Harry Drajpuch , Chief Executive Officer at Amware Fulfillment , shares his outlook on the retail landscape today. The emergence of increased competition brought on by e-commerce means retailers need to think differently. Harry thinks that retailers must become more agile in all aspects from operations and marketing to customer experience. The retail space has to deal with swings in demand with delivery times expected to remain short. Outsourcing your fulfillment operations to an expert can help...
Sep 26, 2022•32 min•Season 1Ep. 174
Rob Whalen , CEO & Co-Founder at PTO Exchange , talks about his startup journey that began with an idea that turned into an industry differentiator. Key takeaways include: Getting a new idea off the ground and convincing people to think differently are what use the most energy in a startup. Being consistent and maintaining persistence are the key elements of successful startups. When fundraising, focus on gaining trust and delivering on that by returning what investors expect. Implementing a...
Sep 19, 2022•35 min•Season 1Ep. 173
Mark Grilli , Chief Marketing Officer at CommerceHub shares his thoughts on the changing world of retail and gives insight on how to adapt from a marketing standpoint. Some key takeaways include: Marketers have to make it clear to customers why they should adapt to change Marketers need to gain executive support in order to help drive the change. It’s essential to move fast and continuously question where you are. Marketers shouldn’t rely on data alone; they need to know their customers, be crea...
Sep 12, 2022•39 min•Season 1Ep. 172
We’re joined by Giora Engel , Co-Founder and CEO at neosec.com . Giora shares his startup journey centered on cybersecurity. The discussion provides insight on the following: How to adjust activities that involve face-to-face relationship building to remote work. How digital transformation has evolved into a “digital first” initiative and how that affects the global economy. How the value of communication becomes more important when working across remote teams. The 3 key elements to growing your...
Sep 07, 2022•27 min•Season 1Ep. 171
Sanjay Puri , Founder and Investor at Autonebula , Wellisen & ACEL360 shares his diverse experience on today’s episode. Sanjay discusses these topics: How passion for entrepreneurship can be developed, with successful founders becoming investors and accelerators. A society that most closely resembles a meritocracy can attract the best talent, rewarding their resilience with success. A balance of confidence and humility enables founders to rally their teams yet remain open to ideas. Having so...
Aug 31, 2022•42 min•Season 1Ep. 170
On today’s podcast, we have Andy Paul , author of Sell Without Selling Out . Andy is an experienced sales coach, mentor, podcast host, and accomplished author. He shares valuable insight on sales and discusses: How selling out uses persuasion to close a sale without understanding the buyer’s concern. The importance of focusing on selling at the human level, through connection, curiosity, understanding, and generosity with your prospect. Gaining the trust of your potential customers by understand...
Aug 29, 2022•44 min•Season 1Ep. 169
We’re talking to Mike O'Kelly , Co-Founder & VP of Sales at Rithm AI on the show today. Mike’s company helps optimize a salesperson’s time through intelligent planning and preparation. We discuss: How to provide value when reaching out and reconnecting with your prospects. The importance of finding ways to reduce the time that your salespeople spend outside of meetings. How avoiding prospect meetings on Monday mornings and Friday afternoons will allow for more successful engagement. How to r...
Aug 26, 2022•49 min•Season 1Ep. 168
Pam Kline Smith , Chief Marketing Officer at Globality , shares great insights for marketing leaders in tech. Globality is an AI company that aims to transform the procurement process for businesses. Pam is a firm believer in understanding the customer’s problem before selling a solution. As such, she emphasizes the importance of communicating with prospects; she believes marketing should spearhead this communication. It’s imperative that you use everything in the marketing channel to lay down h...
Aug 23, 2022•38 min•Ep. 167
Avi Bhagtani , Chief Marketing Officer at Digitate , provides valuable insight on marketing leadership, honed by his technical background. Avi gained important experience on the technical product side of the business before transitioning to his role as CMO. He talks about how advantageous this kind of exposure has been to his career as a marketer and how his technical capability allowed him to deliver value to the customer in a much clearer way. Avi goes into more detail as he paints the current...
Aug 17, 2022•41 min•Ep. 166
Kevin Alansky , Chief Marketing Officer at Jedox shares a treasure trove of marketing experience on today’s show. Kevin started his career in marketing at the tail-end of the advertising era. This allowed him to witness the transformation of digital marketing. Kevin’s guiding star is focused on customers and target customers. At Jedox, they focus on how they can turn the CFO or Finance Manager into the heroes of the company. Kevin thinks that this is the key to connecting and engaging with your ...
Aug 15, 2022•30 min•Ep. 165
Lindsay Boyajian Hagan , Vice President, Marketing at Conductor , shares valuable marketing information. Particularly in the digital space, marketing has changed; planning ahead is essential for success. An example is SEO. In the 2000s and early 2010s, companies could show up on the first page with keywords and strategic baits. Today, the Google algorithm is much more intelligent and places the best content up top. According to Lindsay, this is vital since about 93% of searchers click on the fir...
Aug 10, 2022•31 min•Ep. 164
Nick Lumsden , Co-Founder and CTO at Tenacity Cloud shares great insight on the industry landscape and on personal development for business leaders. Nick’s company democratizes cybersecurity. They accomplish this by providing much-needed tools to businesses that don’t have the enterprise scale for a dedicated security team. Despite being a decade in, Nick thinks that the age of the cloud continues to be a boon to certain businesses. It provides a level playing field, accelerates speed to market,...
Aug 08, 2022•33 min•Ep. 163
Ed Breault , Chief Marketing Officer at Aprimo , talks about his profession as a marketer and its relevance to his company. Aprimo is responsible for digital asset management, focused on content. Ed is very familiar with this, being a podcaster himself. Ed thinks that whether you’re B2B or B2C, the marketing fundamentals remain the same; marketers should focus on H2H (human to human) buying. People flock to your brand and your messaging based on their need and their trust in the seller. Ed talks...
Aug 01, 2022•35 min•Ep. 162
Tracy Kraft , Vice President, Global Revenue Marketing at Demandbase shares valuable marketing leadership insights on today’s show. Tracy’s role at Demandbase focuses on revenue marketing, a function that works closely with sales. She is also familiar with the company’s thrust to use software to help marketers succeed in account-based marketing. Tracy talks about the importance of sales and marketing integration in the B2B environment. Potential customers make their decisions before the sales ca...
Jul 25, 2022•33 min•Ep. 161
On today’s show, Amanda Elam , Chief Marketing Officer at Bloomreach , shares valuable insights into digital marketing leadership. Amanda is a seasoned marketer and supports ecommerce customers. Amanda’s customers come from companies looking to move into ecommerce. The pandemic has forced businesses to adapt in order to survive. Amanda advises that businesses new to ecommerce should look at their data strategy before choosing their tech stack. She suggests that picking only relevant tools that a...
Jul 18, 2022•31 min•Ep. 160
Steve Baines , Vice President at Apps Associates , shares valuable leadership lessons. He brings a holistic leadership perspective to B2B. His insights come from moving up the corporate ladder, jumping into a founder role, and switching back to a corporate executive role after an acquisition. Like many leaders, Steve recognizes the value of hiring and retaining the best talent. His approach to retention is revolutionary. He acknowledges that working with him isn’t going to be a permanent thing a...
Jul 14, 2022•27 min•Ep. 159
Raj Sarkar , Chief Marketing Officer at 1Password , shares key leadership insights and marketing expertise. He brings a wealth of perspective coming from very successful startups like 1Password and Atlassian. Raj believes that the most important thing for the leader of a startup is to set the company’s foundation. This starts with the functional area. A strong foundation will poise people for success as the company grows. As CMO for 1Password, Raj prioritized setting up the organizational struct...
Jul 13, 2022•31 min•Ep. 158
John Street , CEO, Chairman, and Founder at Pax8 , shares his startup journey on the show. Pax8 provides smaller SaaS companies with great products which have much-needed marketing reach. Providing a marketplace for them gives them the advantages of a collective platform that can attract potential customers. When Pax8 started 11 years ago, the environment was completely different. This visionary idea had to tackle several roadblocks and obstacles. SaaS was not the dominant and efficient platform...
Jun 30, 2022•30 min•Ep. 157
Moni Oloyede , Director, Marketing Infrastructure at Fidelis Cybersecurity , shares her simple yet valuable expertise on marketing success factors. It all boils down to communicating with your audience. Communicating with your audience is all about listening to your customers. This involves finding out what business problems they have. It also involves knowing what they are willing to do to solve these issues. Once you know these things, you need to engage with your customer. Delivering a messag...
Jun 21, 2022•40 min•Ep. 156
Peggy Choi , Founder & CEO at LYNK shares how knowledge transfer and management greatly impact companies. Peggy is using AI to solve the business problem of efficient knowledge management. The framework involves gathering data, interpreting that data, converting it to knowledge, which then becomes wisdom. Wisdom is when knowledge is applied to critical decision-making. The knowledge management process is a critical component of a company’s success. Despite this, many companies don’t make the...
Jun 13, 2022•36 min•Ep. 155
Marion Mariathasan , CEO & Co-Founder at Simplifya and Chairman & Founder at Ceylon Solutions , shares his serial entrepreneurship journey. Behind the success, Marion has had his fair share of stumbles. He shares a few of these along with the lessons that came from them to help share and build the entrepreneurship community. Marion explains the importance of recognizing business problems, especially in new and upcoming sectors. Simplifya helps support the tedious registration process for...
Jun 06, 2022•42 min•Ep. 154
Phillip K. Naithram , Founder, DC Local Leaders shares his views on the power of connection and networking. He differentiates his podcast by connecting people in technology, government and military. This corridor is an extremely important one. It has always been a consistent contributor to growth and economic activity. An advantage of establishing a network of people with common interests is mentorship. Phillip shares how you can gain valuable insight from other people’s experiences. Having a me...
Jun 01, 2022•50 min•Ep. 153
Firaas Rashid , Founder and CEO at Hook shares his insight on the value of customer success in B2B software. Customer success is a function that works directly with active customers after they’ve signed on. The role of customer success varies across different companies and according to their strategies. Rashid simplifies his outlook on customer success, he sees it as continuing to provide customers with the value of their purchase. This can come in the form of onboarding, service delivery, or be...
May 19, 2022•39 min•Ep. 152
Samir Diwan , Co-Founder and CPO at Polly talks about throwing in technology to improve engagement. Technology and AI are often construed to be at odds with human resources. Diwan changes this up by using AI to help gain insights and not be intrusive to workflows. Diwan shares how engagement can be accomplished with technology in three ways. Firstly by expanding and gathering the voice of the employee. Having a solution work in the background ensures employees have an effective channel to delive...
May 09, 2022•34 min•Ep. 151
Eric Schmidt , Co-Founder and CEO at Glue Up , thinks entrepreneurs can improve their success through communities and interactions. A move to China made him realize the need for technology to grow communities with other business leaders. The pandemic transformed his product from a nice-to-have to a must-have for business associations and chambers of commerce. Setting up a business in a different country throws out all you’ve learned in the US market. Schmidt shares that in Asia, it was very fast...
May 04, 2022•28 min•Ep. 150
Tim Hinrichs , Co-Founder and CTO at Styra , talks about his startup journey and growth strategy. Hinrichs and his co-founders created an open source language that powers authorization and policies. This is significant for cloud software, back-end systems, applications, and almost everything digital. Hinrichs describes his cavalier approach when he decided to become a founder. He left his comfort zone at VMware with an idea that would solve a major business problem. He believes that showing a st...
May 02, 2022•37 min•Ep. 149
Chris Cheatham , Product Evangelist at Bold Penguin , shares clever insights on his journey from startup to acquisition. He founded RiskGenius as a means to revolutionize insurance policy reviews through AI. The company made big waves attracting the attention of Bold Penguin who then acquired it. Exits like these are considered success stories by many business leaders. Cheatham attributes his success to his ability to communicate with customers. In his view, It is vital to first identify your pr...
Apr 27, 2022•38 min•Ep. 148
Patrick Ward , Vice President of Marketing at Rootstrap , delivers a mini-masterclass on marketing in this episode. Ward talks about the transformation of marketing in three stages. Marketing has evolved over the years through their channels and objectives. First was the period where marketing campaigns were about creative ideas and casting a wide net. The second stage was a period where technology was used to track marketing spend. The stage we are in is about personalization and setting the st...
Apr 25, 2022•48 min•Ep. 147
Tom Glason , Co-Founder & CEO at Scalewise , dishes out a different perspective on scaling for startup founders. Glason thinks the biggest challenge in scaling comes when you need to expand your commercial team. Whether it’s called sales, business development, revenue, or growth—they all funnel to building your commercials. The problem is twofold. Firstly, startups don’t have the experience yet to know what kind of commercial executive they need. And secondly, the most experienced talent wil...
Apr 20, 2022•36 min•Ep. 146
Orlee Berlove , Growth Marketing Manager at PreVeil , shares how to leverage different marketing strategies to drive customer growth. PreVeil is a company that deals with data security and privacy. Companies like PreVeil were once focused on enterprises and government. Increased digital presence in business has expanded the focus to consumers, startups, and mid-sized businesses. Berlove recommends using multiple strategies for effective growth marketing. The approach can be determined by two fac...
Apr 18, 2022•23 min•Ep. 145
