do kind of thing, and I was at this school where people really lived thing and I was like at this school where people really lived that and I was like I drink, I dance and I go with girls who do kind of thing.
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So I didn't fit in very well.
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I lasted about a year and a half there and then transferred to Southwest Missouri State, which is now Missouri State University, and I was really only there for a year.
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I studied computer science and journalism.
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In both schools I had a double major.
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I ended up switching my major midstream to communication theory, which ultimately was much more beneficial to my computer science engineering experience.
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But I actually ended up dropping out my third year to go work on a startup.
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There was a little startup in town working on building media properties for food service and for ad clients.
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It was the time I think it was number 11 in promo, number 75 in ad week in terms of total capitalized billings, an agency called Noble and Associates.
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Through mergers and acquisitions now they don't actually exist anymore, but I worked on Tyson Chicken's first website and French's Mustard's first website and I was 17 years old, you know, 18 years old when I kind of got interested in all of that and so I dropped out of college at 1920, go work for them full time.
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You know I'm living the dot com dream a little bit and it really wasn't until I've been at Microsoft three years before I finished my college degree and I kept working on it.
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My mom really wanted me to finish.
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It was a big thing for her just to have it.
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You know, even though by that point I have this kind of fully developed career, I'm in a place that's going to, you know, add all this additional educational value to me.
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But in studying communication theory I think one of the things that really excited me about it is I got to understand both how people engage with different systems of media and the history of that and the psychology behind it, and really became a student of the psychology of behaviors in engaging with new technology and how we learn and how we engage them, and my degree is a Bachelor of Science.
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So a lot of times I have to clarify to people like I didn't get it Not that there's anything wrong with a BA in communications, but that often leads to, like PR careers and things like that, not a bad feel.
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On the science side, I was more interested in how do people discover stuff, how do they find information, and I think you see that a lot in my talks that I used to give when I would go speaking more regularly is like how do these patterns play out in the way people communicate?
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And so that's really where I began.
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It was kind of a tumultuous ride for a while.
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There I definitely lived that 90s dream of not really knowing what I was going to do and flipping around a lot for that brief period.
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And were your parents supportive during that time?
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Or was like oh my gosh, what's Germany doing?
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I think my mom was worried but she trusted me.
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I think she knew that I had a really strong work ethic.
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I worked at nights at a little print shop to pay for my basic needs, you know, covering my rent I did.
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You know, key lining and page layout and typesetting I mean old school typesetting.
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I worked at an old school print shop.
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We did some things digitally.
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But you know, I think I'd proved to her like I had a pretty strong work ethic.
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As a kid I ran the single screen movie theater on the weekends and also worked as a CNA.
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So I think she already kind of knew like I was a hustler.
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I was going to do what it takes to pay the bills.
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But coming from a family my grandfather's first generation in the US, my mom's dad and we had kind of an immigrant mentality of you work and you put in the work.
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I was never not reminded that and as long as I kind of showed that hustle she didn't really care.
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But there was an expectation that education was a game changer.
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My sister is a college professor, my brother works in academia on the institutional side.
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I think there's a strong belief in our family and even now I still strongly believe in academics.
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I'm just riddled with ADHD and wasn't really good at being in a classroom.
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The classroom wasn't designed for people like me.
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Her encouragement was really more in find something you love and go and dig into it.
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I was really grateful that I had somebody who was that supportive of me, sort of seeking out my passion and my path.
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You know it sounds like you had a really good support system.
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Yeah, particularly from my mom.
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You know my parents split up when we were I was probably 12 or 13.
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They ran restaurants in North Dakota and were very entrepreneurial themselves.
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But I was lucky to have somebody who wanted me to go chase my own dreams and not be held back by other people.
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You know, or like how things must work, you know.
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But she still wanted me to finish that degree.
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You know she wanted that paper.
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So and you did it, so it all worked out.
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No, it did work out in the end.
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That's the main thing.
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So, jeremiah, how would you define a mentor?
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I think to me, a mentor is about investment Throughout your career, in your life.
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I think a lot of us have people who want to invest in us or who are willing to invest in us, and I think there's a great mentor, somebody who really spends a lot of time investing in one or another person, who sees that they have something they can pour into other people.
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And you know, a great mentor does it not for glory or for ego, but actually to sharpen their own skills, to refine their ideas.
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I think the world is a bit of a laboratory for all of us and our own notions of things are really tested when we have to take them outside of our own circle of control and influence that's us and then we have to apply it somewhere else.
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And when you're helping and trying to encourage other people, you know, then you really have to test it.
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And being a mentor or being a coach to other people for some people feels like this supernatural thing, but I think the best ones it's not natural, it's uncomfortable, it's putting yourself out there in a way that I don't want my ideas to be super tested, because what if I'm wrong?
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You know, what if I guide this person the wrong way and you really can't be afraid of that.
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A great mentor is the kind of person who does it for the love of the other person and the desire to see the world better.
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I'm generally of the view that we should leave the world, in whatever way you face it, better than when you came into a place.
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If a room is untidy and you leave that room if you haven't tidied it up a little bit as you leave, you're probably not maybe the right person to be a mentor.
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You want to see the world in a place that there's things that you can contribute back into, and so when I, when I invest both myself and people, but in the people who invested in me, they've been the kind of people who wanted to see the world better, and we're good at at at helping with that, I think, in so many ways.
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So I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but you just spoke about being like at a religious college.
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But it's interesting, in rabbinical school, both even in like high school and secondary, the learning style is in Hebrew it's called chavrusa, which means sort of partnership, and actually most of the learning happens where you're sitting at a table across from someone else and there's a lot of back and forth of teaching and learning and part of the reason to do that is like exactly what you're saying, like through teaching someone else something that's actually how you're going to learn it better.
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Just, you mentioned before which is a concept which I don't think I've heard in 75 or so episodes, but that idea of that it doesn't mean that the mentor's doing it because they're thinking, oh, I'm going to get something out of it, but truthfully, by them, like you said, helping someone out, testing their ideas, they're actually going to grow and gain more.
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That just kind of you know.
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That brings me to it.
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I think the scriptures talk about iron, sharpening iron, and I think most religious traditions have this idea and I think if you look at other religions that are sort of outside of the Judeo-Christian worldview, I think there's similar ideas.
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I even have a young Islamic guy on my team right now and him and I spend we've spent hours talking about the way the world works and from our different viewpoints, not to disagree with each other, but actually to further sharpen our own viewpoints.
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I think in many ways you get a stronger sense of your own view when they are challenged.
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And a good mentor I mean some of the mentors in my life have had to put up with me when I was younger, coming into the room and going like you are wrong and like me, yelling at them, and I, especially when I was younger, I had very, I was not a very pleasant person.
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Always I would just come in and be like this is the way things need to be and this is how we need to move and why is it taking so long?
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And let's go.
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You know you get a little older and a little wiser and you go like, oh, there's things you don't see and but you need to be able to, I think, sharpen against each other.
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You need to have that friction.
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Friction creates heat, I guess, and the heat creates a spark, hopefully, to create better ideas.
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And you know, maybe it is one of those things that we miss now in this digital space where we have to meet like this rather than in person, as much post-COVID, but where, you know, we don't have that across the table from each other as much as we used to.
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In some ways, there's a lot of value in that and it's very special, I think, as an experience, for us to be able to do that.
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I have a son who's 13 and he's very black and white, so I think I need to get him to talk to you a little bit.
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Yeah, yeah, I hung on to that teenage black and whiteness for a lot longer than I think most people did, probably, but to that teenage black and whiteness for a lot longer than I think most people did, probably.
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But you know, we learn and we grow.
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I'm definitely a lot wiser now at 45 than I was at, you know, 20 or 22.
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I definitely had a strong sense of, oh, I know how the world works.
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Now I'm like, the more I know, the more I'm like I don't understand why the world works this way.
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So, but you know, really, it's about learning how to move through the world this way.
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But you know, really, it's about learning how to move through the world.
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You know and adapt to things, rather than you know knowledge of the world.
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And I'm so confident in my ability to learn, but not always confident in my ability to know, you know and where.
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Earlier in my life, I think I I felt like I knew everything and didn't need to learn.
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And now I'm like what can I do next that I need to learn?
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So, yeah, it's very important.
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Okay, let's dive into some of your mentors.
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So you mentioned your grandfather shortly before.
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Why do you consider him as one of your mentors?
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You know my grandpa was an interesting guy.
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His dad had come over from Sweden at a very, very young age, at 11 years years old, by himself and had a lot of pressure.
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It was a long story there but had a lot of pressure to a typical immigrant family to better themselves.
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Having come from Sweden and wanted a better life for him and his family, he had dropped out of high school when he was a kid.
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His family he had dropped out of high school when he was a kid.
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He did join the US Navy and learned to trade and came back and built a home moving and home building business with his brothers and they ran that business for 50 some years.
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I grew up in the back of that construction yard and lumber yard and you know from a little kid I was expected to both work and help out there, whether it was moving trash around or cleaning up the shop, but just generally working with my grandfather and watching his work ethic but more importantly, the way he ran his business.
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And he was an open book about a lot of things.
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He would ask us questions as young men, me and my cousins, about how we were handling our money and how were we paying ourselves Were we paying tithe, how were we planning things?
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And he was just the kind of person who loved to work hard and he showed an incredible work ethic to us.
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And in many ways it wasn't always the conversations that you have with later mentors in your life, but was this like you saw his routine day in and day out about the way he treated his customers?
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I understood very, very early on that my grandfather was a fair and deliberate man with his customers.
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He cared a lot that they were happy with their company's work.
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That you know oftentimes.
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Sometimes if people couldn't afford a thing they needed, he made stuff happen for them and he wanted to do right in the world, in town.
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If somebody was on a hard time and needed a job, he was one of the first, you know people to offer people work and find them work, because he personally believed that a man who puts his hand to work is going to be better than one who's sitting around doing nothing.
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You know, often he invested in people who probably didn't entirely appreciate the investment too.
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You know that's typical with that kind of thing.
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He wasn't naive, but he was.
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He was a hard worker and with him I also learned that, just like value of having a schedule.
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He was the kind of person who, him and his brothers, sat every day and they not to turn this into religious talk but they sat every day and did a devotional together in the morning, had their coffee, went out and did work and then they'd go build something.
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And then they'd come in and do fika and sit and have coffee and I'd go and sit with them.
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As a kid Fika is like that Swedish word for the 1030 coffee break I'd come in and they'd sit drinking their like terrible coffee and these old Scandinavian men would sit in the back of the lumberyard and not talk for 30 minutes, you know, just sit and stare at each other.
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And every once in a while somebody might go oh, did you hear about such and such family or whatever.
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They'd gossip like little old ladies, but generally speaking they kind of they would take these breaks.
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You know, at 10 and two they would take these breaks and they would pace themselves through their work and I think it made them better at their work that they had this kind of schedule and approach and routine.
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And and yet my grandfather would put in hours and hours of hard work.
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He when I was in college, my freshman year, I came home to help him re-roof his own garage and he was in his 70s and the day after I left the man fell off the roof, got back up on the roof and finished what he was working on and a week later it goes to my mother, lifts up this shirt and shows these bruises and was like should I go to the hospital?
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You know, he was that kind of man.
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It wasn't that he was a superhero, it was that you know everybody's playing through something you know, and he was the kind of person who just you have to keep moving.
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If you don't keep moving, you know you're going to fall apart and you have to keep working.
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I feel like I learned a lot about my own work ethic with him just my desire to put my hands to something and to keep moving and to have the respect of a community.
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The way he did when he passed away.
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Hearing people talk about him as a person was almost its own.
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Mentoring event was like all these reminding of like what character means and you know, being an imperfect person in an imperfect world, but trying to deliver your best for your family and for yourself was something he was very good at.
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When one of his brothers died, he took care of his kids for a very long time, even though he had a large family himself.
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He had a family of nine and he helped take care of his brother's kids there were six of them making sure that they had clothes and food and things they needed.
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These are values that I knew as a kid, going into my adulthood, that I wanted to emulate, that I wanted to invest in others and invest in my community and invest in my business, and to also invest in the people that I hire and the people that I work with Like how can I help make them better?
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He taught me a lot and the fact that I can do the trim in my house or do certain kinds of things around here that require physical labor.
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Even though I don't want to Boy, I'll tell you that's a weird mental thing you have to do.
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It's like I know I can do this, so I should probably go fix this thing, but I also am busy and it's probably not the best use of my time to like go and redo all the trim in the house right now.
00:19:39.605 --> 00:19:44.873
That doesn't mean I haven't done stuff like that, but it's I am my grandfather's grandson in that way.
00:19:44.873 --> 00:19:51.042
I love spending time doing things with my hands and investing in it, and it feels good as a person to do those things.
00:19:51.423 --> 00:19:52.347
So yeah, he was.
00:19:52.347 --> 00:19:57.001
He was a great example type, mentor of things, and he cared a lot about his grandsons.
00:19:57.001 --> 00:20:04.171
He wanted us to be the best versions of ourselves, and we were often told when we were young you know, we have this.
00:20:04.171 --> 00:20:06.281
It was an immigrant thing, in a way.
00:20:06.281 --> 00:20:10.842
It's like you, your family came here and they worked hard, so you need to go work hard too.
00:20:10.842 --> 00:20:18.465
We put it, we invested a ton so you could go to your fancy schools and you could go work on computers and play with your toys, you know.
00:20:18.465 --> 00:20:20.840
So it's definitely a different mindset, for sure.
00:20:21.082 --> 00:20:22.428
Man, he sounds like a special guy.
00:20:22.428 --> 00:20:24.435
It explains a lot about you.
00:20:24.435 --> 00:20:33.210
Just knowing about you and I mean having someone in your life like that it can change your whole life right, and not having someone like that, you know, can change your whole life.
00:20:33.460 --> 00:20:45.471
I actually think about that a lot, like how you know I know a lot of people who have not had a kind of connecting influence or, like you know, a shining light to show as an example of stuff.
00:20:45.912 --> 00:21:14.230
And you know the downside of having somebody like him in your life too is, you know, it's a high standard to live up to for some people, and I think some people will look at these kinds of behaviors and go like, well, I want to have a different path and think that there's only one way or there's only one standard, and I think when you look at somebody like that, you should actually see that actually what their life is as an example of how there is a bunch of different paths.
00:21:14.539 --> 00:21:22.009
You know he didn't take a traditional path and he did work with his hand, but he was still a businessman who built a successful and long running business.
00:21:22.009 --> 00:21:33.498
You know you don't have to take one path to the place, but what a lot of people will see is the hard work and think that, well, I just have to brute force everything or whatever, and that they reject it.
00:21:33.498 --> 00:21:37.009
And I don't think that's the lesson you should take away from people like my grandfather or even the way I work today.
00:21:37.009 --> 00:21:43.769
You have to do what's best and optimal for you to get the job done and to make your life what you want out of it.
00:21:44.009 --> 00:21:47.875
Was there ever any pressure or opportunity to join the family business?
00:21:48.180 --> 00:21:48.560
Not really.
00:21:48.560 --> 00:21:53.492
I think nobody wanted us to have to work like they had to work.
00:21:53.492 --> 00:22:03.347
I think in later years several of my cousins and I got together and we go hunting as a family together every fall.
00:22:03.347 --> 00:22:21.022
My cousin Scott was in the Navy and he works for the US military as a contractor and him and I will often talk about like it's too bad somebody in the family didn't take over whether it was one of the sons, you know, and I know for my grandfather it was sad when he sold and auctioned off the business as he retired.
00:22:21.289 --> 00:22:29.077
But it's also North Dakota and even with the oil industry there it's a tough place and it's hard country out there.
00:22:29.077 --> 00:22:37.926
It builds hard people and nobody really wanted us to have to go through and live the way they had to live and to hustle the way they had to hustle.
00:22:37.926 --> 00:22:49.444
They wanted us to have a better situation and I think that's why my grandfather, when he would ask us questions about money, for example, his whole thing was like pay yourself and pay God first and then do what you have to do after that.
00:22:49.444 --> 00:22:59.919
We're like kind of big ideals for him, not just because of the, not just because of his religious views, but because of his own, wanting to make sure he built a better life.
00:23:00.539 --> 00:23:07.734
After you know, he won it and I think he probably had regrets that he had not been able to invest more to set up his kids even better than they were set up.
00:23:07.734 --> 00:23:09.976
You know, he's sharing this idea that invest more to set up his kids even better than they were set up.
00:23:09.976 --> 00:23:15.621
He's sharing this idea that you have to put money in savings, you have to have a backup plan to your backup plan.
00:23:15.621 --> 00:23:19.483
Winter's coming, you know, and people don't.
00:23:19.483 --> 00:23:21.786
It's a good lesson, but he didn't really have.
00:23:21.786 --> 00:23:24.567
I don't think they really ever wanted us to be in that position.
00:23:24.567 --> 00:23:35.237
I'm sort of glad because, as I can do stuff with my hands, but my grandpa could bore a slab of cement without even thinking about it, or I would have to go and watch YouTube videos.
00:23:35.237 --> 00:23:55.575
So yeah, you've mentioned before is Lance Binley who I believe, worked with you at Logitech.
00:23:55.595 --> 00:23:56.760
Tell me why Lance is one of your influential mentors.
00:23:56.760 --> 00:24:01.655
I think for a lot of people who knew me around, the time I joined Logitech I was not in super great shape.
00:24:01.655 --> 00:24:06.955
My two years of working on Bing were really hard for me personally and professionally.
00:24:06.955 --> 00:24:11.153
I traveled around the world and I just was exhausted.
00:24:11.153 --> 00:24:12.638
Microsoft was burning me out.
00:24:12.638 --> 00:24:14.163
It's a lovely place.
00:24:14.163 --> 00:24:30.510
Honestly, I still maintain tons of friendships at Microsoft and I mean it really is a great place but I was burnt out and was really struggling and, honestly, I was pretty broken and I resigned from Microsoft and just said look, I'm done.
00:24:30.510 --> 00:24:32.432
I can't travel anymore.
00:24:32.432 --> 00:24:37.557
I can't go and speak at these conferences, I can't do engineering work and do marketing.
00:24:37.557 --> 00:24:39.637
I need a different path.
00:24:39.637 --> 00:24:41.839
Like I was so stressed out working hard and so I quit.
00:24:50.970 --> 00:25:06.817
I took a bunch of time off and Brent Payne, who's an SEO who had worked at the Tribune company for a while I'd met him through SEO and doing webmaster work at Microsoft with the webmaster community he reached out to me and said I know this guy, lane Binley.
00:25:06.817 --> 00:25:09.423
He's building a team at Logitech.
00:25:09.423 --> 00:25:15.693
He'd been at a bunch of other companies.
00:25:15.693 --> 00:25:24.923
He's going to call you and I get this call from Lance and interview with them and I meet him and he was just one of those kinds of people where right away, I was like something about this guy I really like and you know he's an interesting character.
00:25:24.923 --> 00:25:33.876
He was a Buddhist, he'd been divorced and has a second wife and, yeah, he's just a pretty normal person in a lot of interesting ways.
00:25:33.876 --> 00:25:40.699
But he had been through the ringer enough that I think he saw me and was willing to take me on as a project.
00:25:40.699 --> 00:25:56.957
He was the kind of guy who and is the kind of guy who has little aphorisms that I find myself now saying to my team all the time Like you know, my view of the world is that we you know I'm going to give you wide open fields but high fences, right, like you're always going to know where the fences are.
00:25:56.957 --> 00:25:59.131
But he was really good at building a team.
00:25:59.131 --> 00:26:13.881
He could, you know, he got this team of guys together and women together to build the direct consumer and e-commerce business at Logitech and he had a charter and a mission and he understood how to invest in people.
00:26:14.182 --> 00:26:15.545
You know my one-on-ones with him.
00:26:15.545 --> 00:26:19.458
I could talk to him about anything and I could challenge him on anything.
00:26:19.458 --> 00:26:25.371
And you know, having come from that engineering world, I always wanted to get on a whiteboard and argue with him and go like, no, no, no.
00:26:25.371 --> 00:26:26.673
And he I will never forget one time.
00:26:26.673 --> 00:26:34.756
He time he said, like I don't really respect when people get up on the whiteboard, like if you haven't thought through the idea before you've come to talk to me, like you need to go back and think it through.
00:26:34.756 --> 00:26:45.676
I still like to talk on a white board because I I speak to think is the way I like to describe it, but I really respected the notion that, like he's challenging me to think things through before I come.
00:26:45.917 --> 00:26:52.556
The first thing I learned from him is like he really would talk regularly about how we bring our values to work.
00:26:52.556 --> 00:26:57.457
And if you're going to show up at work for eight to nine hours a day, it's a huge portion of your life.
00:26:57.457 --> 00:27:03.526
You should be doing things that make you happy and make you smarter and make you better, and work is still work.
00:27:03.526 --> 00:27:11.480
It doesn't mean we don't have bad days or good days or whatever, but in the whole, you should be looking at your work as like a thing that contributes to your joy.
00:27:11.480 --> 00:27:14.391
You're like, yeah, it should be like, why does it suck?
00:27:14.391 --> 00:27:21.196
And a lot of times it sucks not because of the work itself, but because of our own view of it or maybe the situation at a company.
00:27:21.196 --> 00:27:38.853
But he was really, really good at being transparent and sharing his values with us in a way that made me want to be that kind of leader and to not just invest in my employees but to truly coach them and to try and find new ways to get the best out of people.
00:27:38.853 --> 00:27:57.141
And because I think that was the thing that he was best at, when he retired and left Logitech, I took over his role and you know, to this day I have hired people from that team that worked with us and continue to kind of work with folks that I've worked with there to now, even at SteelSeries.
00:27:57.141 --> 00:28:12.113
My partner on the DTC side of the business is a guy who was on our team there as well, and we have a similar working style and a lot of how we view the world was shaped by the way Lance built his teams, the way he was a.
00:28:12.314 --> 00:28:13.576
He was a by the numbers guy.
00:28:13.576 --> 00:28:14.779
He is a by the numbers guy.
00:28:14.779 --> 00:28:16.751
I can still call him Lance.
00:28:16.751 --> 00:28:20.460
I think that's one of the things I when the startup.
00:28:20.460 --> 00:28:26.135
I was at Vices V-I-C-E-S I guess that you talked about football helmet startup when I was working on that.
00:28:26.135 --> 00:28:30.122
When it failed, I called Lance and was like man, I don't know, what do I need to do?
00:28:30.122 --> 00:28:31.084
What's next?
00:28:31.084 --> 00:28:38.200
And you know we went back and forth on a bunch of things because I was getting a little worried like how do I get to the next level?
00:28:38.200 --> 00:28:42.175
I'm always stuck at this kind of like current level, what do I got to do?
00:28:42.175 --> 00:28:43.960
And asking him should I go back to college?
00:28:43.960 --> 00:28:45.261
Should I do this, should I do that?
00:28:45.261 --> 00:28:53.261
You know he's the kind of guy who doesn't mind you texting him and jumping on the phone and bumping ideas off of him and I think there's a.
00:28:53.723 --> 00:28:57.215
The lesson I think I really learned from him was availability.
00:28:57.215 --> 00:29:00.086
Right Like he, he always had time.
00:29:00.086 --> 00:29:03.234
Even though I worked remote, I was up here in Seattle, he was down in California.
00:29:03.234 --> 00:29:07.112
He was always available to jump on and work.
00:29:07.112 --> 00:29:09.579
A problem to invest in the approach.
00:29:09.579 --> 00:29:12.617
But he was a pretty formulaic guy and I liked that too.
00:29:12.617 --> 00:29:13.401
It worked for me.
00:29:13.401 --> 00:29:21.855
He had these formulas he used for everything, and it was during that time that he encouraged me to continue to go out and speaking and so that's like around the time we met.
00:29:21.855 --> 00:29:30.036
He wanted me to not give up this thing that I was doing at Microsoft and learning about that was good for my career, so he discovered me.
00:29:30.036 --> 00:29:35.376
Also, knowing that it would thinking about other things would help me enjoy the work I was doing.
00:29:35.417 --> 00:29:50.553
Again, thinking about other businesses besides the Logitech business, expanding my horizons and taking tough questions from people and investing in my own learning and then sharing my learnings with others was going to be good for Logitech and good for me.
00:29:50.553 --> 00:29:55.410
And I think you're lucky when you have a manager who sees you as a kind of player.
00:29:55.410 --> 00:29:59.058
I grew up playing hockey and I enjoy soccer and I talked to my team.
00:29:59.058 --> 00:29:59.882
I hate that.
00:29:59.882 --> 00:30:04.772
You know I'm always trying to like avoid sports and military metaphors, but they're really hard to avoid in business.
00:30:05.134 --> 00:30:29.971
But, like I talked to my team a lot right now my current team at SteelSeries about the need for nobody on the team to be a single position player, like it's nice to have a vertical you're strong in, but that we need to be a team like Ajax and we're going to play total football and everybody has to help create space for other players on the team to get their job done and to score a goal or whatever it happens to be.
00:30:29.971 --> 00:30:41.471
And Lance was kind of the first person that got me thinking about how you structure a team, how you coach people, how you invest in individual players on the team creates a different set of results.
00:30:41.471 --> 00:30:48.315
Then if you just say, here's your goals, here's your like, here's the team's mission, go do it, here's the OKRs.
00:30:48.315 --> 00:30:50.280
He was never a just go do it guy.
00:30:51.192 --> 00:31:03.460
He was always investing in the mental state of the players on his team and I think that's an important thing for us as leaders and as mentors to remember that it's about your mentals and your attitude.
00:31:03.460 --> 00:31:15.076
That's one of the best ways you can coach people is through keeping their head right at any given moment and focused on the things that matter and not on the things that don't.
00:31:15.076 --> 00:31:17.731
And he was great at that and I thank him regularly.
00:31:17.731 --> 00:31:19.655
I think he knows how I feel about him.
00:31:19.655 --> 00:31:24.936
He's such an interesting character, kind of retiring a little early way, earlier than me.
00:31:24.936 --> 00:31:29.734
I think his goal in life was retirement, where my goal in life is like, how can I work until the day I die?
00:31:29.734 --> 00:31:46.571
But I think that was also of huge value to me was seeing somebody that I related to so much but also had such different values than me, that desire to get home from work and be with his wife and his daughter, and how he brought those values into the workplace taught me a lot.
00:31:46.913 --> 00:31:51.916
So when you left Logitech, it must have been hard, because it sounds like you were really close with him.
00:31:51.916 --> 00:31:53.730
Was there a certain sadness when you left?
00:31:54.310 --> 00:32:16.413
I think this is an underrated thing in work that when you leave a job whether you're going to someplace new that you're excited about, or if you're laid off or if the company has to do layoffs or the company goes out of business, which is like they say that leaving any job is a bit like going through a divorce.
00:32:16.413 --> 00:32:18.680
You go through this sort of grief and there's that kind of FOMO that people experience.
00:32:18.680 --> 00:32:24.282
That I think is hard because your peers are still out there doing stuff and you kind of want to be with them.
00:32:24.282 --> 00:32:26.250
And I loved Logitech.
00:32:26.250 --> 00:32:32.710
I just hit the top of where I was going to be at Logitech After he retired and set me up for success.
00:32:32.710 --> 00:32:34.497
I was already kind of on my own.
00:32:34.497 --> 00:32:35.775
I was building a new team.
00:32:35.775 --> 00:32:37.736
I set that team up for success.
00:32:37.736 --> 00:32:44.977
Logitech got a new CMO and I remember meeting her and thinking, oh, I'm probably done here.
00:32:44.977 --> 00:32:53.460
You know, it's like I was the guy hired by the last guy, and not that she didn't like me, she was, she was amazing, by the way.
00:32:53.460 --> 00:32:59.156
It's like I instantly was like, oh, she's super smart, but she had a way of doing things.
00:32:59.156 --> 00:33:09.141
That was like she was going to want to take the things I'd been building and shape them in her image and I was like this is going to be very I will be in her way.
00:33:10.202 --> 00:33:11.384
I sent when I resigned.
00:33:11.384 --> 00:33:16.682
I sent the CEO and he called me and was like is there anything we can do to convince you to stay?
00:33:16.682 --> 00:33:18.873
Bracken Darrell, great, great CEO.
00:33:18.873 --> 00:33:22.818
He's currently at VF Corp, like Vans, really amazing and interesting guy.
00:33:22.818 --> 00:33:28.008
Yeah, calls me up on the phone immediately and he's like what can we do to get you to stay?
00:33:28.008 --> 00:33:33.009
And I was like look, you know you hire this new CMO and she's awesome and I will be in the way.
00:33:33.009 --> 00:33:35.748
Like I can already tell I'm going to be in the way.
00:33:35.748 --> 00:33:44.968
If the company is going that direction, you guys should have a chance for her to be a success and I don't want to just be this burden of the legacy way things should work.
00:33:44.968 --> 00:33:49.634
Let's go amicably and I'll just go and find a new playground.
00:33:49.634 --> 00:33:51.728
And I'd wanted to work in VR.
00:33:51.728 --> 00:34:04.186
I'd gone to, I'd talked with both Facebook and HTC and HTC was here in Seattle and I'd had a former coworker who worked there and was like I'm going to go play over here for a while and if you guys ever want me back, I'm always willing to talk.
00:34:09.539 --> 00:34:11.105
But in the meantime but it was I think there was grief for a while.
00:34:11.105 --> 00:34:18.467
It was eight really successful years for me of personal growth and development, being able to move on to several next new levels and take on more work, things that I mean.
00:34:18.467 --> 00:34:22.927
Running a sales and marketing team was something I never thought I would do as an engineer.
00:34:22.927 --> 00:34:39.045
I was like the learning, all the numbers and the budgeting process and all of that stuff that Lance taught me how, how to operate a business, not just how to work a business and to plan, but actually the fundamentals, the P and L and all of that.
00:34:39.045 --> 00:34:40.608
It was sad for a while.
00:34:40.969 --> 00:34:52.360
I definitely went through a period of like even jumping into my new job and the excitement of it, but still being like I wonder what this person's doing, I wonder what that person's doing, I wonder how the business is going and sort of peeking in on things.
00:34:52.641 --> 00:34:53.903
You know it's hard not to.
00:34:53.903 --> 00:35:11.487
But I think when you bring on a new employee who comes from a place, even with that excitement, I think a great manager tries to understand the feelings they might be going through in the first couple of months that help them embrace the new team and get excited about being where they're at, because everybody has gone through something.
00:35:11.487 --> 00:35:18.030
If they've gone through layoffs even more, so right, because that's often devastating to people's financial life.
00:35:18.030 --> 00:35:20.985
And they're excited about the new job and they're excited to get back to work.
00:35:20.985 --> 00:35:28.606
But they're maybe operating at a level of fear and you want to get them into a place of positive forward momentum.
00:35:28.606 --> 00:35:56.572
Not just you know like nobody wants to be around a drowning man, right Like that's the most dangerous place to be is really important so that they feel less like that, having just gone through a divorce, and instead more like a new romance.
00:35:56.572 --> 00:35:59.012
You know something to be excited about you said years ago.
00:35:59.032 --> 00:35:59.793
I remember one of your talk.
00:35:59.793 --> 00:36:13.391
In one of your talks you spoke about getting like I think it was something like a four to eight row as on google ads selling logitech.
00:36:13.391 --> 00:36:14.601
I don't know if you remember that.
00:36:14.601 --> 00:36:25.324
Yeah but to me in my mind to me in my mind it was always like, like all those years after it was like, how do I get that four day that jeremiah spoke about?
00:36:25.324 --> 00:36:27.844
Uh, is this so funny for me to remember that now?
00:36:27.844 --> 00:36:28.885
Oh my gosh.
00:36:28.905 --> 00:36:31.507
Oh yeah, we are heavy focused.
00:36:31.507 --> 00:36:32.329
My, I mean it was.
00:36:32.329 --> 00:36:35.391
I'll never forget Lance once he had all these aphorisms.
00:36:35.391 --> 00:36:37.893
You know it was like we've given you the company's checkbook.
00:36:37.893 --> 00:36:43.177
Like you know, failure isn't like having a campaign that goes sideways.
00:36:43.177 --> 00:36:44.197
That's going to happen.
00:36:44.197 --> 00:36:51.561
Failure is not trying, and he's like.
00:36:51.561 --> 00:36:54.365
But on the other hand, we've given you the company's checkbook and you need to treat it like your own.
00:36:54.385 --> 00:37:00.074
And from a contribution margin standpoint, if we made a dollar and it took us a dollar to make that dollar, we're not doing very good.
00:37:00.074 --> 00:37:06.432
But if we make $10 and we spent a dollar, now we're self-funding.
00:37:06.432 --> 00:37:09.989
You know we don't have to go and ask for budget.
00:37:09.989 --> 00:37:12.728
We're self-funding out of the margin of the products.
00:37:12.728 --> 00:37:29.219
So how do you get on various products and it was the first time I actually started thinking about my efforts in regard to work as a contribution to the total margin and as a part of the finance marketing as a part of the finance, marketing as a part of the finance.
00:37:29.219 --> 00:37:34.791
And there are intangibles in marketing and branding that to make those numbers work.
00:37:34.791 --> 00:37:42.311
You like chasing the last click and chasing the ROAS is like heroin.
00:37:42.311 --> 00:37:45.123
You'll get it once and then you'll be doing it forever.
00:37:45.123 --> 00:37:47.730
Um, look what you did to me, jeremiah.
00:37:47.929 --> 00:37:48.612
What the heck man.
00:37:50.623 --> 00:38:10.652
I know Seriously, and I'm truly I've spent a lot of my career chasing these very difficult numbers and it's gotten a lot harder, because I think what was once possible between Facebook and Google is less possible than it used to be by design from them.
00:38:10.652 --> 00:38:17.208
They they recognize people were making too much money and then would spend less on ads, and so they've made it harder for us.
00:38:17.208 --> 00:38:23.503
And you know it's, but I think at the same time it's even then.
00:38:23.503 --> 00:38:34.342
It was about facing the landscape of the business we were trying to create, looking at what was possible and then striving for the best thing that was possible, and lance was really good at pointing that out.
00:38:34.342 --> 00:38:40.764
I don't I don't know if he actually thought we could hit 10 to 1 or 12 to 1 and at various times we'd hit.
00:38:40.764 --> 00:38:42.472
We'd hit some pretty crazy numbers.
00:38:42.472 --> 00:38:51.150
We had a good year where we were doing like 12 to 1 across all of our media and and I was like you guys need to give me huge raises, but I'm also acting like a day trader.
00:38:51.150 --> 00:38:58.960
Back then, you know, I'm like, totally, you're not sleeping a whole lot if you're chasing a 12 to one return on ad spend and.
00:38:58.960 --> 00:39:10.302
But you know, in his mind also, it's like, well, amazon and Best Buy and this company and that company, like their margins don't work if they can't be profitable against their margins.
00:39:10.302 --> 00:39:17.242
And so it was just this sense that you had to chase the best margin possible.
00:39:17.242 --> 00:39:26.652
And I think even now, one of the biggest things I end up talking to people a lot about in work when I'm coaching people is like what is the business model you're chasing?
00:39:26.652 --> 00:39:42.606
If you're buying media for my team and you're thinking about it at this super high brand level and not at that growth or incremental merchant spend level based on the way the funding works for this particular set of campaigns, you're already doing it wrong.
00:39:42.606 --> 00:40:08.217
It's like I need you to first think about what our business model is and then move over here, and oftentimes, if you're, you know, an I-shaped individual and all you think about is media buying, you may not think about how, like, oh, the funding for this media comes from a 23% or a even smaller margin cap and it's not really a budget fund in OpEx.
00:40:08.217 --> 00:40:12.661
But from a P&L perspective it's a.
00:40:12.661 --> 00:40:13.920
We can take this out of margin as long as we don't exceed it.
00:40:13.920 --> 00:40:22.447
Nobody's going to bother us Otherwise we have to, from a financial perspective, treat it as OpEx and now we're in the negative.
00:40:22.447 --> 00:40:34.010
And having somebody coach you through how the business actually works can be really eye-opening to the way you design your own performance and it sets a different expectation for the employee.
00:40:34.619 --> 00:40:42.735
It says I'm contributing not just to this media application but to the output of the business.
00:40:42.735 --> 00:40:46.690
I actually am impacting the total revenue target for the year.
00:40:46.690 --> 00:40:48.851
I am impacting the regional revenue target for the year.
00:40:48.851 --> 00:40:50.940
I am impacting the regional revenue target.
00:40:50.940 --> 00:41:02.652
The whatever right, the growth of this business is in my hands and that growth is both at the contribution financial contribution level, as well as the new users in the queue.
00:41:02.652 --> 00:41:14.527
You know and he was so good at coaching through stuff like that I dream of those kinds of ROASs and sit and think about ways we could do that and it's unfortunately gotten much harder.
00:41:14.527 --> 00:41:20.530
And I think a big part of our job these days is we coached all these people that this is the way magazines and TV ads.
00:41:20.530 --> 00:41:35.806
We coached them on a whole new way the world could work and now we're having to undo that.
00:41:35.806 --> 00:41:39.931
It's kind of a shitty thing to have to do.
00:41:41.001 --> 00:41:45.713
Yeah, that's why I say digital marketing is kind of like going up the hill and now we're going back down.
00:41:45.713 --> 00:41:48.949
It's like, yeah, it's definitely, it's not easy.
00:41:48.949 --> 00:42:00.929
You mentioned a topic that I'm also passionate about, because in my company we actually have mostly females, so I just wanted to know why you know you mentioned one of the things you wanted to talk about is about supporting female leadership.
00:42:00.929 --> 00:42:07.306
Obviously, women have certain challenges being leaders in an organization, but you know what's what's important to you about that.
00:42:07.306 --> 00:42:13.956
How do you help the women on your teams, or even just your colleagues, deal with the challenges?
00:42:14.500 --> 00:42:24.630
I started at Logitech At the time Lance left, there was a kind of attrition that was happening where people were starting to leave and turn over and I had to do some hiring.
00:42:24.630 --> 00:42:27.266
And this was the first time I ever started thinking about this.
00:42:27.266 --> 00:42:28.710
Before I never really thought about it.
00:42:28.710 --> 00:42:32.070
I was like I've worked with women and I've worked with men and it all seems great.
00:42:32.070 --> 00:42:34.648
But now I'm the boss and I'm having to do hiring.
00:42:34.648 --> 00:42:41.632
And I was trying to hire in Europe and I was shocked because I would talk to the recruiters at Logitech and I would just get these.
00:42:42.079 --> 00:42:47.083
I would get the same resumes over and over and over again, and over and over and over again, and they were all men.
00:42:47.083 --> 00:43:06.297
And granted, I work in consumer electronics, so like there's kind of draw, but on paper they all looked the same and I was like for the consumer electronics industry to grow, we actually need people with some different ideas, we need people from different industries, we need people, and I but I couldn't figure out why.
00:43:06.297 --> 00:43:13.228
I was only like in the globe, it doesn't make sense that I would only get men, male resumes and it.
00:43:13.228 --> 00:43:15.963
It was just very strange to me and it stood out as something that was weird.
00:43:15.963 --> 00:43:27.012
And so I'd start talking to the recruiter and the recruiter's like well, in this country or this country, you know, when people get the CV, you've got the like picture of the person and their name and you get all this history.
00:43:27.012 --> 00:43:30.697
And in Europe people will even put like if they have children and stuff on their resume.
00:43:31.259 --> 00:43:32.742
And I was like I don't want any of that.
00:43:32.742 --> 00:43:47.405
When I was like when you're doing the screeners, when you have a screener do recruiting, whether it be a tool or anything, I want CV to job description match and that's it and pull their names like, pull the names, pull everything off the top of the resume.
00:43:47.405 --> 00:43:50.911
I don't want, I don't want the actual recruiter to see any of that.
00:43:50.911 --> 00:44:01.661
Let's get them just cd comparisons to and overnight, all of a sudden, I had 49 of the resumes were now women and the rest were men.
00:44:01.661 --> 00:44:03.365
Wow, all just all of a sudden.
00:44:03.365 --> 00:44:09.648
And it was very eye-opening to me personally and it became like I'm like something about this I don't like.
00:44:09.648 --> 00:44:10.952
I just don't like that.
00:44:10.952 --> 00:44:17.132
I don't like that feeling that there was a game being played on my behalf, even right.
00:44:18.181 --> 00:44:20.650
Like so now yeah, 100%.
00:44:21.440 --> 00:44:28.173
Now, all of a sudden, I have three really talented women on my team, both senior.
00:44:28.173 --> 00:44:32.766
All three of them were relatively senior and I have to guide them.
00:44:32.766 --> 00:44:43.666
The same way, I'm being guided, and I remember reaching out to a couple of friends in the search industry particularly women friends and saying like, okay, now all of a sudden I've got a bunch of women on my team and I'm the boss.
00:44:43.666 --> 00:44:46.132
What do I need to do to coach them?
00:44:46.132 --> 00:44:54.503
And the reality is is, on one hand, it's the same thing you have to do with everybody else, it's listen to them, try and understand what their goals and ambitions are.
00:44:54.503 --> 00:45:13.172
But I also think like for me, the changeover was really putting them in a position where they could speak on behalf of the team, where they could invest and bring skills from you know, you don't often think about when you think about consumer electronics to the forefront I have.
00:45:13.172 --> 00:45:19.206
Right now, my team is 50% women, 50% men, even split right down the middle.
00:45:19.206 --> 00:45:27.369
At SteelSeries, our CMO is a talented and strong woman who's been both in the CPG industry as well as consumer electronics.
00:45:27.369 --> 00:45:30.824
She worked with us briefly as a consultant at Logitech.
00:45:30.824 --> 00:45:48.193
I'm surrounded by strong, strong female players, and I think the difference for me, though, is that, in the industries I've worked in, there has been this expectation that women needed to work like we do, and I don't like.
00:45:48.193 --> 00:45:50.728
I don't think a man needs to work the way I do.
00:45:50.728 --> 00:46:03.788
I want a man on my team to come in and bring his unique talents and strengths to the team, and it is my job as the manager to bring out those talents and help them execute to the best of their ability.
00:46:03.788 --> 00:46:05.050
Same thing with women.
00:46:05.050 --> 00:46:31.208
If you're going to invest in them, you've got to invest in them at the level of what are their unique strengths and talents and allow that to come to the forefront and allow that to whatever those differences are and sometimes I mean you know you'll you'll work with women, especially in the sales side of things, that are as aggressive and as for lack of a better word bro-y as any other, particularly in the sales side of the world.
00:46:31.208 --> 00:46:34.369
It's just something that attracts saleswomen versus salesmen.
00:46:34.369 --> 00:46:36.307
They just can be very aggressive.
00:46:36.539 --> 00:46:38.806
In the world we're in, marketing is so much.
00:46:38.806 --> 00:46:55.353
It's art and science, and so we need to draw that out, and we need to create a space where people can be free to be the version of themselves that they are, and that both means being a woman or being a man or being, you know, gender fluid or whatever.
00:46:55.353 --> 00:47:09.755
Right, like, I want to bring out the best, and it starts with having a heart of like, wanting seeing people for the talents and interests that they have and encouraging them to apply that to the business they're in.
00:47:09.755 --> 00:47:15.773
You know, when I left Logitech and HTC, there was this part of me that's like I want any other job than working in consumer electronics.
00:47:15.773 --> 00:47:18.503
It's like I don't want to be known as the consumer electronics guy.
00:47:18.503 --> 00:47:24.601
I would sell diapers, you know, but only because I was hungry to learn new things.
00:47:25.063 --> 00:47:33.880
And I think one of the beauties of bringing in women and investing in women on the team is they bring with them a whole host of differences.
00:47:33.880 --> 00:47:40.447
And when we watch female game players play versus male game players, there's a different way in which people play.
00:47:40.447 --> 00:47:44.708
There's a different way in which people who are left-handed versus right-hand play.
00:47:44.708 --> 00:47:57.280
And I want the world of gaming, since I do work in consumer gaming I want gamers to play their best and to be the hero of their own story when they're playing.
00:47:57.280 --> 00:48:07.684
I know that sounds very marketing, but, like, I want them to be the hero of their game and I think women bring their own unique sort of vibe to a team.
00:48:07.684 --> 00:48:39.121
But if you're going to have women on the team, there are, like cultural things that I have a global team, my team's from all over the world, so we're not even just dealing with like stereotypes of women in business from the US, but, like my right-hand person right now is a Chinese woman who lives in France and is very French and very Chinese all at the same time and culturally there's a lot of differences there than me, a white guy from the Midwest, and I have to make space for her to talk, to explain things to me, to help me understand her viewpoints.
00:48:39.121 --> 00:49:02.112
And if you're going to lead a diverse team, you have to be willing to sit with people and respectfully challenge them and encourage them and ask them to be their best, but also listen to them, to hear them and to see them and to make space for them to lead, and to lead in their own way, because it's going to be different than how you lead.
00:49:02.112 --> 00:49:06.362
Inevitably, I in a lot of ways, you know it's helped me.
00:49:06.362 --> 00:49:07.581
I got a um.
00:49:07.581 --> 00:49:19.190
I I uh hired a executive coach a few years ago, um, just to try and get better, and she was a successful executive and I've learned a lot from her.
00:49:19.190 --> 00:49:33.067
She challenges me a lot in my own goal setting and approach and I think in having a woman executive coach it's made me a better mentor and coach to my own team of women, and I think I do.
00:49:33.260 --> 00:49:40.833
There are times when I have difficult conversations because you have to sort of say like well, this guy is kind of old school and you have to do things this way to get this thing done.
00:49:40.833 --> 00:49:48.032
I hate telling people that because they shouldn't have to, but on the other hand, we're all people and we have to live in a world where things don't always work the way we want them to.
00:49:48.032 --> 00:49:50.065
But on the other hand, we're all people and we have to live in a world where things don't always work the way we want them to.
00:49:50.065 --> 00:50:02.302
I'll admit I was a little worried as I've sort of elevated this woman in France, like, would people in her office respect her the way they would a male colleague being the lead With the men there?
00:50:02.302 --> 00:50:07.791
Like, the culture there is interesting at times with regard to men and women.
00:50:07.791 --> 00:50:11.079
The culture there is interesting at times with regard to men and women.
00:50:11.119 --> 00:50:17.474
And yet what you find out is that it's not about those, are not things about her capabilities, and we should be focused on her capabilities.
00:50:17.474 --> 00:50:19.282
And that's how you invest in women.
00:50:19.282 --> 00:50:24.425
In leadership is you invest in her capabilities, not the culture's needs.
00:50:24.425 --> 00:50:29.411
You add to those capabilities so that she can adapt to whatever the culture is.
00:50:29.411 --> 00:50:49.893
The expectation, then, is that we're growing and making a place that women can be promoted, that they can grow, that they're representative of our user base and that their ambition can be achieved the same way a man's can, and I definitely have had conversations at a previous company.
00:50:50.074 --> 00:51:03.795
I had a young woman who worked for me where four months in our one-on-one, I would say you know, we have this upcoming annual review and you really need to ask me for a raise, you really need to say this.
00:51:04.260 --> 00:51:16.193
And I was telling her because it's not that I didn't want to give that to her it's that company culture was such that if she didn't ask, I was sort of morally obliged not to.
00:51:16.780 --> 00:51:19.639
I think people don't always understand that you have a fiduciary responsibility.
00:51:19.639 --> 00:51:41.059
That sometimes means it's unfair, but, on the other hand, you have to be a different person in the negotiating room than you are on the work floor, and every annual review is a chance to have this negotiation with your manager, and I would sit there and kind of like hint at her, like if you don't do this, I'm sort of like my hands are tied.
00:51:41.059 --> 00:51:49.262
But if you do this and it was weird to be like as a friend you should ask me this, because I will.
00:51:49.262 --> 00:52:07.971
I'm you know, at the end of the day, I need you to push for what you want and need, otherwise the company will not allow me to give it to you, and I think those are tricky conversations you have to coach people on and it's unfair that the world is structured to the way men think and work a lot of times.
00:52:07.971 --> 00:52:13.916
As a mentor and as a manager, we have to do our best to see those opportunities and step ahead of them.
00:52:15.061 --> 00:52:16.704
Yeah it's been a big thing for me personally.
00:52:16.704 --> 00:52:18.407
I hope that all makes sense that all makes sense?
00:52:18.567 --> 00:52:21.072
No, it does, and that's such an awesome perspective.
00:52:21.072 --> 00:52:22.054
I really appreciate it.
00:52:22.054 --> 00:52:27.802
So now it's time for our lightning round.
00:52:27.802 --> 00:52:30.289
I'm going to mention five categories and you can either tell me your favorite part of it or your favorite type.
00:52:30.289 --> 00:52:31.172
Move through it pretty quickly.
00:52:31.172 --> 00:52:34.507
So first one is rifles and hunting.
00:52:35.289 --> 00:52:37.635
So funny thing about rifles and hunting.
00:52:37.635 --> 00:52:46.809
I grew up hunting and shooting, but really it's been later in my life that I started learning how to coach and teach people how to shoot and train people.
00:52:46.809 --> 00:52:50.927
There was a lot of interest around obviously during COVID people wanting to learn.
00:52:50.927 --> 00:52:54.081
And I am a safety nut and I'm not a gun nut.
00:52:54.081 --> 00:53:04.971
I'm a safety nut and so I spent a lot of time wanting to learn more and so rifles became super interesting to me, partly as a competitive person too, because I wanted to go more, and so rifles became super interesting to me, partly as a competitive person too, because I wanted to go out and shoot competitively.
00:53:04.971 --> 00:53:06.940
I wanted to like test myself.
00:53:07.099 --> 00:53:13.864
And then you get into like the science of ballistics and real engineering nerd and so like how can I shoot further?
00:53:13.864 --> 00:53:14.987
How can I shoot?
00:53:14.987 --> 00:53:20.733
You know it's not about volume, but how can it be more accurate and learning about accuracy versus precision.
00:53:20.733 --> 00:53:34.420
So rifles and hunting for me became this like way to apply all this fun, weird stuff that I was doing in my business life into this like weird hobby that I understand comes with a bunch of, you know, strange implications.
00:53:34.420 --> 00:53:50.603
But it's also become now a place of joy for me to go out every year with my family and go hunting again, to bring home a freezer full of meat and know where it came from and to learn how to, to like learn so much about the animals that we hunt.
00:53:50.603 --> 00:53:53.009
I, I love these animals, you know.
00:53:53.009 --> 00:54:00.596
I know it seems counterintuitive, but I spend my year watching them on cameras and like learning their behaviors and you it's.
00:54:00.596 --> 00:54:05.509
You get to a point where you're actually less interested in killing them and you just get super excited to go out there.
00:54:05.730 --> 00:54:12.684
I think it was Teddy Roosevelt or somebody else that said we don't hunt for the kill but like we hunt for the hunt itself.
00:54:12.684 --> 00:54:13.766
Is the thing right?
00:54:13.766 --> 00:54:13.985
Like?
00:54:13.985 --> 00:54:18.681
I know I'm misquoting this entirely, but I like there's a bit.
00:54:18.681 --> 00:54:38.751
Once you actually get into it, there's this thing where you start to realize like so much of the gun and hunting thing is about being with like minded people who want to challenge their own abilities and I love being challenged, whether that's in sport or in hunting or in shooting, and that's why I am just not allowed to have any more hobbies that are challenge things.
00:54:38.751 --> 00:54:41.382
I would never get any work done.
00:54:41.884 --> 00:54:43.025
All right, how about dogs?
00:54:43.025 --> 00:54:48.693
Dogs I have three dogs Rosie, ruby and Freya they are.
00:54:48.693 --> 00:54:49.755
They keep me very busy.
00:54:49.755 --> 00:54:56.565
They're sitting around me right now, fortunately sleeping.
00:54:56.565 --> 00:54:57.248
But I always grew up with dogs.
00:54:57.248 --> 00:54:57.911
I've had them with me forever.
00:54:57.911 --> 00:54:58.835
They travel with me at times, which is wild.
00:54:58.835 --> 00:55:10.884
Every summer I try to go on road trips to see family and friends and I just throw them in the back of the Defender and away we go, and they are my constant companions so I love them to death.
00:55:11.346 --> 00:55:11.907
Photography.
00:55:12.429 --> 00:55:16.721
I started collecting vintage cameras when I was 18 years old.
00:55:16.721 --> 00:55:18.085
I just loved the engineering.
00:55:18.085 --> 00:55:22.862
I loved how they sounded like watches and they were clicky and amazing and interesting.
00:55:22.862 --> 00:55:25.047
I dreamed of one day owning a Leica.
00:55:25.047 --> 00:55:40.369
I now have 15 Leicas and I have a Hasselblad and I have shot all over the world and I currently have a photo hanging in the Leica Wetzlar Germany in their headquarters out there corporate museum.
00:55:40.369 --> 00:55:42.432
I won an award a few years back.
00:55:42.432 --> 00:55:44.324
I shoot for my own pleasure and enjoyment.
00:55:44.324 --> 00:55:47.360
I mean, a lot of people shoot and they enter their photos into competitions.
00:55:47.360 --> 00:55:48.202
That's just not me.
00:55:48.202 --> 00:55:57.351
But every once in a while I'll get outreach and things from people who like my photography or interested, and that's always nice when somebody enjoys your stuff.
00:55:57.351 --> 00:55:58.161
But I do it for me.
00:55:58.161 --> 00:56:00.547
My house is full of art and photography.
00:56:00.748 --> 00:56:07.815
Growing up, my dad had a shelf on the way to his bedroom which had like a bunch of vintage cameras.
00:56:07.815 --> 00:56:11.525
So that's definitely a part of my life, but I don't know all the names.
00:56:11.525 --> 00:56:14.873
But I can definitely appreciate it as well.
00:56:14.873 --> 00:56:16.423
How about travel?
00:56:16.563 --> 00:56:17.646
Travel is one of my favorite things.
00:56:17.646 --> 00:56:23.521
I'm probably my most happiest when I'm experiencing a new culture or somewhere else.
00:56:23.521 --> 00:56:28.090
I've been to every continent other than Antarctica.
00:56:28.090 --> 00:56:30.463
I'm still terrified of flying a little bit.
00:56:30.463 --> 00:56:36.445
I don't think people realize like you can be terrified of flying and like it, but I love being on the road.
00:56:36.445 --> 00:56:42.284
I like driving adventures as much as I like flying adventures, but I just like being other places and experiencing new things.
00:56:42.545 --> 00:56:48.744
I used to be such a picky eater as a kid and I've just learned to be in the culture and be in the moment.
00:56:48.744 --> 00:56:51.030
I don't like doing touristy stuff.
00:56:51.030 --> 00:56:57.170
I want to go to the local bar or the local restaurant and I like challenging myself.
00:56:57.170 --> 00:57:01.322
But my favorite place probably ever has been is still probably Tokyo.
00:57:01.322 --> 00:57:02.262
It's just so.
00:57:02.262 --> 00:57:04.003
It's such a foreign concept.
00:57:04.204 --> 00:57:15.371
Mexico City is an amazing city and it's one of my favorites, but I would I would go to Tokyo over just about any place in the world if I could go again right now, just because there's so few people who speak English.
00:57:15.371 --> 00:57:16.914
There's so few like.
00:57:16.914 --> 00:57:18.394
It's such a dynamic place.
00:57:18.394 --> 00:57:31.268
For someone with ADHD, it can be overwhelmingly loud at night like just anxiety creating with all the blinking lights and noise, but then in the morning it's so quiet you can hear the clicking of women's heels on the sidewalk.
00:57:31.268 --> 00:57:34.128
It's crazy and it's beautiful.
00:57:34.128 --> 00:57:43.242
I highly encourage travel, and if you have one thing you should add to your life's pursuits to make yourself a better person, it's travel.
00:57:43.242 --> 00:57:45.387
You'll just become a better person.
00:57:45.387 --> 00:57:49.585
You'll appreciate what you have more and you'll want more for yourself too.
00:57:49.585 --> 00:57:52.291
I think you'll want a better culture and a better world.
00:57:52.960 --> 00:57:55.528
And then, finally, your most favorite tech right now.
00:57:55.940 --> 00:57:59.230
I actually think where things are going with cars is really interesting.
00:57:59.230 --> 00:58:06.387
Even in ICE vehicles, there's just an amazing amount of tech going into cars right now the sensors.
00:58:06.387 --> 00:58:20.934
It's hard to begin to even understand how much our cars have become computers in the last, maybe even just the last 10 years, and when you look at the innovations that Tesla has made, the work that BMW and Mercedes are doing I follow a bunch of people from Mercedes and their innovation labs.
00:58:20.934 --> 00:58:28.744
I follow a bunch of people from Mercedes and their innovation labs and it's just like the stuff they're thinking about in trying to make the world better around cars is crazy.
00:58:28.744 --> 00:58:36.192
And yet the biggest problem we have is that the tires still produce most of the microplastics and waste and we haven't solved that yet.
00:58:36.940 --> 00:58:38.427
Like they're kind of ignoring that for now.
00:58:39.882 --> 00:58:40.322
Yeah Well.
00:58:40.322 --> 00:58:45.242
I think that when the electric stuff doesn't make it any better in fact it makes it worse, you know.
00:58:45.242 --> 00:58:47.110
But I think that's what makes it interesting, right.
00:58:47.199 --> 00:58:49.119
Jeremiah, this has been such an awesome conversation.
00:58:49.119 --> 00:58:59.027
I definitely have so much more to discover about you and just your perspective, but thank you so much for being a guest today and thank you, everyone else, for joining the Digital Marketing Mentor.
00:58:59.027 --> 00:58:59.871
We'll speak with you next time.
00:58:59.871 --> 00:59:17.989
Everyone else, for joining the Digital Marketing Mentor.
00:59:17.989 --> 00:59:19.349
We'll speak with you next time.