Leadership Development: Network every day (episode #72)

10/02/23 • 69 min

Get the power of 10,000 marketing experiments. Play with MECLABS AI at MECLABS.com/AI (MECLABS is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa).

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

That quote is from George Bernard Shaw, and hopefully is inspiration for anyone trying to make positive change in their organization.

I thought of that quote while reading a lesson in the podcast guest application for this episode’s guest – ‘change starts here.’

Different words, same sentiment. The status quo is tenacious. If you want change to happen, you need to be unreasonable. It needs to start with you.

To discuss the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Dan Garzia, Chief Marketing Officer, Provenance Blockchain Foundation (https://provenance.io/).

Provenance Blockchain Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports a public, open-source blockchain, used by 70 financial institutions, including fintechs, banks, and credit unions. More than $15 billion in financial asset transactions have been supported by Provenance Blockchain.

In his career, Garzia has managed teams as large as 80, up to 12 partners, and budgets as large as $110 million.

Stories (with lessons) about what he made in marketing

Some lessons from Garzia that emerged in our discussion:

Progress beats perfection
Make up for areas where you're not as strong
Celebrate the win
Network every day
Change starts here
Words matter

Related content discussed in this episode

Marketing Chart: How important customer-first marketing is to consumers (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/customer-first-marketing-importance)

The Low-Hanging Fruit: 11 specific examples of small marketing and communication changes that drove big results (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/customer-first-marketing-importance)

Optimization and A/B Testing: Why words matter (for more than just SEO) (https://marketingexperiments.com/conversion-marketing/optimization-and-testing-why-words-matter)

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This article is distributed through the MarketingSherpa email newsletter (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters). Sign up for free if you’d like to get more episodes like this one.

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This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages (https://meclabs.com/course/) free digital marketing course.

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Get the power of 10,000 marketing experiments. Play with MECLABS AI at MECLABS.com/AI (MECLABS is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa).

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

That quote is from George Bernard Shaw, and hopefully is inspiration for anyone trying to make positive change in their organization.

I thought of that quote while reading a lesson in the podcast guest application for this episode’s guest – ‘change starts here.’

Different words, same sentiment. The status quo is tenacious. If you want change to happen, you need to be unreasonable. It needs to start with you.

To discuss the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Dan Garzia, Chief Marketing Officer, Provenance Blockchain Foundation (https://provenance.io/).

In his career, Garzia has managed teams as large as 80, up to 12 partners, and budgets as large as $110 million.

Stories (with lessons) about what he made in marketing

Some lessons from Garzia that emerged in our discussion:

Progress beats perfection
Make up for areas where you're not as strong
Celebrate the win
Network every day
Change starts here
Words matter

Related content discussed in this episode

Marketing Chart: How important customer-first marketing is to consumers (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/customer-first-marketing-importance)

The Low-Hanging Fruit: 11 specific examples of small marketing and communication changes that drove big results (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/customer-first-marketing-importance)

Optimization and A/B Testing: Why words matter (for more than just SEO) (https://marketingexperiments.com/conversion-marketing/optimization-and-testing-why-words-matter)

Subscribe to our podcast

This article is distributed through the MarketingSherpa email newsletter (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters). Sign up for free if you’d like to get more episodes like this one.

For more insights, check out...

Previous Episode

Female Entrepreneurship and Marketing: Having built a big community doesn't mean you will be able to monetize it (episode #71)

Get the power of 10,000 marketing experiments working for you. Play with MECLABS AI at MECLABS.com/AI (MECLABS is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa).

It is hard to make this episode of How I Made It In Marketing and share it with you.

Because you are professional marketers and entrepreneurs, many of you know marketing, business, and content creation better than I ever will. So I could work on this forever just to make it better, bulletproof to criticism, dare I say... perfect.

Of course, then we wouldn’t be able to publish regularly. Instead of the other 70 episodes we’ve produced so far, there would only be this one.

Which brings up a great lesson I read from in a podcast guest application – “Done is better than perfect.”

A truism I know I’ve had to live with. It applies very well to my job, as someone who wants to create awesome content, yes, but also lives in the constant reality of deadlines.

In this episode, Cordula Pfluegl, Marketing Director, TNW (https://thenextweb.com/), shared the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories.

TNW, which stands for The Next Web, is mostly known for its annual tech conference hosted in Amsterdam but is also a media company writing about technology with 1 million monthly readers. TNW is a Financial Times company. I’m sure you’ve heard of the 130-year-old newspaper, and it probably stuck out to you if you ever saw it, as the pink newspaper. FT is owned by Nikkei, Inc., which reported 175.2 billion yen in sales last year.

For the lead-up-time to the conference, Pfluegl oversaw a team of 10 people, including the event-focused marketing coordinators and the company's brand team of designers and content creators. When marketing the annual TNW Conference, they created over 2.8 million organic impressions with user-generated content on LinkedIn alone, in the two weeks around the event.

Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

Some lessons from Pfluegl that emerged in our discussion:

Working in various industries and for different brands/products (D2C/B2B) makes you a better and more versatile marketer overall.
Having built a big community doesn't mean you will be able to monetize it
Practice 'in-company' and 'across-team' learning together
Having a clear purpose will always guide the way
Market localization is important
Done is better than perfect

Related content discussed in this episode

6 Good (and 2 Bad) B2B and B2C Value Proposition Examples (https://marketingexperiments.com/value-proposition/6-good-2-bad-b2b-b2c-value-proposition-examples)

Launch and Learn: How marketers can keep up in a real-time world (https://marketingexperiments.com/social-marketing/real-time-marketing)

Pfluegl’s Substack (https://thisisjusthestart.substack.com/)

About this podcast

Next Episode

Personal Development in Career: Step out of your comfort zone (episode #73)

Get the power of 10,000 marketing experiments. Play with MECLABS AI at MECLABS.com/AI (MECLABS is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa).

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”

This is from Viktor Frankl, in the book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning.’ He learned it in a very serious way, as a prisoner in Nazi concentrations camps.

But he was a psychiatrist, and he used his experience in the Holocaust to write that book, one of the ten most influential books of all time according to the Library of Congress, and help us all learn to live better lives.

Which includes better work lives as well. As a marketer it can feel like you’re in the eye of the storm, with so much happening to you. But as our next guest reminds us, even in the times that seem most challenging to us, “the only thing you can control is your attitude.”

That’s right, when things are out of control, you are still in control of something.

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Regina DeMars, Director of Content Marketing and Strategy, FNBO (https://www.fnbo.com/).

FNBO is the First National Bank of Omaha, a subsidiary of First National of Nebraska. First opened in 1857, First National of Nebraska has $30 billion in assets and 5,000 employees.

DeMars manages a team of five people, both internal and external communications.

Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

Some lessons from DeMars that emerged in our discussion:

The only thing you can control is your attitude
Step out of your comfort zone
It’s so important to take time to build relationships with the people you work with – it builds trust in each other and team effectiveness.
Live a purpose-driven life
Learn how to be a good listener and be your authentic self
Lead by example rather than micro-managing

Related content discussed in this episode

Heuristic Cheat Sheet: 10 methods for improving your marketing (https://marketingexperiments.com/conversion-marketing/10-heuristic-cheat-sheet)

Team Building: Loyalty, relationships, pre-selling, and other keys to marketing management success (Podcast Episode #16) (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/team-building)

Servant Leadership in Marketing: We are only as good as how we handle humbling moments (podcast episode #54) (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/servant-leadership)

About this podcast

This article was distributed through the MarketingSherpa email newsletter. (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters) Sign up for free if you’d like to get more episodes.

How I Made it in Marketing - Leadership Development: Network every day (episode #72)

Transcript

Daniel Burstein: So nonetheless, you intended to celebrate the win. So how do you do that? How did you learn this?

Dan Garzia: It's definitely not one of my natural skills. What? So when when we were talking Omega about counterbalancing weaknesses there, there's one for you. It's not something I naturally go to, You know, my. My head. Still, there's something bigger that we're still working on. But. But I've had a lot of team members. And Daria, you were mentioning a mo