#172 | What Silicon Valley Taught a Tech Analyst About Marketing, Authority, and Never Burning Bridges w/ Mark Vena

Welcome to the Lemon Tech Leadership Podcast. My name is Alexander Leaminska. I'm a former violinist turned management engineer, turned organizational psychologist, speaker and PCM leadership mentor and facilitator. In this space, everyone is invited to the table where we have real, eye opening conversations about tech leadership.

Two keywords utility and real life implementation. Knowledge tools, frameworks, ways of working, dos and don'ts taken from my personal experiences as a leader in the experiences of others is what you are going to get from every single episode. This is the Lemon Tech Leadership Podcast. Okay, so let's go and take some action.

Okay, and we are live in another episode of the Lemon Tech Leadership Podcast with the guest Mark Vina is with me today or thank you so much for finding the time to Jenny. Alexandre, good evening and glad to be with you today. Yeah, and let's connect the world that we represent, the Polish world in the US world when it comes to marketing tech and all of the things that monrow when it comes to create promote scale grade products. And let's start with yourself as a person, as a professional, as a leader.

So you have so many years of experiences that I'm super curious how you are going to put it in a nutshell. So if you. Can just familiarize all of the people who are listening, especially for those that's listening to you for the first time, who are you, where everything started for you when it comes to York, or what happened over the way, And do. You have three or four hours?

We can speak for three or four Yeah. Yeah. So name is Mark Bina. I'm the CEO and excuse me, principal analysts and smart tech research.

It's ay. I call it a boutique technology research company that I founded about I want to say six or seven years ago. I have to get the calendar book out. But I spent about twenty five years in corporate America.

You know, I worked for IBM, I worked for Alienware, the gaming company that people know about, with Dell Compact, a couple of other companies, Sling Media that used to make the Sling box, and held you know, senior level marketing level jobs with all of those companies. And it was quite a journey. And about six or seven years ago, I said, you know, I'm getting to the point in my career that I'd like to be in a position where I could have total autonomy over what I do. It's fun.

You know, I've managed large groups of people. I've managed, you know, groups of two hundred people in different companies, both engineering and marketing. I've had small groups, and there's something to be said about, you know, really working for yourself. So I've got a couple of folks that work with me, but I would call that a small boutique company.

So I kind of went to that startup phase. We'll we'll talk about that. I don't like to describe myself as the startup because I've been around now and doing what I'm doing for about six years. But yeah, but it's been a long journey, and I don't be very honest with you, Alexandra, I don't think I would be where I am today unless I had that twenty five years of experience as a tapestry to kind of really craft my background.

And you know, we were talking before you hit the record button. I spent about eighteen years in the Bay Area, right in the middle of you know, a Silicon valley. You know, I lived about seven minutes away from the Apple Spaceship campus. It doesn't like a spaceship if you haven't been there.

But you know, the reason why that's relevant is that when you work in Silicon Valley and it's such a unique place to work, is that you deal with people that are incredibly bright, they're brilliant. Many of them are technology oriented that they think they're marketiers, but they're not. They know how to design a product, they're graded engineering. And very often when those especially when they're founders of a company, h they somehow don't have that secret sauce in terms of how to market it.

You know, how a market a product, but they believe when they come out with a widget, that widget's going to change the world, when in fact, yeah, it's important to maybe do something does something unique, but at the same time, it's not something for everybody, and you have to be very cognizant of that. So you get to deal with a lot of personalities like that, people who think they're brilliant. You know, people who typically when you know people who are founders of companies, they have to have a lot of courage.

You know, not just in Silicon Valley, but just you know, you're you're taking a chance, and when you're taking chances, you know sometimes that brees arrogance, you know, in that you know, I'm right about everything. I just have to tell the right person and they'll understand why my product is going to change the world. And that's not always the case. So you've got to kind of deal with that.

And that's probably one of the things we'll talk about in terms of some of the lessons I would with in part to others in terms of, you know, leadership skills and management skills that will help you, you know, sustain yourself when you're kind of you know, driving a company forward. Thank you for sharing that. And there are a lot of as you mentioned, do you have four hours to talk about everything? And I'm sure that we can do a part two or part three and of the conversation, but that's always open.

You haven't don't tell it twice. I'm going to use the occasion. So I would love to a little bit deeper to and what you said about leading different teams, different business areas, because this is something that people are especially people who have a leadership urge that they think that they are great in leadership, they have results, and there are more and more situations in the market that people who who live in a certain a certain space. Are experts in a certain space go and lead other business area.

As you mentioned, you're a marketing person and to go lead engineering team, or you're an accounting person and you go lead in marketing or something. You are not an expert in the area, but you are great in leadership and you need to have a basic understanding of the process of course, so you lead well and the team well. But you don't need to be an expert in a certain area to be efficient. True or false?

Because I have a lot of different people who are saying the allies this is this is impossible to lead tech team without technical expertise. They're not going to believe in me. I won't have any authority whatsoever. So just give me a break.

And it is not possible. So what are your my thoughts? Is I absolutely agree with your promise. You don't have to.

Hey, just to look at myself. I was a history major. You know my educational background. I made in history.

I was going to go to law school and become a lawyer. That's what my father wanted me to do. And I was very lucky. In the late seventies early eighties, I got the personal computer bug, you know, I worked for IBM as an intern, which was like a an hourly pit.

I could walk into my entire life story. But I was there, you know, when IBM introduced the IBM PC. My first personal computer was a radio shack to R S A D. And I stayed up all night, you know, fooling around with it.

And even though my father saw this as a kind of a hobby, you know, this is where the the industry was. The world was going frankly, and I got it, got involved with that. But my, my, my educational background, which turned out to be a real help, because history is a you know, or an English major might be another good Liberal arts major for this is that you have to have the ability to communicate, you have to have the ability to message, and history is exactly is a tremendous I think it's a terrific background because it gives you an appreciation for what's happened in the past, because very often, whether it's in business, whether in politics, whether it's entertainment, if you don't understand I used to have a history professor that told me, if you don't understand the mistakes of the past, how can you understand what might happen in the future, you know, And that's absolutely true.

I mean there's a number of axioms built around that. And what's helped me because I think when people become leaders, leaders fall into different categories. From a background standpoint, they may be a product an engineering kind of background where they actually have played a role in designing the product. They may be more of a product marketing person.

Steve Jobs to invoke his persona, was not a product person. I mean, he wasn't an engineer. It was Steve Wozniak, and there was others that he surrounded himself with really good, strong product people. But he was a message expert.

He knew, you know, what the what consumers wanted in terms of needs and requirements, and a lot of that was was heresy back the back in the late seventies, early eighties. I mean when he was talking about, hey, you know, one day you're gonna buy a piece a personal computer. It's gonna have a different color. I mean back in the day, IBM, you know all the club that you had, it was a gray putty color that you'd use in an office.

But my point is is that there was a too broadly, those are two kinds of people. There's product people, and then there's there's marketing people. Then I would also say there's probably a third bucket that's developed over time. That's people who are operational people.

For example, Tim Cook, who just he did leave Apple, he's not becoming the chairman of the company, and one of his underlings, John Turnas, is becoming the CEO. He was an operations guy. I worked with him at Compact. You know, he was an operations guy.

And you could argue that his number one accomplishment when he went to Apple was he streamlined their operational capability. And he also did things like introduced Apple silicon, which was a very technical undergoing. But the Apple of twenty twenty six is far different from the Apple of twenty eleven after Steve Jobs died because and much of its improvements from a revenue a profitability of different types of business they got took advantage of the fact of his operational background.

But going back to what you were saying before, I think the number one thing that I like to see in leaders, and God knows that, you know, it's taken me a long time to get to this point, is you have to be sometimes very self reflective and understand where your weaknesses and strengths are, and that's when you hire people. You hire people. You don't want to hire clones of yourself. You want to hire people who you know fill a gap from a personality standpoint and from a from a skills attribute standpoint, because that, to me makes a very effective leader.

And unfortunately, most people, especially who are startup leaders, they have a real difficult to understand they may have a gap, they may have a blind spot, and that's really really you have to really be very reflective that you're not always perfect. You always want to hire people, frankly, that are smarter than you are. You know, now you may make the final decision when you hear consent different views for different people on your staff, but you always want to be able to hire people who address a blind spot in your background.

And it's been my experience especially with people who again who are startup leaders. You know, they maybe they've gotten a few million dollars in startup money, they've got a big company that's promising, you know, even additional investment funds to really take the company to the next level. Their big challenge is that they have leaders, frankly, who sometimes don't understand they have a blind spot. So that's what I'd like to say, And it's sometimes it's not easy, you know, because there's also something to be said that when you're a bulldog and you want to drive something forward, you shouldn't listen to other people.

You just listen to your own inner voice and hopefully that wins the day. But it's in my experience that you have to be very selective. You have to have that kind of brain that says, Okay, here's something that I go to war with, and here's something that it's not worth going to battle with because it's just it's it's it's not going to make or break the company. So I know I'm asking this in a bit of a long winded way, but those are the kind of things that I look for and really really good leaders.

And I smile when you said that you don't want to recruit clones of yourself, But honestly, how often do you see that leaders actually are doing. All the time, all the time, all the time, And a lot of it, Alexander, is based on personality. You know, you might have a Silicon valley full of it where you have companies that had a leader and they had a couple of childhood friends that were part of the startup operation and because they were friends, the friendship overcame. Well, is that the right person in the job when the company is got different types of challenges and often, you know, people the friendship becomes a blind spot.

You know, that has happens over and over and over again. And I think, you know a lot of leaders are trying to figure that out, saying, you know, sometimes you have to put a friendship piece to the side, but it's a problem, it's a challenge, true. Sure, And let's see it all the time as well. And I work with teams and I see they're doing a process communication molil profiles that I work with in an area of expertise, and they see that there's a team as fre fresh example.

But I have from all all the data sciences team that I work with right now, and that twelve people in a team including the boss, and ten people out of twelve including himself same personality base, and then one person from one other and one person from the other. So three out of six and eighty seven percent of the team is something very similar. So it's uh, it's interesting to observe how rationally we know from our brain that we should be more diverse. And it is not about diverse inclusion as a as a program, let's put it that way.

But it is about innovations. Put it in challenging ideas. It's putting it's about creating different pieces of product, different pieces of functionalities and having a different approach to two different things. So this is this.

Is more about the business business perspective than even the people perspective. Let's let's just be honest about it. It's like creating something. I agree with that one hundred percent.

And and I always bring the Steve Jobs name up because he was such a fascinating leader. He had many contradictions. He went through different phases as a management career. You know, I knew I met him once when he was the CEO of Next Next Uh, the company that he went that he founded after he left Apple, and that kind of dark period of his career when he kind of got pooted out of Apple, he learned a lot.

There was a lot of reflection. He was not same leader he was in those early days when he introduced a Mac and then he you know, he left and he got involved with Pixar, and you know, and then he came back to Apple famously. There is a little short story that I would share with you about Steve Jobs that was really interesting. The latter Steve Jobs and and I think the former Steve Jobs would have made a different decision when Apple was coming out with the original iMac, you know the iMac with the not the flat screen one that people know and love, but the original it had a CRT.

It looked like a big bulb. When I was a compact, we came out with a thing called the Presario four series, which was the Windows version of that. But it really really changed the world. That changed the face of consumer computing because it was all in one product.

It was marketing you could just plug it in and be on the Internet in five minutes. But the story that I'll tell you is when they were defining the product and trying to figure out what type of speakers that put inside the the original iMac, what happened was is that all the engineers they knew that Steve Jobs had this really good ear for audio, and oh, he's gonna want a very expensive solution, even if it raises the price of the iMac. And basically they set up they set up a it's called a dog food taste, where they configured three prototypes, one with really cheap speakers, one with a little bit better They all looked the same, but they say were integrated a little bit better.

And then I think the third one was using bang and all of same technology. It sounded tremendous like you were at Cornegie Hall. And they for sure they felt when jobs came into the room that he was going to choose the most expensive one, because they didn't he didn't know. It was a blind, blind test, and every single time he would tell the engineers, I liked the worst one.

I like the worst one. I like the worst one, and the engineer is going to Steve, are you crazy. I mean, it's okay, but it's not at the same audio level as the Morgsive one. And I think the most expensive one was about five dollars cost wise, it's more expensive than the cheapest one.

And he very he very rat well. I don't know he said rationally, but the way he told the engineers, he basically said, you realize that anybody who runs really really good acoustic audio and a computer are it's going to go out the best buy and spend a couple of hundred dollars on external speakers and plug them in that. If you're really into audio, why would you want to burden every unit with five dollars of extra cost Because that's going to take our profitability down x and it's going to make us less competitive.

So let's put the least expensive audio solution in it, because we know that people who are really into audio are going to buy external speakers which we don't have any control over. And to me, that's the different different Steve Jobs. The Steve Jobs of nineteen eighty seven or nineteen ninety after he left the Apple would have probably said that we I don't care about cost, I want the best audio solution. So that goes to show you that, you know, from a a leadership standpoint, you can adjust, you can change over time.

You know, you should be a different leader after you've led people for five ten years. If you're really good and you could reflect on your own behavior, you should be in a good situation to acknowledge that maybe I did make some mistakes, or maybe my thinking is a lot different than it was maybe ten years ago. And again you don't see that with people who are become our fresh leaders right off the back. You know people who are startup leaders who you know they maybe they were an engineer the previous year, they teamed up with a couple of guys, they went into some garage, they designed something, and all of a sudden they think that their solution is going to change the world.

But maybe they make a different decision if it's ten years after the fact, where they kind of you know, they melot a little bit. They accept feedback. And that's the one thing that I would tell you, well exact that I like to see with There's two things I like to see with people. I like to see with leaders people who are knowledge that they can make a mistake.

You know, now, I know that there's a perception that every CEO is perfect and they never make mistakes. As bs as we say in America, all CEOs make mistakes. Acknowledging that they made that mistake is not only good for you in the business. It's good to convey to the other people who you work with that you are fallible, that you can make mistakes.

The other skill set that I don't see, I see it very often by the way in people that do what I do. You know, I'm a tech analyst. It's probably about two hundred and fifty people who it's not. It's a relatively small world of people who do what I do.

You have to like to write, you have to like to be on camera. You know a lot of people get freaked out because you do a lot of podcast stuff. I'm sure that you've encountered a lot of even CEOs that once the camera goes on, they kind of ah my god, I'm being recorded live. You got to that's a skill set you have to develop over time being comfortable when the camera goes live.

But the one thing I would say is that do not burn bridges. That there is a sometimes people, especially when you have a bit of success, and this applies to leaders as well, where let's say that the worst thing that could happen sometimes is that a small company is a success right out of the gate and they become arrogant and they feel that they can burn bridges. Oh, this person did not do what I asked them to do, or this reporter didn't report the way that I kind of positioned a product.

That person is on my naughty list, and I'm not going to talk to that person again, and I will say, in business and in technology and in life in general, you have to be able to not burn bridges because you never know who you may need help from. You know, you might. I find this, you know, over and over again. I was at this trade show last week, and I had a busy week.

I was at a Dele event of all things, and I was going to do I did a podcasting with thrither Leaders. They have a thing called Dell. Wil Technology is a big show in the Venetian And someone walked up to me and said, because I used to work at Dell, I was at del years ago, twenty eight years ago, and they recognized me and I had to look at their badge to see who they are, and it was a lovely young woman. You know, we're now about the same age.

And oh, Mark, you haven't changed at all. And I remember when you used to weark here. You know, I'm a big theater person. I love to talk about Broadway a big theater because I grew up in New York.

I remember how when this was very very funny when you when I was in product barking back then, and we're defining products. And one of the great things about being a product manager, is you get to come up with the code name of the product that was the most fun. You know, everybody, every company comes up with a code name. And all my code names of all my products were Broadway shows.

She remembered that. Yes, she remembered that. That was from over twenty years ago. So you just you just got to be careful not to burn bridges.

That's that's the advice I would give people. Yeah, that's true. I mean you never know who knows whom, and it's the world is very small, as you mentioned to your your niche. When I talk with with some people, I have some guests on the show, or I go and speak at the conferences and take part of different different events.

This is crazy, how how small this world is. So you never know, you never, oh. You never, you never know, and you and remember it could it could be you have an argument with someone. Let's say you're coming out with a product.

This is a very very famous, not an unusual example. You may meet with a supplier who's selling you a component and they want don't want to change the price, and you're like, I have to have a price production at x over the next year and a half. No, we're not going to do that, you know, and then you start burning a bridge with that supplier, especially especially Alexandra, if that supplier is a single source component. That's why Dell very famously they really will source a component, but only when company sells they only get from one company.

They generally have to have a supply chain that supports three or four sources. That way they can play one once against the other and they can get the cheapest price. But you never you know, yeah, you could have, you could disagree. You can.

Hey, by the way, this is not working for me, and you know, we respect each other and you move on. But when you start to build ittle people and you start to and I believe me, I could spend hours with you talking about examples of how sometimes people we get angry and they call you names and things get and you're like, what, this is business. We're not here out to attack each other. Come on, you know.

That's true, that's true. And yet I see the examples of the behaviors all the time, and sometimes I'm wondering if we are here to do business or to just have a boxing rink or. Something, because people are behaving and. So and so inappropriate and inadequate way that I just sometimes I just leave it.

You know, it's completely anesome because. It is like you know, you know, it's interesting because I was a history major, as I mentioned before, or I have a great bond as for American history and one of my areas that I love. I'll probably spend this entire Memorial Day weekend watching documentaries about World War Two and the different presidents that we've had. It's very fascinating.

And when you look at the great military leaders who were involved in World War Two. Eisenhower, George Patten, Bradley, a number of great generals from MacArthur Oversaw, the Pacific Theater. They were great military leaders, but they each had different styles and different personalities. You know.

For example, Omar Bradley had this reputation of being kind of the soldiers general. He was very protective of people, you know, he was the perception if you asked his gis was that, you know, he cared about me. I'm about to go into battle, I might die, my brethren may die, but he cares about us. Versus George Patten, who is a brilliant general, would insult you.

You know, he would yell at you, and you were scared more of him than you were of the enemy. And I think those are the type of skills that you can learn from and management. And now that's not to say in a management sense. Sometimes you have to be hard on people.

Sometimes an executive has to tell the rank and file, you know what, we have a goal. We have to meet this deadline, whatever that deadline might be. It might be a product development deadline, or we're going to miss the market, you know. And the reality is is that there's a couple of ways you could do that.

You can do that in a very firm what's holding us up from hitting this deadline? How do I help you help the team solve certain problems that will help us get to that deadline. Or you could do the other part, which I don't like. And that was kind of the Steve Jobs approach, you know, maybe the George Patton approach, and that was to yell at them and screen at them.

You know, you may if you don't get this fixed, I'm going to fire you. You know, I'm not going to spend any time with you and trying to understand what your problem is. I'm not going to try to understand what the gap is and why we can't hit that deadline. But I'm a big believer in the former versus the ladder in terms of management.

Now, different leaders, you know, have different styles, you know, and I won't be the first one to say that there are certain CEOs that are much more candid and much more colorful in terms of the way they manage people. But I believe that in the long term, if you want to keep your team loyal, if you want to make sure they're giving you feedback. And that's another skill, frankly, that a lot of leaders don't get, is that when you are managing people and they feel comfortable with you, they're willing to tell you things that you they might not tell you normally because you're afraid of getting yelled at.

You know. There was a have you ever watched the show Silicon Valley. Yeah, Silicon Valley is when I wish it was still on the air. It was a sattire about Silicon Valley, but it was so dead on, you know, because I knew many of the personalities that were in the show.

One of the things they took a spoof at was how schedules slip out, and the way they did it was basically, you know, the CEO thought they were going to hit a certain deadline of X, and one of the guys at the stefan, there's no way we're going to hit that. You know, we're already four months behind. And then he would whisper to another person, Hey, we've got to hit this deadline, and that person said, you're crazy. And it was kind of like a like a telephone game, and by the time it got down six or seven people, you know, oh yeah, we're going to hit this deadline, no problem, you know, because the people were afraid to tell the CEO we're not going to hit it.

And that's I think the number one, certainly in the top two or three issues that some leaders don't have. They don't make they don't make their direct reports comfortable enough to be the be square with them and be direct and candid with them. And now that doesn't mean you cannot be hey, listen, okay, I got your information. I appreciate the candor.

This is what we've got to do to fix that. There's there's no reason why you can't have that kind of response. But I think that part of the problem is that sometimes leaders they create this air of being of being so perfect that they never make mistakes and God, you know, God help you if you try to challenge them. Yeah, and then dysfunctional teams are made in dan lack of trust and everything that is happening.

And then we are surprised as leaders. That's the team is disengaged, low in interesting motivation, and they don't believe our results. That's that's we agree to surprise the price. Let me ask you a question.

Do you see a difference because I've been talking mostly about American leaders, even though there's a number of Europeans and that they came to Silicon Valley and they became leaders and their European but I was calling them American. But for the sake of argument, do you see a different leadership style with European leaders versus American leaders? I mean, do you see a style difference? Yeah, it's more cultural connection connected to to the being more or less direct.

And then then in the US and the APEC as well. So and it differs from country to country as well, because there are countries are like Poland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and people are more direct and there are self direct that you can die this is this is it and more Latino countries like Italy is being Portugal, they are more connected with the whole Latino world. So are they're they're chill, they have time, they that the time is fluid, So this is this is this is different.

So it's more cultural connected, I would say, But I also see the patterns. You know, this is a feedback to mention that we are not giving it properly, We're not giving it up to date, so we are not candid as Skimscott and radical candor is giving us examples from us mostly at this adequad to all around the world. I would say, so a lot of those things are much more repetitive than we think. And then the slide changes between cultures are visible by.

The cultural you know, the cultural things are big. I mean, for example, you know, and it's not anti country, but like for example, when you're dealing with Japanese companies and I worked for I worked for actually the very beginning of my career for kind of called EPSOM, which is owned by Sekoh. They make the they make printers. They're owned by Sekah watches, believe or not.

So they're a very technology driven company, believe or not. But when you deal with Japanese leaders, especially when you're presenting ideas to them, they will never tell you what their true feelings are during a meeting. And what happens is that there's something called the Japanese head nod where you're talking to them and you think that you're getting an agreement, where they're going like this, I understand, I understand, when in fact they don't disagree yet, but they don't agree either.

And because they the way that the Japanese I think brain operates, the culture operates, is that they have to deliberate. Once you give them the information, they make it with their leaders. Okay, let me have a discussion and we'll get back to you. But very often what happens is that you interpret the head nod in a meeting as something affirmative, when it's not affirmative.

It is not. I remember the first time. It was first couple of times when I run workshops in Apei, Korea, and I had different people from India, from China, from Japan, South Korea, but also a straggling in New Zealand because I was operating in the region as well. And I remember my confusion when I was asking some questions to you include people's minds and opinions, and there was silence, and I was like, what is happening right here because it was like I was used to do work in Europe and in US and Canada, so the contact is differ brand And then I worked more about the cultural differences, and I owe, this is why.

It's not about that I am doing something wrong from the content perspective, but it is just the way they communicate and the values that they have about experts in a certain area that they're not experts in, especially when they're boss is there as well. This is and it was so huge lesson for me from. It's a very hierarchical system. Yeah, very very interesting.

Sure interesting and talking about culture, but also the Silicon Valley that we mentioned several times until this point of the conversation. I would love to use it as a bridge to the marketing and sales conversation that I would love to have with you because in an expert in the area and I want to use it for our audience. So how you know, Second Valley is just an example, But how important do you think do you have an experience with this? You mentioned living there for for for several years and being close to certain people.

You know, certain names, certain people I work with this guy. How important is proximity especially nowadays, especially for the startup to be or startup founders that are are you know, especially at the very beginning of getting traction, they are just just just getting into the market being close to differ to people that you want to be as as you grew up quote unquote, but also to the environment that is that is like a Silicon valley. You can talk about it more from the experience.

I said, yeah, yeah, but I understand you correct your question correctly. I mean at proximity I think is important to a degree. You know, we live in a world right now where you and I can have conversations across the world and you know, for all our intention purposes, you could be down the street, you know. So I think that the proximity is important.

And part of that, though, is that the situation where you know, you're if you're part of a small team that founded a company and you know, you get things off the ground and you've got pete. You know, you might be the engineering part. You know, you might be the product person among the group. The other person might be taking on marketing responsibilities, even though he's not a classic marketing person, but he's the person who's got time to dedicate the marketing and they may not he may or may not be the right marketing person, but he gets shoved into that role because there's nobody else to do it.

And remember too, is that in most startup companies, product is paramount. You know, any dollars that they have for investment of it, if they've got, if they raised let's say three or five million dollars in seed money, ninety eight percent of that money is going to designing the product, you know, hiring engineers, you know, teaming with laboratories and engineering entities outside the company to get that product out the door. Marketing typically plays a second fill, which I'm not a big fan of, but unfortunately that's the case.

Now. What's changed completely in the marketing realm and I can do a podcast with anybody without invoking AI. I mean AI has changed the entire landscape of things, especially from a marketing standpoint. You know, I have been using I have leaned very heavily into marketing over the last in marketing over AI in the last three years, especially with video and content creation, because it allows me to do things that I did a video the other day and I'll send you a link to it later that it would normally have taken me three weeks to do, and I probably would have had to hire an agency and probably had to spend five or ten thousand dollars to do it.

Where I can use AI to come up with a professional deck with a professional video clone of myself. Because I talked, but you know you talk, actually talk very fast like I do. I'm from the New Jersey, New York area, and I have found I used to get performance reviewsing Mark. People love working with you, but you talk very fast, and if they're from the South or they're from Asia, they don't understand you.

Well, guess what when I do these AI videos, which might be a thirteen or fourteen minute profile on a topic or on a product. I just did one for Dell a few days ago. When I do, when I write the script or I use AI to help me come up with a script, it has my voice, it has my image, and the video the audio playback, even though you can tell it's me, my accent is absolutely there. It's unmistakable, Mark Vina.

You can hear me in a very articulate mode. So AI is helping me being understood. I view it as a communications tool. But I think what's happening today, you know, visa V marketing marketing is going through a very, very big overhaul because the old school marketing leaders that kind of ran marketing in a kind of traditional type of way.

You had a marketing agency you dealt with, You went back and forth, but all the heavy lifting was done by the agency. Maybe you hired a couple of graphics designers that come in house, but generally speaking, you were working with a third party agency. That has completely changed, you know. I mean I do stuff over thee.

You know, someone will say, hey, Mark, can you do something really fun for me for personal reasons, And I do something where I would have to hire an agency to do it. I did something the other day with someone if you if you remind me, I'll send it to you where my cousin was celebrating his birthday party and I was able to take his picture and put it on a cover of a magazine, a very popular sports magazine, with the little jokes all over the place. It looks absolutely realistic, you know, And the point of reason why I'm saying that is that young people who are comfortable using AI, they may not have the marketing experience because they're only in their twenties, but they have the expertise to use AI versus the other type of folks who might be forty fifty years old.

I'm unusual on that. I'm a bit older, but I've embraced AI. They feel uncomfortable with it, you know, because oh, you know, it's AI. You know.

There's a term that I don't know whether it's made it over to Europe, but it dries to me crazy. There's a term now called AI slop where people are defining where oh it's just AI and you shouldn't believe it, and it may be fake. That may be true, and there there are of course, very very good examples of people using AI for bad reasons, you know, which we won't get into. But ninety percent of time, I believe AI is going to take marketing.

People who have good creativity, have good the ability to envision different things. It's going to take things to a level that they've never been able to do before. You know, not just about image manipulation, Alexandra, about video content creation where just using a pros nothing technical I can describe a particular scene. You know, here's a scene of two people eating a dinner and a diner uh, the waitress walks back in the background, and you're all used to just English phrases.

Describe this and it will create a video for you that looks like it was filmed in Hollywood. You know, that's a complete sea change. And today's marketing people don't think like that, you know, they think in old ways of creating content. They don't think in terms of doing it using these incredible tools.

That's true. I was listening yesterday, actually, I was listening to the conversation with Tom car Vodka. He's a well known Polish and entrepreneur and angel investor, and he was talking about because there was a question about the obviously, and he was talking about older generations versus the newest generation and their ability to use the tools that are there. It's a threat or now and Tom said something that's that that's stuck with me, and I knew it from again rational perspective, but it stuck with me as well.

The younger generations has an easiness in using it because they are in it. As you mentioned, we need to unlearn the old behaviors, patterns and habits that we have and the beliefs that we have in our brains about marketing, for example, creating content, creating, messaging, copywriting, all of those video, all of those things that you mentioned that it is completely different, and that was three years back. So this is not a history. Oh, it's just like.

No, it's amazing. And you know, and just to go back to what I do as a technology analyst before the arrival of AI, you know, my business model was companies would like you to write a white paper. You know, you sit down, you write a white paper to about eight or nine pages. It might take me three or four weeks to review it.

I go back and forth with the client, and then then they pay you handsomely, you know for that writing that white paper. Unfortunately, people don't read anymore the smartphone, I mean. And and by the way, there's a lot of downside with that, because when you don't read as much and you don't spend time digesting something, you lose context and that scares me. So there's a downside with this.

But very largely my clients, non clients like Qualcom, Microsoft, I've worked with HP before, Intel, you know, Fortune one, hundred companies. They are now pivoting to other types of content and they would rather for example, podcasts. I don't have to tell you there are millions and millions of people who do podcasts, you know, and you don't have to have a following of four hundred thousand people. I mean, they're the most popular podcast right now.

Are people you know, I have thirty five thousand subscribers on my podcast, but there are people who have a thousand subscribers. They're the right type of subscribers because they're really interested in that content and they do very well, and they get paid extremely well by YouTube because they get they get they get. They don't get millions of views, they get maybe tens of thousands of views, and they're paid handsomely. But again, that requires a pivot if you're in the marketing arena, and I have found I am finding that even some large companies still have there's still a bit squeamish, you know, they're still not comfortable with how AI fix into it fits into their marketing mix.

But it's a different world. It's a different world, and I think what's going to happen if I can make predictions. I think this is going to change dramatically in about two years when A and I and I'll say very frankly on your podcast, there will be a movie that wins Best Picture within the next two years that's going to be completely designed by AI. No real actors, no clones of real actors.

You'll you will know, you will know, you will be able to tell the difference. But these are all conjured up actors. The writing will be great, the music will be rate, and it will win best It will be win Best Picture, and that will be what will That will signal the moment that AI has arrived, and maybe that has has to happen. But I, you know, I you know in the United States, you know, there is a there is a bit of a backlash right now with AI because people see AI is taking new jobs away.

You know, if I work at a call center right now, I'm not sure everyone will work at a call center, you know, because AI is completely taking that experience over. You know, fast fast food restaurants that used to be the job when you were a kid and you were you know, in high school, or you know, you want to just make a buck, they would hire you. You would make six or seven dollars an hour and you were very happy. You weren't going to do that the rest of your life.

But now fast food restaurants are adopt the AI from an automation standpoint that now one day you're going to walk into a McDonald's and there'll be one worker. That one worker will be there in the back loading the roles and the burgers into the into the automated machine that's that's making the burgers. Everything will be depletely AI driven maybe man. So we still have some time to adopt I would say, So that is so negative of.

The whole landscape because as you mentioned, and I believe that today and there is a huge opportinity as well for me. Yeah, and I don't mean to convey that I'm negative about it. I'm very enthusiastic about it. And I think that anytime a brand new technology gets into the workforce.

And by the way, this is a leadership skill that good executives have to be able to tell, especially with large companies where you have a CEO, you may have thousands of employees or scared scared to the uh out of their daylights that their job is going to be replaced. You have to have leaders that says, you don't want workforce, you have to start to gain the skills to embrace AI, not rejected, you know. And there are some companies that are doing a really good job of that. I used I use Dell as an example.

Dell's actually doing a pretty good job. Now there's no question that they're they're replacing workers. They may be, you know, reducing workforce in many ways, but at the same time, they understand that those employees that embrace AI will become more productive, they'll be more useful, they'll be more impactful to the business. And I think people have to see this as an opportunity, you know.

I mean, this is not any different from to use a really bad example, when the telephone came into existence in the late eighteenth century, when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, and people were still communicating with telegraph, which was you know, that was still that was a breakthrough technology for many years. Well that didn't There was a lot of people who were telegraph operators that went out of set offs their job when telephones came online. But thus people found other jobs, and the same thing will happen with AI.

It might be a bit more abrupt, but I think it's the most disruptive technology in the history of the world, and I've seen a lot of them. Yeah, so let's stay positive, let's see o virgin these and let's real learn and learn if possible, Because how we are going to serve ourselves from starvation, I would say, And we like to eat and pay our rent. So this is this is it? Mark?

I want to ask him one more questionable than. Marketing slash salesport because you mentioned the startups and how they get financing and that they invest a lot of money into building a product, hiring a team, and then long, long, long afterwards. There is a piece of marketing, piece of h R, piece of processes, et cetera. But as you mentioned about AI as well and how the lines can shift, we can do things, I would say, in a more affordable way right now in compared to what happened like a couple of years back.

So what would you advise two three first steps for first time founder that wants to do it right. They are smarter than a generation before them. They want to build. A great product and actually sell a great product.

So there it is, because if they're not doing it, it's a very expensive hobby that they have. Okay, so what would you advise them to do in practice, very practical a way to do in marketing slash sales if combined as possible. Yeah, I'll give you a very specific example is that in Silicon Valley, it's not difficult for anybody to get a meeting with a ventual capitalist. I mean there's a number of very large, prominent ones, but you know, you can literally email them and you'll find someone to take a meeting.

You know, I have consulted a number of companies that do a very loud when they get that meeting, they're really excited and they have to design an elevator pitch. They have to sit down with that investor, there might be a group of them, frankly, and they have to convey in a very pithy, surgical, reasonable rational way. Why should I give you one hundred million dollars? Why should I give you fifty million dollars?

Why should I give you five million dollars? If you're a brand new startup. And I cannot tell you how many companies they blow it completely either they they focus on that and elevator pitch is what it sounds like. What It means you know, how do you have, how do you convey and maybe ten slides or less what the value propos issue to the company.

And I cannot tell you how many companies blow it. And very often I will get hired before they know. They'll call me and says, Mark, we would love we're meeting with an investment house. Can you help us develop that elevator pitch.

We'll send you what we're thinking about, and they'll send me the deck and I'm like, oh my god, you cannot show that. If you show that, they're going to show you the door. And about they'll be very polite and they're going to show you the door. So my personal advice would be reach out to people they can reach out to.

Maybe they can reach out to a number of people who do what I do, and they will sit down and have a candid conversation with you based on prior experience. This is generally speaking, when an investors looking for and they're generally looking for, what's the revenue profile, how big is the market, what's the competitive environment the product that you're developing. Are you going to be able to bring into market against six months or is it going to be like a three year deal type of thing.

All things that you need to be candid about. Sometimes you have in many cases when if you by the way, my advice would be, whenever you think, and this is very very funny funny story is I've had a number of companies that they might there may be very early startups that they only might be Look they only really need two or three million dollars to get off the ground, and they'll ask for like a very exact number, we need two point two four five million. They'll put up a spreadsheet saying, well, let's based on seven workers and everything out.

It's very precise, like almost like a minute, like the check that you get from a restaurant. And I would say no, no, no, no. First of all, whatever you ask for, a good investment company will give you a haircut. They'll say, well you might wear asking for five million, we'll give you three.

You have to ask for a lot more. You have to defend why you're asking for a lot more. And very often, and we were talking about the marketing piece before, it is that many especially because they're technically you know, they're these companies are are generally founded by product and technology people. They're not they'll be too afraid to say, you know what, we're asking for four million dollars, we want to spend eight hundred thousand on marketing.

We want to hire a good CMO or, we want to hire a good vice president of marketing. We know that they're he's going to need a couple of product managers. We need to pay them one hundred and fifty thousands. That's what a story.

That's what investors want to hear. They don't want to hear you're just in an exact amount of money to get your product out the door. They want to know what's going to get your product out the door and why is it going to be a success. So I would you know to your point, I think that you know before you ever again, getting the meeting is not a problem.

Getting the right content for that elevator pitch is crucial and paramount and a number of companies I know they blow that chance. And remember in Silicon Valley it's a very very small world. And if you blow it with one investor, they didn't tell their competitors. So, by the way, don't meet with these guys, because there are waste of time.

They don't know what the hell is going on. You know, you're better off playing golf that day, so you have to be very, very careful. So my advice would be, don't be nervous about asking for help. And work us off on the pitch deck because this you're elevating pitch skills.

Because the deck is one thing, because I saw lots of beautiful pitch decks, super well designed, but then the presentation skills variable and then the beautiful deck and the beautiful traction event and that could the team build and everything that was there on the slides was ruined because of the lack of courage, lack of the skills of communications. Still, of course, oh yeah, message didn't have to have a good pitchtick has a narrative. You know, it's getting you from point A to point B.

You know, I would advise this is going to sound a little bit corny, but one of the great great television shows of all time that is great, you know, from a marketing and messaging standpoint, is a television show called Madmen. It was on the air for about ten years. It was about a mythical advertising agency on Madison Avenue in New York in the nineteen sixties, and that show because it was a great thing about that show was that all the products in that show are real. The advertising company was fictional, but the show, over the course of ten years was a number of pitches.

The great Don Draper, the big Advertising I was always giving you a great pitch to the company, why you should you should work with us? And they would come up with some great, great pitches, and it's you're telling a story. You're telling a story. And again, product people and technology people tend not to respond to that.

They think everything, they see everything in terms of specs. You know, our products is going to be better than this product and it's going to be more advanced. Yeah, and the reason why they don't care is because there'll always be another company that will you surp you your position. But you know, I think that you know, we were talking about AI before.

AI can be a real boon. You know that if you have a pitch deck, you can upload that to Gemini, you can upload that to Chatchipt, you can upload that to Claude and it has Could you please evaluate this as a pitch deck, you know, and you'll get some really interesting feedback that didn't exist three or four years ago. Yeah. The hard the most hard VC that you can find over the internet and just you know, challenge the agilence of deck.

Yes, and this is the monument that you mentioned, and the products oriented approach that you mentioned and the skills that we both mentioned is something that is a lot of vcs and angels that I talk about that are talking about the same thing that I am investing in a founder, not in a product. Product. That's exactly right. Yes, that's exactly right.

That's exactly right. And I think that's a great point in that most vcs, not all of them, but the vast majority of them, they'll say, hey, you know when I here's my here's the check for five million dollars, and they'll put the the VC will put his arm around the CEO and say, this five million is not for the Yeah, it's called the company's going to use it. But the five million I'm investing in you. I believe in you.

And if they don't come away with that feeling when you're making that pitch, probably not. It's probably gonna be a long day. Sure, Mark, As I mentioned, as you mentioned at the beginning, we can talk for hours about. All of this, So stay tuned to have a part to this.

I helped. I help. I'll say you, I help. It was helpful, was it was delightful speak with you and I'd love to be on your your podcast in the future.

Yes, thank you. And before we wrap up the conversation, I have a few questions from the Linking Craft because this is something that we always do with guests at the very end of the conversation. Are you ready for some cookie questions? Go ahead, Okay, go for it.

So what is the worst leadership advice that you ever got? My worst piece of advice I got from someone. We were from the CEO of a company that we had a problem. I'm not going to tell you the name of the company.

I'm not going to tell you who the names were. But we had a leader that I hired based on his recommendation. Okay, and this is about ten or fifteen years ago. So I was a relatively new senior executive and I made the mistake of hiring the person and it turned out to be he was an awful employee.

And the problem I got myself into is that because I hired what saye was a former colleague of his, I could never let him go. I could never fire him you know, And so the advice I would I got was, which I had rejected, was I should not have hired that person. You have to hire your own team. Now, that's there's nothing wrong with getting suggestions from other people in clearing.

You see, you're the guy you report to about my people that you might want to consider to hire. But in general, you need to hire your own team, you know, and you really shouldn't really hire. You shouldn't hire people who have such a close connection to someone you report to. It could put you into an awkward space.

In games of power about to start. What is the one thing that you're wished to you at the very beginning of your leadership journey. I think the number one thing would be listening to people. Do a better job of listening, you know.

In the beginning of my career, you know, like most people, I actually kind of, Oh, I'm going to do it this way. I know the answer. All all of you are in the desert from a from a knowledge standpoint, and I know the right answer. And one thing you develop over time is that listening and acknowledging that you can make mistakes and being that a motive and be able to communicate that We talked about that about twenty minutes ago.

In terms of being willing to be booked, be seen as vulnerable, That's something that I've been able to develop over the last ten years or so. But in the early part of my career I was not good at that, and I've gotten good at it. I think I have gotten good at that chiefly because I interfaced with a lot of companies and firms that you know, my life will not change a bit if they don't want to do work with me, you know, No, that's I mean, I'm going to be arrogant and negative. But when you don't have that, that that relationship that oh, if I pissed them off for whatever reason, they're not going to pay me or they're not going to do with business with me.

Once you're free, free from that that kind of that kind of thinking, you can be much more candid with people, you know, And I think that, and it happens with companies all the time. As you know, is that people tend not to be very transparent with each other because they're afraid of a negative consequence. But you know, my thing is that being you know, listening to people and being very transparent about bringing you know, understanding that feedback and conveying to people that you that you can be vulnerable and you're willing to be corrected.

Last, mathethics, what is something that you right recently or listened to or watched that's not just something inspires you, that's you can share with all of us too. I'll go back to my little my history roots. There is a great there's a great, great book written on America's second President, John Adams. The book is called John Adams.

It was a great TV series but done on It was on HBO with Paul Giamati, the actor, terrific actor and before he became president during the American Revolution, during and not Its shocking. This is how bad American schools are in terms of teaching their children about about history. When he when after the Boston massacre happened, which was an awful, awful incident, the British soldiers were looking for a lawyer to defend them in a British court that they might be charged with murder because they killed all these they killed a number of innocent bystanders.

And. John Adams was the only lawyer in Boston that was willing to take their case because he felt that everybody should have a defense. There's a great scene in John Adams where he's in his bedroom reading his summation that he's going to read to the jury to his wife, Abigail Adams, and she reads the entire summation and he asked his wife, what do you think about it? What do you think of that speech?

And she thinks for a second and she says, you know, John, I think that speech is a great it's a great summation, but it sounds to me like you're trying to convince everybody in the room. But you're the smartest person in the room, you know. I thought that was brilliant, you know. And and of course in a thing like that, it only can come from a loved one.

But I again, that goes back to my thing about being very reflective and trying not to convince people that you're the smartest person in the room. And I would. I took there's a number of lessons I took from John Adams. But it's a great novel and I encourage people to read it.

Thank you for sharing. I'm going to check it out because I don't know it and the. Show is all ye, I'll watch the show. The book is huge, but watch the TV series.

You like the TV series, you. Know I love huge books, So I have this guilty pleasure. The bigger the book is the better for my brain, so I'm going to I'm going to check it out as well. Mark, thank you for everything that you shared today.

As as we both mentioned, I feel that this is not the last conversation that. We have and I'm definitely going to to let you know when I'm around around Las Vegas next time. But for all those people to that want to check you out, to contact you, d MU where, where's where's the best? What is the best place for.

Them to go to check you out? And they can reach out to me on Twitter or x at market at market being a tech guy that's my handle. LinkedIn has turned into the new you know it's not new, but reach out to me. You know there's only one mark being on LinkedIn.

And I love people to subscribe to my podcast. My podcast has gotten over five million views, the Smart Tech Check podcast, and I get I respond to mentions pretty quickly, so we love people to stay in touch with me with those channels. Sure, we're going to put everything in the show notes so people can just check it out quick and use your wisdom because you have a lot of different experiences that you can ensure it we can all learn from you. So thank you for sharing that today.

Well, thank you al yeah, and thank you all for listening because this is for you. So shure away if you if you found interesting and interesting important for you, that you had value from the conversation, just share away with one person who might need it. This is how we learn together and build the community, build proximity to cut content and everything that is connected with changing the world of leadership in tech.