Podcasts about Owl Labs

A recent report by Owl Labs found that 46% of workers said their company had increased the use of monitoring software over the past year — and a similar share of workers said monitoring was a top concern of theirs. David C. Olcott, CEO of Samurai Success, talks with Lloyd, Jamie, and guest host Chris Alberta this leading to distrust and resent among employees, and the need for transparency among employers.

Given that hybrid working is here to stay we hear from one of the leading companies providing smart video conferencing which makes everyone feel that bit more connected – Frank Weishaupt, CEO of Boston-based Owl Labs, who gives a highly informative and data-rich interview covering everything from attitudes to flexible work through to whether we'll all be meeting in the Metaverse in the future – or not. Also in this episode we hear from the Financial Times features writer Emma Jacobs, who frequently covers work and careers, in our sponsored feature My Working Life, brought to you in association with Whitefox: Exceptional publishers for exceptional stories. Find out more at www.wearewhitefox.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coffee Badging: A Trend in Hybrid Workplaces In the world of hybrid work, a curious phenomenon has emerged: coffee badging. It's not about java aficionados collecting stamps on their loyalty cards; rather, it's a sly workaround for employees who are less than thrilled about returning to the office. Here's the scoop: Coffee badging involves employees showing up at the workplace just long enough to swipe their building ID, grab a cup of coffee, exchange pleasantries, and then promptly head home—akin to an Irish goodbye. According to a study by Owl Labs, nearly 60% of on-site workers have tried this tactic1. But why the covert coffee run? Let's explore the motivations behind this trend and how organizations might address it: Forced Office Return: Many employees harbor reservations about returning to the office. Some workplaces have become toxic due to disgruntled colleagues. Even those who don't mind being in the office engage in coffee badging to avoid the negativity. The key question: Are they still productive elsewhere? How does this impact the team relationships and trust?1. Rewarding the Wrong Behavior: Some companies inadvertently reinforce the idea that visibility equals success. Employees feel pressured to be seen physically, even if it doesn't enhance productivity. Managers who prioritize presence over results inadvertently encourage coffee badging. The fix? Evaluate performance based on effort and outcomes, not mere face time1. Deviant Conformity: Coffee badging falls into the category of deviant conformity. Employees conform to the letter of the policy (swiping in) while flouting its spirit (not fully engaging in office work). This behavior often arises from dissatisfaction with poorly designed policies. Organizations should revisit their mandates to ensure alignment with employee needs and expectations1. In summary, coffee badging reflects a nuanced response to workplace policies. While it may irk some managers, understanding the underlying reasons can guide better policy design. So, whether you're a coffee badger or a policy maker, consider the balance between compliance and genuine engagement in the evolving world of work.

In this episode of the Wise Decision Maker Show, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky speaks to Frank Weishaupt, CEO of Owl Labs, who talks about why it's important to avoid treating remote meeting participants as second-class citizens.You can learn about Owl Labs at https://owllabs.com/

Video-conferencing company Owl Labs surveyed two-thousand employed Americans, finding that 46 percent had at least one additional job outside their full-time occupation. Polyworking, as it's known, is most prevalent among millenials, least common among Baby Boomers. Those poly workers aren't doing it just for fun; 40 percent say they need additional income to cover expenses. Debbie and Marty Discuss  

Craig Durr, Senior Analyst, Wainhouse & Max Makeev, Co-Founder, Owl Labs join David Dungay, Editor in Chief, UC Today for this latest interview.Key talking points include:The MOST critical technology components needed to create a hybrid meeting room todayThe impact of AI on the meeting room spaceHow to create great hybrid meeting rooms

Hey CX Nation,In this week's episode of The CXChronicles Podcast #201 we  welcomed Jeanette Wiley, Project Manager - CX at Owl Labs based in Boston, MA.   With the rise of the hybrid & remote work place where some of us work from the office and some of us from home (AKA the beach, cough, cough...) the need for better video solutions to communicate with your customers & team has become paramount. Owl Labs is building incredible video and audio technology solutions to help their customers communicate with their customers & teams. In this episode, Jeanette and Adrian chat through how the team at Owl Labs has tackled The Four CX Pillars: Team,  Tools, Process & Feedback and shares tips & best practices that have worked across her own customer focused business leader journey.**Episode #201 Highlight Reel:**1. How Owl Labs help their customers experience fully immersive meetings  2. Building a remote or hybrid playbook & tool-kit as your business scales  3. Connecting your CRM and customer details directly to your customer success 4. Simplifying your CSMs processes & mitigating clicks and scrolls 5. Socializing your customer feedback across the entire business on the reg!  Huge thanks to Jeanette for coming on The CXChronicles Podcast and featuring her work and efforts in pushing the customer experience & customer success space into the future.Click here to learn more about Jeanette WileyClick here to learn more about Owl LabsIf you enjoy The CXChronicles Podcast, stop by your favorite podcast player and leave us a review today.You know what would be even better?Go tell one of your friends or teammates about CXC's content, CX/CS/RevOps services, our customer & employee focused community & invite them to join the CX Nation!Are you looking to learn more about the world of Customer Experience, Customer Success & Revenue Operations?Click here to grab a copy of my book "The Four CX Pillars To Grow Your Business Now" available on Amazon or the CXC website.For you non-readers, go check out the CXChronicles Youtube channel to see our customer & employee focused video content & short-reel CTAs to improve your CX/CS/RevOps performance today (politely go smash that subscribe button). Contact us anytime to learn more about CXC at INFO@cxchronicles.com and ask us about how we can help your business & team make customer happiness a habit now!Support the show

After reviewing his calendar from 2022, the CEO of Owl Labs decided to get more strategic about why and when he held meetings. Here's why it matters.

Josh Allen and Joe Lynch discuss Tive's validated, real-time visibility for pharma. Josh is CRO at Tive, a leading provider of real-time supply chain visibility insights that help logistics professionals actively manage their in-transit shipments' location and condition. About Josh Allen  Josh Allen joined Tive in April of 2022 as Chief Revenue Officer to build out the go-to-market team as the company continues to scale at a rapid pace. Allen's primary responsibilities include fortifying the long-term global sales strategy, hiring the required expertise across the team, driving aggressive revenue growth, and creating a culture of winning. He joined Tive after serving as CRO at two fast-growing Boston-based technology companies in Owl Labs and Drift (acquired by Vista Equity Partners). Prior to that, Allen served as SVP, North America Sales & Service at CarGurus (NASDAQ: CARG) where he led a team of more than 300 sales, service, and operations professionals during the company's most expansive growth period. He also spent a decade at LogMeIn (NASDAQ: LOGM), where he held a number of leadership positions, including VP of Sales for two of the company's three business units, and helped open and expand their international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. Josh attended Bowdoin College and now lives in Lynnfield, MA with his wife and two daughters and spends any extra time he has coaching, training, playing music, or sharing stories with friends and family. About Tive Tive is a leading provider of real-time supply chain visibility insights that help logistics professionals actively manage their in-transit shipments' location and condition. With Tive, shippers and logistics service providers (LSP) eliminate preventable delays, damage, and shipment failures. Tive‘s solution provides data generated by its industry-leading trackers allowing clients to actively optimize their shipments, improve their customers' experience, and unlock supply chain insights in an actionable real-time manner. Key Takeaways: Validated, Real-Time Visibility for Pharma Josh Allen is the Chief Revenue Officer of Tive, a tech firm that provides location and condition data of critical shipments in real time to ensure on time and in full delivery. In the podcast interview, Josh and Joe talked about Tive's validated, real-time visibility solution for the pharmaceutical and biological industries. The pharma and biological industries require visibility solutions to comply with exacting regulations – and Tive meets those requirements. Tive's pharma compliance is outlined below: FDA 21 CFR Part 11 and EU Annex 11 compliance: Ensures electronic records can be trusted in the same way as handwritten records. 3-Point NIST® traceable Certificate of Calibration included with every Tive tracker: Tive Solo 5G trackers and probes are fully calibrated by an ISO 17025 accredited laboratory. GxP-compliant: Tive's solution follows the guidelines of Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). All the components (hardware and software) are developed and tested following the Good Automated Manufacturing Practice 5 (GAMP 5) model. The bar is higher for medical and pharmaceutical shipments because a shipment that is late or out of temperature range could cause loss of life. The Tive Tracker is about the size of a deck of cards, and it captures and transmits shipment data in real time with unprecedented accuracy. The Tracker provides real time alerts that enable shippers and their 3PL partners to respond and recover the shipment in the case of temperature breech, tampering, shock, damage, theft, and a variety of other factors. Tive enables shippers and their carrier partners to move from reactive to proactive, which is so important when transporting medical/pharma shipments. Tive provides flexible, scalable solutions bringing end-to-end visibility to supply chain professionals. In additional to medical and pharma, Tive provides solutions for the following supply chain problem areas: Location Tracking for High-Value Goods Chemicals Condition Monitoring Handling Damage Monitoring Damage Alerts for Electronics Shipments Port Delays Environmental Monitoring for Perishables Equipment Delivery Monitoring Automotive Supply Chain Optimization Learn More About Validated, Real-Time Visibility for Pharma Josh on LinkedIn Tive on LinkedIn Tive website Tive pharma solution page Biocair case study Optimize Courier case study Mercury case study Tracking Medical Shipments with Alex Guillen The Tive Story with Krenar Komoni The Logistics of Logistics Podcast If you enjoy the podcast, please leave a positive review, subscribe, and share it with your friends and colleagues. The Logistics of Logistics Podcast: Google, Apple, Castbox, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Tunein, Podbean, Owltail, Libsyn, Overcast Check out The Logistics of Logistics on Youtube

A daily look at the relevant information security news from overnight - 08 June, 2022Episode 240 - 08 June 2022Properties loader- https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-svcready-malware-loads-from-word-doc-properties/Shields down - https://www.securityweek.com/data-breach-shields-health-care-group-impacts-2-million-patientsWho let the Dogs out- https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-dogwalk-windows-zero-day-bug-gets-free-unofficial-patches/Owl be watching you - https://www.securityweek.com/owl-labs-patches-severe-vulnerability-video-conferencing-devicesBad Pirates - https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/pirated-ccleaner-search-results-spread-information-stealing-malware/Hi, I'm Paul Torgersen. It's Wednesday June 8th, 2022, and this is a look at the information security news from overnight. From BleepingComputer.comA previously unknown malware loader named SVCReady has been discovered in phishing attacks, featuring an unusual way of loading the malware from Word documents. Specifically, it uses VBA macro code to execute shellcode stored in the properties of the document. HP reports that the malware has been under deployment since April of this year, and received several updates in May. This indicates it is currently under heavy development, and is likely still at an early stage. From SecurityWeek.com:Shields Health Care Group of Massachusetts has informed roughly two million individuals of a cybersecurity incident that potentially impacted a robust set of their PII and PHI. No word on the threat actor or attack vector in this breach that happened between March 7 and March 21 of this year. No free monitoring was offered, but they do guide you on how to lock down your three credit reports. Gee, thanks. From BleepingComputer.com:Yet another Windows zero-day vulnerability in the Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool has come to light. The security flaw dubbed DogWalk, is a path traversal flaw attackers can exploit to copy an executable to the Windows Startup folder from a .diagcab file. This flaw has actually been known for over two years, but Microsoft said that Outlook users are not at risk because .diagcab files are automatically blocked. Opatch says yea, but here's a free patch anyway, you know, just in case. From SecurityWeek.com:Video conferencing company Owl Labs has released patches for a severe vulnerability affecting its Meeting Owl Pro and Whiteboard Owl devices. These flaws can be exploited to find registered devices worldwide and access sensitive data, or even gain access to the owners' networks. The company says updating to firmware version 5.4.1.4 should eliminate the threat of unauthorized access. And last today, from BleepingComputer.comA new malware distribution campaign dubbed “FakeCrack,” is being promoted through search results for a pirated copy of the CCleaner Pro Windows optimization program. What you really get is a nasty that steals your passwords, credit cards and crypto wallets. On the other hand, if you are pirating software anyway, maybe you get what you deserve. That's all for me today . Have a great rest of your day. Like and subscribe. And until tomorrow, be safe out there.

Ależ ten czas pędzi. Dopiero co był poniedziałek, a tu już nastał kolejny weekend. Skoro weekend, to wraz z nim na falach podcastu BSS bez tajemnic pojawia się EPT, czyli nic innego jak Ekspresowe Podsumowanie Tygodnia. Jak co tydzień wybrałem dla Was kilka interesujących tematów z moich podcastów, z platformy FOCUS ON Business oraz mam kilka zapowiedzi ciekawych wydarzeń na nadchodzące dni. Oto lista linków, przez które dotrzecie do poszerzonych informacji o omawianych w tym odcinku tematach:Podcast:661 Ciekawy biuletyn o PODATKACH od Piotra Chojnackiego – https://bit.ly/39GOYxc 662 Jak biznes podchodzi do CSR i to na ZIELONO – https://bit.ly/39OnRQS 64 How does labor market in Poland look like in the mid of 2022–analysis of LABOR MARKET BAROMETER – https://bit.ly/3wOKlu8 NEWSy:XVI edycja Barometru Rynku Pracy - https://focusonbusiness.eu/pl/ludzie/obawy-i-nadzieje-pracownicy-i-pracodawcy-w-niestandardowych-czasach-barometr-rynku-pracy-2022/24859Ankieta Grant Thornton „Zmiany i trendy w outsourcingu kadrowo-płacowym i finansowo-księgowym” - https://focusonbusiness.eu/pl/wiadomosci/ankieta-zmiany-i-trendy-w-outsourcingu-kadrowo-placowym-i-finansowo-ksiegowym/24860Raport HAYS Poland „Kobiety na rynku pracy 2022” - https://focusonbusiness.eu/pl/raporty/53-kobiet-doswiadczylo-przeszkod-w-karierze-jednym-z-problemow-jest-postrzeganie-ich-przez-pryzmat-macierzynstwa/24847Kolejna podwyżka płacy minimalnej - https://focusonbusiness.eu/pl/wiadomosci/wzrosnie-placa-minimalna-a-za-nia-preferencyjny-zus-dla-przedsiebiorcow/24831Praca zdalna i hybrydowa. Przedstawiciele Biura Projektowania Systemów Cyfrowych komentują wyniki badania State of Hybrid Work dla Owl Labs - https://focusonbusiness.eu/pl/wiadomosci/praca-zdalna-wazniejsza-od-wiekszej-pensji/24828Zapowiedzi:2 czerwca w Warszawie odbędzie się Reach4.biz Meetup –https://focusonbusiness.eu/pl/wydarzenia/reach4-biz-meetup/2022-06-02/13576 czerwca odbędzie się 3 edycja HR MASTER. - https://focusonbusiness.eu/pl/wydarzenia/iii-edycja-hr-master-konferencja-hybrydowa/2022-06-06/1336W dniach 7-8 czerwca w Berlinie odbędą się dwa wydarzenia - Outsourcing & Shared Services Germany Forum oraz RPA & Smart Automation Germany Forum. - https://focusonbusiness.eu/pl/wydarzenia/outsourcing-shared-services-germany-forum-rpa-smart-automation-germany-forum-in-berlin/2022-06-07/1354****************************Nazywam się Wiktor Doktór i na co dzień prowadzę Klub Pro Progressio https://klub.proprogressio.pl/pl – to społeczność wielu firm prywatnych i organizacji sektora publicznego, którym zależy na rozwoju relacji biznesowych w modelu B2B. W podcaście BSS bez tajemnic poza odcinkami solowymi, zamieszczam rozmowy z ekspertami i specjalistami z różnych dziedzin przedsiębiorczości.Jeśli chcesz się o mnie więcej dowiedzieć, to zapraszam do odwiedzin moich kanałów w mediach społecznościowych:YouTube - https://bit.ly/BSSbeztajemnicYT Facebook - https://bit.ly/BSSbtFB LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wiktordoktor/ Możesz też do mnie napisać. Mój adres email to - wiktor.doktor(@)proprogressio.pl****************************Patronami Podcastu “BSS bez tajemnic” są: Marzena Sawicka (https://www.linkedin.com/in/marzena-sawicka-a9644a23/), Przemysław Sławiński (https://www.linkedin.com/in/przemys%C5%82aw-s%C5%82awi%C5%84ski-155a4426/), Damian Ruciński (https://www.linkedin.com/in/damian-ruci%C5%84ski/) Szymon Kryczka (https://www.linkedin.com/in/szymonkryczka/)Grzegorz Ludwin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gludwin/). Wspaniali ludzie, dzięki którym pojawiają się kolejne odcinki tego podcastu. Jeśli i Ty chcesz dołączyć do grona Patronów, to możesz to zrobić przez serwis Patronite - https://patronite.pl/wiktordoktor Możesz także wspierać rozwój tego podcastu przez Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/wiktordoktor Jeśli podoba Ci się to co robię, możesz, przez ten link https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wiktordoktor, kupić mi kawę i tym samym wesprzeć rozwój tego podcastu.

What good is a hybrid meeting if you are remote and can't see and hear what's most important? Mark Schnittman, the Co-Founder and CTO of Owl Labs, breaks down how his company is creating products to help make hybrid meetings more meaningful for all participants. Learn about how Mark landed on the idea of creating a camera that could better capture the in-person meeting experience for remote teammates. Tune in to learn:What's the origin story of Owl Labs? (03:54)What were some of the technical difficulties in building the product early on? (6:22)How much did customers influence the development of the product? (24:32)How did sales begin for the initial product? (29:27)How does Owl Labs decide what updates to make? (33:45)What does the future look like for Owl Labs? (40:17)IT Visionaries is brought to you by The Salesforce Platform. If you love the thought leadership on this podcast, Salesforce has even more meaty IT thoughts to chew on. Take your company to the next level with in-depth research and trends right in your inbox. Subscribe to a newsletter tailored to your role at Salesforce.com/newsletter.Mission.org is a media studio producing content for world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Highlander Charter School Psychologist, Ms. Dehlia McCarthy joins the STEAM Box youth to talk about Self Care.  Who's responsibility is it to love you? Are all actions motivated by either love or fear? How do you take care of yourself?Shout out to Owl Labs for helping us capture moments like these with our Meeting Owl.

Listen now | Episode 76 Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.This week I’m excited to bring you my conversation with Peter Barrett, co-founder of Playground Global, a firm that has raised over $825MM to invest in deeply technical and transformative technologies. Founded in 2015, the firm has invested in companies like eero, Canvas Technologies, and Owl Labs among many others.This week’s show was a bit of a departure from our normal episodes that are more focused on firm and fund management, as I was really excited to talk to Peter about both new technologies, and the art of funding these types of hard science companies. About Peter Barrett:Peter has been writing code since he was a teenager, and at 19, his first security program caught the attention of the NSA. He went on to create the first widely used video codec in the early-90s, he built the world’s most popular IPTV platform at Microsoft, worked on cloud intelligence for automotive at CloudCar, and now is pioneering quantum and optical computing, robotics, and artificial intelligence at Playground. He holds over 100 patents. Subscribe at ventureunlocked.substack.com

Dr. Deloris Grant joins the STEAM Box podcast for part 2 where we discuss the Mighty Gemstones, the Black Indiana Jones, and traveling.Thanks to Owl Labs for sending us our Meeting owl to capture moments like these.

The STEAM Box youth from Central Falls HS interview Dr Deloris Grant and some of her mentees about their podcast - What's your story.  What's it like having a famous Oscar-winning sister?  Why is it that Central Falls is so good at building relationships with youth?  What does success look like?  Tears are shed in this feel-good interview. Check us out tomorrow when we publish part 2 of the interview to learn why Dr. Grant is the Indiana Jones of the community and we talk about travel.Thanks to Owl Labs for sending us our Meeting owl to capture moments like these.

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.   I'm Fred Fishkin.        Owl Labs is a company that has been bringing smart innovations to video conferencing to make remote connections feel more natural.    We've been impressed with the Meeting Owl Pro….a stylish cylinder that has a 360 degree...

Afro-futurist rapper, Brown University Professor, Video Game Designer for HBO's Insecure, and more joins the STEAM Box Central Falls Warriors Podcast to discuss X-Men, Nintendo, Women in hip-hop, and so much more.  This inspirational visit was recorded on our new toy, the meeting owl from Owl Labs!

The STEAM Box youth from Highlander talk about life after HS.  No one cares about Aaron Rodgers.  And is Travis Scott responsible for the tragedies as AstroFest? Shout out to the team at Owl Labs for our new toy.  We're going to center it next time, but the sound is so much better!

Techstination interview: Owl Labs brings innovative tech to whiteboard meetings

In this week’s episode of The Room Podcast, Madison and Claudia cover a relevant topic as the world begins to re-open and adapt to a life post-pandemic: the future of work. They are joined by two CEOs, Frank Weishaupt and Roy Hirshland, who are both innovating on the new normal as leaders of their companies. Frank is the CEO of Owl Labs, a video collaboration technology company that provides the inclusive meeting experience remote participants need and deserve. Roy is the CEO and Co-Founder of T3 Advisors, a global real estate firm that inspires companies to think more strategically about real estate and their workplace. We discuss key insights and tactical advice surrounding the future of work, including the hardware and software tools needed to empower a hybrid work culture, leadership’s vital role as reopening brings transition, and multi-generational perspectives on navigating a crisis while empowering employees to thrive at work. Let’s open the door. Season 3 is sponsored by our friends at SVB and Cooley. The questions today were researched through SVB’s Future of Work Report.

O trabalho remoto se tornou uma saída viável e necessária para muitas empresas e empregados para poder conter a Covid-19. Melhor ficar em casa do que correr o risco de um ambiente onde o vírus circula e tem capacidade de contaminação elevada. Porém, esta condição não representou a maioria dos trabalhadores brasileiros. O trabalho em casa não é algo novo para 3,8 milhões de brasileiros que já tinham este modelo de trabalho. Os números são de 2018 e o levantamento é do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). Logo, se levarmos em consideração que hoje 7,5 milhões estão em home-office, a tendência não significa uma mudança para a maioria dos trabalhadores brasileiros. A vontade de trabalhar em casa é uma tendência dos trabalhadores dos mais diversos setores onde a atividade é possível. Segundo uma pesquisa da Buffer, de 2019, 98% têm o desejo de experimentar pelo menos uma vez esta forma de trabalho. Mas, entre a vontade e a realidade há uma grande diferença. Hoje, 49% das pessoas em atividade profissional poderiam optar pelo home-office. Seria para 55% dos desempregados a forma de trabalho ideal, segundo pesquisa do Instituto Ipsos. Porém, há uma falta de estrutura tanto por parte das empresas como da condição privada dos trabalhadores. Há uma tecnologia entre o viável e o inviável A possibilidade de um trabalho mais seguro e com maior produtividade tem como fronteira do possível a capacidade tecnológica. O conhecimento que se traduz em ações produtivas passa pelo domínio e condições de meios que viabilizem a eficiência da atividade. Investimos pouco nisso. As empresas brasileiras ainda resistem em pensar a Tecnologia da Informação (TI) como uma necessidade real. Segundo levantamento da Owl Labs, feito em 2019, mostra que a satisfação de quem está trabalhando em home-office é de 71%. Os trabalhadores que não estão nesta modalidade têm uma satisfação de apenas 50%, segundo a pesquisa. Tecnologia bem usada e no lugar certo tende a ser produtiva. Mudanças qualitativas acabam por estimular resultados em um período em que as empresas estão vivendo o desafio de se manter funcionando dentro de uma crise sem precedentes. Para algumas, a pandemia demonstrou possibilidades, contudo, com necessidade de mudanças. TI teve papel vital nestas ações que refizeram e geraram possibilidades para superar as limitações com as restrições que a prevenção ao novo coronavírus apresentou. Logo, a pandemia acentua um divisor de águas entre possibilidades profissionais. Em um momento que falamos tanto de um “novo normal”, esta condição pode significar a abertura para uma nova percepção do trabalho e sua capacidade produtiva. Porém, temos que nos preocupar em dar condições a maioria dos trabalhadores de poderem se aprimorar para serem incluídos entre os que têm acesso a tecnologia e mais opiniões.

In today's GROW B2B FASTER episode, our host Sammy, Managing Partner and founder of SAWOO catches up with Josh Allen, CRO at Owl Labs.That's in it for you1. How to build a really high velocity inside sales motion by creating a trial to paid model.2. The different B2B business models Josh experienced during his career at different firms.3. How to make cold outreach successful by providing solutions to present problems.4. How to incentivize your team correctly.5. How to use the voice of your customer for your marketing.About JoshPrior to joining Owl Labs in October 2020, Josh held the roles of CRO at Drift, SVP of North American Sales and Services at CarGurus and VP of Sales at LogMeIn. In each position, Josh has focused on building out high-velocity, effective sales and customer success teams. In his free time, he is passionate about CrossFit and is the co-owner of “CrossFit 128”, a CrossFit gym.About Owl LabsOwl Labs is a collaborative tech company revolutionizing how the world communicates through inclusive and immersive video experiences. Built for modern organizations, we're dedicated to empowering hybrid and remote teams with our award-winning collaborative technology and product suite. Owl Labs was founded in 2014 and is based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. ShownotesFind Josh on LinkedInFind Josh's company Owl LabsCheck out Josh's Cross Fit Gym CrossFit128.comWhat Josh is currently reading: “The Talent War” by Mike Sarraille, George Randle & Dr. Josh CottonJosh uses The Wall Street Journal to be up to date with the developments in this worldJosh's favourite business book: “Powerful” by Patty McCordJosh's favourite business leader: Seth Shaw, CRO at Airtable and his former mentor and sales leader when he was at LogMeIn

Josh Allen is CRO at Owl Labs and Former Drift CRO and CarGurus SVP.

My guest this episode is Josh Allen, well established business leader and CRO of Owl Labs. Having held many sales leadership positions throughout his career, Josh knows how to read the signs and pave a path towards scaling a company by hiring the right people and navigating the growth with a keen eye. Josh emphasizes the importance of refining your job description when scouting for team members and the responsibilities of coaching them with the attention of a caring leader over a transactional manager. As any company expands, they learn that the devil is in the detail, but a team crafted with Josh's passion and skill is any company’s best counter to error. Like what you heard of Owl Labs and interested in joining the team? Reach out to Josh Allen on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-a/. And as always, thank you to Allego for sponsoring this episode. With Allego, you can record your best content for practice, collaboration, and feedback, all while organizing it neatly in one place to improve sales performance. Email me at webb@thejaydavidgroup.com, so I can personally introduce you to someone who will take great care of you. And, like always, Over Quota is sponsored by the j. David Group, a retained sales search firm for lean start-ups. If you're looking to hire a sales leader for your next stage of growth, please visit thejdavidgroup.com.

In this new episode, Thibaut receives Josh Allen, CRO at Owl Labs. Josh has over 18 years of sales experience, working in companies like LogMeIn or Drift. In this interview, you will discover what keeps a CRO up at night, what KPIs Josh follows, and you'll even learn how to craft a good cold outreach message to Josh. You can find Josh on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-a/ (here). Go check Owl Labs https://www.owllabs.com/ (here). Enjoy the show!

  Are you tired of having too many meetings during the day? You are NOT ALONE! Join the conversation by adding your thoughts in the comments.  Episode Shout-out to OWL Labs, slack, Lifehack, Forbes, and One Legal         Music Intro/Outro: “Thoughts” by Killah Smilez Music Outro: “Explained” by Killah Smilez Make sure you check out the Killah Smilez song on Amazon Catch the music video by Killah Smilez HERE ----more---- Get our NEW book HERE Want to share the episode? Please share the episode on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, and Soundcloud   Don't forget to subscribe to WokeNFree on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and Google Play Do you want to join the show as a guest on an upcoming episode? Contact us HERE Don't forget to submit a scenario to us for SCENARIO TIME!    SCENARIO TIME: How would you respond to these scenarios in SCENARIO TIME? Let's chat HERE!  Have you reviewed our show yet? Pick your platform of choice HERE      Do you want to start a podcast? We are here to HELP! Schedule a FREE strategy session with us HERE This post contains affiliate links. That means if you click on a link and buy something, WokeNFree will earn a small commission from the advertiser at no additional cost to you.

Workforce thought-leader Dan Smolen believes that the future of work is in hybrid work. This week, we dig into fresh workforce market research sponsored by Owl Labs and Global Workplace Analytics. Their study provides a snapshot of a post-COVID workforce that splits its time between home and office. "Now, as millions of people return to the office, they recognize that the office-only workplace has become a relic of the past. With more offices resuming operation, four out of every five [of their full-time workers] will pivot to hybrid work." Survey findings: 70 percent of full-time employees worked from home during the pandemic workers on average saved $473 per month in out-of-pocket expenses for commuting and other needs 20 percent of those working from home clocked more hours than they had in the office 77 percent indicated that a post-pandemic work-from-home option would make them happier about half of respondents have increased their use of Zoom and other conferencing tools working from home added on average 40 minutes to the day that had been used for commuting KEY FINDING: 80 percent of full-time workers said that they expect to work 3 times a week from home, 2 times a week at the office Clearly, the future of work is in hybrid work. And the ramifications of the shift in how we work, and where we work, will hasten sudden and seismic shifts throughout the economy, infrastructure, and workforce. "The future will involve constant pivots and reassessments. And we will need to real-time reimagine a future of work doing meaningful work." EPISODE DATE: October 16, 2020 Social media: - LinkedIn - Facebook - Twitter - Instagram Please Subscribe to The Dan Smolen Podcast on: – Apple Podcast – Android – Google Podcasts – Pandora – Spotify – Stitcher – TuneIn …or wherever you get your podcasts. You may also click HERE to receive our podcast episodes by email. Image credits: Future of work in hybrid work, martin-dm for iStock Photo; Podcast recording session, 10/14/2020, Dan Smolen

“We work with the agencies who are culture driven, meaning that, yes, we can make more money, but we'd rather make a little less money and put culture first, because we understand that it's a marathon, right? Like, we understand that if our employees are happy, it's going to make our situation a lot better.” Kaleem Clarkson This week on the Control the Room Podcast, I’m excited to speak with Kaleem Clarkson, COO and Co-founder of Blend Me, Inc., a consulting firm that cultivates remote employee experiences from onboarding through off-boarding. He has a particular interest in culture-driven organizations. Kaleem is also the COO of RemotelyOne, a members-only community on a mission to end remote work isolation by connecting and building relationships between location-independent professionals. Kaleem and I speak about the different types of remote work, why some companies are struggling to transition to remote work, and why it’s so important for a job posting to accurately represent your organization’s culture. Listen in to find out how Kaleem’s experience as a member of a college metal band led to his career as an employee experience expert.   Show Highlights [2:43] Blind Melon, Slick Rick, & Warped Tour [13:43] The Teleworks Big Three [20:16] The commonality between organizations struggling to work remotely [28:56] Company culture clubs [34:48] Handling employee anxieties during COVID-19 layoffs   Links | Resources Blend Me, Inc. RemotelyOne Kaleem on LinkedIn   About the Guest Kaleem Clarkson is an employee experience expert and remote work advocate helping organizations build intentional employee lifecycles that begin at initial job postings and end after off-boarding. He is the COO and Co-founder of Blend Me, Inc. a remote employee experience consultancy. He is also the COO of RemotelyOne, a members-only community for location-independent professionals. About Voltage Control Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.  Share An Episode of Control The Room Apple Podcasts Spotify Android Stitcher Engage Control The Room Voltage Control on the Web Contact Voltage Control   Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting. Douglas: Today I’m with Kaleem Clarkson, co-founder and chief operating officer of Blend Me, Inc. He is a remote-employee-experience professional, and developing RemotelyOne, a community for location-independent professionals. Welcome to the show, Kaleem. Kaleem: Douglas, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I hear this crowd applause in the background. Let’s get that in post-production. I love it. Douglas: Awesome. So, Kaleem, I'm really curious to hear how an employee-experience professional gets their start. How do you find your way on this path?  Kaleem: That's a good question. I probably should have this ready by now. But I guess I'll start my origin story. I guess this is my origin story. So born and raised in Bangor, Maine. I’m going way back. Bangor, Maine, represent. I always love to throw it out. My home state, I love it. But I ended up going to college in Massachusetts. Got a chance to play at Western State University. Got a chance to play some college football there. And during that time, we all had a very good time. Let's put it that way. I enjoy having beverages with people, making sure that everyone else is having a good time, and we ended up throwing a good amount of gatherings, should you say, in college. And started getting into a metal band, believe it or not. Just got into a metal band and started rocking out. Love the stage. Love that whole feel to it. And that led me to starting a nonprofit organization called Concerts for Charity, which I think we started in ’99. And we started putting on different concerts with different charities across New England. We got our 513(c) status and started donating to different charities, and we got to work with a lot of cool bands in different areas—you know, a lot of jam bands, a lot of hard-rock bands. We worked with—jeez, I'm trying to think of some bands that we booked in the past. I think we booked Blind Melon on their comeback tour, which was pretty cool. Chk, Chk, Chk out in Sacramento, I remember back in the day. I think we booked Slick Rick, a rapper. If you don't know, some of the old-school folks. Douglas: Colleague of Doug E. Fresh, if I'm not mistaken.  Kaleem: Yeah. Yeah. You know, what's funny is we went and picked him up at the airport or whatever, and he gets in the car, and total British accent. You know? So, you don't think about that, like, dude's been living in England all these years. And gets in, and he’s like, “Hello.” Horrible British accent, by the way. That’s horrible.  But anyway, yeah. So I got a chance doing that, and that was really kind of my first experience with dealing with virtual volunteers. VolunteerMatch at the time, we ended up connecting with the Warped Tour, and were able to register people to vote through a group called HeadCount as well. Anyway, it was great. It was a cool experience. We got to do a documentary that featured Trey Anastasio from Phish, Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead, and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones—really big artists in the jam-band scene. And we got to debut it at HBO. So it was cool. I was probably only, what, 21 years old, 22 years old? I really got my first taste of putting on events and just kind of sitting back and watching everybody having a good time. And I think that's the common theme, right? Everyone was just having a good time. Everyone has that cup, that Red Solo Cup, and that really cheap beer. But everyone's having a good time, generally.  And yeah, so I kind of move on. Moved to Atlanta, my partner and I, and get a job at Kennesaw State University at Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. And that's like a faculty-development center. They basically teach faculty how to teach. I don’t know if you knew that, you know, a lot of people may not know this, but college professors, they graduate with a PhD, and they put right in the classroom, so they don't go through any teaching training or anything like that, a lot of them. So, yeah, yeah, it was cool. I got to put on a lot of international conferences there. Again, I'm putting on parties again, right, except in a different setting. That was the kind of interesting, or educational piece to me. I didn't realize faculty also enjoy having a good time, and they do.  So, yeah, all these professional conferences, got a chance to put some of those on, and really kind of just didn't even realize that—I was there for 10 or 12 years. And I would have to say in 2012, I believe, during my work at Kennesaw, I got heavily involved with the Drupal community, and Drupal’s an open-source website-application tool, kind of like WordPress, build websites with it. So kind of got involved with that community. And again, that was another experience of being with like-minded people. It was outside of my previous experience of concerts and the entertainment industry, and then getting in the higher ed around faculty in the higher ed industry. Well, now I'm around other computer digital marketers and digital professionals, you know, developers. And yeah, I got heavily involved with Drupal and started building websites, and I kind of became a Drupal developer. And last year, or probably a year and a half ago, yeah, a year, I left higher ed and decided to get involved with a company called Oomph as a UX engineer and started doing some front-end development work. But the cool thing about Drupal and open source is, again, the networks of people that you meet. And during that time, it was 2012, that I was at a conference in Denver, DrupalCon Denver, and I heard a talk by, his name is Matt Westgate from a company called Lullabot. They’re a big development firm. I think they did the Grammy’s website and some other big ones. But anyway, yeah, I went to that talk, and he was talking about how to run a virtual organization. And he talked about why they weren't using the word remote and why they were using the word distributed and how those words, what those words actually could mean to people. And I recall him saying remote felt like you were distant from something. Douglas: Mm-hmm. Kaleem: You were away from a group of people. So it was fascinating. Like, at that time, 2012, it seems like 100 years ago, but there weren't very many people talking about how to work remotely. So I came home, and my partner, she had graduated two years before that, in 2010, with her master's degree from Yukon in organizational development. And she actually wrote her master's paper thesis on virtual volunteerism, because my charity had hooked up with the Warped Tour, and we had virtual volunteers all over the country. So I came home from that, and I was talking with Jen, and I said, “I think we found something. I think we should do our own thing,” and she was all about it.  She was looking for strategic HR jobs, and there weren't very many. People love those jobs, by the way. I’ll use VP of people and CHRO of people; they don’t really leave those jobs, because those jobs, they’re great. Strategic HR’s obviously a much bigger thing now. So we just decided to create Blend Me, Inc. I kind of took care of the marketing, and then she would take care of the engagement, and that's how we kind of came up with the name.  So she worked for a while at a company that was all distributed. And, you know, we kind of did some consulting on the side with some diversity inclusion. And at the end of the day, you realize all of your experiences are kind of what, together, are who you are, and I was very fortunate in that I had been at companies for—I was at Kennesaw for a very long time, 11 years, and it was because we had a great time. And now, if I'm looking back, you asked me the origin question of how you become an employee-experience professional, you just look back and think about all of the situations and the moments you had that were special with a special group where you accomplished big goals. We accomplished a lot of great things there, and a lot of it had to do with the fact that we were all having a really, really good time.  So this year, with COVID, I decided that it's time to go full time, that we no longer had that obstacle of proving to people that remote work, you can be productive. That has always been an obstacle. And honestly, what we decided from day one, 2012, when we're writing our mission statement, we said we did not want to work with agencies that wanted us to prove that remote work was the right answer. We didn't want to get into that type of work, because trying to prove to somebody that, no, you could do this, it’s just not really in our—we want to help people that have already kind of gone over that hump or already believe that it can be successful, because if there's not a belief from the very top all the way through the organization, it doesn't come through as authentic.  So what's interesting is for all these years, there's been a very small market. But I firmly believe, and I think we can all agree, that from March of 2020 on, I don't think any manager—well, in certain industries, I shouldn't say that—but I'm going to say in 90 percent of jobs today that we have behind a desk or in an office, it's going to be very difficult for managers to say that you're not productive.  So, yeah, that's the whole origin story. I think I got it in, like, eight minutes. I got to work on cutting it down a little bit. But, yeah, that's how we kind of came to this point. Douglas: Yeah. And I really want to dig in on the definition of remote versus distributed. And, you know, even virtual is kind of mixed in there as well. I ran into this when I was first venturing out of my own and kind of exploring this kind of concept of fractional CTO. And at first I was calling myself a virtual CTO, and someone asked me—it was a junior developer—they said, “So does that mean it's all in the cloud?” And so I thought maybe this word virtual is not a good fit here.  That story or that notion of misinterpretation of the word virtual is I know exactly what you're getting at around remote versus distributed. And I think that a lot of those notions really held us back. But now that everyone's been thrust into this experience where they've been forced to grapple with it, to wrap their hands around it, they're starting to understand that there are some benefits, and things maybe aren't as bad as they might imagine. Kaleem: Absolutely. And you know what really the difficulty with our industry—and when I say “our,” I just mean remote work or telework industry—is that we don't have an association now. I know Laurel Farrer has just created the Remote Work Association, and I give her kudos to that. And I believe—what’s her name from FlexJobs?—Sara—can’t remember her name, but she started FlexJobs. They created the one-million-person march campaign. There’s been different, like, spin-off campaigns. But one thing that I've learned from higher ed is when you have the National Society for Statistics, Mathematics and Statistics, you know, that's an organization that spits out all the knowledge. When you have SHRM—Society for Human Resource Management—or you have these major-field associations, there is research. There's guidance. There are definitions. There are thought leaders.  And for me and for us when we were trying to talk to clients about the different types of “remote” work, we just always got stuck. Me, having that thought of, well, let's find the history, and realizing that, oh, okay, well, outside of the U.S., a lot of countries use the term telework. The government agencies use the word telework. You know, there's telework guidance guidelines for the government—well, before, but I'm pretty sure that they still exist somewhere. So then we were struggling with that.  So for us, we just figured, okay, we need to come up with our own definitions for when we're working with clients. And we wanted it to show homage to Jack Nilles for coming up with the word telework in 1973. It's kind of a little outdated definition, but we just kind of thought, like, okay, all of these different things of telework, and when we're thinking about the different types, we realized that a lot of the terms are related to a central workplace. So for us, what we decided to do is come up with our own definitions.  Here we go. We call them teleworks big three, right? So we kind of go with, all of it’s telework work, but a distributed company doesn't have a centralized workplace. So when we’re talking with our clients, we’re like, “Oh, yeah. We’re a remote company. We don’t have an office.” We’ll say, “Okay, well, for our purposes, when we’re in our meetings and when we’re talking about the programs that we have, we’re going to refer to your agency as a distributed company because you don't have a centralized workplace.” So employees, they work from wherever they're the most productive and the most comfortable. So that's distributed.  Then we came to the common word of remote. And what drove us to this was back to that 2012 talk of the reason why they don't use the word remote was that it felt like you were away from the centralized workplace. Well, Lullabot was 100 percent distributed. They didn't have a central workplace. But remote employees are away from a centralized workplace. So to me and to us, when we're talking to—not to me, but internally speaking—remote employees are people who work away from the office. So you have a centralized office, there are people that are going into the office every day, but you also have some remote employees. So that's how we kind of label that.  And then our last one is kind of like the telecommuter, telecommute. You know, telecommute employees share their time between a central workplace and working wherever they feel comfortable.  So to us, that's kind of how we've broken it down. I’d be awesome if everybody out there in the whole remote workspace would say, “Hey, this is great. Let's all agree to this.” As far as posting social media, remote work is very popular, the term remote work. And we’re kind of still in that space as well, so we understand. But when we’re internal, I kind of feel like there are definitely differences. Another word that we've seen before to replace kind of remote employee is maybe hybrid. You know, we've heard people talk about a hybrid setup and a hybrid setup means half the people are in a central workplace and half the people are not.  So I do feel like it's really important. I wish, I hope somebody steps up and maybe the Remote Work Association will be that governing body for all of us, where we can all post our research too and be a place. For right now, I guess we'll use the term remote work when we're talking to the rest of the world and just try to clarify the differences between the different types, because there's a major difference in communication facilitation and how you're going to manage your team based on the types of telework that you’re implementing. Douglas: Absolutely. And I would imagine that the tactics would be quite different and maybe even the programs which you might use to address the concerns or the needs.  So when you think about these three, this taxonomy, when you're working with clients, is there one category that you find is most popular? Kaleem: Yeah. There's no doubt that what we call remote or “hybrid” is the most popular, especially like today—you know, so it's kind of a difficult question because it's like, well, are you talking about before or after? So before; let's just talk about before. Before, and I'm saying just so the world knows I'm talking about before COVID-19, okay? Before COVID-19, I would say there were definitely more hybrid companies or remote companies where they had people working in a central workplace and some people working remotely. Telecommuter, it's kind of, you know, I would say a lot of agencies allow their people to work from home a couple of times. So I would say definitely between telecommuting agencies that lets you work from home a couple of times a week and the hybrids were by far the most popular. Douglas: And what do you think folks are learning as they're shifting a bit, as far as their ability to set the frequency at which people were remote? They went from being a part-time, somewhat sometimes kind of thing to being a full-time thing. And I'm sure you've seen them kind of struggle from—because I would imagine some of the practices and approaches they were using, let's say the weaknesses maybe started to show more once they started to lean more heavily into it. So I'm curious what you noticed. As folks have been forced to be more remote, what have they noticed that broke down? What was no longer working for them? And I’m interested from a pattern standpoint. Like, what's been consistent across most of your conversations? What are you hearing that’s like a...kind of a very common issue that's been breaking down for folks as they have become more remote? Kaleem: There's no doubt it's been communication. We kind of used to brand ourselves as an internal-marketing agency, and we still do a lot of internal marketing. But there's no doubt that the communication has been one of the biggest breakdowns, because you weren't set up to do this. One of the things that we talk about when you're designing your employee experience is you have to look at it from the day they look at your job ad to the day that they are departing. And if you don't have a plan—and you know this with meetings—if you don't have an agenda, right, or you don't have a set of goals that are intentional, then your product’s not going to most likely be as good. And then that goes for the same thing with internal communication and doing remote work.  The ones who are struggling are the ones who did not have good internal-marketing practices in place. The organizations who are struggling are the ones who don't trust their employees. The ones who are really having a tough time are the ones who did not take on the responsibility of providing enough resources, enough training, enough documentation to allow you to be distributed now.  So it's really interesting to see the companies who haven't even missed a beat. A lot of the Drupal companies in the web-development space, I'm learning a lot of this, the culture and the practice and stuff, from some of these companies. They’re going on—you know that talk that I’m telling you about is 2012. Another company, Four Kitchens, I mean, they’re another Drupal company. They’ve been distributed now for, jeez, probably eight years. And the company I work for, they've had distributed people.  So the organizations who are not having a challenge at all are the ones who are already prepared to be remote already. So, you know, just to kind of re-emphasize, the ones who did not have their internal-communications strategy set up are the ones who are struggling the most. There's no doubt.  Douglas: Yeah. And so what are the hallmarks of a good internal-marketing program? How do we bolster those communication plans? Kaleem: Whew, yeah, that's a deep one. That's a deep one. So just not just internal marketing. I probably shouldn't say the ones who didn't have the internal-marketing plan, but more along the lines of, you didn't have your whole employee experience planned out, because you can have the best internal marketing set up, but if you haven't explained how your culture works or what your culture’s like, a remote employee can't feel that. So I guess I should say, you know, yes, internal marketing is critical because it's part of communication. That's a huge piece. But in the whole employee experience, there are a lot of steps.  And I would say Gallup, for all you researchers out there, Gallup, we've been quoting Gallup a long time for all of the awesome research they've done on remote work: how many people work remotely? They're one of the best that have been producing it. They kind of came up with this great diagram of what the employee experience is like. I'll just kind of go through those different spaces, because internal marketing kind of fits kind of within these things, right? So their first thing that they talk about is attract. How is your job description written? Does it reflect the type of people that work at your agency? And are you attracting the type of people that you want to be at your agency? So what's your culture statement look like? Do you have a page that talks about your culture? Do you meet every single day? Is it more of a Netflix—work-90-hours-a-week-type culture, or are you more like work whenever you feel comfortable? So that's important that your website’s set up right.  Then, you got to hire. Is your hiring practice matching what you’ve already talked about? Are you interviewing with multiple people on the teams? Are you meeting those people? Do you have a chance to talk to the culture club or people outside of your team instead of just your team?  Then, you have to onboard the people. So now you're only at step three. Onboarding and onboarding alone are very, very thorough. Onboarding program can be up to 18 months. You're talking about, okay, you’ll get 30-, 60-, 90-day reviews, and you have to kind of establish what your goals kind of were. And so onboarding can be long. Then, you have engagement. You got to make sure your employee’s engaged. So you have engagement pieces.  Then, you have to set up and go to performance. You got to make sure your performance evaluations are set up correctly. Make sure that everybody understands what is expected of you to be successful at that organization. And then you have to develop them, right? And then they depart at some point.  So this huge step of, like, seven steps of the whole employee experience, what we’ve realized from remote work is that you have to have trust. Trust is even more critical. Trust is even more critical because, you know, are you an agency that is going to try to have a piece of software that takes snapshots of your individuals every 90 seconds? Or are you a results-only-type agency that cares more about the results and understands that, hey, with school the way it is in some places, people may not be able to work all day. You know, people may have to work at a different time. So trust is critical.  And then, we kind of talked about responsibility earlier. You have to have this—you know, to work remotely, there's a sense of responsibility both on the employee and on the employer. It's a very two-way street.  So, like, this whole, whole thing is kind of what is the pillar of the remote-employee experience, kind of something that we're kind of labeling as “tree”, trust and responsibility. In order for you to get that set up, you just have to start at the beginning, and you have to be intentional of what it is that you're trying to accomplish in each step.  So, I know I didn't answer your question specifically about, like, what are some of the pillars in establishing a good internal-marketing strategy? But, you know, I just kind of wanted to really emphasize that you need to think about this whole thing and not just the internal-marketing side. You have to think about this whole thing, because now we don't have those office places that people can talk to and interact with. You know, now people are distributed behind a computer. So you really do have to think about the whole spectrum.  Douglas: Yeah, that makes sense. What is that journey the employees taking, and how can you meet them at various moments in that journey with intention? Kaleem: Yeah. Yeah. And we're just seeing it right now. The groups who really, really, really care about their employees, that are—what we like to say is we like to work with agencies who are culture driven. And to us, what that means is, listen, we all want to make money. I kind of feel like people trip sometimes when you talk about we care about people. Even nonprofits, people—look, nonprofits make money, people, just so you know this. And I used to tell people about this all the time. A nonprofit, a 513(c) is an IRS designation. All that means is that entity does not have shareholders. Charities make profits. Your business has to make profits to be sustainable. So with all of that said, we work with the agencies who are culture driven, meaning that, yes, we can make more money, but we'd rather maybe only make a little less money and put culture first, because we understand that it's a marathon, right? Like, we understand that if our employees are happy, it's going to just make our situation a lot better. So I think one thing I like to talk about is culture-driven agencies. Douglas: Yeah, I like that, this notion that that's a priority and a focus for the leadership.  So I want to talk a little bit about some tactics. And something that we talked about, or that I noticed, in some of our preshow exchange was around the use of Google Docs and how you can, as a remote tool, use that to focus the team into a common task. So I’m just really curious around what are some things that people can go do today, whether it's, like, use Google Docs in this fashion, if you want to elaborate on that, or it could be any other tactic or approach, but what's something that they can just go literally try out and improve their employee experience?  Kaleem: All right. That's cool. I like that. I like that. So I'm just going to kind of go through each one of them. I think that kind of will make a little bit more sense in my brain.  So the first thing that you can do to attract the type of employees that you want, I learned this, actually, with Oomph, inc. is they created a culture club, which I thought was pretty neat. Get some of your team together, make it voluntary, and say, “Hey, you know what. We want to kind of rewrite what our culture statement is like to better fit who we are today. And we want to kind of better illustrate what it's like to be a part of this team.” I like to use team instead of family. Sometimes families…you know. So, yeah, “What is it like to be a part of this team?” so that you’re attracting the right people.  The other thing, too, is to kind of attract some of those people that you're looking at, get outside of your normal bubble and market yourself, but—we love to say, and now I’m going to kind of talk about engaged—look for people that are going to add to your culture instead of culture fit. So we like to use the word culture ad versus culture fit. Culture’s great, but we all talk about why is culture great aside from the obvious reasons from a personal and emotional level.  Back to business, you want as many different people on your team so that you have different perspectives. Like, if you want to just talk about “Straight cash, homey,” T.O. quote, it's more about having people, more variety of people, on your team so that you have different perspectives. You know, just think of Corn Pops. If Corn Pops would've had maybe more people on their marketing team, they wouldn't have sent out that Corn Pops box years ago, where the only brown Corn Pops person as the janitor. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's a huge gaffe, right?  So that's attract. So that's one thing that you could do. Maybe get a culture club together, try to rewrite your culture statement. With hiring, I would say a good one is—oh, yeah. This is a simple one. This is more probably along the lines of in your wheelhouse of facilitation—do not, by all means, do an interview with—and I'm sorry to say this, Owl Labs, because you have an awesome product, but it feels awkward—don't do an interview with your team at a conference table and the employee remote. I understand—I think Owl Labs cameras are the best. Now I can't get it out of my head. It's an unbelievable product, in my opinion. You know, it kind of jumps around to the person that's speaking, and the camera shows the whole room, and it kind of goes back and forth. It's super cool. Like, I would suggest it for any agency that has multiple board rooms in different places that are meeting and talking. But when you have an interviewee, their first impression, and they're trying to talk with you and you're at a conference-room table with eight of your colleagues side by side, there is already an us-versus-them experience. So it's already a “I'm here, and you're there.” So my suggestion is just get everybody on Zoom or whatever video system you're using. Equality, it's about the same. So put everyone on the same call, the same platform, the same camera. Everywhere the same.  Douglas: Yeah. You know, I’ve said that for years. Like, if we're facilitating and someone's remote, everyone should be remote because we want to level the playing field. Otherwise, it's going to be hard to empathize if we're not all experiencing what everyone else is or what those few individuals are experiencing. And it reminds me of all-hands meetings years and years ago, where people would dial into it. And then I thought to myself, what is it like to actually dial into one of these things? So I dialed into one, and it was—I mean, I couldn’t hear anything. It was [muffled]. And then you’d hear people talking like that, and you’d think, oh, I don’t know. I don’t even know what anyone’s saying. And maybe every now and then you could make out a few things the CEO said but definitely didn't hear any questions or any dialogue. And it's, like, really not great. And so I love that point of, like, let's level the playing field.  Kaleem: Yeah. Yeah.  So then for onboarding, so you're kind of talking about Google Docs and stuff. But for onboarding, simple solution, like, you got to have a place where someone’s going to learn about the organization. Believe it or not, a lot of companies don't have a moment to hear the origin story. Like, we talked about my origin story earlier. And to a lot of people, they may fast forward, but, like, hey, I love to rep Bangor. You know, there's an emotion to why a business got started. You know what I mean? There's something outside. There's a story. And if people don't know that story,  then they may not understand what it is, you know, what are the values that are driving the organization?  So to me, I know onboarding is not the initial, it's not the first interaction with the agency. It's not even where first opinions happen, because it's in the third step. We’re in the third step, right? I mean, we understand that your first impression is definitely the job description. I mean, when people look at the jobs, their first impression is the job description, and then they go on your website. But when you’re onboarding, this is kind of like the first time that employees get to interact or participate. This is the first time that the individual’s participating. So this is a really, really, really crucial moment to let them know what that origin story is and let them know what values are driving your organization.  So one of my first recommendations is just record a video of the founder. I mean, it doesn't even have to be crazy. Just record a video of when the founder got the idea for the business and why the founder started it, and then maybe a little bit about what drives the company. Because right now, COVID-19, if you have to let go of 20 people, or maybe you have a staff of 100 and you got to let go 20 or 30 people, those other people that are there, they go through all sorts of emotions, never mind the people that you let go. But the people that are staying there are going through some stuff. They lost some friends that are no longer employed. There’s a little bit of uncertainty about the future. If all your employees know what drives you even during uncertain times, a lot of these anxieties that make people nervous and get people looking for other options will be erased.  So onboarding is so critical, and I can't give away all my secrets.  Douglas: Sure, sure. Kaleem: So I would say the video is something simple. If you don't have a quick little video that somebody can watch or even, like, a couple paragraphs, how you got started and why you got started and then what drives you. And I know people use the word values all the time. I’m trying to use different words than mission and vision and all that stuff. But what drives your company? Douglas: Yeah. And a couple things I would add there. It’s like so many companies talk about values, and even in the job description, they'll describe things that are aspirational and not necessarily—they're not really conveying the fact that we are that culture that's working 60, 80 hours a week. And if you plan to retain people and you’re doing that, you should be pretty honest about it up front, right?— Kaleem: Right. Yes, be honest. Douglas: —rather than tricking people into coming in. And then the same thing with values, right? If they’re just some words that we adopted because they sound like stuff that, you know, you put on values— Kaleem: Hardworking, go-getter. I mean, like, what is that? Douglas: Yeah. And integrity.  Kaleem: Yeah. Like, what is that? What is that?  Douglas: So if you can make them authentic, then I think people are going to resonate with those. And if they’re shared values that they hold, then it can get people really excited. So I think that's really great.  Kaleem: Yeah, yeah. Douglas: And one thing that I saw a company do here in Austin I've always been a fan of is they created a scavenger hunt, and, essentially, new employees were given this scavenger hunt. And the cool thing about the scavenger hunt was that it included different aspects of the company's history. The way that they got to the answers or found these things, they would have to go talk to other employees in other departments. And so they got— Kaleem: Nice. Douglas: —to know so much about the way the company worked, the way the company— Kaleem: I love this. Douglas: —had evolved over time, and they made friends and connected. And it was very participatory. So I love it because it’s like a facilitator's dream to do those kinds of things. And so if more companies could institute these types of more participatory onboarding practices, I think you’d start to get into what we talk about as facilitator leadership. Kaleem: I love that idea. You’re definitely going to have to send me some—maybe you can remember the company and send me some stuff on that. I think that's a great, great idea.  So then, yeah. So then you have engagement. And there's a million different ideas for engagement. One thing that I love for remote work that—I don't know, maybe this is more in performance—so engagement, you've got to keep your remote workers engaged. So do you host an annual retreat? Do you host a quarterly retreat? You know, how many—do you have—I don't want to say happy hour, but that's no good. The link to—Zoom happy hours have been pretty tiring of late.  Oh, on engaged, this is my tip for engaged. Something very simple. Ask your employees how they're feeling. Like, literally, you could not imagine how many companies just don't send a very simple employee engagement survey out to their employees. Like, all of us consultants in H.R. are like, “Yo, stop talking, Kaleem.” But the fact that you just don’t do that, it’s so easy. Just write, like… And the other thing that I would suggest is if you’re going to use a survey, if you’re going to have a survey, you got to have a plan of what you’re going to do with the data. So come up with a very simple survey. And I would say ask that question, ask that survey, the exact same time next year so that you can have some sort of benchmarks. You know, doing a survey for no reason, you need to be able to have some data. And  I actually suggest surveying people frequently. There's a lot of great survey software out there. Like, I don’t know. Was it Officevibe? Culture Amp? All of these softwares that send random questions to employees. You may not have that software, the budget for that, but you can come up with a very easy SurveyMonkey or Google Forms with four or five questions and ask your employees every quarter. And they could be the same questions. Maybe you’ll find out that in the fall this one question’s being answered, and they’re lower in this for some reason. So for engagement, that would be my one tip is you got to ask your employees how they’re feeling. Douglas: Awesome. We've definitely covered the gamut, from starting off with a good impression on job descriptions; making sure we're thinking about that human connection in the remote landscape; the taxonomy—making sure we think about what bucket we're in, what is our style of remote work, and how can our approaches and tactics be tuned to be appropriate for our style—all the way through to making sure that we are engaging folks and even understanding how they're feeling, especially in this time of a global pandemic that can be damaging morales and stuff. So, wow, covered a ton, and it's been a blast thinking about all this stuff, Kaleem. And I know that the listeners are probably curious how they can connect with you, learn more, maybe end with a little bit around how they can find you. Kaleem: Yeah, sure. You can find me personally anywhere: kaleemclarkson. So I’m @kaleemclarkson on Twitter, LinkedIn. And you can find our company at blendmeinc.com. And also Remotely One. If you are a remote location, independent professional, and you’re feeling the pains of isolation and loneliness and you want to still kind of build your network, come join Remotely One. We’re a members-only community for location and independent professionals. So you can find us at remotelyone.com or @remotelyone.  And yeah, I guess if there was something that I wanted to kind of sign off on, I guess that would be, let's not all go back—if there was a piece of advice that I could give to organizations out there, don’t go back to the way it was before COVID-19 “just because.” So let me repeat that. Don't go back to business before COVID-19, don't go back “just because.” And what I mean by that is take this time as an opportunity to further develop your organization to be prepared for other disaster contingencies. They’re going to happen. If you're up in New England, you deal with the snow. Midwest, you deal the snow. I mean, there are disasters all the time. Hurricanes. Remote work, as you all have noticed, can help you make it through those times. So take this time to figure out how you can be better when you go back, when we go back, to the “new normal,” and maybe think about how you can reuse your space or reuse some of the things that you used to do before. So let's just not go back to the way it was before COVID-19. Douglas: Kaleem, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thanks for joining. Kaleem: I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me on. Come back anytime. Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.

Zoom fatigue? It’s a thing. Frank Weishaupt, CEO of OwlLabs, thinks he has an answer. On this episode of Remote Possibilities, he talks about the state of video conferencing in this world of remote working and learning. The pandemic has thrust the technology of video meetings into our faces. Listen how we can escape these daily squint-inducing reenactments of the Hollywood Squares for a better distance learning experience.Each year, Owl Labs publishes the State of Video Conferencing report to share with business and IT leaders the collaboration challenges companies face most often, the preferred collaboration software and hardware tools to solve them, and how business and education can improve productivity overall.96% of respondents agree that video conferencing is effective for improving the connectedness of remote team members, with full-time remote employees nearly twice as likely to feel strongly about this than those who work on-location. Most notably, the report uncovered that setting up and starting meetings are taking up respondents' dedicated meeting time. More than 50% of video conferencing users are wasting nearly 10 minutes per meeting on meeting setup, with 83% reporting that it takes more than 3 minutes to set up and start meetings.OwlLabs’ Meeting Owl product line is designed to solve this issue. It is driven by its own proprietary intelligence system. While sitting in the center of the table, it uses vision and voice recognition to automatically shift the camera to focus on whoever is speaking. This creates a fully immersive and equalized experience for those who can't be on site. The device sports a high-quality, 1080p 360° camera that makes you feel like you're in the room – even if you're not.Both products are compatible with all popular video conferencing platforms (i.e. Zoom, Google Meet, Skype for Business, Bluejeans, etc.) and accessible to nearly all businesses at a sub $1,000/device price point. Owl Labs' products are used by 35,000+ companies globally across a wide array of categories; including the likes of Home Depot, SoulCycle, Ro, Ogilvy, Andela and RXBAR.Weishaupt previously served as SVP of Sales at CarGurus and played an instrumental role in the company's growth, leading to a successful IPO in October 2017. Prior to joining CarGurus, Weishaupt served as Chief Operating Officer at Jumptap, leading to an acquisition by Millennial Media. He also served in executive roles at Yahoo! and Criteo, which had a successful IPO in 2013.

Join Bessemer Venture Partners' Alex Ferrara as he takes a look at trends and predictions for the cloud industry in 2019. One of the most popular sessions from SaaStr Annual, this presentation will provide an in-depth look at the cloud computing industry across Europe and globally. Find the video and full transcript on our blog. Sponsor message: Remote and hybrid teams aren't the future of work-- they're the present. Owl Labs is embracing this revolution and is here to provide remote workers with a virtual seat at the table with the Meeting Owl. Their 360° smart video conferencing camera can recognize and highlight any speaker at the table using an array of 8 microphones. Check it out for yourself at owllabs.com!

On this month's episode Chloe and Ella from the team ask anthropologist Dr Caitlin McDonald, and Karen Rubin CRO at Owl Labs, for their take on the future of working. Is the psychology of videoconferencing yet to catch up with the technology?

Today we have Max Makeev, Co-founder of Owl Labs, the company that created the Meeting Owl. This is the first-ever episode that we recorded live in Arc’s office, so the audio is noticeably different! In this episode, we covered how their flagship product, Meeting Owl, was created, and the struggles Max and his co-founder faced in the early days of Owl Labs, We also talked about the unique challenges of building a hardware startup, how Max prepares for — and runs — meetings, and his learning/challenges faced when he was still the CEO of Owl Labs.

At CES in Las Vegas, Owl Labs was showing the latest version of their Meeting Owl, a combination of 360-degree camera, speaker, microphone, and software that not only makes video conferencing better, but “produces” the video of the meeting by creating video that focuses on the speaker without leaving other participants out. Bob Breznak, VP of Engineering, takes us through the feature set and the results you get. This edition of MacVoices is sponsored by Smile, the makers of PDFpen and PDFpenPro, PDFpen for iPad, PDFpen for iPhone, PDFpen Scan+, as well as TextExpander for Mac and TextExpander for iPhone and iPad, as well as the new TextExpander for Windows. Great software to help you get more done. Show Notes: Chuck Joiner is the producer and host of MacVoices. You can catch up with what he's doing on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the show: iTunes: - Audio in iTunes - Video in iTunes - HD Video in iTunes Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher:  - Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss  - Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss Donate to MacVoices via Paypal or become a MacVoices Patron.

At CES in Las Vegas, Owl Labs was showing the latest version of their Meeting Owl, a combination of 360-degree camera, speaker, microphone, and software that not only makes video conferencing better, but “produces” the video of the meeting by creating video that focuses on the speaker without leaving other participants out. Bob Breznak, VP of Engineering, takes us through the feature set and the results you get. This edition of MacVoices is sponsored by Smile, the makers of PDFpen and PDFpenPro, PDFpen for iPad, PDFpen for iPhone, PDFpen Scan+, as well as TextExpander for Mac and TextExpander for iPhone and iPad, as well as the new TextExpander for Windows. Great software to help you get more done. Show Notes: Chuck Joiner is the producer and host of MacVoices. You can catch up with what he's doing on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the show: iTunes: - Audio in iTunes - Video in iTunes - HD Video in iTunes Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher: - Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss  - Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss Donate to MacVoices via Paypal or become a MacVoices Patron.

At CES in Las Vegas, Owl Labs was showing the latest version of their Meeting Owl, a combination of 360-degree camera, speaker, microphone, and software that not only makes video conferencing better, but “produces” the video of the meeting by creating video that focuses on the speaker without leaving other participants out. Bob Breznak, VP of Engineering, takes us through the feature set and the results you get. This edition of MacVoices is sponsored by Smile, the makers of PDFpen and PDFpenPro, PDFpen for iPad, PDFpen for iPhone, PDFpen Scan+, as well as TextExpander for Mac and TextExpander for iPhone and iPad, as well as the new TextExpander for Windows. Great software to help you get more done. Show Notes: Chuck Joiner is the producer and host of MacVoices. You can catch up with what he's doing on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the show: iTunes: - Audio in iTunes - Video in iTunes - HD Video in iTunes Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher: - Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss  - Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss Donate to MacVoices via Paypal or become a MacVoices Patron.

Karen Rubin, CRO at Owl Labs, discusses embracing playful aspects of your product, tailoring their marketing focus, managing growth in a B2B e-commerce company, the landscape of remote work, the complexities of building and selling a physical product, lessons learned from launching products at Hubspot, and building a team with strong female leadership.Owl LabsOwl as a BatThe Company Culture CookbookKaren on TwitterSee open positions at thoughtbot!Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots!

Sophia Bernazzani is the Head of Content Marketing at Owl Labs. In this podcast episode, Sophia shares some statistics that show how remote work is meant to be the future of employment culture. Don’t miss her recommendations and also a peek of her experience as a remote worker herself.

Rene Yang Stewart, Co-Head and Principal, Vista Equity Partners, and Monica Enand, Founder and CEO, Zapproved discuss growing a company from product market fit to scale. Vista Equity Partners invested in Zapproved in 2017. Hear perspectives from both the investor and founder on growth to scale. Find the video and full transcript on our blog. Sponsor message: Remote and hybrid teams aren't the future of work-- they're the present. Owl Labs is embracing this revolution, and is here to provide remote workers with a virtual seat at the table with the Meeting Owl. Their 360° smart video conferencing camera can recognize and highlight any speaker at the table using an array of 8 microphones. Check it out for yourself at owllabs.com!

Owl Labs is a software-led hardware company dedicated to creating a better workplace experience for today's hybrid workforce of remote and in-office employees in over 20,000 businesses. The Meeting Owl is the first intelligent all-in-one 360° video conferencing device that combines video and audio to simplify your meeting set up. The company's products use emerging technology such as artificial intelligence to bring teams together for better work. While focused on its core hardware, the company is developing advanced software technology to reinvent the conference room ecosystem and make it smart. The Meeting Owl product line is driven by Owl Labs' proprietary Owl Intelligence System™. While sitting in the center of the table, it uses vision and voice recognition to automatically shift the camera to focus on whoever is speaking. This creates a fully immersive experience for those who can't be on site. Both products are compatible with all popular video conferencing platforms (i.e. Zoom, Google Meet, Skype for Business, etc.) and accessible to nearly all businesses at a sub $1,000 price point. Frank Weishaupt is the CEO at Owl Labs, creator of the smart conferencing camera Meeting Owl. Weishaupt previously served as SVP of Sales at CarGurus and played an instrumental role in the company' company's growth, leading to a successful IPO in October 2017. Before joining CarGurus, Weishaupt served as Chief Operating Officer at Jumptap, leading to an acquisition by Millennial Media. He also served in executive roles at Yahoo! and Criteo, which had a successful IPO in 2013.

Glassdoor CEO Robert Hohman and Battery Ventures' Neeraj Agrawal walkthrough Glassdoor's $1.2 Billion story from its launch in 2008 to its 2018 acquisition by Recruit Holdings. Hear about the early days of Glassdoor; tactical lessons on scaling—from building a business model and recruiting an all-star management team to advice on building a compelling, innovative company culture; and learn why Glassdoor’s $1.2 Billion acquisition is just one milestone in the early innings of the company’s story. Sponsor message: Remote and hybrid teams aren't the future of work-- they're the present. Owl Labs is embracing this revolution, and is here to provide remote workers with a virtual seat at the table with the Meeting Owl. Their 360° smart video conferencing camera can recognize and highlight any speaker at the table using an array of 8 microphones. Check it out for yourself at owllabs.com!

When is the right time to go upmarket and how do you serve small, medium and large customers in the same company. SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with Shopify Plus GM Loren Padelford to discuss. Read the transcript on our blog. Remote and hybrid teams aren't the future of work-- they're the present. Owl Labs is embracing this revolution, and is here to provide remote workers with a virtual seat at the table with the Meeting Owl. Their 360° smart video conferencing camera can recognize and highlight any speaker at the table using an array of 8 microphones. Check it out for yourself at owllabs.com!

Brought to you by Virtual Not Distant Ltd - head over to our detailed shownotes for more depth on the main discussion, as well as links to all our other episodes, services and content. Today’s episode is all about planned spontaneity. But firstly our regular news round-up: 01.30 What’s going on Owl Labs has released their ‘State of Remote Work 2019’ report. It highlights a huge variety in the meaning and scope of remote work, a reminder that we should not assume it means the same thing to different people On the other hand, research from Airtasker published by Yahoo tells us that remote workers work more and have poorer work-life balance, and paints a very different picture to the report above. But that just goes to show how hard it is to compare like with like in this fragmented space. What do you think? Here’s the link to the original research. Co-working - apparently the best low-cost option in San Francisco is a parking space - and why not! It might not work quite so well in London… Lots of interest here, including the idea of co-working becoming unaffordable in city hotspots, and the human connection of this ties in nicely with today’s theme of spontaneity New co-working options like And Co (UK), and CoCo (US/International) are seeking to reclaim work space on a more flexible and fractional way, so maybe this will be the future? More grassroots and user-centric than the WeWork corporate top-down stuff, maybe that’s what we need to get back to… Slack released a load of updates this week, including a tool to invite up to 1000 users to a channel. Do we want to be in Slack channels with thousands of users? Well, these tools continue to evolve in response to users, and they’re replacing intranets in large organisations. Let’s hope everyone knows how to manage their notifications! Looking ahead to an upcoming episode on social change, and the general idea that ‘remote work is the future’, we do need to make sure we’re not excluding whole industries or categories of work. Remote may be the future for knowledge workers, but let’s be careful not to generalise and create divisions. The future is blended and flexible, rather than specifically ‘remote’.   26.44 Planned Spontaneity Please see https://virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/planned-spontaneity - or simply enjoy the conversation.

When Rebecca Corlis first started building her marketing team at Owl Labs, she realized that the first type of employees she needed were generalists. The marketing needs of her company changed so much from day to day that he needed people who could learn quickly and answer the call no matter what was thrown their way. Rebecca is also a generalist herself. Having worked in a variety of capacities and industries, she has built up skills that span a variety of roles. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Rebecca talks about how to become a generalist, and also how to find and hire them.   Links: Full Links, Quotes, & Notes: http://bit.ly/2VxCU68  Rebecca’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rebeccacorliss/ Rebecca’s Twitter: twitter.com/repcor Owl Labs: owllabs.com/   3 Key Takeaways: - Early in a company’s lifecycle, it’s important to hire generalists who can adapt to changing circumstances. - Grit and adaptability are key attributes in becoming an effective generalist. - It’s also crucial to find a great mentor who can teach you and who believes in you.   --- Marketing Trends is brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Pardot, B2B marketing automation on the world’s #1 CRM. Are you ready to take your B2B marketing to new heights? With Pardot, marketers can find and nurture leads, close more deals, and maximize ROI. Learn more by heading to www.pardot.com/podcast. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

David Cummings is the co-founder of the Atlanta Tech Village, Pardot which sold to ExactTarget/Salesforce.com, Hannon Hill,  Rigor, SalesLoft (raised over $75M in capital), Terminus (raised over $25M in capital), and several more. Hear his lessons learned over the years from Pardot to Calendly.   Missed the session? Here’s what David talks about: How large a role does funding play? Matching pricing to value How to continuously level up talent Find the video and full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin SaaStr Remote and hybrid teams aren't the future of work-- they're the present. Owl Labs is embracing this revolution, and is here to provide remote workers with a virtual seat at the table with the Meeting Owl. Their 360° smart video conferencing camera can recognize and highlight any speaker at the table using an array of 8 microphones. Check it out for yourself at owllabs.com!

Talkdesk SVP of Client Services Gillian Heltai oversees Talkdesk's Customer Success and Technical Support teams, partnering closely with customers to achieve their CX vision. In this session, Gillian will walk you through how to build a high performing CSM Team.   Missed the session? Here’s what Gillian talks about: How to build a CSM team Avoiding the mistake of over defining the candidate profile How to divide responsibilities across roles Find the video and full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin SaaStr Remote and hybrid teams aren't the future of work-- they're the present. Owl Labs is embracing this revolution, and is here to provide remote workers with a virtual seat at the table with the Meeting Owl. Their 360° smart video conferencing camera can recognize and highlight any speaker at the table using an array of 8 microphones. Check it out for yourself at owllabs.com!

Rebecca Corliss talks about landing press coverage before you have a product or website, building a brand and content marketing engine from scratch, and marketing through survival mode.

For once we are truly working from home, because we’re recording this episode in Maya’s home office! Usually we record from different countries on Skype, but it’s quite fun and very appropriate to do things differently today.   This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant, a London-based consultancy helping organisations transition to successful office-optional working. What’s going on? Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker recently unveiled an $18 billion transportation investment bill that includes a tax credit that will give companies more flexibility in offering work from home perks to their employees - more on LinkedIn here. Employers are not supporting tech learning, at least not as much as their employees would like. This UK research in People Management was disappointing to read. The reasons why are not clear, but the expressed frustration certainly is. Leaving people to figure things out for themselves is NOT the way to implement effective digital transformation! WeWork have cancelled - sorry, postponed - their forthcoming IPO Pilar and Maya don’t really get it, the corporate co-working movement and replicating the office you’ve left behind, but clearly some people love it… Not enough to fundamentally shift the problems of office space costs, but maybe it’s good to remind us of the many different options in terms of co-working alone. Work From Home Week - listen to Rebecca Corliss, VP of Marketing at Owl Labs, recapping on this interesting initiative they promoted in July, encouraging corporate partners to experiment systematically with home working.  It’s great to learn more about their ‘Meeting Owl’ product as well, a 365 degree conferencing camera that puts the remote participants in the centre of the hybrid meeting, instead of stuck up on the wall somewhere. Work From Home Week was a great experiment which taught participants a great deal, and the blog post shares these fascinating insights.  “#WFHW” will be repeated, but you don’t have to wait : Why not have your own ‘work from home week’ within your organisation? BBC Bitesize have been writing about ‘workplace perks’, and we all went ‘ahhh’ about the concept of ‘Fur-ternity’ leave - offering new pet-parents the option of working from home for a week while settling a new non-human family member. Anything that brings on experimenting with remote working is fine by us, as is any embrace of the diversity and individuality of human motivation. Pilar has been a panelist this week for a Minds at Work event, which was run as a hybrid event in London plus a parallel remote one, while the two cohorts were kept completely separate.  The remote side used Remo, a new tool for remote events, which worked very well - offering lots of flexibility for participants to ‘choose a table’ and talk to each other, then listen to broadcasts in bigger sessions. Event sessions included finding your community at work, and how that differs in the remote space (do people still meet their best friends or their life partners at work?), as well as the ways we communicate and changing degrees of formality and the evolution of the business conversation generally.  So many shifts, and the question of how to make remote work better are often questions about how to make work better generally… this event and others are really helping to broaden the conversation, and if you get the chance to participate in one in future, why not check it out? You can do so from anywhere in the world, for example somewhere like Maya’s home office - which she has recently reclaimed from a shared space, banishing her other half to his own home office in another room! She has added a comfortable arm chair for reading and research, and also a standing desk zone (though the way this is being used as a bookshelf reveals that not a lot of standing up takes place every day) - at least the theory is there, and it’s good not to sit too much!  Also to change your focal point, by looking at something further away than the screen in front of your nose. A work in progress, Maya is doing her best to organise the space - small as it is - by function, to create different zones for different activities, which is a powerful way to overcome any feeling of being “stuck in one place” all day, as well as switching up the energy: Pilar does a similar thing moving around her apartment, and both enjoy getting out of the home office and interacting with other people in the neighbourhood too. And how about if more employers encouraged people to do things in their community, safeguarded the time needed to take a class or do some exercise? Surely everyone’s health AND productivity would improve.  But you can always find ways to connect when remote working, such as apps like FocusMate - which pairs you with an accountability partner to work alongside  remotely via webcam. Anything which helps you get things done is worth a try, though some people might find it distracting or want to talk to the other person and get to know them - which is the opposite of the whole idea. We would love to hear your thoughts about working from home - which is just one aspect of remote working and wholly optional one. Let us know what you thought of this episode, what you think of working from home, and what you’d like us to explore and discuss next. Send us your comments, or catch up on Twitter to join the conversation.

REBECCA CORLISS is the VP of Marketing at Owl Labs, the makers of a 360 degree video conferencing camera called the Meeting Owl. In this interview she gives her expert tips for hybrid meetings (remote + in person) and tells us how the hybrid team at Owl Labs works from wherever they are most productive. For more stories, visit https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com. 

The Inbound Success Podcast launched on August 28, 2017 and today marks the 100th episode, and 100 straight weeks of publishing interviews with high performing marketers. On this week's Inbound Success Podcast, I'm taking a break from interviewing guests to share with you 13 trends that I've observed from the 99 interviews I did throughout the last two years. Listen to the podcast to learn more about the 13 things that the world's top-performing inbound marketers are doing, and get links to the specific episodes where you can dive deeper into each topic. Transcript Welcome back to the Inbound Success podcast. My name's Kathleen Booth. I'm your host, and this is the 100th episode of the podcast. I thought this was a great opportunity for me to take a break from the usual routine of interviewing some of the incredible marketers that I get to speak to every week and look back on the last 99 episodes and try and digest some lessons learned. I've had the incredible good fortune of speaking to some really amazing marketers in the last two years as I've done this podcast. It's given me an opportunity to meet people I otherwise never would have met, to learn some things that have really kind of made a difference for me in the way I think about marketing, and have prompted me to take a second look and reevaluate the way I've been doing some things. So, thought it was a great opportunity to share some of those lessons learned with all of you. How The Inbound Success Podcast Got Started But first, I wanted to just take a moment and tell a story about why I started the podcast. It was about two and a half years ago that I had my own marketing agency, Quintain Marketing. I had had the agency for 11 years. I'd gone to a lot of marketing conferences and listened to tons of podcasts, and watched webinars, always looking to make myself a better marketer. I had a lot of clients that I wanted to help. I also wanted to market my own agency and do better every day. I always would listen to these folks talk about the marketing work they were doing and the incredible results they were getting, and so infrequently felt that there was anything really tangible that I could take away from it and immediately use to improve my own marketing. This podcast was really an attempt to solve for that. It was me trying to scratch my own itch, and in doing so hopefully helping some of you. The interesting thing about this has been that it has certainly done that for me, and it has also done so much more. I already mentioned that it's enabled me to meet so many people I otherwise would never have met. There are a lot of people in the marketing world that I really admire and respect. And having the excuse of saying, "Hey, would you like to come on a podcast?" is a great way to meet someone new and to meet and to form that relationship, so that's been great. I've also met some really incredible people that I didn't know about through my guests when I ask them who else is doing a really great job with inbound marketing. And those relationships have been amazing. One of the most amazing and incredible things about this is that it changed the entire course of my career. One of first people I interviewed when I started the podcast was Bob Ruffolo, who is the founder and CEO of IMPACT. Now, I work at IMPACT. The reason is that before we started to hit the record button for the podcast interview, we were just talking about how things were going. I was telling him that I thought I might be ready to make a change, and that led to me selling part of my company to IMPACT and joining the team. That's been a really major shift in my life and a great one. I've learned so much. I get to work with some really smart people every day and do very, very interesting work. All this has come out of this little podcast. And most importantly, I've learned a lot about marketing. As I said, that was my original goal. 13 Lessons From Interviewing 99 High Performing Marketers So without further ado, I looked back through the 99 episodes I've done before today and really saw 13 themes emerge. That's what I'm going to share with you today. 1. There Is No "Secret Sauce" The first one ... And some of these, by the way, are going to seem like no-brainers, but they're important because it's important to remind ourselves of the things that we kind of already know. First one is, in most cases there really is no secret sauce to being an amazing marketer. The folks that I interviewed who were the most successful have a few things in common. Number one, they are voracious learners. They're always trying to improve their knowledge. They're always hungry for more. And they're consistent. That's huge, the consistency. A great example of that is Goldie Chan. I interviewed her. She's often referred to as the green-haired Oprah of LinkedIn. She has the longest running daily channel on LinkedIn. She's posted a new LinkedIn video every day for I think it's about two years. It's incredible. It doesn't matter where she is, what's happening, whether she's feeling well, whether she's traveling, what her access to Wifi is, she finds a way to do it because consistency is so important for her. And it's really paid off. They also do a few things and do them really well. A great example of that is Rev Ciancio who I talked with about Instagram marketing. Rev has an incredible Instagram presence. Which by the way, do not look at it when you're hungry because his pictures are all of mouthwatering hamburgers, french fries, pizzas, chicken wings, nachos, essentially everything that's bad for you, but that tastes so good. But, Rev has a fascinating strategy for how he approaches Instagram and has built an entire business around it. He does one thing, and he does it really well. Alex Nerney talked about Pinterest similarly, just a platform a lot of inbound marketers overlook, but he's really figured out a way to make it sing for him. The hungry learners who are consistent and who pick a few things and do them really well, that's really the secret sauce, which essentially isn't so secret. That's number one. 2. Listen To Your Customers And Prospects And Use What You Learn in Your Marketing Number two is they really listen to customers and prospects and use that in their marketing. Again, sounds like a no-brainer. We always talk about the need to do persona research and to build buyer personas, but I think what happens is we get very often so caught up in building the actual persona that we forget the big picture, that it's not about having this fictional profile of a person. It's really about understanding the way our audience thinks, what their real pain points and needs are, and the language they use to talk about that. A couple of the interviews I did were great examples of this. Barron Caster at rev.com who uses their own transcription product to transcribe all of the conversations they have with customers and then pull actual words that customers have used out and feed that into the copy on their website and landing pages, and that's gotten them amazing results. Val Geisler and Joel Klettke, two of the most accomplished conversion copywriters out there, both also talked about this type of research and understanding deeply, deeply the needs of customers and prospects. Paul Blamire at Atomic Reach, who is head of customer success and makes it a point to speak to new customers shortly after they've onboarded and really understand what brought them to the company and how the product is solving their needs. And he feeds that back in not only to marketing but to product development, to every aspect of the business to deliver a better customer experience from first touch in the marketing process all the way through the experience of using the company's product. 3. You Don't Need Fancy Tools Or A Big Budget Number three, you don't necessarily need fancy tools or a big budget to get incredible results. There are some really great examples of this. Oli Billson who I recently interviewed about the small events he's doing that are delivering tremendous amounts of revenue to his business. Chris Handy who talked about marketing for a Pre-K school, really small campaigns, but they just really ... They understood their audience, and they used the available tools that they had and got terrific results for the school. Adam Sand, who's using direct mail in conjunction with inbound marketing, super old school, but very effective for him. And Harry Campbell, who's The Rideshare Guy, and he's probably the top content creator in the ridesharing space. So think Uber, Lyft, Lime, Bird. He just started blogging and has created some great content and a big following. You really don't need fancy tools or a big budget. You can do it on your own with what you've got, if I go back to the first thing, if you're consistent, if you pick a few things and do them really well, and if you're a hungry learner who is willing to roll your sleeves up and apply what you're learning. 4. Connect With Your Audience On An Emotional Level Number four, the best marketers connect with their audiences on an emotional level, another thing that might seem obvious but that I think a lot of marketers get wrong. We tend to put our marketing hats on and make our marketing all about ourselves or we fall back into that comfortable place of corporate jargon, and kind of robotic speech, and use words like leverage and synergy. Nobody talks like that in real life, or not at least the people that you want to hang out with. The people who talked about this were Kieran Flanigan of HubSpot who shared their hearts and minds strategy for creating content with two types of content, content that solves a person's problems and tells them how to do something, that's really that mind's content, and then the heart's content, which taps into a pain and emotional need that the audience has. Then, Katie Stavely from Mautic. This is ironic that these are the two examples I'm giving for this one because HubSpot and Mautic could be considered two different sides of the same coin, HubSpot being a paid marketing automation, CRM, customer service platform, and Mautic being a completely free open source alternative to it. Katie talked about how important it was to be authentic in your marketing, especially with their audience, which it's all about community. It's opensource software, so your community is helping you develop your product. But regardless, the idea is to really make that emotional connection. 5. Sometimes The Biggest Wins Come From Content That Is Not Related To Your Products Or Services Number five, with content marketing, sometimes the biggest wins happen when you don't create content about your products or services. We as marketers, as inbound marketers, think a lot about top-, middle-, and bottom-of-the funnel strategies. We're always brainstorming what are the questions that our audience is asking as relates to our product or service. That often leads us to create content that is very much about us and not so much about our audience. But, I had two interviews that I thought really highlighted how successful you can be if you flip that script and talk nothing about yourself. What I mean by that is ... I'll start with Stephanie Baiocchi, who was actually Stephanie Casstevens at the time I interviewed her. She hadn't been married yet. And funny enough, she was not working at IMPACT. That's another great outcome of the podcast. Now she is. But, she talked about a campaign that she was running for a client that sold solutions for medical waste from physicians' practices. Originally, they were creating a ton of content around medical waste, and it just wasn't working. The reason is that their audience, which is really the office managers for physicians' practices, already has a medical waste solution. You can't be in business if you don't, so they weren't out there searching for any information about medical waste. They didn't even realize they needed to switch providers or that they had a problem. It was when she kind of took a step back and thought, "What are the biggest problems that office managers have? It doesn't need to have anything to do with medical waste," and she realized it was patient no-shows. They created a patient no-show policy template that office managers could use. That was a total home run. What it did was it opened up the conversation with their audience so that eventually they could begin talking about medical waste. But at that top-of-the-funnel level, they needed first to really open that conversation, and product- and service-related content wasn't going to cut it. Another person who did that really well was Ryan Bonnici, who is now the CMO of G2 Crowd, but at the time was working at HubSpot. HubSpot's a company that has a huge audience. Of course, trying to broaden the top of the funnel at a company like HubSpot is challenging. All the low-hanging fruit is gone, and so you really have to get creative. He was trying to target a small business audience. He really asked himself, "What are the problems that small businesses have?" And, again, doesn't have to have anything to do with HubSpot. He realized when you're starting your business or when you come to work at a small business, one of the first things you have to do is come up with an email signature. You're usually either copying one that somebody else in the company has created or you have to create it from scratch, and it's kind of a pain. He built an email signature generator, an online tool where you could type in some information about yourself and it would spit out a really nice-looking email signature. That tool generated a ton of traffic, leads, and revenues for HubSpot, and it cost them only $6,000 to build it, but the impact was enormous. So, great lesson learned about getting out of the habit of creating only product- and service-related content and thinking bigger. 6. Paid Ads Are An Essential Part Of Any Inbound Marketing Strategy Number six, the old myth that paid ads are not inboundy is dead, or it should be dead. This one was woven throughout almost every interview I did. It's funny because when I first started working with inbound marketing, it was back with my old agency. I had discovered HubSpot. We were following their original methodology of attract, convert, close, delights, for those of you who've been in the HubSpot world for a long time and all. I remember many times going to INBOUND and seeing Brian Halligan stand on stage and talk about how the old way, the old interruptive way of marketing was paid ads, and people didn't like being interrupted. I think we all read that as, well, paid ads are not acceptable if you're an inbound marketer. That myth started dying, I think, several years ago, but it's worth repeating that paid ads are, I would say, not even just inboundy, they're essential to an inbound strategy in this day and age. I'll just list off a bunch of names of my guests who've talked about it. This isn't even a complete list, but Mark Rogers, who at the time was with Carney and grew The Daily Carnage newsletter using Facebook ads; Sterling Snow from Divvy who's used ads to drive leads for their platform; Moby Siddique who has his own inbound agency and does some incredible Facebook ads work with Messenger bots; AJ Wilcox, who is a LinkedIn ads expert; Ali Parmelee, who's one of my coworkers here at IMPACT who does incredible things with Facebook ads; Anthony Sarandrea; Rick Kranz. The list goes on and on. All of them attribute the success that they're getting and the incredible results to some form of paid ads. Let that be the final nail in the coffin of that old myth. Let's really embrace ads, and not just checking the box with ads and promoting our posts, but really taking a full funnel approach to advertising. Because that's the other thing that these folks talked about is it's not about boosting something on Facebook. This is about really digging in and getting good at ads and thinking how ads can be used at every stage of the funnel. 7. Content Distribution Is Critical Number seven, it's not enough to create and publish your content on your website. You've got to promote it and distribute it. This is one that I've heard time and time again. A lot of the best marketers I've spoken to say you should spend twice as much time promoting and distributing your content as you do creating it. I think for a lot of us that equation is backwards. One person who talked about that was Kipp Bodnar who is the CMO of HubSpot, probably one of the companies that is the best at inbound marketing. He talked about what a game changer it was in the last year when HubSpot really threw some muscle behind content distribution and how that impacted their traffic. This is a company that already had amazing traffic, by the way. Then, Phil Singleton. I loved my interview with Phil who is an SEO expert and an author. Phil talked about this great strategy he uses for clients where he's creating e-books, just like lots of inbound marketing agencies do. But then he takes the e-books that he makes for clients, or he takes a collection of blogs, for example, and compiles them into any book, and he publishes them as Kindle e-books on amazon.com, and also in some cases as hard copy books through Amazon direct publishing. It is so simple, and straightforward, and inexpensive. It blows my mind that more marketers are not doing this. It was a cool episode, so definitely check that out. But yeah, the lesson is don't just like write those blogs, create those e-books. Think about what are you going to do with them once they're published. How are you going to get them out in front of the world? 8. Original Research Can Drive Tremendous Results Number eight, original research can have amazing results. I had several interviews where people touched on what has come of original research. One of the people I think that that is most famous in the marketing world for doing this is Andy Crestodina. He has been doing a blogging survey for several years and really credits that with bringing a lot of attention to his agency, Orbit Media, out of Chicago, giving him a ton of backlinks and press. It's a pretty simple survey. He does put quite a bit of effort into promoting the survey itself so he can get a lot of responses, and then once he gets those responses into packaging that content so that he can turn it into things like infographics and articles, et cetera. But, it's not just Andy. Michele Aymold from Parker Dewey uses original research and data to boost her marketing results. Clare Carr from Parse.ly, they actually don't even have to do that much research because simply by the nature of the product that they sell they have access to a lot of proprietary data. She's really productized that and used it to get a tremendous amount of press. In fact, she was able to dramatically cut back the amount of content she was creating while getting better results because the data itself was so attractive to their audience, and it also helped her reduce their PR spend. Then, Rebecca Corliss at Owl Labs. They produced the state of remote work, and that's gotten them quite a bit of traction. 9. Community Is A Powerful Tool To Fuel Growth Number nine, community is such a powerful tool for marketing. This is an interesting one because here at IMPACT we've been working really hard over the course of the last two years to build our own community called IMPACT Elite, which is on Facebook. We've learned a lot about community in the course of doing that. I would say it has been a game changer for our business, certainly. We now have over 5,000 people in that community. It's a delicate balance how you run it. You can't make it all about yourself. It has to truly be about helping the members of the community and getting them to the point where they're almost running it, if you will. I spoke to several other people who have built communities and had similar experiences in terms of the community being a fundamental tool in the growth of their business. One was Bill Faeth who is a marketer who specializes in the limousine and transport business. He has Limo University, and he has a big community around that of limousine companies. Frank Gruber, who started Tech Cocktail in the beginning and turn it into Tech.co, which was then acquired, he now has a company called Established. But, he began this grassroots community all over the country of startups and people interested in the startup ecosystem and wound up building a tremendous media business from that. Nikki Nixon who at the time I interviewed her was running the FlipMyFunnel community for Terminus. Ameer Rosic who has a community focused on blockchain called Blockgeeks. And Mark Graham, who is an old friend of mine doing amazing things, he's up in Canada and has a software platform called Commonsku and has built a great community around that. All of these folks doing incredible things with communities in very different niches, I should say. For Bill, it was limo companies. For Frank, it was startups. For Nikki, it's people who are ABM practitioners. For Ameer, it's folks in the blockchain community. And for Mark Graham, it's people in the promotional products world. All of these different niches need communities and people are hungry to connect with others who have similar interests as they do. 10. The Quality Of Your Content REALLY Matters Content quality. I had a couple of great interviews on this. This is one that I'd love to talk with more people who are focused on this. In this day and age, you can't just be creating content and checking the box. You have to really create great content that is better than anything else out there if you really want to get amazing results. One person who talked a lot about this was Oli Gardner and how he is putting a lot of effort into really making the content that they create be the best that's available on the Internet. Emily Maxie from Very talked about this, too, really digging deep and creating unbelievable resources for your audience. Both of these folks are getting great results in terms of traffic, and that traffic ultimately turning into leads, because they took the time to create in-depth pieces that really added value for their audience. Seems like it should be obvious, it's another one of these, but it's really not too a lot of us. I mean, you might think your content's really good, but is it the best? When you Google that topic that you created content about, is your piece the best thing that you can find in the search results? If not, go back and spend the time and make it better. I think one of the lessons I've learned is it's better to make less content that's better content than it is to create a high volume. 11. Creating A Podcast - Or Being A Guest On One - Is A Good Way To Build Your Brand Another theme that came out was podcasting. It's sort of ironic because we're on a podcast talking about podcasting. But a lot of my interviews, as I went back and reviewed, had to do with podcasting, beginning with George B Thomas, who I've had the privilege to work with over the years here at IMPACT. He's now at Impulse Creative. George is a prolific podcaster, and he's ... It might seem easy when you listen to him. It just seems like, "Oh, there's a guy that just has a great rapport with his audience," but he puts a ton of thought into how he does these podcasts, how he structured them so that they not only deliver value for the audience, but that they have naturally built-in incentives for people to share them and to grow his audience. That's really worth listening to if you're somebody who wants to start a podcast. Andrew Dymski is another person who's been podcasting for a long time and who I've been a guest on his podcast. He's been a guest on mine. He's got some great insights. Ryan Hawke, who has The Learning Leader podcast, Ryan blew my mind just with how prepared he comes to everything. He talked about this, too, how before he does an interview the amount of preparation he does, the amount of preparation he does when he even just invites somebody to come on his podcast. This guy is serious business, and that's why he's so successful. He really has put the thought into it and turned his podcast into a business. Dan Moyle came on the show and talked about podcast guest interviews. So not necessarily starting a podcast, but if you want to get the word out, going on other podcasts as a guest. At the time, he was with a company called Interview Valet. What's been really cool for me is seeing the other side of that. I get pitched a lot by companies like Interview Valet, and there are certainly other ones as well. They'll send me an email and say, "Listened to your show. Thought it was great. Here's a guest that I think would be really good for you." That's how I've gotten a lot of my more interesting guests. There's something to that podcast guesting strategy that really I think can help you get traction and raise your profile if you're trying to build a personal brand or trying to get the word out about a product or a service. There are plenty of companies like Interview Valet that, for a fee, will take care of that for you. It's kind of like having a talent agent. I also talked to Jay Acunzo about podcasting. He is actually a consultant to other companies and helps them create, produce, and get the best results out of their podcasts. One of his clients is Drift, which comes up a lot on my show. People love Drift, always cited as one of the best examples of a company doing inbound marketing really well, and they have a couple of podcasts. Then, Jeff Large of Come Alive Creative. Lots of folks talking about podcasting. It really stuck out to me that it's not just about, hey, everybody should have a podcast, and I don't think everyone should. It's not right for everybody. But, podcasting can play a role in almost everybody's marketing strategy for sure. 12. Video, Video, Video Number 12, video. Can't have a list of trends and things that are important in marketing without talking about video these days. Some of the guests that I've had that have spoken about this are some of the more impressive people that have been on this podcast. In 2019, I opted to kick the year off with an interview with Marcus Sheridan, who is an amazing man that is a big role model for me. I currently get to work with him at IMPACT. But, he's somebody that I followed for years and I have so much respect for because he sees things about marketing and about customer behavior that a lot of other people don't, even though they're staring us in the face. One of the things that he has really seen and committed to is that when it comes to marketing and selling, we can't just tell people something. We have to show it to them, too, and we show it to them using video. He talked about how important video was going to be in 2019. I know that he's out speaking at conferences and talking about video all over the world. Also, Eric Siu. I kicked off 2018 with Eric Siu doing predictions for last year. He talked about video as well and was like, "Video's going to be huge in 2018." So in both of my kind of yearly prediction episodes, the guests that I've had have cited video as one of the biggest things we should be paying attention to. And then, of course, I already mentioned her, but Goldie Chan, who is a LinkedIn influencer and creates a new LinkedIn video every single day, has made a career around those videos. She's amazing. She travels all over the world and is sought after as a speaker because of the LinkedIn video she creates. And Dennis Yu who has turned video into a formula for building people's personal brands. It's really impressive what he does. They're these short little videos that he films. Using that medium has helped countless people create brands for themselves. 13. Lead With Brand Which brings me to my 13th and last lesson learned from 99 interviews with incredible marketers, and that is that all of these strategies, and tactics, and approaches are powerful. But at the end of the day, the most important thing in marketing is brand. Brand is paramount. Without it, you can have some quick wins but you'll never have a true success that will last over the long term. I'm only going to cite one example here because it's the one that comes up the most. And if you listen to this podcast with any degree of regularity, you know that at the end I always, always ask my guests, "Company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now?" There is one company/individual, the company and the marketer who's spearheading it for them, that by far comes up more than anybody else, and that is Drift and Dave Gerhardt, who I was very fortunate to have as a guest early on. I can't tell you the number of times people have mentioned Drift, and it's not just people from the marketing world. It's folks that have come onto this podcast from all different industries, and they all cite Dave Gerhart and his work building a brand at Drift as the one succeeding the most with inbound marketing. It's not for me to say what that brand is or to really try to encapsulate what Dave has done, but I think it's fair to say that they've built a brand that's incredibly authentic. There's no artifice. There's no fancy tricks about it. They, of everybody, really reflect everything I've said about the past, you know, this list of 12 to 13 trends I just spoke about today. When I look back through this list, they are doing a few things and doing them really well. They really listen to their customers. It's not about fancy tools or a big budget. The things that make them successful don't have anything to do with that. It's about connecting on emotional level. It's about creating content that sometimes doesn't have anything to do with your products or services. They do paid ads. And it's not enough to create and publish your content, you've got to promote it. They are so good at that. They've got a tremendous community, really high-quality content, a bunch of podcasts. They use video better than almost anybody else, especially on LinkedIn. Checkout Dave Gerhart's LinkedIn presence. And they just have a really strong brand. So my hat is off to Dave Gerhart and the team at Drift for ... If I had to give out an award for top inbound marketers, I think it would go to them. Thank YOU For Listening But really, everybody that I've interviewed over the course of the last two years has been so impressive. It is just my absolute privilege to get to do this every single week. I also wanted to say thank you to you for listening. Podcasting is a funny exercise. As I record this, it's Sunday morning, and I'm sitting in my home office, which is a tiny little room that actually had to be permitted as a closet because it's so small. There's chaos happening around me in my house. I'm by myself talking into a microphone. I'll go away, and I'll turn this into an episode. It'll go live tomorrow. You'll be hearing this Monday, if you get the episode right when it comes out or sometime after, and you're out there listening. But when I create these things, it's just me in a room. To know that there are people who choose to listen to this every week is just an unbelievable honor and a privilege to me. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to this content. I hope so much that you've learned something from it and that, even if it's in a small way, it's helped you get better results from your marketing and feel like a smarter marketer. If that has happened, then I feel like I've succeeded. With that, I will say I would love to hear from you. It's been a hundred episodes. If you are a regular listener, please take a moment and contact me. I always say at the end you can tweet me @workmommywork, which is my Twitter handle, but you can also message me on LinkedIn. You can email me at kbooth@impactbnd.com. You can send a carrier pigeon. However you want to do it, I would love it if you would get in touch and let me know what you like about the podcast and what's something that I can improve because I'd love to make the next hundred episodes even better. With that, I won't belabor it. Thank you again for listening, and I'll see you next week. Or not see you, I'll be talking to you next week for episode 101.  

Rebecca's career has been shaped by jumping at opportunities that were presented to her. As a singer and extrovert, working remotely was somewhat of a shift for her. For those extroverts and are concerned that working remotely will make them feel isolated and alone, Rebecca has some tips for you! It is certainly possible to thrive working remotely as an extrovert, and Rebecca is a wonderful example of that. Owl Labs' mission is to solve a problem we've all experienced: meetings suck, and they are especially painful for the remote people on the other side of the call. Check out https://www.owllabs.com/ for more information about the Meeting owl tool. It truly is the next generation f hardware tools for remote workers. Be sure to check out Rebecca on Twitter at : @repcor Also, check out Rebecca's book she'd force everyone to read: Radical Candor, by Kim Scott Thanks for listening!

The post E894: How do you know when to hire a CEO? Owl Labs Co-founder & outgoing CEO Max Makeev & new CEO Frank Weishaupt on applying robotics thinking to transform video conferencing, shaping the future of distributed teams, & hitting the gas on growth by handing over the reins appeared first on This Week In Startups.

The post E894: How do you know when to hire a CEO? Owl Labs Co-founder & outgoing CEO Max Makeev & new CEO Frank Weishaupt on applying robotics thinking to transform video conferencing, shaping the future of distributed teams, & hitting the gas on growth by handing over the reins appeared first on This Week In Startups.

On today's podcast, we have a conversation with Rebecca Corliss from OWL Labs. We discuss a radical change in meeting room technology, a true shift in attitudes towards working from home, and how video is becoming more and more commonplace in the world of communication. For more information on OWL Labs, check out owllabs.com