Shamir Duversau on Helping enterprise marketers improve the post-click journey through collaboration and experimentation

Speaker A: I cashed out my entire 401k thinking someone stole my identity.

Speaker B: A fake email cost me my dream home. After I sent my personal information to a scammer, my AI agent wired thousands

Speaker C: to an account I'd never seen.

Speaker D: When billions of people feel unsafe, that's no longer a security problem. It's an economic one. At Jenn, we're building the trust layer for a more fearless planet with products and technologies from our global brands, Norton, Lifelock, Avast and Money Lion. See it in action@gendigital.com welcome to the

Speaker B: Breakfast Leadership show, where we explore the realities of leadership, decision making, and building organizations that perform under pressure. Your host, Michael D. Levitt, is the creator of the Breakfast Leadership Operating System, a framework designed to help organizations improve decision clarity, strengthen leadership alignment, and reduce the execution friction that slows teams down. Each episode features conversations with leaders and experts navigating the challenges of leading in today's complex world.

Speaker C: Well, let's get started today. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. It's been on my calendar for way too long. So I was like, finally we get to talk to Shamir. So, Shamir Durasal, how are you doing today? I'm doing well.

Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker C: Thank you for being on the show. Why don't you share a little bit about you and then we'll jump into the conversation.

Speaker A: Yeah, certainly. M. So I'm right now managing director, co founder for Smart Panda Labs. We're a technical marketing agency. We've been around for about 16 years now. So I come from corporate America. Like, I'm sure many worked at some different brands. Southwest, uh, airlines, Disney, Marriott. Along the way, just discovered that there were things in my life that I wanted to be able to pursue that were important to me personally. And just in having conversations with some other critical co workers, found the same thing. And so we decided to create a business where we could kind of shift priorities and have enough control over our schedules that we could put the things that we wanted to be first, first. And from that came the. The birth of Smart Panda Labs.

Speaker C: Uh, I love hearing journeys about that. And those former organizations have all got my money in the past or recent maybe. So big names. And of course those organizations are. They're big machines, each of them, and they do things differently. Of course we know the history of all of them, but, uh, it's all about experiences and when you decide to launch. And 16 years ago, well, you've seen a lot because the last 16 years of been no shortage of all kinds of twists and turns, whether it's the Great Recession, the pandemic, everything that's going on with tariffs and wars and all of that kind of stuff. So your organization has seen and been through, you know, a, uh, century's worth of activity in a short, you know, compact time frame. Uh, you know, when I look at history now, of course it's distorted because we're looking at it from a broad standpoint, but it certainly feels like the last, you know, 16 to 20 years we've lived a bit. There's been a lot going on, especially with technology, and just the organizations trying to figure out, okay, how do we. How do we use technology to do what we want to do in our business and can technology create opportunities to do new types of things for us and all of that? So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know, absolutely. It's funny you say that, you know, when I started my career, which was, you know, right around the turn of the century, and that sounds weird to say turn of the century. Ah. Anyway, when I started my career around that time, it was a time when the Internet was really starting to become just more central to the business world, where organizations weren't able to ignore it, but were really starting to have to invest into it. So as I started working in marketing, eventually came to the point where the world of marketing and the world technology really started to draw closer and closer and closer together until they started to overlap, largely driven by the Internet. And I found that my, My brain worked well enough that I was able to kind of have a foot in both worlds. So that's what kind of drove, uh, me in my career in terms of getting into the world of digital marketing and, and staying in that world across those different organizations. And then ultimately that led into starting smartpan, the labs, and starting the work that we did. And, you know, it's funny, when we first started, we were full service. You know, we were startup, so we do anything. You want me to wash your car, shine your shoes, get your dry cleaning? Like, it didn't matter, right? It was just, you know, if it was paying, it was a job. But along the way, when we kind of started to say, okay, what do we like doing? What are we good at doing? But what do we not like doing? What are we not very good at? As we started to ask our clients about that, one of the things they said is that we really help them a lot understand technology, how to use it, how to leverage it, how to make that translation between the marketing teams and kind of the technical IT engineering teams and kind of sit at the table and allow those two teams to kind of get along and communicate. So that kind of became what Smart Panel Labs evolved into, was this technical marketing agency, was this idea of saying, how do we help the business side, in particular the marketing side, understand and leverage technology in a way that allows them to accelerate the kinds of experiences they're trying to deliver to their customers? So it's very much essential to what we do. And as you mentioned, it's because of all the change we've seen over the years. We've seen how important and critical that's become. And as many organizations as there are out there, like the Amazons and Googles of the world, who really are driving that ship of technology, there are just as many, especially, uh, legacy organizations that have been around for a long time that are still trying to figure out how exactly do they best leverage and use technology, use digital to create the kind of digital online experience that their customers are really looking for.

Speaker C: Yeah, you mentioned turn of the century. I do some of my clients, there's some really young, new to their career stuff, and they'd ask me because they don't really know my age. I mean, they could guess it, but they don't ask. And they say, well, when did you start working? I said, well, I started working in the late 1900s. Uh, and it's such a funny, funny thing to say for our generation because we never, we said the late 1800s, we're like, okay, we understand what that means, but when we say late 1900s, it's the same thing for them. They weren't around for that. We were. And now we're like, wow, I don't like this math of the age thing. This is not cool. But my career was kind of similar, but I was instead on the marketing side. I was in the accounting and finance side and then started dealing with the IT stuff. Just out of your curiosity, like, what's this all about? And even at the, uh, CPA firm that I worked at early on in my career, we were a, uh, beta tester for the first version of QuickBooks. When they said, how much QuickBooks experience do you have since day one? And I've seen nothing improve. But again, in there, like with many companies just like yours, they've evolved over time and changed and improved and started addressing what the needs of, uh, of the customer base has been. And what we needed 16 years ago compared to what we need today is like a completely different world. I mean, yeah, there's elements involved, but still it's mind boggling. And I, and I think that's, you know, one of the things about our generation. And uh, I'm not knocking any other generation. Every one of them is going to have their opportunities to see dramatic change. We always do. Even the baby boomer generation has seen an absolute ton of change in their lives. So it's not exclusive our generation. But what I, what I find is that there's anytime there's something new, we're so used to new things coming along that we're like, okay, we just kind of lean into it and go, okay, well what's it do? And we're curious, let's take a look at that. Where some other generations are like, I'm not sure about this. It's like, well, we, we don't know anything about it, we don't care. We're going to jump in and see what it is and take a look at it. And, and you know, that kind of segues into, obviously the talk of the town lately has been AI and all the plays and you know, there's new things being created every nanosecond. So there's always different things and people are using it. And just in the, uh, you know, handful of years that I've been playing with it, you know, I've seen a ton of improvements on what it does. But also we're starting to see, okay, we've been using all this stuff and creating all these things, but how do we actually get it to actually be beneficial to us? How do we improve our branding, our marketing, our knowledge, internal knowledge? How do we get things to work together? Because we know, and you've seen it throughout serving all the clients you have and over the years is there's a lot of silos in companies and one department doesn't know what the other department's doing. Or if you, you ask the board of directors, define your company, and if there's 10 board members, that means there's 10 different versions of what that company does. And you're like, it's a wonder you guys get anything done. But, uh, it's just, just by human nature, things just accidentally get done in some of these places. But, you know, what are some of the things you're seeing? I'm sure a lot of your clients are asking about, you know, okay, how do we leverage AI? It's like, well, what do you want to leverage it for? And that's a question that sometimes dumbfounds people. So I'd love to hear your experiences. So with the AI play.

Speaker A: It's funny that we had a client recently asked that exact question. You know, their boss had challenged them to say, hey, how could, how can we be using AI more? And, you know, she kind of came to us and said, hey, um, I'm just, you know, kind of getting feedback like, you know, what are ways that you guys use AI? We're looking for ways to use AI. And you know, at first we're like, okay, you know, we'll send you what we have. And we kind of went back and kind of said, you know, that's not, that's not going to be very helpful to her. So we went back to her and set up some time and said, well, you know, it'd be better to kind of like, look at overall. Like, what are you trying to do? Like, what, what is your current process? What are the objectives that you have for what you're trying to accomplish on a day to day basis? Let's look first to kind of improve that process. Is that, is that the optimal way to, to meet your objectives and meet your goals and to, you know, to build the kind of campaigns you're looking to build or, you know, whatever those things happen to be. And then once we do that and kind of map that out and say, okay, this is the optimal way to do it, then it becomes, okay, can AI help to accomplish that? All right, so we come at it very much from the, the standpoint of, if you're familiar with Jim Collins and his work, you know, built to last good to great, and rank great by choice. One of the great things he says that in his research that good companies do is they use technology as an accelerator, right? So technology isn't the goal. It's, it's the means. It's a tool. It's the means by which to, uh, accomplish the goal. So that's how, that's very much how we look at it. That's how we tell our clients to look at it as well. It's, what are you trying to accomplish and can AI help accelerate that? But in order to accelerate it, you need a direction, right? To give it. It's, you know, it's one thing to say you can drive your car fast, but if you don't know where you're going, you're. You're quickly going in the wrong direction, right? So you first got to map course, you've got to know where you're going, what's your destination, how do you plan to get there, why are you going there? And then you can say, okay, now let's rev up the engine and let's get there as quickly as possible. And that's ultimately what AI is about. It's about accelerating that ability and not kind of just like, you know, shooting and kind of seeing what you happen to hit or don't happen to hit. And I think that's a challenge because just like anything new, I think the same thing happened with the Internet. And as you mentioned, our generation has seen the birth of all these things. When the Internet first started, it was all over the place. You know, everyone and their mother had a website. I remember, you know, the late 90s with the dot com bust. I remember one super bowl where every single commercial was some new dot com, it was dot com this and dot com that. And I mean, I don't know if even one of those is still in existence today. I don't know if they were in existence two years after that commercial came out. Right. It was just every, everything was just happening because like the Internet was the thing. So we need to do this, this Internet thing as opposed to saying, what are we trying to accomplish in our organization and business? And then how can the Internet be a tool to help accomplish that? So AI is exactly the same principle. Arguably, it's probably happening faster with AI, just as we've seen things speed up. Uh, you know, I remember as a kid seeing an eight track tape and then, you know, going to a cassette and cassettes seemed like they were around for a long time. And then CD seen, they were around for a long time. And now CDs are ancient. You know, my kid doesn't know what a CD is, never seen one. Right. It just picks up so much faster. So AI and its adoption and its capabilities are growing at a astronomical rate compared to what we've seen otherwise. Right. So that the curve is differently, really growing very steeply. So it's just a matter where more pressure is on us to say, how can this help us? And it's forcing a lot of organizations to have to take a step back and say, okay, what are we trying to do? What are we trying to accomplish? Um, what data do we have? What format is that data in? Because all those things have to be answered. In order for AI to be able to accomplish anything of real value or use for an organization, you've got to have structured data, it's got to have a structured goal, it's got to have a framework, it's got to have context. All those things are critically important because, uh, when all is said and done Right. It's AI is like. It's like having another team member, another employee, and if you're going to hire someone, like you're trained, like, what is the job? Like, what's the job description? Like, what are they here to do? Whose team are they on? Who are they supporting? What are their goals? What are they being measured against? Right. That you're doing all those things with a team member, fundamentally speaking, those are the things you're doing with AI. Right. It's just another team member. And they need that same structure and framework as a person would need. It's just. They're just able to do it faster than any one person could possibly ever do it.

Speaker C: Yeah, I see. In a lot of cases, it's a governance issue from the board and the senior leadership all the way down.

Speaker A: And

Speaker C: it's forcing organizations who have postponed or procrastinated or delayed or just not necessarily to their fault because maybe they were a startup and they had rapid growth over a short period of time. And now it's like, okay, well, we've built the house, but no, okay, let's put in the foundation. And not the best order it can be done. It's going to be a little painful, but you can do it. And what AI is doing is it's forcing those conversations to say, okay, you have different departments that are deploying it, but again, are those LLMs or those agents, whatever you want to call them, are they working together? Or they just kind of basically hiring an internal employee for each of those departments, an AI employee. And much like your human employees, they're not interacting where there's a lost opportunity there. Because as we know, you know, uh, if, if the data is good and clean and folks always put this on the side, don't put secret stuff online. You wouldn't, would. Would you open up your website and put on the front page, okay, here's, here's our secret formula for what we do. You know, here's the secret panda sauce. No, you're not going to do that. But you know what? People go, I'll just upload it to Copilot. And they see. No, you're like, oh, you know, now it's, you know who. It's going to go everywhere. And you're like, well, crap. And. And then you're like, oh, no. And you know, that's happened. You know, thankfully, you know, they've A lot of organizations are keeping quiet about it, but I'm sure it's happened and it's, it's unfortunate. But anymore, I Mean, with AI, uh, you can reverse engineer pretty much what anybody does and say, okay, you know what, What's Boston Consulting doing about this? And there it is. And you got the. It's all about implementation. It's all about experience. It's all about your team, your dynamics, all the different things together. Working together, they can make the difference between what a big consulting house is doing versus what a smaller consulting firm could do for businesses and whatnot. But I love your thoughts on that, because, again, it forces organizations to say, all right, yeah, we want to deploy this, but what do we want out of it? Just like when you hire an employee, what do you want this employee to do? What. What's the outcomes you would love to see? What would be. You're doing your annual review of this, um, employee. What would be. We are so happy we hired you. What is that? And that's a question. A lot of times they don't even ask themselves that. And I think, okay, you're just hiring to hire. This is just an exercise. And it's, you know, the stat that I share all the time. You know, that 52% of the Fortune 500 companies from the year 2000 no longer exist. And over half of the companies that launched in 2020 online businesses are also gone. And it's. And I worked for an Internet market research firm at the turn of the century. And our CEO, we're at a retreat, and we had a company that rhymes with pets.com, which. Pets. I think Petsmart owns that domain.

Speaker B: Now.

Speaker C: They don't exist, but the domain, I think Petsmart owns them, if I'm not mistaken. Anywho, pets.com decided that they didn't want to use our services anymore. And I don't. I don't remember if this was after or before the super bowl ad. I don't think we were involved in super bowl because I'm guessing they probably left before that. Long story short, we're at this retreat, and they were a big client of ours because we were a startup ourselves, and they're still going strong and, you know, thousands of employees globally, so they're doing pretty decent for market research. Long story short, he gets up on stage and of course, you know, there's like, I think three. We were at 300 employees at that point, and everybody's kind of like, okay, what's going to happen here? You know, we just lost a big company. And he gets up on stage and he goes, okay, I need to address the elephant in the room. Okay, I know you guys are all concerned. I don't give a shit about pets dot com. So 300 people bust out in laughter. He's like, we're fine, don't worry about it. And we were and continued to grow and all that kind of stuff. And of course we know that pets.com well, many of those dot coms went back and gone because they dumped millions of dollars on TV ads instead of in their actual product of making sure that their stores had inventory. It worked. And when people wanted to buy a new sweater for their dog or some, you know, cat food or whatever, they were buying that. That experience was good. It worked. They got it shipped in a recent. A recently common time frame were good, but they didn't. And well, we know what happened to them and many of them. And it's a lesson for all of us to learn. We're seeing it. You and I both. I know you're looking at it going, okay, all these AI players that are out there, all these big companies that are throwing money around all over the place. I know, because history may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes. I see a lot of these players that are like, oh, this is a multi billion dollar entity. Okay, well they're going to gone. It's a poof. Because they just, it's not sustainable the way that they've built it. They just, you got quick and grow and it's. I hate seeing it because I want, I want, I want companies to see succeed because we all benefit from the creation that they make, but they keep stubbing their toes. So I think go back to what we've talked about for the clients of yours that are, you know, we want to implement AI that exercise of, okay, let's actually take a step back and go for what? Uh, instead of just saying I want AI, it's like, all right, we'll spend 20 bucks and give it to OpenAI or Claude or whomever. And there you go, you've got AI in your organization. Congratulations. Hope that works out for you. But, uh, it's. And we all know it's not because they're just like, yeah, it's like buying, okay, I'm going to buy this engine for this Lamborghini, but I got a Ford Escape. You could probably get it in there, but I don't think the chassis is going to be strong enough to hold all that horsepower. Could be wrong, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say, no, you're going to have a problem really quick. So before we close, uh, for companies that are interested in Working with you. What are some things that they can do beforehand that can help them be better prepared for the work you do? Because I know you have onboarding and you go through and there's a deep dive and all of that good stuff. But what are some things that companies can, can do that'll benefit them when they want to start, you know, leveraging some external excellence and experience to get them to the next level? I'm not saying they're not doing a great job, but it's great to hire organizations like yours because you can see things that they may not see, and it can help them go from, pardon the pun here, from good to great. Quoting Mr. Collins, but love to hear, love to hear your thoughts on that.

Speaker A: Yeah, you know, we, we think of ourselves a, uh, lot like doctors, right? So we even talk about our, our sales process is very diagnostic. And you think about it like you go to a doctor because you're having a particular problem, like you're having a pain. You know, you have this weird pain in your side or, you know, your stomach's bothering you or whatever the case is. So just kind of identifying, like, what, what's the pain that you're feeling as an organization? Like, there's, there's areas where, you know, you may feel great just like you would physically, but there's like, but this is bothering my, my eyesight's bothering me. You know, I'm not hearing well. What, you know, whatever the case is, right? So you got this thing that's just kind. Getting pain. It's getting in the way. You know, maybe you're not able to read what you want to read, or you're not able to eat what you want to eat or whatever the case is. So, you know, what, what's the pain? What is it preventing you from doing? And I think just identifying those two simple things is a great way to start, you know, a conversation with, with any external partner. Because what you're immediately going to do is, you know, you go to the doctor and he says, you know, hey, doc, I have this pain. You know, it's in my stomach. You know, I can't eat certain things and so forth. And Doc's like, yeah, hey, like, I'm, I'm a neurologist. Like, you really need a, a GI doctor. Like, that's, that's not my thing. So one of the first things we always try to figure out when we're going to work with a client is, are we even a good fit for this? So what, you know, what's your Pain and, uh, what is it preventing you from doing? And just understanding those two things can help us a great deal in terms of beginning to take the first steps of diagnosing that problem and then saying, okay, let's find the root cause and let's begin to treat it. So that, that's really the thing that, that matters most. Identifying those pains, those gaps that exist in the organization and what they're impeding the organization from moving, doing, moving forward in doing.

Speaker C: If, uh, you do that, uh, that helps. It's like they help me help you kind of mentality. It's like you're coming to us a little bit more prepared. That. And we're still going to do the diagnostic, but at least we, we kind of know what room to go into. It's otherwise like, you know, we know about, uh, projects and scope creeper. Yeah, we want you to come and help in this. And then you open up the door and you look at some other things. You're like, that's not your problem, folks. That's right over there. But you go, uh, okay, we're here for this, right? Let's see. Well, we'll introduce that softly, but it's an ongoing challenge, but also ongoing opportunities to make organizations better because that benefits society and that's what we're all here for. So love this conversation. Where can people find out more about you and the amazing, uh, work you're doing?

Speaker A: Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn or Instagram. M. Shamir Duverseau. I pretty much guarantee I will be the only Shamir Duversault you will find on either LinkedIn or Instagram. So very easy to find. Or you can always learn about us as an organization@smartpanda labs.com I'll definitely have that show.

Speaker C: So, Shamir, thank you again for being you and loved the conversation today. Thanks so much for being on the show.

Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me, Michael.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Breakfast Leadership Show.

Speaker D: If today's conversation resonated with you, we invite you to explore the Breakfast Leadership Operating system.

Speaker B: A structured approach that increases decision velocity, clarifies accountability, and stabilizes execution across leadership teams. Leaders can learn more and schedule an

Speaker D: executive diagnostic by visiting breakfastleadership.com until next time, keep leading. With clarity.

Speaker A: I cashed out my entire 401 thinking someone stole my identity.

Speaker B: A fake email cost me my dream home. After I sent my personal information to a scammer, my AI agent wired thousands

Speaker C: to an account I'd never seen.

Speaker D: When billions of people feel unsafe, that's no longer a security problem, it's an economic one. At Gen, we're building the trust layer for a more fearless planet with products and technologies from our global brands Norton, Lifelock, Avast and Money Lion. See it in action@genndigital.com.