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During this 198th episode of “Marketing Today,” host Alan Hart interviews Reggie Walker, U.S. Chief Commercial Officer for PwC. We discuss Walker’s background and his long career at PwC. Then Walker takes us through the digital transformation happening within PwC and the impact of technology on professional services today and in the future. Walker shares the importance of giving employees new skills and technology to transform the way you're running your business, which ultimately impacts client experience. He says, "When you focus on your people, and you build the right skills within them, those are your factors of production that you can then take out and use in multiple ways." When providing advice for peers in other large companies, Walker advises that training employees and setting very clear expectations is essential. As Walker reflects on the future of professional services, he remarks, "Creating more personalized experiences is really what's starting to win the day.” Walker’s thoughts on the digital transformation within PwC can help us think about how other businesses can use technology to change the way that we work. Highlights from this week’s “Marketing Today”: Reggie provides background about his twenty-seven-year career at PwC. 01:17 Reggie describes pivotal moments in his career. 03:47 Reggie tells us about his current role as Chief Commercial Officer for the U.S. at PwC. 04:37 What was it like to transition from his prior role to his current position? 06:10 Reggie explains the various components of marketing and sales at PwC. 7:10 Hear about the transformation initiative happening within PwC. 9:53 How PwC doubled down on its organization internally. 12:51 The vision PwC has for taking what they've done to create a unique client experience. 14:35 Reggie's advice for peers in other companies that are working on large scale change. 16:43 Reggie discusses the future of professional services. 19:38 What are the top opportunities or challenges Reggie's clients are bringing to him in 2020? 21:55 Is there an experience in his past that defines who he is today? 26:59 What is the advice Reggie would give to his younger self? 29:31 Are there any brands, companies, or causes that Reggie follows that he thinks other people should take notice of? 31:13 Where does he see the future of marketing? 34:00 Resources Mentioned: Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) Reggie Walker bio Subscribe the podcast: Listen in iTunes (link: http://apple.co/2dbdAhV) Listen in Google Podcasts (link: http://bit.ly/2Rc2kVa) Listen in Spotify (Link: http://spoti.fi/2mCUGnC ) Connect with the Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reggie-walker-366882 https://twitter.com/ReggieWalkerATL https://twitter.com/PwC Connect with Marketing Today and Alan Hart: http://twitter.com/abhart https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanhart http://twitter.com/themktgtoday https://www.facebook.com/themktgtoday/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketing-today-with-alan-hart/ Support the show.
Craig Walker’s on a mission to overhaul the way businesses communicate, with cloud-based phone service Dialpad. As a securities attorney in Silicon Valley, Craig Walker met regularly with a who’s who of Palo Alto venture capitalists, startup founders, and investment bankers. He thrilled at their stories of big ideas and bold risks. Then one day in 1998, he decided it was time to live one of those startup stories of his own. When life offered him an opportunity to sit on the other side of the table, he said yes without hesitation. That decision shaped the rest of Walker’s life, first as a VC and soon after, as head of his own companies. Today, he’s the founder and CEO of Dialpad, a cloud-based business communications company that is rapidly approaching the coveted $100 million revenue benchmark. The San Francisco-based startup is changing the way businesses communicate, by shifting them from traditional desk phones to cloud-based service, and all the powerful features that come with it. In fact, much of Walker’s career after that fateful day has been all about improving business communications. He’s been disrupting the stodgy old office desk phone in some way or another for around 20 years, having laid the groundwork for Google Voice and Yahoo! Voice, and ultimately taking them on as a formidable competitor. From Attorney to Founder Walker was quite successful as a lawyer, but it was in that role that he became drawn to the prospect of starting his own business, and learned what it takes to make it happen. “Once I was a lawyer and I met a bunch of CEOs and founders, I realized there wasn’t any real magic to it,” Walker says. “It was just taking a risk or taking a chance and having a good idea and a good team to go along with you.” When a client asked him to leave his job behind and join a venture fund, he took the opportunity. But his time with TeleSoft Partners and Sterling Payot Capital, both of which invested in early-stage telecom startups, was only a combined four years. In November 2001, when an internet telephony service asked him to step in as CEO, again, he took the leap. And he’s been in the game ever since. That company was the first iteration of Dialpad, where Walker served as CEO and built relationships with his coworkers and others in the tech space, who would stick by his side through future ventures. When Dialpad 1.0 was acquired in 2005 by Yahoo! as the base for Yahoo! Voice, he took on his first role as a founder and launched a similar company, GrandCentral Communications. This was yet another foray into the world of online phone communication, but in less than two years, it was also acquired, this time by Google. For nearly four years, Walker continued on with GrandCentral, now called Google Voice, but before long it was time for him to move on once again. Having now laid the groundwork for both Yahoo! Voice and Google Voice, Walker was ready to challenge them for supremacy. Desk Phone Disruption A good name is hard to find. So when Walker and crew decided to found a new online communication company, they knew they needed to have a little chat with Yahoo! first. The owner of the first version of Dialpad agreed to sell the name back to Walker—including the all-important URL—and in 2011, Dialpad 2.0 was off to the races. His goal remained very much the same—the master the art of using the the internet as your business phone. As Walker boasts, Dialpad offers “all the power of a business phone system, but from anywhere in the world.” “The world has changed,” Walker says. "You’re working from anywhere at any time, and not having the ability to do that from your business phone system is crazy.” Using the latest iteration of Dialpad, businesses can toss their hardware to the curb and use the cloud to connect team members and clients. By importing existing numbers, companies can use a single system to manage all phone communications. There’s even an app that instantly transforms a cell phone into a work phone, allowing employees to port their number and merge into existing CRMs, productivity suites, and social networks. And with an AI integration that alerts supervisors of red flags like an irate customer, prompting them to step into the situation, sales teams could grow and improve with ease. Convenience was key, and customers of Dialpad rapidly embraced the new technology. After winning TechCrunch Disrupt and being featured several blog posts and articles, Dialpad saw a flood of new inquiries. But even with all the buzz around the new business, Dialpad wasn’t above the need to make cold calls. As you might expect, however, Walker’s approach to cold calling is a little different than just picking up a phone and hoping for the best. He explains that they first built a list of “modern-thinking companies.” Then, they investigated what tools those businesses were already using to accomplish basic day-to-day tasks. If they found a list of antiquated, on-premise technologies, they crossed the business off their list. If, however, they found that a company used other cloud-based technologies, they knew they’d found a lead and would reach out. “Ultimately you want to get up to the CIO, but building champions below the CIO is great,” Walker says. “The folks who are going to be actually responsible for managing the day-to-day of the product are great ones to start with.” As momentum built, so did Dialpad’s sales team and advertising budget, along with a loyal customer base. “I don’t see any other competitors on the horizon coming out of the startup world,” Walker says, “so now you’re just competing against the legacy guys that you know you’re ahead of and can out-innovate because you’re more modern.” Despite their edge as an innovator, Walker acknowledges that no business grows without facing its share of challenges. “On the road to success, there’s plenty of roadblocks and challenges on a daily basis, and I think every startup goes through those.” Staying Nimble The first major hurdle Dialpad had to clear was convincing major corporations to trust all of their critical calls to the cloud. This was back in 2011, when the concept was still fairly new. But even if they could achieve that goal, Walker had to struggle through the complex process of raising money, gaining traction, finding early customers, building a healthy organization, remaining innovative while serving existing customers, and so much more. Most importantly, Walker had to become excellent at making decisions. He insists, however, that this doesn’t necessarily mean being right all the time. “There have been many times I’ve been wrong,” Walker says. “You just need to adjust and move on, because you’re never going to always be right, and if you wait until everything is so clear that you’re always right, you’re going to be moving way too slow.” The key is to remain attentive and flexible. “One of the beauties of a startup is if you do realize you missed something or you moved too quickly one way or you moved too slowly one way, you can pretty quickly adjust it as long as you stay nimble,” he says. And, above all, Walker advises founders to trust their instincts. Even though he has spent the last two decades gathering a collection of trusted friends and advisors, he still occasionally throws caution to the wind and goes his own way. “The decisions all come down to you, and, because of that, I do think you’ve got to trust your gut,” he says. “You’re the one that’s going to live with the outcome. Don’t let people talk you into things that don’t make sense to you.” Walker explains that, because everyone has a different perspective, two equally intelligent and well-informed people can come to diametrically opposed viewpoints on a situation and what is best to do next. So his best piece of advice to new founders is simply this: “Stick to the North Star of what your idea was, and see it through.” Interview by Nathan Chan, feature article reprinted from Foundr Magazine, by Erica Comitalo Key Takeaways Why Walker, a Silicon Valley securities attorney, decided to transition into the world of entrepreneurship How the first iteration of internet telephony service Dialpad came to be How Walker became involved in companies that were eventually acquired by Yahoo! and Google The reason Walker decided to buy back the name Dialpad in 2011 Why introducing the cloud became a game changer for Dialpad and its customers Walker’s unconventional approach to cold calling Why it’s OK to make the wrong decision sometimes The best advice Walker can offer about staying nimble and trusting your instincts
After a Zero day in Bridgeport to celebrate Molly's birthday and the end of the tough Sierra section of the trail, the guys need to resupply. Bridgeport is a nice town, but the options for hiker supplies are thin on the ground, so EthaMol hitch to Walker, 30 odd miles away, and find the general store there well stocked, though they have to swap out some of their normal purchases for new items (being English 'weiners' are an unfamiliar item). After some BBQ ribs at a nearby diner they need to hitch back to the trail. As Walker is not a normal resupply town rides are difficult, & Molly particularly feels the stress of needing to get a lift, and when they eventually get a hitch it turns out to be a friendly but wild journey! Back at Sonora Pass they head uphill, and at the top Ethan notices that the view ahead has a distinct lack of snow on the horizon. Having got rid of their bear canisters and ice axes in Bridgeport the guys are travelling lighter, and their next stop in South Lake Tahoe is only another two days away. A short day back on trail, but the work resumes tomorrow. Episode 80 of Trail & Errors :)
Welcome to the Adventures of Spackataw we’re on Level 54 State of Play part 2. I’m player 1 Tony “Player 2 Buckity” and Player 3 Ceavn. We have a level jam-packed with news, from the pre-releases of #Rage2 to Gaming with Ceavn as he tells us how we felt about Detroit Become All Humans, after that, we talk about the New #TomClanceyBreakingPoint and jumping right into the #Playstations State of Play…. That’s a lot of Sony talk where is #Microsoft ...that's right they are getting ready to have possibly the largest E3 ever. In Checkpoint, we are going to give you the schedules and our predictions of 2019 E3. Join and Watch us live every Sunday at 4 pm CST twitch.tv/AOSpodcast follow us to get alerts when we go live. Follow Us: Facebook @blackengamingnetwork Instagram @blackengaming #APLAGUETALEINNOCENCE - May 14th PS4, XB1, PC - “Follow the grim tale of young Amicia and her little brother Hugo, in a heartrending journey through the darkest hours of history. Hunted by Inquisition soldiers and surrounded by unstoppable swarms of rats, Amicia and Hugo will come to know and trust each other. As they struggle to survive against overwhelming odds, they will fight to find purpose in this brutal, unforgiving world. Pre-order now and get three alternative outfits and coats of arms.” A Plague Tale: Innocence $41.86 as of 05/12/2019 #Rage2 - May 14th PS4, XB1, PC - “Dive headfirst into a world devoid of society, law, and order. RAGE 2 brings together two studio powerhouses–Avalanche Studios, masters of open world insanity, and id Software, creators of the first-person shooter –to deliver a carnival of carnage where you can go anywhere, shoot anything, and explode everything. An asteroid has annihilated 80% of the earth’s population, and humanity’s numbers are dwindling. Ruthless and bloodthirsty gangs roam the open roads and the tyrannical Authority seek to rule with an iron fist. As Walker, the last Ranger of the wasteland and a threat to their power, you have been robbed of your home and left for dead. Now you’ll have to rage for justice and freedom. With ludicrous vehicle combat, super-powered first-person mayhem, and an open world full of emergent madness, you will tear across an unforgiving wasteland battling sadistic gangs to find the tools and tech needed to crush the oppressive rule of The Authority once and for all..” Rage 2 $59.99 Apex Legends Is Coming To Mobile Devices - GS News Update… During an EA conference call, investors and EA leaders discussed plans to launch Apex Legends on mobile platforms. No details were provided as to when Apex Legends will come to iOS and Android devices (or if those are the target platforms), but EA is working aggressively to bring the game to more players in more markets around the world. -Source Gamespot editor Lily Zaldivar Ghost Recon Breakpoint announced, gets October release date… After a leak of Ubisoft's Ghost Recon Breakpoint has been formally announced, and it already has a release date: October 4, 2019. Breakpoint is set behind enemy lines on a "mysterious island" with a variety of environments, including fjords and a volcano—plus drones, of course, because it's kind of futuristic in the way Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is. As previously speculated, The Punisher/The Walking Dead actor Jon Bernthal is playing a key role in the game. "You are no longer the hunter," says Ubisoft. Instead, we're being hunted by an equally-elite team, the Wolves, and the title 'Breakpoint' is meant to imply that our mission is on the verge of failure. When Ghost Recon Breakpoint launches in October, it will be available on the Epic Games Store and Uplay. -Source pcgamer.com editor pc gamer staff EA Access subscription service coming to PS4… Electronic Arts are bringing its EA Access subscription service, which offers early access trials to new games and a library of existing games as part of “the Vault,” to PlayStation 4 this July, the publisher announced. EA Access for PS4 will cost $4.99 per month or $29.99 annually, the same price as the existing EA Access service on Xbox One. -Source Polygon editor Michael McWhertor State of Play: All The Announcements… Predator: Hunting Grounds revealed during the State of Play. https://youtu.be/wiSmINxtLC8 MediEvil is unearthed Oct. 25, 2019 https://youtu.be/OdFgmLIjYiw A New look at Final Fantasy VII remake https://youtu.be/Df0YG3qfZ8E Away: The Survival Series takes you on a journey into the wild. https://youtu.be/lIjGxIxQ8ok Introducing Riverbend, a vocal shoot-and-slash featuring Indie crossovers. https://youtu.be/CsASJ1r-DLk Monster Hunter World: Iceborne comes to PS4 Sept. 6 https://youtu.be/MM_936U7cvg -Source Playstation blog
On today’s MarketScale Pro AV podcast, we are joined by Electrosonic Pre-Sales and Design Engineer Doug Walker and Project Manager Bob Mann for a conversation on extended control room design. Control rooms are integral to companies that make mission-critical decisions daily. As Walker points out, the term “control room” does not mean the same thing to everyone, so the first thing that the technicians and engineers at Electrosonic do is begin by defining what that actually is and means to each individual client. For some, it could be a room with dials and valve switches and very physical devices, and for others, it could be a flight control room or be very software driven. “In the oil and gas industry, they’ve seen the control room attached to what it’s actually controlling, which can often be on a rig, or in a very hostile location, so with improved connectivity and better control rooms, it doesn’t have to be out in that hostile location anymore,” Walker says. Walker goes on to point out that now only essential personnel must be on the operated asset, on an oil rig for example, but people can operate the same resources remotely, which allows for better communication, and a lot of safety improvements. Technology has evolved, and as it has, people’s attitude and expectations have changed. That now means that we need to be able to access that information from anywhere. “In the oil and gas field, it’s more of what we call a controlled environment that the client’s looking to create,” Mann says. That allows teams to “monitor, implement, and replace faulty equipment” efficiently. “The most important tool that we’re providing is the ability to communicate immediately and seamlessly with any offshore asset,” Mann adds.
This week’s guest was a tremendous interview! Sam Walker is The Wall Street Journal's deputy editor for enterprise, the unit that oversees the paper's in-depth page-one features and investigative reporting projects. A two-time bestselling author, Walker's latest book, "The Captain Class", set out to answer one of the most hotly debated questions in sports: Who are the greatest teams of all time? He devised a formula, applied it to thousands of teams from leagues all over the world, and when he was done, trimmed the best of the best down to a list of the sixteen most dominant teams in history. With the list in hand, Walker became obsessed with another, more complicated question: What did these freak teams have in common? As Walker dug into their stories, a distinct pattern emerged: Each team had the same type of captain — a singular leader with an unconventional skill set who drove it to achieve sustained, historic greatness. So he wrote a book that delivers to us this exact formula. On today's show, we talk about his discoveries, take a deep dive with into the history of success for each captain and team he highlighted in his book, and much, much more. Walker's ability to identify these counterintuitive leadership qualities of the unconventional women and men who drove their respective team's to success is phenomenal. A must-listen show. Suiting Up is a podcast that explores the psychology, playbook of tools, and strategies of the most influential people in sports, entertainment and business.
Welcome to MR, the podcast for beginners and insiders about the ideas, people and movements who have shaped rhetorical history. Today or rather, the day I wrote this, I got some bad news, so to make up for it, I get to talk about Jeffrey Walker, who is one of my favorite people ever, and I get to talk about one of my favorite books, too, his Genuine Teachers of This Art, subtitled Rhetorical Education in Antiquity. Basically Walker’s arguing that rhetoric as a field is, at its very core, pedagogical. It’s not just practice of rhetoric or analysis of rhetoric, but that both of these really come into being through the teaching of rhetoric. As he says “by defining ‘the art of the rhetor” as the art of producing a rhetor, one puts the other definitions into relation. The pedagogical project sets the agenda for the critical-rheoretic one and determines the appropriate objects of study… Its pedagogical enterprise is what ultimately makes rhetoric rhetoric and not just a version of something else” (2-3). Walker’s title comes from a line from Cicero’s dialogs on the orator. Antonius describes Isocrates’ subsequent rhetoric teachers as the “genuine teachers of this art” and Isocrates does feature heavily in how we think about rhetoric and the teaching of rhetoric. At the center of this text, Walker does the incredible work of reverse engineering the techne or art of rhetoric that Isocrates may have written. We think Isocrates wrote such a treatise. Zosimus’s Life of Isocrates in the the fifth century wrote “It is said that Isocrates also wrote an art of rhetoric bu in the course of time it was lost” (qtd. 57) Cicero, too, and Quintilian, seem to take it for granted that Isocrates had a complete rhetoric treatise. We might, Walker points out, not impose our own publishing tradition on what this would look like. Isocrates’ treatise on rhetoric would be, like Aritotle’s probably was “a ‘teacher’s manual’ or ‘toolbox’ containing an organized and thus memorizable and searchable, collection of ‘the things that can be taught’ and a stock of explanations and examples” (84). Combining shorter pieces of Isocrates’ with cited fragments and other sources’ admiration, parody and allusion, Walker reconstructs what this lost document might look like. He suggests that by looking at, say, the legal arguments of Isocrates, you can see evidence of a “rudimentary stasis system”: did they do it? how bad was it? was it legal or right? if it was right was that because of advantage, honor or justice? Of course there’s a bunch of stylistic rules some of which seem uniquely suited to Greek language and culture. And, of course, imitation is paramount. Over all, it seems that Isocrates’ pedagogical philosophy “assumes an ideal student of ready which who can take the imprint of the stylistic models set before him and can quickly come to imitate and absorb them” (153). One of the key pedagogical assignments, then, is declamation. We don’t think of performance and acting as part of rhetorical discovery, but back in Isocrates’ day,speaking was extremely important, and the old debate practice of speaking your opponents’ words was a key pedagocial practice. Not just your opponent, but just “others” with whom you may or may not agree, sort of playing a part and trying on an argument. Think of it a little as if you were doing mock trial back in high school and some peopel are given the role of defense counsil and some are prosecution and some are witnesses: you have the facts of the case, but then you play the role the best you can within that structure. It’s invention, but also acting and it can be an effective pedagogical tool. As Walker puts it “the student was(is) freed from the pressure to discover the ‘correct answer’” (198) and “because the the student is playing a role, his or her youthful ego is not at stake, and it is possible to both play with the lines or argument and to reflect on them as well” (199). If you have a question about some of the verbs and pronouns used in those last quotes, it’s because Walker doesn’t just study this stuff--he teaches it. Since his whole argument is that rhetoric is about being a teacher, he doesn’t shy away from describing how contemporary first year composition can embrace “rhetoric [as] an art of cultivating a productive, performative capacity” and unabashedly declares that “Rhetorical scholarship that made no consequential difference to what rhetors/writers do, or to how rhetors/writers are trained, would have little point. Perhaps that is obvious. Yet it is easy to forget” (288). Man, I get chills reading those words. I should take a moment here to say that if you use rhetorical methods from the ancients, like closely imitating exemplors or trying on other arguments, why not shoot a line at Mere Rhetoricpodcast@gmail.com? I’d love to hear about it and maybe we could do an episode just on the history and benefit of, say, imitation or declamation. Okay, here’s the last word from Dr. Walker, though “Ancient rhetorical education appealed to the desired that brought the motivated student to it and that persists today: the desire expressed by Isocrates’ students to say admirable things; or Plato’s Phaedrus’ remark that he would rather be eloquent like Lysias than rich; or Plato’s Hippocrates’ wish to learn to speak ‘awesomely’ like Protagoras … Rhetoric, as a paideia, was a ‘sweet garden’ where the young could experience and enact such things as theater, as game, and in so doing could cultivate their dunamis for wise and eloquent speech, thought and writing in practical situations as well as develop an attachment to a dream paradigm of democratic civic life” (293-4)