The Last Class of Demand Gen U… for Now

Speaker A: So we are not in a office setup right now. This is the first time that we were doing this in a podcast studio, and it is a little bit of a special episode on Demand Genu today. So without sharing too much more Demand Genu is officially in session. Let's do it. All right. So, Jason, I kind of feel like Joe Rogan right now with a, uh, little bit more hair, but this is wild. You ever think we would do this?

Speaker B: No. This is weird. And I'm feeling very much out of sorts. I'm like, what do I do with my hands? What do I do? Uh, yeah, we're in the actual podcast studio live. Well, not. I guess we're not live on the podcast. We're live together for the first time, actually. And we're episode number 64. 64. And I guess we've done every single one on Riverside, then that means. And we've actually tried to do this

Speaker A: before and failed every time.

Speaker B: Yeah. So like, we always had. Every time we'd get together, we're like, oh, let's record the podcast in person. And had great ideas. One time I even brought my microphone. Remember that? I brought the cheap version. And I broke it.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Right. We were like, hey, we're going to record the podcast together. Let's set it up. And I was trying to get the thing. I think the. I'm pointing at it now. The Broke it.

Speaker A: When you're trying to screw it on.

Speaker B: Yeah, the micro microphone holder. I'm trying to screw it on and it just busts. And I was like, no other way to hold the microphone up. So I didn't want to do the podcast holding it to my mouth. But now we're being told by the podcast professionals here that we must keep the microphone within 3 to 4 inches of our mouths. And it is a little uncomfortable, but I'm sure within two minutes, I'll probably figure it out here.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, we've got a little bit of a special episode, and I think before we get into the fun part. Sounds like you have some news to share.

Speaker B: Yeah, I do. Um. How do I even say this? I'm leaving metadata. I'm leaving metadata at the end of May. So by the time this episode is out, it'll probably have been my last day.

Speaker A: Actually going to come out the day before your last day.

Speaker B: Oh, wow.

Speaker A: That happened by accident, too. Mostly my poor planning.

Speaker B: But m. It worked out. It's time for me to focus on some things in my personal life. I'm going to take some time off. I'm going to take probably six weeks off.

Speaker A: You're going to look like the Hulk by the time that you're done with that.

Speaker B: Oh, I mean, yeah.

Speaker A: So he's in the best shape of his life right now for the Rainier hike.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I'm taking some time off because I've got my Rainier hike in August, and. Yeah, just spending some more time with the family. Ramping down a little bit these last four years at, uh, a startup. It's like every year, we cram five years of work into each year. So I've been here four years, but it's really 20 in startup years. And it's been a sprint. You know, we've sprinted this entire time. And it was just. And it was a nice, you know, Gil and I, our CEO, it was a mutual decision. It was really. We both, I think, handled it really well. This is exactly the kind of exit I always wanted to have and thought was possible. You don't have to be surprised and fired, and you don't have to find another job immediately and then surprise. I don't, you know, I don't have to surprise Gil with, hey, by the way, you got two more weeks of me and see ya. Um, you know. And we did it. I flew to Miami to meet up with Gil. We spent a day and a half together just talking through, had some reminiscing about m. Old times.

Speaker A: He made you stay out late?

Speaker B: No, actually, that's, uh, surprising. Yeah, yeah, it was actually a nice, relaxing. We'd have dinner together and, yeah, it was just a nice, relaxing Miami visit. The weather was nice. We went for some walks. So, no, it was really nice. And it was something that Gil and I had actually talked about for years. Like, hey, we don't think it has to be done the traditional way. And he actually made a commitment to me at the time. He's like, I won't hire anybody over you without talking to you first. I won't change your job without at least talking to you first. And I really believed him, and I'm glad I did, because it removed some of the anxiety from me about wanting to do it this way. But, yeah, it's been an amazing ride, and I've learned so much in these last four years about myself, about what I'm capable of.

Speaker A: And this is your first real startup experience?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, first, yeah. 100% first true startup experience, and my first time running the entire marketing department. Most of y' all know I came up through operation side and was more technical, and so, yeah, so this was My first one. I loved it. I love it. I'll probably do another startup again while I still some energy left. But I think you know what I'm likely going to be doing. Like I mentioned, take some time off, do some camping, heading to Montana for a bit, seeing some concerts, training like a crazy person for my Rainier climb. And then I uh, will likely take the solo advisor consulting route and just bring to the table all the stuff I've learned in the last several years and all the stuff that we've done differently. Yeah. So I'm excited on one hand and then also very sad of course. And we'll have to go through grieving processes on the other hand, I'm sure. And I'm already starting like today actually today in our company, all hands. I'm making the announcement to the whole company today. I think most people probably know, but. Or maybe not. Maybe a third of people know. So that'll be hard. Making it public on Monday, the 22nd on LinkedIn and then we'll go from there.

Speaker A: Wait, so this Monday? I didn't even know that.

Speaker B: Yeah, this coming Monday I'll be able

Speaker A: to doing it live, Bill Ryan style.

Speaker B: I'll be able to post about it and yeah, that's pretty much it.

Speaker A: I'm gonna ask you a few unplanned four questions. Where does this stack up on all of the different places that you've worked at just in terms of experience? People like all in.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, second, I'm gonna push you for sure.

Speaker B: First. Uh, yeah, and you can push me because we're physically right here. So the. There were a couple reasons for it. First, I always knew there was one other job I had where I felt like I was truly part of a high performing team. And it was a small B2B agency I worked at in Portland and we were probably 40 people and it was just like everybody had each other's backs and it was. We're just working together really well, being very direct and honest with each other and transparent and it felt good. And I just. And I worked in other big companies wondering am I ever going to have that experience again. And this one was that plus some. So yeah, no, it's number one for sure.

Speaker A: There is a wrong answer.

Speaker B: But you know, and I've had a lot of. Yeah, I've had a lot of jobs and I've changed jobs a lot. Probably, I don't know, 12 jobs, 12 marketing jobs, something like that. I don't know, I'm just making that up. It sounds about right. And usually I'm like a year and a half, two years maybe. You know, I've had a couple three year stints, but to do four years at a startup, I think like we mentioned, it's like 20 years at a

Speaker A: older company in general, for anyone, I would say four years at a startup is a huge accomplishment. But given the amount of work that you did here, how demanding it was, how much change we all had to go through, and you had to go through, it's even more impressive.

Speaker B: So, yeah, I mean, oh, man, so much change, so much growth, both professionally and personally.

Speaker A: And hair.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, the hair. When I started this job, my hair was less gray and much shorter.

Speaker A: I was not talking about the gray color. I was more so talking about length.

Speaker B: But now my hair, it, uh, needs to get cut. Otherwise I'm going to be considered a vagrant. And people wonder, don't let that guy in the building. So, yeah, so that's the news, I think, I hope, uh, in. You know, because this podcast is really a metadata podcast. I'm sure you're probably going to figure out how to.

Speaker A: We're going to put it on pause for a bit and then reboot it in some way. What that reboot is going to look like TBD right now, but I think to move forward with it, as we've been recording for 64 episodes now in the same format, it would feel weird to do it the same way. And it. I don't think it would be as good to be totally honest. So, yeah, we'll figure out how to reboot it, but it's been something that. We'll get into this here in a sec. I never thought we would get to 64 episodes. I thought you were going to kill this after five, truthfully. Well, yeah, and hold on, let's segue into this. The rest of the episode is not going to be all somber and sad, even though I am bummed, um, that Jason's leaving. We're going to have some fun with this. We're going to talk about fun stories, horror stories, best memories, most memorable moments, you name it. So we've got a couple different things, actually. Pretty long outline here of what we can talk about, but maybe we start with the podcast part first and then get into everything else.

Speaker B: Yeah, sounds good.

Speaker A: Think back to. I think it was around August of 2021. We. A lot of my ideas at Metadata, I really just had to annoy you. And when you overthrew repetition and persistence

Speaker B: and you learned, you learned how to. How do I influence Jason?

Speaker A: And I think this was one of the first ones because at that time, you didn't really want to waste. We only had three people. Like, you didn't want to waste resources on a podcast. And I had to convince you, hey, I think this is a good idea. Not just for the podcast itself, but because it can be used in so many different ways. And it finally took you a while to get around to it. And then once we hit our stride, we were jacked to record these episodes and couldn't imagine not doing it.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I don't really remember why I didn't want to do it. You know what I mean? I just, I was like, probably because we did have so much going on, and maybe there's probably a little bit of me wondering if it would be good, you know, like, will I be. And it was mostly about myself. I was like, will people want to hear from us once a week? That sounds like a lot of, like, how will we not repeat stuff? How will we have, uh, that many topics to talk about? And. But then once we started doing it in the first, when we recorded how many. We bank, like three or four episodes before we even published anything more than that.

Speaker A: Yeah, we probably had like maybe five or six. Because there's some crazy stat of how many podcasts die after. I think it's seven episodes. I don't even want to make up the stat, but it's crazy high.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: And we knew that we, if we were going to do it, like, we've always preferred to whole ass things. We wanted to whole ass the podcast and not have it die after seven episodes.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And so we. So when you're banking these episodes, you have no feedback, really. It's just like the people around you, like, no, it's great. Yeah. Oh, you guys sound awesome. Have you re.

Speaker A: Listened to any of them?

Speaker B: No.

Speaker A: They're bad.

Speaker B: Are they really?

Speaker A: It's amazing.

Speaker B: When did they get good?

Speaker A: How much better we've gotten at recording the podcast. Podcast.

Speaker B: That's funny. I should do that now, actually. It's comically bad. Oh, wow. Interesting.

Speaker A: Probably took us somewhere in the range of maybe 15.

Speaker B: Really? Oh, wow. Okay.

Speaker A: Before we really hit our stride. And I think that's when we started to notice the LinkedIn DMS it coming up on Gong Recordings. More people were listening. It was a breath of fresh air. It wasn't just straight up marketing nerdiness and seriousness all the time.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, it took us a bit to hit our stride.

Speaker B: Interesting. Yeah. I remember when we had some episodes out and we started to and we were promoting them pretty heavily, and we'd start to get some of that feedback and that positive feedback, and that's really what started to get me really going. I know. And just, like, motivated and lots of even early days, we'd get good feedback, even though they were bad episodes, it sounds like. But I think the structure.

Speaker A: Way too hard on myself. Yeah.

Speaker B: And that's probably how we think about it, but I think people really like the structure of it. And we were specifically saying, hey, we want to make sure every episode there's some kind of a, uh, lesson, or, how do you do this thing? And we would prepare a lot more, I think, early on. And then once we hit our stride, it was like, okay, we can kind of wing it a little bit. And we still, you know, got really good. And we did a lot of different types of stuff. We did episodes about, um. That one episode about my relationship with Gil specifically, I think, was pretty interesting. And you had a lot of guests on that had very, like, tactical and tangible things for people to do and. Yeah. And then the best. Best compliment I ever got was from my wife.

Speaker A: I love this one.

Speaker B: And my wife is not a B2B marketer. She's a fitness instructor. And. And she was like, hey, you know, she'd listened to our podcast once just to, you know, oh, it's fun to hear my husband on a podcast.

Speaker A: Well, she's your wife. She has to listen.

Speaker B: Yeah. And she's like, oh, you sound good. And then she said, a lot of times, I'll. Cause she listens to a lot of podcasts. She's like, a lot of times, I'll get done with one of my podcasts and your guys as well. Just play next. And she's like, it takes five or ten minutes for me to realize, like, oh, wait, this is a B2B marketing podcast. So you guys just sound natural and you're funny and you're transparent. And so that was like. That was the best compliment. I was like, oh, she, you know, she listens all these true crime and entertainment podcasts, and we fit right in there. Somewhere in the middle of those amazing.

Speaker A: Well, I think that's probably enough about the. The DGU origination story. Let's have some fun with this. So we've got a bunch of different things that we can cover. I think the first one is you hiring me. There's, yeah, quite a few funny chapters in that story.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I was trying to remember. You were on our cab. Right.

Speaker A: So let me start the story.

Speaker B: Thanks. Yeah. Fill in the blanks.

Speaker A: Yeah. If you've listened to dgu, that's how a lot of these stories go. So I was at Bass Radius, my previous company, and I had bought Metadata and I was using it for about three or four months and metadata had asked me to come on the customer Advisory Board. So this is probably in the March, April 2020 time frame. I think something big happened in the outside, uh, world right around then. And you at the end of the CAB meeting had said, we're going to be opening up a job wreck for the second marketer. If you have any referrals, please let me know.

Speaker B: Nice.

Speaker A: Well, I can't remember if it was slack or if it was email, but within five minutes of that cab meeting ending, I had reached out to you

Speaker B: and I said, I'd like to put

Speaker A: my name in the hat.

Speaker B: Yeah, I do remember that. Yeah, thanks for filling in the blank. That sounds right. I think you remembered it correctly. Nice.

Speaker A: And then this is where it gets funnier.

Speaker B: God. So I had been working with Karina Edwards, who many of you might know, she had helped us when I was a consultant here and she was giving us like part time work, helping me out. And I thought I was going to hire her. I knew her, you know, nothing against you, but yeah, she's great. And I've worked together with her actually at Lytics and then here. And so we had a lot of history together. And then. And so I had gotten really far with her and I think even made her the offer. And I was like, sure she was going to take it. And so I must have shared it with somebody internally. And so Mark and, uh, I'm going to get this story. Probably not right, but the gist is right. Mark had a meeting with this person and this person unfortunately told Mark, oh, uh, I'm sorry that you didn't get the job. And I had not had a chat with Mark yet about it at all, so he thought everything was still in the running. And now he's hearing from some side person at the company who's not even in HR or anything because we didn't have hr.

Speaker A: Well, this is all true. But you didn't know about this at the time. I was also interviewing with another company who had given me an offer and I told that person no. And he asked why? And I said, I think I'm gonna get this gig at another company. He goes, you don't even have the offer yet and you're telling me no? And I said, yes, I am.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So then this happened.

Speaker B: Oh yeah. And I had no idea about any of this. So I can't remember if you. I think the person told me. Yeah, I think the person told me or. And I was just like, what? What? Don't ever assume and then tell somebody like a candidate that you don't have the job. You're not even the hiring manager. And I was so upset. And like, I just remember the anxious, like this gut feeling. I was like, he's going to think we are absolutely bonkers, and he's going to. I still do. Yeah. Yeah. And you did. And you were so willing. And there's no way. I was like, this is not the way to start a good, like a good working relationship. But thank God Mark was. And I just had to. I think I had to call you. I was like, hey, here's the real thing, you know, And I don't remember how much of the actual story I told. I don't know if I was fully transparent or.

Speaker A: I think you were transparent enough. I didn't know all of the details, but I knew I had the general gist.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I think it made sense from my perspective. It was like, hey, you can't really argue I've been working with this person for a long time, blah, blah, blah. But thank God all that happened, you know what I mean? Because then we wouldn't be here on the 64th episode of the podcast and we wouldn't have had all those great times. And you were absolutely the right person for this job. And we'll talk about this a little bit later, but, like, how well we work together, you know, has been, um. You know, I've. I call Mark my marketing partner. And I have from the beginning, not an employee of mine, because, yeah, I've just like the successes we've had here. Everything is a combined effort in my mind, and so I share all of

Speaker A: it with you now. It's the most fun I've ever had working through the fun times, the lots of crazy times. And we'll get into more of those here. So thank you for taking a chance on me. It's been awesome now.

Speaker B: It's been great and great watching you grow and, uh, learning from you, too. At the same time now, it's just been. Yeah, it's been the greatest work experience I've ever had.

Speaker A: So let's get into some of the funnier ones. First, if you remember, this would have been. And we're not going to go chronologically here, but this would have been, I think, somewhere in the September 2020 ish range. There was that. I, uh, don't know if it was TikTok then or what, but it was video. That dog face vibing dude with the skateboard and the cranberry juice that you hadn't seen yet. And you had probably that week had offered yourself up to, you know, hey, if there's anything that I can do to put myself out there on LinkedIn that you think is going to land, let me know, I'll do it.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: And in my head I was thinking, wow, it's a dangerous offer to make, but I might take you up on that. And sure enough, that video blew up. And within 24 hours, I had a. What I thought was a funny but mostly dumb idea to have you recreate that video with a marketing angle on it and then publish it on LinkedIn. So, yep, you. I think at first you're like, should I, like, do this? Should I not do.

Speaker B: Yeah, I was questioning it a little bit because I. When I think you showed me the video and I was like, what? Like, what are we going to do? And your idea was sound. It was like the premise of the video is just like, hey, I'm just chilling. You know what I mean? I'm like, chilling. M. Riding around, things are going well. Cool. And you're like, well, what if we, like, showed metadata and just how easy, you know what I mean? And it's so easy and you're taking care of stuff that you're just, like, chilling, you know, and you're just riding through. And I was like, oh. And I remember I had said I think I had like a. Probably like a recent LinkedIn post success. And that's where I was like. And, uh, it was maybe it was a little out there and transparent. I was like, yes, let's do more of these now. It worked. So I was like, yeah, just put me. Just give me the teleprompter, put me in front of it, and I'll just read whatever's on it. And so, yeah, so I was like, okay. And then this is the time when we weren't so crazy busy because it was just the two of us. And so we had some. I mean, we were crazy busy, but like.

Speaker A: And no notoriety around metadata as a company.

Speaker B: No. But, like, our workload felt manageable back then. Yeah. Even though we were always busy, it was like, I don't know, it just felt more manageable and. Cause otherwise if it would have been like, timed like this, like, I don't even know what I'm doing. How am I going to do this? Where's the time? So, yeah, I remember the whole thing. It was fun. I had my son help me.

Speaker A: Going around your neighborhood.

Speaker B: Yeah, I was like, okay, Brendan, sit in the back of the truck and we're going to get some B roll here. Or we're just driving around the neighborhood. And so he's just sitting there with the phone and I drive around the neighborhood and then I record myself just in front of the, like, clicking around and just, like, beboping to the music. And then I think you must have put it all together or had somebody put it all together, But I honestly

Speaker A: don't know who put it together. Maybe my friend Steve.

Speaker B: Maybe it was Steve. Maybe. I don't know if we were using Aaron at the time, who was doing Gil's podcast stuff. Uh, that might have been him, but. But yeah, it. And then it just blew up. And I. I don't know how many views it has now because they took it down and I can never see it again, but it was like, really, really high. Like, it would have just way overshadowed any other post that I've ever done. But then within two days, I think LinkedIn had to take it down because somebody came at LinkedIn because it was the Fleetwood Mac song. I don't remember which one. But, uh. And you can't use it without, you know, paying the royalties and all that. And so somebody threatened LinkedIn and so they had to take it down. I got a threatened from LinkedIn, like, come on LinkedIn, like, this is a closed environment. Nobody cares.

Speaker A: The original bad boy of marketing moment. I think that's where it started and went downhill ever since. But let's stay on the LinkedIn topic for a little bit, because I think when we were first trying to get ourselves out there and market metadata more, it's a free channel, and we wanted to just try and use that to our advantage to show people the faces behind the marketing team and the company in general. And that was a huge milestone because from that point forward, we knew that we were going to prioritize it and spend a lot of our time there.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I've always been on LinkedIn, but I'd never tried to post or. You know what I mean? I just never really had a perspective or a point of view, really, that I thought was worth sharing. But in taking this job, it was kind of like, hey, I'd seen all these startups and how they would build in public, and I was just like, oh, that just seemed. And you can't really do that when you're at a big company. And I was just seeing all these, like, I love that approach. I love how transparent it is. I get to see the inner workings, what's working, what's not. They're being, you know, open. And I wanted to do that. And I was seeing people, like, grow their personal brands. I was like, do I have something interesting enough to say where people would want to hear it? Am I entertaining? Am I? And so just thinking, like, let's focus on that, because it can serve two purposes. One for the company, especially if we're talking about the company and the struggles we're having, the successes we're having, but then it can also help build my personal brand. And I'd seen so many people build their personal brands and then have successes from that afterwards. And yeah, like, my last five jobs I got from my network, but it wasn't like a lot of different offers or opportunities, you know? And so, yeah, I was just thinking to myself, hey, I'm working at a startup and this may not work out. And in case this doesn't work out, let me build my personal brand so that my next. Finding my next job is that much easier. And I also wanted to stay in the startup area because I was having so much fun and just like, hey, let's do that well.

Speaker A: And I think when we first started to one, I had no idea what I was doing. I don't know if you did.

Speaker B: No, no, no, not at all.

Speaker A: I think I spent way more time trying to craft the perfect thought or the perfect post or whatever it is.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And all that shit tanked. And I think what we very quickly learned was, rather than just regurgitate the same things that people had already been saying on LinkedIn, it was be the same exact person that you are in real life and at work as you are on LinkedIn. And it was kind of a breath of fresh air for people. And I think that's when we really knew that, hey, let's keep putting time and effort towards this. And I mean, did you ever think that you were going to win a LinkedIn creator of the Year award?

Speaker B: No, definitely not. No, definitely not. Um, and we grew our audience intentionally on this channel too. And so we used tools basically to say, what types of people do I want to connect with? And we made this part of our marketing strategy, which was, hey, let's connect with other marketers because they'll accept our connection. We're marketers. Right. So we all want to learn from each other and then. But we're also selling to these marketers and so let's use this channel because it's free, it's better than email, and let's use it to build a relationship with people, show that we're transparent, we're open, which then cascades into how they feel about the brand metadata. And let's basically see how that can benefit the company. And then other people in the company started to say, hey, I want to get on that bandwagon too. But we use tools like Phantom Buster to just grow the network. And you can't really game it too much because you get a hundred invites a week from LinkedIn. So if you really want to grow, you've got to have good content and you've got to have people liking it and commenting on it, and then it broadens out and people follow you. But it was like probably one of the best things we did from a strategic standpoint. And then also how you took it and then had the. Basically made it into this company thing.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it got to a point where in the early days when we had a sales team, a super small sales team, what, four or five sellers at first, they would get on calls and some of the prospects that they were about to demo to asked where you were or where I was in the call. And I remember the first time I heard it, I was thinking to myself, like, why we're not in the sales team. We're not going to be on every single demo call. But it was hilarious because the people that we were marketing to then got to know us and like us and trust us, and it warmed them up for the sales team, which at the end of the day is kind of the end goal of marketing when you're working for a B2B company.

Speaker B: Yeah. We became the face of metadata really to our icp because we were the folks in the company that they could relate to the most. They're marketers, we're marketers. We're using our own tool. They want to see how we're using it. Yeah. So it was. I just. And then I think even you can make this work, even if you're not selling to other people in your same role too. So who knows what companies all work for, but if they're not selling to marketers, I think this strategy can still work if you've got good things to say and you're on the right channel with your target audience and you're doing it in the right way, like educational, entertaining, not too salesy. Using it to build a relationship. Yeah, I think it can work in all different types of industries.

Speaker A: So you mentioned faces of the brand. And I have a few funny faces that we're going to talk about here in a second. We did a webinar. Our first webinar, I think that we did at the end of 2020 and it. The title was more or less 2020 sucked. Your marketing in 2021 doesn't have to. And we got a little creative, if you remember, with some of the promos for the webinar. Do you remember which faces we used and what we did?

Speaker B: I remember two of them maybe. I think.

Speaker A: All right, well there.

Speaker B: Don't look at the computer cuz I can't see it.

Speaker A: I hope you can see that font. So basically what we did was I have gotten cameos for family, for friends, for fantasy football shame, you name it. And I had this idea of let's get some really funny faces to promote a webinar that they really had no idea what they were promoting. Who do you think some of those faces were? Because I have the list right here.

Speaker B: Oh, I remember. I mean, the one I remember the most was Hasselhoff.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Oh, uh, he was this great. And these are people that we knew would be like tongue in cheek. Whereas like B list, you know, used to be cool, but now people might get a kick out of them.

Speaker A: Mike o', Connor, who was our little marketing intern at the time, he was the barometer of who would land and who would not land. But we were looking firmly at B, C and D list. Celebrities off cameo.

Speaker B: That's right. I just remember one of the other ones. Lindsay.

Speaker A: Lindsay Lohan was there. Yes.

Speaker B: I can't believe we got Lindsay Lohan to do that one.

Speaker A: My favorite rip, Bob Saget.

Speaker B: Oh, that's right, Bob Saget. I forgot. How did I forget about Bob Saget?

Speaker A: Oh my God, the last one. Well, there was two more, but Lance Bass was one of them.

Speaker B: Okay. I would have never remembered him.

Speaker A: And then we had. I think it was like a real house.

Speaker B: It was. That's the other one I remember. I don't remember her name. Uh, um.

Speaker A: I don't know.

Speaker B: I can picture her. And I only can picture her because, yes, my wife watches Real Housewives and so it comes across my. Yeah, no, it was bad. And I just remember like how some people would say B2B and just people just weren't quite really. What am I reading here? But. And I don't remember Hasselhoff specifically, but I remember it being good.

Speaker A: Yeah, I. So I have all of them saved on my computer. We'll have to maybe Use them promo and cut it up. But that was not the only celebrity run in that we had with metadata marketing. So I did not get to experience this next one. You did. Why don't you take it from here?

Speaker B: Yeah. So this was shortly after we got our Series B. So we had some money in the bank, and our growth rate was ridiculous. We were going to 2 1/2 x the company, I think, that year. And so Gil was like, hey. And you had brought to me this idea of having a Persona, a person, a specific person rep the brand. And so, like, not having a bunch of different stock images across the site.

Speaker A: Kind of like, ah, as much as I hate her face, not in the mean way, but like, it's been so long. Get a new face, flow from Progressive or Mayhem from Allstate. It's all about that repetition and trying to humanize the brand. And no one had really done that in B2B marketing before.

Speaker B: Yeah, Nope. And at first I was kind of like, I don't know. But if you felt strong about something, I was like, yes, do it. And you're like, no, this is the right thing to do. And also our creative, you know, algorithm was like, yeah, this is the right thing to do. And so Gil's like, hey, I think we should look at celebrities to rep the brand and.

Speaker A: Hold on one second. So Gil, born in Israel, knowledge of most American pop culture is not, I'd say, at the average level, despite him watching every single episode of Always Sunny. But I tell you that because he didn't really know whether or not these people were. Moonshot asks.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, he's just like, I know a show, I know these people. But, uh, I don't have any context of, like, maybe where else they are or whatever. So. Yeah, and so feels like we'd always equated, we'd always use this Mad Men reference. You know, the show on Mad Men. I think it was an AMC show. Marketing in the 60s. And we'd always somehow use that. I don't remember exactly how, but he was like, hey, what if we do Don Draper from Mad Men and have him. It's like, you know, fits well with the brand. It's a marketer, like John Hamm. Jon Hamm.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: And he's everywhere. You see him in commercials, you see him in movies, like, big movies. He's leading movies.

Speaker A: Not in the B, C or D list category.

Speaker B: No, no, he's for sure A list. And so I'm like, okay, uh, I don't know anything about this, you know, and so I pushed back. I was like, I don't think this is the right thing. I just think he's going to be way too expensive. Should we really be spending our money on this? He's like, well, make him an offer with equity. And like, okay. It's probably something they've never done, you know, but okay.

Speaker A: And think of the brands that Jon Hamm is working with. If you say, hey, Mr. Hamm, I'm with a series B startup called Metadata, we'd love for you to do this.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: What kind of response do you think you would get?

Speaker B: Oh, man. So I dug in. I was like, okay, I'm going to do this then. And I found an online database that you can pay for that gives you the booking agent info for basically every celebrity. And got a hold of Jon Hamm's agent. He responded to me. I had this nice email like, hey, this is what I'm thinking about doing. We're at 200 and some odd million dollar startup. I got a good offer for you, even though I had no idea what it would be. And so he got on the phone with me, and I just remember feeling so, like, what am I doing here? Like, what am I even saying? Like, this is this guy just laughing. And these guys don't do zoom calls. And I am, um. I very much like to read body language so I can adjust what I'm saying. So I have no idea. This guy's in his car.

Speaker A: Sounds like an analyst call.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. This guy's in his car. He's just. He could be. No, he could not be any less interested. But he was like, kind of throwing me a bone. He's like, hey, you know, John just did a, uh, commercial for Apple. Heard of them, and they paid him about $2 million. So just. And that's one commercial. And you guys are saying you want to use them for a year and have them come back and do multiple shoots and clips. I'm like, yeah, so let me take that back and thanks for the reference. And I put together an offer that was like a little bit of cash and a lot of equity and never heard from them again. I just think never heard from him again. And so then we went through. Okay, that might not, but what about LeBron James? Because I think he's pretty philanthropic and he's kind of doing some cool things, and I'm just like, I can't, I can't. That's. That one's way too big. And so.

Speaker A: Which is funny for you to say that because you're not A sports guy in general. So for you to be like, hey, this is too big.

Speaker B: Shows how I already knew. Yeah.

Speaker A: Shows how big LeBron James is.

Speaker B: I knew, and I couldn't. I was also having a hard time equating him to our brand. You know what I mean? I was like, how do you make that work? You know what?

Speaker A: It killed me.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I wouldn't have known how to. Hey, put your la. You know, I don't know who he was playing for back then.

Speaker A: He's a suitcase.

Speaker B: Yeah, put that on, and we'll figure out how to. So then it was like, okay, how about. And I don't remember this woman's real name, but the Don Draper secretary for Mad Men, but she'd blown up, too. She's popular now. She's in movies, and she's doing all this stuff. And. But she was actually. I got a hold of her agent, and they were actually interested, and we were kind of digging in, and we were going kind of deep. And they were. Yeah. And they were like, hey, we can. We just need to evaluate your equity, and we need to dig into the company and see all the financials so we can make sure there's a good deal. So they were actually kind of leaning in. And then I don't remember. I don't remember why we stopped. I don't remember why it was like, okay, we don't need to chase that down anymore.

Speaker A: Probably because we had other marketing priorities,

Speaker B: and I think we were spending, like, a lot of our money. Maybe we were like, okay, maybe not. Maybe we don't want to put our cash up against something like this. But we ended up doing your original idea, which I think works really, really well. And we get comments on that quite a bit, too. People are like, oh, uh, I like what you did there.

Speaker A: So perfect, unplanned segue into. One of the next things that we can talk about is how that came about and really how that partnership formed. So this was in the early days of. I think it was called the Dave Geart Marketing Group, his community, before he shortened it to dgmg. Uh, and there may have even been a name before that. I think there was, but I forget what it was. Was. And this would have been a few months into me starting. And I posted in that group, said, hey, we're on a shoestring budget right now. This is what we need. We were doing the dog and pony show off of Upwork and Fiverr, and the quality was all over the place and all this stuff. And Dave Geart commented back within probably 30 minutes. And we were lucky enough to work with Dave in an advising role at Metadata. So at that time he had absolutely no idea who I was. So the fact that one, he was willing to respond to a comment and then to give up somebody that he had worked with for a decent chunk of time at Drift was Algert, Sula and Alger. And I think we had a call probably the next day or that maybe two days after and we worked with them for probably three or four months before that trial period was over. And once I realized that, hey, this is a good fit, I really enjoyed working with Algert. And really at the time it was him and maybe one or two other people on his team maybe. And they've been a huge amazing partner for us ever since then. And we've been working up with, you know, almost it's coming up on two and a half years now at this point. So yeah, they've been amazing to work with. It's probably one of my favorite outside calls of the week because him and his wife Amena are absolutely hysterical on calls.

Speaker B: Yeah, they're great, they're great.

Speaker A: But no, I think that was a, a um, very memorable moment for me because everyone on our team has enjoyed working with them. Yeah, push us. They've got crazy ass ideas that make me feel uncomfortable and make you feel uncomfortable and I think made Gil feel uncomfortable at first. And it took Gil a while to get more comfortable with it. Is he totally comfortable with it now? I don't think so. Is he way more comfortable than I ever thought that he would be with it? 100%, yes. So yeah, it's been fun to, to work with them because we, outside of Alex Burden, who's our uh, secret little PowerPoint Google Slides designer that she hates when I call her out for that, we don't have any design resources in house. So they've done everything for us from a design perspective, everything from a web development perspective. And yeah, it's almost like they're an extension of the team. That's been great.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it's a two way partnership. We treat them like full employees and just like we treat them really well. Just yeah, just like if they were people that were on our team and I think they respect that, they like those, that kind of a working relationship better than being an order taker. And we're partners, you know, I would call it more of a partnership than anything else. And yeah, they've always been great, especially I think because we were early on and we've Been working with them this entire time and we've never tried to replace them or wanted to. And that's a good example for me because in most of my career, I avoid agencies because I. It's usually the agency route is three or four months of amazing work and always there. And then, oh, we got three new clients and you guys are good. Okay. Over here. So I'm going to go focus on these clients. That has not been the experience with Alger. And so it's good for me to know, hey, there are actually agency partnerships you can have that can go years and still get the same or more value from it.

Speaker A: So speaking of the team, I think one of my favorite memories was the marketing team off site that we had. When was that? That would have been summer of last year. Right.

Speaker B: So many good stories that. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Speaker A: Why don't you take it from here and we'll see which stories you.

Speaker B: Man. Uh, so this was the peak of our hiring, of our team size, because even Nicole was there too.

Speaker A: Katie was there too. That was.

Speaker B: Yeah, Nicole and Katie. Right. Cuz Nicole was the last person I hired, I think.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah.

Speaker B: And she was there, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Well, Katie probably was.

Speaker B: No, right? No, Katie was.

Speaker A: Was she the last person?

Speaker B: Ah, no, I think it was Katie, then Nicole. I think, honestly, they were all there. We were all there.

Speaker A: That we had. Was there eight people?

Speaker B: I think. Was it eight at the time? Seven or eight?

Speaker A: I think it was more than that.

Speaker B: We had Preston and anyway. Yeah, we were anyway, at our heyday.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And Mark and I enjoy hiking national parks, skiing. We enjoy getting outside and, you know, doing stuff. And so like, hey, let's go to Rocky Mountain national park just outside of Denver in this place called Estes Park. Um, we had this amazing lodge that I found on air. Airbnb. Oh, man. I'll tell you. Tell a story because then I'm going to tell the story of breaking in.

Speaker A: Yeah, I figured that you're going to tell that one. But I think it was just the first time where, like when we were first trying to hire people, when we hired Justin and when we hired Maza and Brittany and Alex, we didn't really have any name recognition as a company. So you really had to convince people to come work for us and trust us, we think this is a team that you want to be a part of. So it was really difficult to hire good people. And that was the first time that we had all gotten together as a team. And obviously with budget cuts and layoffs and all the Bullshit that we've had to go through. The team did not get to stick together for as long as we would have liked it to. But it was one of my favorite all time metadata moments because one, everyone had a blast together working. It wasn't just all fun. We would do serious stuff during the day and then go out and get to know each other afterwards and have some fun and whatnot. But there were so many funny pictures that we took when we went on that, that Jeep ride. Yeah. Through Rocky Mountain National Park. We had taken so many pictures ourselves that our tour guide, which I doubt that he's going to be listening to this podcast, wanted to take a bunch of pictures on the way down and we were just like, no, we're good, man.

Speaker B: Take us to the bar.

Speaker A: I think he got pissed.

Speaker B: He was upset. He was not. Yeah. He was just making under the tone jokes against. Yeah. Ah.

Speaker A: Like we were going past these viewpoints that are objectively beautiful.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But we had already been in that Jeep bumping around for God knows how long that day. And we just wanted to.

Speaker B: Katie was sick from. She was car sick. Yeah.

Speaker A: And he got pissy with, uh, Us.

Speaker B: Yeah. No, he was like. And I was riding up, I think close to him for a while. He would just say, well, there goes another. There goes another attorney. You guys probably don't want. You just want your margaritas. I guess it's like, come on, man. Like, you don't do this for a living. We don't need an 18 hour tour of Rocky, uh, Mountain National Park. Yeah. So the Airbnb we had wasn't big enough for all of us. And so we had a couple people. Actually we had two Airbnbs. And then we had still a couple people that needed to stay at a hotel. So there was a motel down the street from the main house. We had Justin and Katie staying in that.

Speaker A: In a mountain town in Colorado. So whatever image you're thinking of, of what a motel in rural Colorado looks

Speaker B: like, it looked like that. Yeah. And the first issue was that when they went to check in later at night, everyone's hard coded key was just taped outside because the people. There was nobody there to check people in. Uh, actual physical key, not like a digital one. Physical key was taped to the outside of the motel for them to just get and go into their room.

Speaker A: Sounds safe.

Speaker B: It sounds. So, I mean, yeah, just. It couldn't be safer. So that was the first problem. I was like, okay, so somebody could have just taken my key and gone in my room, whatever. So I think it was the second night, maybe we were, uh, driving them

Speaker A: back, which I think was also the most fun night of all of them. Like, everybody was, you know, had their happy face on. Like, we had a couple drinks.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yep. And so we take him back, and Justin realizes he left his key in his room, and he locked. He was locked out. And we were like, um, oh, man, it's late at night. And it was like, okay, there's no. And there's nobody at the front desk because they tape keys to the outside and close down. And so I remember, I was like, huh. Uh, we're trying to get in. Oh, no, no, he had the key. It wouldn't work. That's right. He had the key. But for some reason, it just was literally not unlocking it. And in my infinite wisdom, I'm trying it, and I break the key off in the lock. And so now there's. There's no getting in now. So I'm like, okay, let me. And I have my hoodie on. I look like. Like I'm trying to break in. And so I'm like. I'm like, hey, this thing is on a slope, and I know there's a balcony, so maybe we can climb up to the balcony. And maybe. Maybe it's like, a lot of maybes. Maybe it's open. Maybe we can climb up the balcony. So I pull the truck down, and I back it up, and Maza jumps on the back of the truck and then hops up and climbs up on the balcony, and sure enough, it's open. But we weren't sure that was a room, because you kind of, like, you're trying to guess. Like, okay, it's three or four in from the front. You go back around. We're like, I just hope to God he's not just. Could you imagine going into somebody else's room? Oh, no. He could have been shot.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: We're in a mountain town. Like, anything could have happened. So we get in, and he's sure enough. But we realize it wasn't the problem with the lock. The people at the hotel had actually blocked Justin from getting into his own room because he hadn't signed something, and he had. So instead of trying to get him to sign it or whatever, calling him maybe on a phone, it was just like, let me just fully lock you out. But there's no way of knowing. There's no thing on the sign saying, hey, come to the front desk. We need you to sign up. And then the other side of that is after midnight, they are banging on Katie's door.

Speaker A: I remember this.

Speaker B: So we have a woman by herself in the motel room that has taped keys already. So. And now you got somebody banging on the door at 12:30. It was the motel property people requiring her to sign this stupid piece of paper. Just like wait until. That was just like. Yeah, couldn't wait till the morning. But they didn't treat them the same because Justin was the same issue. They locked him out. Katie, they just banged on her door and she thinks she's going to be like, killed in the middle of the night. Oh, uh, it was just. I've just never.

Speaker A: On the job too. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: And this is in like a year ago or, you know, it's like. It's just, it, it's in modern times and this is what was going on. So. Yeah, that was just. That was crazy. But, you know, we made. I mean, it was a great. It's a great story. You know, now we have a nice story to tell about it. The jumping up on the thing and getting our way in there. It was just like you felt accomplished, you know, and it was just. It was so much fun. I had a great time.

Speaker A: So speaking of funny housing arrangements and continuing that conversation, there's a good ending to this. The Denver 2021 company off site. So most of the people at Metadata at the time, I forget how many people were at the off site were staying at a hotel in downtown Denver. And then the people that, you know, wanted to live the startup life stayed at a. I don't even know how big the house was. It was big enough to.

Speaker B: It was like four. Four bunk beds in the basement. They, uh, all like a bunch of. Were sharing. It was maybe five bedrooms.

Speaker A: Airbnbs wasn't super nice, but it was really just meant for Airbnb. And we had a two and a half day. I think it was. Two and a half days.

Speaker B: Yeah, sounds right.

Speaker A: Offsite with a bunch of meetings, trainings, awards. Way too many people in a crowded place without. I don't even know if it had ac.

Speaker B: Yeah, probably not even if it did.

Speaker A: I remember it being really hot.

Speaker B: No, it didn't. Yeah, we had fans going and stuff. Yeah, it was not great.

Speaker A: That many people in there in general is not great. Temp wise. And then you add the heat wave at the time. So that was wild. But I think my favorite memory of that trip was that was when we opened up registration for the first demand that we did. Yeah, we did it from a. The basement there, which had one of those papa shot basketball hoops there. Was a pool table, uh, you know, a dartboard, bunk beds, you name it. It was like, where are we right now?

Speaker B: Frat house.

Speaker A: And I mean, with that event that we, we did, if we want to tell the quick backstory of this, you originally told Gil, no, we're not going to do this. It was a request from Gil at the time. And it really wasn't a request. It was more of an order, I think. And you responded in a way that I don't think he was terribly pleased with. So on basically, um, three months notice, we went from the idea to actually putting the event on. And I don't know how we were able to do this, but we got some pretty big names in the first wave of speakers. And I remember opening up the event registration and announcing it while we were in the basement of that house. And that was really the first moment of marketing metadata where I was like, whoa, we might be onto something here, because I think we had a thousand people.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Within the first, like, couple days.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And we all did it together. We were all there together and it was like we opened it up and then every. We had everyone else there post at the same time too. And so that was also one of our. I don't know if that was our first, but one of our first takeovers too, that we were like, um, my

Speaker A: metadata marketing memory, I think it was the first.

Speaker B: Yeah. And that was like, everyone was like, LinkedIn is just about metadata today. Like, I'm opening it up and all I see are, uh, just demand, demand, demand posts. That was fun. It was nerve wracking. It was stressful, but fun and really successful, that event.

Speaker A: So we've talked about a lot of fun things, memorable things. It hasn't been all sunshine, rainbows, unicorns, whatever you want to call it. So I've got a couple of things that come to mind. Uh, but what are some of the things that you remember that maybe didn't go so well or, you know, oh, moments. In hindsight, I think I black a

Speaker B: lot of them out.

Speaker A: Can't use that as an answer.

Speaker B: No, I mean, one of the, uh, one of the times. And I don't get emotionally mad usually. Like, it's. I, uh. It takes a lot to get me mad, especially at work. You know, it's just like, this is work. Let's not freak. Our first demand event and it's live. Most of our sessions are live that year. That first year they were like 100% live. Okay, 100 live. And we're all distributed and we're trying to make this work. And we're using a new event platform. And between the first session and moving to the second session, the platform just died and timed out.

Speaker A: And it was the. When you say between first and second session, we did a quick little opening remark to start. That was like, the first session.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: No offense. That wasn't why people were there.

Speaker B: Nope.

Speaker A: The first session was with April Dunford.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: Pretty big deal. And we had pulled a favor through Mark Organ to get her in the first place.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: And within the first 10, 12 minutes of her session, the platform just went down.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: And we were not together.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So you were in Seattle. I was in the shared office that we had at the time. And I was in a very dark place. I had no idea what was going on.

Speaker B: No. And we didn't really have a contingency plan because we just assumed, like, oh, there might be a little hiccup here and there, but it'll catch back up. This thing was just, like, down and not working. People couldn't get into the session. They couldn't get back in. And so I called the company, the folks that I knew at the company, and I'm, like, losing my mind and I'm freaking out. I don't know what to do. And they're of course, on it and they know, but it took them a while to figure out, like, what happened and to fix it. Um, but, yeah, that was a scary moment and probably like, the most angry I'd been ever at metadata.

Speaker A: I don't know if I've seen you as angry as you were.

Speaker B: Yeah, truthfully, no, I was steamy is a good thing.

Speaker A: But.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, it was a good thing. But that was. That was tough. That was tough. But, you know, again, it worked out. People said we handled it well. Uh, luckily the. Her session was still recorded and so we could, like, give it out.

Speaker A: That many people either, which is kind of crazy.

Speaker B: Yeah. People logged back in and they kept trying to log back in. We could even look at stats that showed, like, these people dropped off at this point and never came back. Or these people dropped off and they did come back and it wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't bad. And I think it ended up probably being like a somewhat positive for us just because of how we handled it and how transparent we were about, hey, listen, it's a live event. Doing the best we can. We're a X, uh, person. I don't know. However, my three person marketing team or whatever, uh, so. And people were cool about it, um, the following year they weren't as cool, but yeah, the first year they were cool about it.

Speaker A: Yeah, that was one of the horror stories that I remember and I think another one that happened a couple different times. I think this is the closest that I've ever been to the CEO of the company. And the way that Gil works and the way that all CEOs work, they're all a little bit different. They have to be crazy enough to found a company and try and build something out of nothing. So I had never really gotten to work with him that closely. And I think there were times where I'd learned lessons the hard way of what not to do with the CEO. And, and some of the times I was like, am I gonna get fired here? Am I at risk? I'm sure I probably was at times, but it was a huge learning process for me to one, not make those same mistakes the second time, and then two, figure out what to say and how to frame things with a CEO. Because, I mean, there were some dark times. I thought, like, I'm, I'm done, I'm out of here. There's no, no chance that he's going to keep me around.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think early on, some of that I think was related to you just didn't spend a lot of time together. And so the short amount of time you would, or like the moments in time, it's fewer interactions to go off of, you know. And so I think there was some, um, prejudging maybe a little bit or just judging based on maybe not knowing the full story and. But yeah, we got through it. We got through it and we're better off, I think, for it in the long run. But yeah, not everything was just like you said, rainbows, rain. Rainbows. Rainbows and unicorns. I don't know what that was trying to, I was trying to do a, uh, rain corn, I think.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think one of the other times there was, let's just say a little zoom hiccup with it was you, um, me, Gil and Dave Gerhardt at the time when we were working on our strategic narrative with him, which was, uh, in hindsight, one of the coolest projects that I think. Yeah, I got to work on and we got to work on as a marketing, uh, team at Metadata. And Dave was, I think he was kind of doing us a solid. I think he was in Florida on a vacation with his wife and kids. So he was taking the call from the balcony of like a beach front place that they were staying at and His, I think he was tethering off of his phone and the WI fi wasn't great, you name it. And I thought he was done talking. And like, I looked up to Dave for a long time, like he was somebody I, you know, admired. Like, I'm not going to talk over Dave. And I think Gil thought that I tried to talk over him and I chalked it up to bad Internet, not talking over him. And uh, yeah, I'll say the rest of the details. But yeah, I got in trouble.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, just sometimes, like I said, those little things can just get steered and thought of in the wrong way. And um, But I think we just trying to be as honest on just like transparent as we can. We wouldn't make things up. So, hey, if this happened, if I actually did this thing, I would own up to it. You know, if I was like, no, you're right, I was a little hot and I was. And I stepped on him and you know, we would, we are confident enough in ourselves, we'd own up to it. And so I was again, like, hey, I don't have a ton of experience with you, so this is what it looks like.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but yeah, Dave was cool. You know, he didn't think. I don't think he even noticed. I don't even notice it because his Internet was bad too.

Speaker A: I don't think I've shared this before, but I slacked him after I got in trouble and just said, hey, just so we're clear here, I was not trying to speak over you. You know, I thought your Internet cut out. And he more or less responded back with, what are you talking about? I was like, yeah, you know, when this happened, he was like, yeah, my Internet cut out. I think you were talking over me. So I was like, all right, thank God. Yeah, I didn't tell Gil that. Um, I don't know if Gil listens to dgu, but if he does sometimes, we squashed the beef with Dave. There was never any beef. We're good. Um, but no, I think that's one of the other horror stories that I remember. And then this one's really going to trigger me. But the, the series B announcement in the press conference.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, I'm glad you brought. That's a good one. That's a good fail.

Speaker A: So everyone who works at a VC backed startup and is a part of a fundraising round, you can all relate to. It's almost like a what, Like a ad lib format of, you know, hey, we're X company, we Raised X dollars. We want to thank our customers. We're so happy.

Speaker B: And here's our great investors. Look at this shiny list of investors.

Speaker A: Literally, like it's a cookie cutter template. So we didn't want to do that. And that was right around the time that we were working on our strategic narrative. And I think it was. Dave had the idea of, you know, hey, take the funding announcement, but then pair it with something else. Let's pair it with this narrative that we're working on and try and announce this to the world. So it sounded good.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it was a. It was a perfect idea. Yeah. Timing was just off.

Speaker A: But then we only had, what, like, two and a half weeks?

Speaker B: Oh, my God. Yeah. And I had actually screwed us on that one, because I could have been. It could have been two and a half weeks or four and a half weeks, I think. And I was like, yeah, I was trying to impress Gil. Like, uh, ah, let's do it in two and a half weeks. Let's do this. Yeah, that was bad.

Speaker A: Very dark. Two and a half weeks of trying to work through that. I think I remember.

Speaker B: Oh, um, my God.

Speaker A: I was working on the weekends of trying to get this thing to a good state. And then I had sent everything that I was working on to Gil that Sunday. And one of the things that I always did when I was working on writing stuff with Gil was just ask him, hey, 1 to 10, 10 being amazing, 1 being tear it up. Where is this? And on Sunday night, he said, you know, this is at an eight and a half out of ten, which.

Speaker B: Pretty good.

Speaker A: Like any CEO. Um, that's pretty good.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Bars are very high. So I'm thinking, okay, if it's an eight and a half, it's probably, I don't know, maybe a nine and a half or maybe a 10.

Speaker B: Yeah. Right.

Speaker A: And for whatever reason, I think it was Monday morning, he decided to tear it up and start from scratch. So then we had to completely redo the POV in, I think, about 24 hours for the narrative that we were writing in his name as part of this announcement. And. Oh, um. Man, my skin is crawling just thinking about this. In hindsight.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I remember it was like, hey, let's do this as a press conference.

Speaker A: And I didn't even get to that part yet. Yeah, let's go there.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I remember thinking, I honestly had to Google. I mean, uh, you shouldn't have to write press conference. It makes sense. But I was like, what? Really is that? What does that mean?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And the only thing that comes up are, like, when detectives have, like, a new lead in a case. You know what I mean? Or a sports one, or, you know, it's. It's. And so we were trying to create that kind of a vibe with, like, analyt. We wanted industry analysts and, like, customers.

Speaker A: We were going to try to get you, Gil and Logan to be in person together and sit at a table like, it was a true press conference

Speaker B: and have people there live right there.

Speaker A: Which, in hindsight, if we could have pulled that off, that would have been so. That would have been unbelievable. But, no, it did not work as intended. And then it, uh, didn't help that Mark Organ was dialing in from a ski lodge.

Speaker B: This was so. Oh, man. I just remember it literally in the dining hall of a ski lodge. Everybody who skis knows those places are dirty, busy, loud.

Speaker A: Loud.

Speaker B: And there should not be good Internet there. Like, you don't expect good Internet on a mountain lodge. Sure enough, here I am skiing with my kids, and it's like, uh, man. And it was breaking up. Luckily, it came through, I think. Okay, but. Oh, um, man. And also that one. We were mocking up screenshots of what the product was supposed to look like.

Speaker A: We were not.

Speaker B: No, not. Yeah, yeah. We metadata the. We metadata. We. So we were like, hey, we're launching this B2B marketing operating system. This is what it looks like. I mean, we. And that was hard, trying to come up with product mockups that were two to three years into the future in two weeks.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And no one knows whose vision. Like, whose vision is this? I have a. I had a vision of it. Gil had a vision of it. They were fairly aligned, but Disney aligned in other areas. Unaligned, whatever. And that was, for me. You. You were doing the words, I think. And I was focusing a lot on the. These screenshots and these mockups. And I just remember thinking. I thought it looked okay, but I just. There were so many holes in it that, like, couldn't really work that way or. Oh, that was tough.

Speaker A: It was partially about how it looked, but it was more about the fact that we had existing customers in the chat saying, when is my instance going

Speaker B: to look like that? And it's like, yeah, when's this coming?

Speaker A: You had just mocked these up.

Speaker B: You know, it's vaporware. Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. That was. Yeah, that. I'm glad you brought that one up. That one was. That was probably, honestly, one of the bigger, like, normal failures where we were trying to do something, like, pretty. I mean, different. And it was just like, nope. And we had. We had attendees, and I think we had a couple analysts that showed up, but nobody asked any questions, you know, and so it's like, okay, all right. No, we learned.

Speaker A: So I've got one last story, and then I'll kick it over to you for your last story, and then we'll wrap things up. But you mentioned the ski lodge and mountain mark Organ, and it reminded me of this. So when we were first getting started, and I think this is probably, I don't know, maybe a year and a half in, I. I've gotten better about this, but I was bad about totally unplugging when I was on pto. And one of the times where I was truly, truly off the grid was I went to visit my younger sister in Colorado, and we went skiing. And I had sent you a text the morning of, because you're a snowboarder. And I said, hey, we're going to be at Copper Mountain. We're skiing today. We're starting at this time. I'll be back whenever the lifts close at 4. And, you know, on mountains you don't get any service. So that was the first time where I was truly, truly unavailable.

Speaker B: You're just, like, having the best life. You're just, like, skiing with your sister.

Speaker A: I had no idea anything that was going on, which is what I'm about to share here in a second. Just having a blast. So by the end of the day, we had done way too many runs. My legs are sore. We're getting ready to go, you know, have a Opera ski beer afterwards. And we. We go back to the car to put our skis away for the day. And that's where my phone was. And I think my phone was actually on airplane mode because I knew that I didn't have any service. So when I turned it off of airplane mode, within a matter of probably 15 seconds, once the cell service came back on. I forget the exact number, but I think it's pretty close to what I'm going to say here. There was somewhere in the range of 30 text messages, maybe 15 to 20 calls. Calls from people who don't call me at Metadata. Usually it was like you or somebody else on the team at the time. And I had calls from Ray Taft, ciso, Emily.

Speaker B: Emily. I think, yeah.

Speaker A: SCP of engineering. Like, people who, uh. I do not really work with that closely and never talk to me on my cell phone. So I'm thinking, oh, my God, what happened? Well, I start reading all the texts, and then I think I Called you like immediately after. So basically what happened was I had used my metadata personal email address to sign us up as the. It's like the Google my business listing or something for the office. And I think Ray tried to like add himself to the listing or something.

Speaker B: Or we were trying to change the address, I think. Address. Yeah. Because it had to match up with our business address or something. And we were changing our business address.

Speaker A: Locked us out for security reasons.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And then the security emails were only going to my email, which shocker, I was on a mountain, so I'm not going to get. And then the reason why that was an issue, and this is where I kind of loosely remember it, is there was then some tie to the platform.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I think the platform went down.

Speaker B: It was some. It was like a certificate thing. It was related to a certificate, but related to also us trying to change the address. It was some weird thing that. Yeah, I don't remember exactly it, but yeah, it was. Mark's account was the only one that could actually get us out of that jail. And he's on a mountain skiing. It's the middle of the day. Yeah. Uh, and of course that's gonna happen the first time. You're really off grid. I mean just. It was just so classic. Nobody was mad, of course. You know what I mean? I was just like, hey, I'm so sorry about this. Yeah, I'm like, I'm so sorry about this. Oh, I'm sure you would just probably freaked out. Yeah, I would have been just like. My heart would have just sunk right into my stomach.

Speaker A: What they had to do was they had to. I forget the exact order of this, but they were trying to get into my email.

Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, that's right.

Speaker A: I had nothing to hide.

Speaker B: You had to change your password and

Speaker A: you asked Ray if you thought it was going to be an issue and you're like, no, like he would be fine. Which I was.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But from a security perspective, he like legally, like he didn't want to get into the email. So I think they ended up getting into my email. Right.

Speaker B: I think they had to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that we had to. I know that was like. That was cl. I wasn't, I wasn't too, uh, like anxious in the moment. Cause I was just like, there's nothing we can do. Nobody's doing anything wrong. And it's just we're gonna have to figure this out and figure out why this happened. But yeah, I think we quickly changed it to somebody else. Somebody else's Name. Yeah. So, yeah, I guess we should probably. Oh, wow. We've been at this for a while. Wrap this up for good reason. Um, yeah, so I don't really have a story, per se. I just want to say how much I've learned from you and how much I've just really enjoyed working with you. And this will not be our last time doing stuff together. Like. No, but you've taught me a lot. A lot. You know what I mean? Just in terms of. In just the tactical stuff like writing, you know, help me with writing a lot. With writing a lot. With creative.

Speaker A: Your writing has gotten like, it's good now.

Speaker B: I'm seeing it's decent now.

Speaker A: No, no, no, no, no. I know I must stop when it comes to writing, but I see stuff now. It's like, see, I knew you were capable.

Speaker B: It's there, it's there. Um, you know, to just pushing me in the right ways and not being afraid of it. I think a lot of that is just because of our relationship. Our relationship isn't just tactical work relationship. It goes deeper than that. And so, no, it's just been the best four years of my work life. And I just wanted to thank you and really appreciate you.

Speaker A: I appreciate that. Thank you for taking a chance on me. Thank you for telling somebody that, hey, I'm not going to hire you or by way of the other person and then hiring them again. And I think there's so much that I've learned and developed just by working with you. I've never had this relationship, this type of relationship with a boss before, and it's been a lot of fun. It's been very tough at times. I know I've been a pain in the ass many times. It all comes from a good place, but I did not think that we would make it to 64 episodes of a podcast and have the final episode for now podcast studio. So I'm, um, bummed that you're going to be leaving us, but I'm very excited for you personally and just for everything that is still yet to come for you. Post metadata. I know you're going to continue to do great things.

Speaker B: Oh, uh, thanks, man. So, yeah, so everyone, thanks for listening. Thanks for making this podcast fun for us, giving us the feedback, noticing us in the wild and coming up and talking to us randomly. It's all been great. And the stories you all share with us and how much this podcast means to so many people as well, has been really meaningful for us. And this has been great. So thanks, everybody. Still like the episode. Subscribe I'm just kidding.

Speaker A: This is a long one so listen to it and respond back on LinkedIn or shoot us an email and tell us what your favorite story was because I know that we covered quite a few that we have not talked about before. Some we have, but this was better than I expected and a pretty fitting send off for you and everything that you've done at Metadata.

Speaker B: Nice. All right, well bye for now.

Speaker A: Thanks everybody. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of Demand Gen. You Demand Genuine is brought to you by metadata, the no BS marketing OS. B2B marketers use metadata's marketing OS to drive more revenue without all of the manual and repetitive work. From running paid campaigns to personalizing web experiences to online optimizing everything to revenue, Metadata automates all of this. This means less time spent on low value tasks and more time spent on strategy, creativity and driving revenue.