Episode 23 with Sandi Green

Narrator:

Welcome to Cyber 909, your source for wit and wisdom in cybersecurity and beyond. On this podcast, your host, veteran chief security officer and Cyber Aficionado Den Jones taps his vast network to bring you guests, stories, opinions, predictions, and analysis you won't get anywhere else. Join us for Cyber 909, episode 23 with Sandy Green.

Den:

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Cyber 909, your podcast for, oh, I dunno what it's for. Actually, I think it's just for random stuff. We don't talk about breaches and all those things very often, but we love to talk about how do you survive and thrive your leadership journey in tech and cyber. And every episode I bring in some fascinating guests that I've met along my journey, mentoring me, coaching me, providing me with help. And I therefore thank this is a great time for them to share their wisdom with others. So today we have got Sandi Green. Sandi, welcome to the show. Why don't you introduce yourself and let's hear a little bit about your current endeavor at Medical Max Marketing.

Sandi:

Yeah, thanks Den. Thanks for having me. So I'm Sandi Green, co-founder of Miracle Max Marketing. We are a fractional marketing agency. So basically what that means is we help startups with everything that they need to sort of get started on their marketing journey. And that could be anything from their overall strategy to creating content, to figuring out their digital presence, to maybe doing their first events. And then we also help scale ups. And for us, scale up are companies where they've either hit a skid in the road and they need some very specific help for a short period of time, or they're just looking to explore new channels or just need some extra fire power on the team because maybe someone's going on leave or they've lost a headcount. So we like to say we come in for a good time and not a long time, and that's because we really do believe that it's better to tap into the expertise that you need at the point that you need it and then ultimately really rely on in-house talent because really where all the brain trust is, and we never want to interfere with that.

So that's what we do. And we've been around for, gosh, a little bit over a year now and yeah, really excited and doing well.

Den:

Wow, that's excellent. And so on LinkedIn, I mean, you've got this illustrious career of working at some great companies. So from paying to beyond trust and then we met during your time at Lumos, I mean in your career, how did you grow as you jumped between company to company because all of your progressive steps has been a little bigger challenge or bigger company or a better role. So when you were looking to navigate through your career, what did you look for when you were thinking of the next move?

Sandi:

Well, thank you for calling my career illustrious. It doesn't feel that way when you're in it, but when I started out, I actually got really great advice from a headhunter way back. We're talking early nineties, not to date myself, but that is how old I am. And what she asked me was, she's like, what do you want to do? What do you want to be when you grow up? And I didn't know I had a liberal arts degree. I was sociology and religion. I thought I was going to go get a master's degree and study terrorist groups and cults. That was my passion back in school. So when I got thrown into the working world, I didn't really know how my skills applied, but the advice that this head owner gave me was work for as many different kinds of companies in as many different kinds of roles as you can and it will come to you as you go.

And so I took that advice to heart and really never got precious about any one career track. I tried to let it come to me and just stay open for opportunity. So believe it or not, my first job out of school was for a CRM called Dendrite that worked with pharmaceutical companies, life science companies on CRM for their sales reps. So I got exposed to startup culture, which we didn't call them startups back then and CRM and operations. And I quickly figured out that I hate operations. I hated being downstream from the decisions that salespeople made for me and for clients. I found myself frequently saying, I have to do what you promised them. And so yes, I ruled out operations and found my way into sales and loved sales for a time, but I didn't really like the constant continual flow of sales. It never ended. And I really wanted something that had a starting a beginning, a middle, and an end. And so yeah, that's how I meandered my way through and made my way into marketing.

Den:

So you guys are just around a year old, so what made you decide after your last role that now's the time to start a business?

Sandi:

Yeah, it was a wild epiphany. I will never forget it. We were launching the company publicly launching the series A and new website and all that because Lomos had been in stealth mode and it had been a really crazy, really, really fun journey of just getting everything sort of set up from scratch. And prior to going to Lomos, one of the things that I really wanted to do was get very, very early on into a startup just so I could really understand what zero to one felt like. And this was the earliest stage company I had been in. But going back to the epiphany, it was about 10 o'clock at night. It was the day that we had launched. I had been working I think since about six or seven that morning. I barely had time to shower change to get myself together, but it was finally time to give the dogs the walk, the evening walk.

And I was crossing the street and I stopped in the middle of the street. I will never forget it and just let out probably the most expletives I've ever yelled in my life because it occurred to me that I had to keep working. The job wasn't done and I didn't have the energy. I was like, oh my God, you got to keep doing this. This wasn't the job, the job was this plus. And so after I got out of the street, I realized I loved the launch aspect of it. I didn't really know if I wanted to be around for the building of it. And the best analogy I have to it is politicians have their politicians that are good at campaigning and then there are politicians that are good at governing. And this kind of job was both. And so the idea for Miracle Max was, well shoot if I really liked the campaigning part of it, just the getting everything together and building it all up and then launching it. Why not build a business around helping other companies like Lumos do just that? So that's where the idea came from and I just sort of fleshed it out and then found some co-founders and that's where the idea kind of came to life.

Den:

That's excellent. When you think of, because you mentioned something earlier, which is train the team at the company so that truly they can be self-sufficient. So you're teaching them how to fish when you help with founders. What kind of conversations do you have about your goal to help them really grow this discipline themselves? How do those conversations play out?

Sandi:

It varies. I think for first time founders, a lot of times they just don't know what they don't know. A lot of them are especially tech founders, they're engineers, they've built a great product, they know the problem that they want to solve, but they may not have as many deep insights about the people that they want to solve them for. So a lot of our conversations start with really just start with the people. And the question I love to ask founders is what do you want to be known for? And that's a question that I usually don't get an immediate answer to. I don't like an immediate answer to it because sort of a reflective question, but to me it helps reveal a few things. One is how deeply have they thought about brand, their own personal brand, their company brand, what their vision is ultimately just where they want to go, and also what kind of stories do they want to tell?

Because those things are kind of essential cornerstones in my view about getting to really good marketing. You have to understand who you are and who you want to be to your audience and ultimately who you want to serve. So that's usually where I start is just what do you want to be known for? And that question, I've heard funny answers to that question. I've heard people say, I want to be the next Steve Jobs, I want to be known to be the next Apple. I want to be the next superstar. And that leads into, okay, well what is that going to take? And I love the vision, I love the audacity. Everyone should dream big and want that, but for me it's a starting point to just unpack all the different elements of marketing. It's your brand and it's your position, it's your message, it's your audience, it's the ways that you want to reach them. It's sort of how you want to even build the business and sort of how you think about what it is you're doing and the importance of the product that you're creating versus the problem that you're solving. Sometimes there's conflict there.

You've probably worked in places where you've found that it's a solution looking for a problem. And so that can lead to all kinds of interesting problems down the road. So yeah, that's usually where we start. It's just what do you want to be known for? And then from there we sort of figure out, okay, what do we need to do to help set the foundation now so that when you're ready for say your series B or if you're not funded by institution, if you're ready for your next milestone, these are the things that we need to solve for in order to get there.

Den:

And actually you picked a few things there. So brand, I did want to dig into this. I was blessed at Adobe to work with a great brand coach. So she was advising me on personal brand, working with my team on their personal brand, but then also the team brand When I inherited enterprise security after my boss retired before retirement, she'd been given a different objective from the CIO, which was security first kind of business where it's almost like created the thing where security became the ivory tower and it was more the team that says No and the team to be avoided more than the team to collaborate with. So I spent a lot of time and effort on a marketing campaign within the company building the brand of our organization to be, we are the ones to collaborate with so we can hopefully help you move really fast but in a secure way. And that took a lot of effort. So when you think of a company brand, how important do you feel it is for the company's external brand and internal brand to match

Sandi:

Critical? It's one of the first things that I notice when, especially working with established companies, when you meet the people and you get an impression of the people and then you say, look at the website and they don't match, the thing that I say is, your outsides don't match your insides, so which one are you? And there's nothing more frustrating than getting on the phone and meeting a really fun, really cool, really personable, really passionate team and going to the website and it says, we help organizations leverage blah, blah, blah. And it just sounds so stodgy and just not real. So I think it's incredibly important and I think the companies that really understand that are the ones where you feel there's true authenticity there. And that's really what that comes from is when you're outside matches your inside you, you're really locked into something.

Den:

And that's something like brand in general. People talk about think of your brand words, what best describes you and why is that and it is not a goal. And then be conscious of your brand and trying to live those brand words. And the thing I learned early on about it is it's not that you're trying to create an unauthentic self, it's that you're trying to recognize your authenticity and how you really believe. If you don't really believe in your brand words, I mean they could be aspirational, but you've still got to think about, well, how do I show up every day in that way? Now the other thing you mentioned was big goal settings or big dreaming. When you talk to your founders and they come up with, I want to be the next Steve Jobs, I learned this thing called BHAG, which is big, hairy audacious goal.

And when you're coming up with vision and mission, the thing for us, I think of our consultancy having this big hairy, ambitious goal and you share it with the team and you're like, 10 years from now we are going to be black. And it's almost like we've arrived in 10 years. You're looking at that newspaper or that big write up on Forbes magazine about how nine nine cyber are the dominant player in the US of cybersecurity consultancy. And I'm like, why can't we have that goal? And if we want that goal, how do we work towards it?

And ultimately it is got to be big, it's got to be hairy, it's got to be audacious. Otherwise, what kind of strategy is it? Is the strategy just to do more of the same shit? Then you're just the same as you're not the same as everybody else, you're probably not as good as even some of the players out there. So Miracle Max a year in, what's it like being a female founder and trying to thrive? Now the marketing industry in general, there is a decent set of diversity, but you're marketing towards tech startups where the diversity is pretty shit still. So what's it like being a female founder trying to stroll into these environments and convince them that you're the team that can trust?

Sandi:

I think we've had good luck so far, knock on wood. Our experience has been that our approach in I think our own authenticity has really done served us well in that you really do get what you see. So for us, we sort of know usually first call whether it's going to be a good fit or not. And so I'd say I'm not just back and thinking about thinking back on the first year. Overall it's been pretty pleasant and we haven't had even in too many instances where we've had to fire people, but we have, we've got a pretty hard and fast rule about no assholes. And also if you won't let us help you, we're not going to take your money because what are we even doing? We've all worked in places where we've had consultants come in or agencies come in and we've said, what do they even do?

Why are we paying them this money when we're doing all of the work? And we just never want to be those people. We really do want to be the team that comes in and does what they said. They'll say they'll do we'll, have left you in a better place and think well enough of us that you say in your own travels like, Hey, you better call Miracle Max. They can help you do X. So I'd say overall our experience has been really positive. I think on a personal note, I've been the first or the only woman of color in so many spaces that it almost, it doesn't phase me as much. So I feel like I was almost built for, I've kind of been almost built for this. So for me, I don't necessarily see it as an obstacle just because I've been comfortable in this place. I think the thing that I always try to do is one, represent us. Well just represent the team, well represent my profession very well. Two, always just leave people within insight, whether they choose me or not, whether they choose us or not, just leave them better than you found. And I think that's always been our

Me, Chris and Erin's motto about this is just, let's leave them better than you found. So even if conversations don't go our way, even if we decide that we don't work together, we always like to know that, hey, if nothing else, we've done a little bit of good today and so we can move on. The thing that my friend Alys always says is that the paper's out there, the money is out there, the opportunity is out there, so we just keep hustling. And so

Den:

Yeah,

Sandi:

So far it's been really fun.

Den:

And I love that because one of the things that we talked about at Banyan as well when I was their CSO was product is, well, first of all, product is different than consulting because in this you are the product, but at Banyan, the product was a zero trust technology where there's features and functions and the user experience and maybe it checks all your boxes or maybe it doesn't check all your boxes. The only thing you have is the ability to walk in, impress them with your authenticity, your ethics, your values, and a really good sales person, including founders in this as well, they're the ones that turn around and say, actually, our product is not what you need. Here's three products I think you should look at and why. And here's where our product solves these problems if you have these problems. But it doesn't sound like it's a right fit. And I think when you can walk in and even well walk out and not win the deal, but walk out with your head held high because like you say, you've still done them a service in consultancy, we've spoken to a lot of founders where we will give them some guidance knowing full well that we're not actually trying to sell to them.

I just want, I'm meeting a founder this week, they're going to give me a demo of their AI security technology, we'll introduce them to nine, nine Cyber. I don't think right now I'm a customer of theirs. And I don't think right now they're a customer of mines. But possibly what you're building is a new relationship, a good connection, and you're building the ability for someone to remember who you are and why you exist. And you and I, we met during your time at Lumos

And you've been gracious in helping us as we build nine to nine cyber and giving us feedback and help. And conversely, when I bump into a founder that says, I need help with my marketing, I'm like, well, you should meet Sandy because she's been great with us. And I think that's how this game plays. I mean, the reality is there's a hustle where we're both out there trying to drum up business, but then there's also this networking component of it, which will naturally bring business in, provided you put your authentic self forward without asking for anything in return. I've done, I've done that my whole career, but I'm like, I'm a giver. I want to help people be successful, and it doesn't matter if there's anything in it for me. And I think when you can do that, even in business, personal life as well, but even in business, then it does come back. I think it always comes back in speeds.

Sandi:

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, when we started, I spent most of the first six months just networking, really just getting out in public, getting out physically in Denver, just going to places, meeting founders, meeting other agencies, and really just letting people know, Hey, I'm out here. What do you do? How can I help you? Who can I introduce you to? And yeah, I think there's always a temptation to try to solve everyone's problem. But I think the thing I've learned in doing this for the past year and a half is you're not always everyone's hero in the way that you think. Meaning just because you come across an opportunity and you think you might be able to do it doesn't necessarily mean that you're the perfect fit for it. And sometimes it really is better to introduce that person to someone who would knock it out of the park because those returns come tenfold.

That kind of giving does come back around, and people do remember that. I have a couple of instances where I've met people where I've said, Hey, we're not perfect for you, but let me help you find someone who will be spot on. Just bang on with it because I know, yes, I could do a good job for you, but I will struggle in doing that because that's not really core of what I do. But I know that there are people out there that do this for a living that can do this with their feet up and they will absolutely knock it out of the park. And that kind of giving really does come back tenfold. Yeah, I agree. I think it's just good practice in life and in work, but especially when you're starting out,

Den:

I think people see the genuine nature and that builds trust. And I think trust for me is important in any personal or professional life I've learned over the years and walked away from leaders that I reported to because I didn't trust 'em.

And sometimes actually I'd say one of my moves was probably a 40% reduction in my annual salary, and I'm still like, fuck it, I'm out. I don't trust. And literally the first person that knocked on my door that said, Hey, do you want to come and work with us? And now I trusted them more than I trusted the person I was working for at the time. And actually one of my good friends, I'd say good friend, mentor and stuff at Adobe once said this to me. She said, is the person joining your team because of the opportunity, are they running to something or are they running away from something? And I thought that was a brilliant question that stuck with me for a long time. Now, talking about mentors, you're part of Ladies Who Launch, so what does mentorship mean to you and what do you think makes a good mentor?

Sandi:

Yeah. Oh, I just hit my,

Den:

Oh, and also what is Ladies to Launch?

Sandi:

So actually not latest to Launch is kind of disbanded. So actually my better mentor experience is with Entrepreneurship for All, which is my most recent experience. But mentorship for me is I take the same approach to mentorship that I do to leadership and just managing people. And that is when you are a mentor, what you're ultimately looking to do is kind of pour into someone and pour into another team or another group so that you can ultimately see your success through them. And so for me, mentorship has really been incredibly rewarding in that I look to it as something that I give without any expectation of a material return and really just more of a chance to help someone, maybe try to make new mistakes and not make the mistakes that I have made, but really most importantly, to just encourage someone else to follow their dream and really just help them realize their potential and also just be there as a cheerleader and sounding board and sort of number one fan and advocate for them.

So it's been a really, really great journey the past couple of years and just taking some time to really just give back into organizations that I really believe in and also to really just get to know some other mentors or me other entrepreneurs and other founders. So we're just doing cool things that I had no idea what was possible. And yeah, right now I think I'm mentoring three different founders and I get something different from all of them, but it's really to me, I feel like at the end of the day, I feel like I almost get more out of it than they do. It's almost an unfair advantage. It's a great inspiration and it's just really been a fun addition to my career.

Den:

Yeah, I think of it where I'll gain, I usually think I've gained more, like you said, I usually think I've gained more from the relationship than the personal mentoring, and you like to see their career grow, but then at the same time, there's always a little gem that you'll get from someone that you're mentoring that you're like, oh shit, I never thought of it like that. Or just a different perspective on how they look at the situation that they're having. So they might knock on your door asking for guidance and the specific situation and they'll explain how they're thinking about it and you'll be like, oh, I would never have thought of it like that. But that's pretty creative. And then all of a sudden you've learned this new little gem new tool in your toolkit, what's the best piece of advice you've received and what's the best piece of advice you think you've given?

Sandi:

Best piece of advice I've received, I'd say it was to stay open and let it come to you. I am a very impatient person. I will admit. I want to see results yesterday. I am just very motivated and just always just trying to go, go, go, go, go. And I think the best advice I receive is sometimes your best move forward is to stand still for a moment and just let it come to you. And I've taken that to heart professionally and personally. It's kind of the way to stay humble and aware and let, sometimes your best move really is someone else's move. And so it's not always an offense. I think the best advice I've ever given, and I feel like now I say it all the time, but very few things are permanent in life. It's not a tattoo. I think the thing I say to everyone is like, you guys, it's it's not a tattoo. And also we're not missing a plane here. We're not missing a flight. The rush and all of the anxiety that comes with either trying to get it right or trying to get it perfect or just trying to get it ASAP, sometimes you really do need to just slow down for a moment in order to really speed up and know where you're going.

Den:

Yeah, that's great. I kind of look at it when you give advice, there's nothing better than bumping into someone years down the line and hearing that they still give that advice to their people. So I always think in leadership there's this maturity curve and somewhere there's a thing called legacy. And as you become a more mature leader, you've left a legacy, which is you've groomed other leaders and now they're grooming their teams or their leaders, and there's a lot of the things that you taught them and now they use, and I've heard some funny stories about XX staff of mine who went on to great companies and literally you're having a happy hour with their new team or their two teams later actually, and they're talking about your ex-employee and how they're great at giving advice and shit. And then you're like, wait a minute. That's what I told them.

Narrator:

Yeah, that sounds

Den:

Familiar. Yeah. I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, what you learned that from now one of the funniest things for me, there's no such thing as bad news, it's just news. And I've used that one for years, and one of the team members at Adobe came back to me maybe six months ago or something and he was like, oh yeah, I was talking to blah blah, blah, and something wasn't working right. And he said, there's no such thing as bad news. It's just news. It's how we interpretate it and what we do about it that's important.

Narrator:

And

Den:

I just started laughing. I'm like, fuck no. He said that he told you this, that Gemma, that wisdom. And he was like, yeah, and he said that he got it from you. I went, do you want to know what? I heard it. And he just looked at me. I was like, Kung fu panda master shifu. And I was just busting my ass laughing. I'm like, I can't believe this gem of Dan Jones's wisdom got shared. And I spoke to my old direct report that guy's boss, and we had that conversation and I'm like, I thought I told you guys. That's where I got it. I never came up with this fucking genius maneuver statement. I was watching Kung fu Panda with my kids. I just always thought it was such a great statement.

Sandi:

That's a great, so I have one from the Hangover that I say, I did a twist on it, but did you die? Remember that scene

From the diner? So I used to say, well, who dies if we don't do this? Just who dies if this doesn't happen? Because there is really no such thing as a marketing emergency, and I'm so sick and tired of marketing teams running around so stressed, working nights, weekends to get an email out to get a thing out. And it's like, you guys, there's really no such thing as a marketing emergency really who dies seriously. But yeah, I've heard people say, people say that and they say, Sandy used to say that who dies if this doesn't get out? Because the sense of urgency, it loses its impact. If everything is always urgent, then there's nothing urgent. So let's say that,

Den:

Yeah, and Sandy, sometimes days are arbitrarily, I mean, I dunno, I'll maybe learn that word offline, but they're created by somebody. It is not usually driven by an event. And even if it's an event like, excuse me, end of quarter for salespeople, I get that those dates are fixed, but most other dates like a launch for a platform, a launch for a product, these dates are, we've pulled them out with thin air. So the reality is, I don't think of it like anyone's going to die if we don't get that out on Monday. Now I'm a bit of a pain in the ass myself for dates, and I've always been very aggressive with my dates, and the only reason for this is there's no bragging rights to deploy something to 10,000 people. Anyone can actually do that.

Narrator:

The

Den:

Bragging rights is to deploy something to 10,000 people quicker than anybody else has ever deployed it.

So for us at Adobe, I remember we'd done zero trust, 40,000 people in seven months. We deployed up to 300 apps in six weeks. When we look at timing, and also I used to do this service management stint for a bit of time at Adobe, and it was like every 12 weeks we're going to do blah and pretty much launch a whole new process with technology, with training, and every 12 weeks. I mean, it was just crazy. So for me, dates are important if you want to be impressive, but otherwise not really. Doesn't matter. No one gives a shit.

Sandi:

Yeah, I mean, the question I like to ask, especially when it comes to product launches is in the pre-mortem, which wasn't my idea, I think it's Adam Grant who came up with a premortem, which is instead of the postmortem, you should do the postmortem to reflect on what happened. But the pre-mortem is about what could go wrong. And lots of people don't like to think about that, but if you sit in that space for a minute and you really think about, Hey, we're going to launch these new features or we're going to launch this new market in two months, what could go wrong? Well, the question that almost inevitably comes up is we don't have enough time to do all the things as effectively as we want to. So the question I like to ask is, well, if you gave yourself another 24 hours, what else could you do?

If you gave yourself another week, what else could you do? And then the who dies if this doesn't go out on X date? And having that conversation upfront with your launch team, especially with your product team who's almost always under the Gump, who almost always needs that extra 24 hours doing that pre-work really does kind of one, put it in perspective, but two, just give you another communication tool to say, Hey, if we actually take an extra moment here, there are so many more things that we could accomplish with just another 24 hours or with just acknowledging that this date is sort of arbitrary. Let's pick a date that works and let's do everything we can competitively to reach that date. But not everything has to be a mad sprint to the finish because as you know, things get sloppy toward the end, and I know you've seen it in your work. I mean from our work we see it too. So if there's anything you can do to avoid that, I think that that's just sound advice for product launches, for rollouts of things like zero trust, it's just, to me it's just good common sense.

Den:

And the reality is resources, it's time and its features and functions are the quality. So there's these three levers, and if you need it out on that day, maybe you need more resources or you're reducing what goes into the thing. From a quality perspective, what I found is if I do a day that's really tight and every week you're pushing out an update, so we always do a weekly update and the weekly update would be the number of days to X and I would remove the weekends, I would also remove holidays. So if there's an official holiday, so I make the number look even smaller than it is.

Sandi:

And

Den:

Then when your leaders are meeting and in the meetings it's like, okay, are we going to procrastinate over this bullshit because tomorrow that number will be 47, the next day it'll be 46. We make a decision, we move forward. And to your point, when you start to say, well, if I had another week, what would I do? Sometimes all you'll do is polish the apple a little bit more or burn more meeting time on bullshit. So for me it's almost a case of, and then the other thing is a lot of larger companies, it's consensus driven. So I remembered at Cisco, I turned around to their leader who was deploying zero trust at Cisco internally. And I just said to her, I was like, Josephina, when you get my permission to ignore everyone's feedback, that's it. You make the decisions, you push this forward under my name and under the name of my boss and my dotted line boss. So the CIO and the cso, I'm like, do it. This company hasn't done it internally for two years, but they had the products.

So the reason for that is because there's too much chitchat going on and too many meetings of bullshit. So I think sometimes empowering and enabling and clearing the runway is really important. And then I get to go back to my leaders and say, you either help or you don't get to seat it at the table. And sometimes people don't like that, especially in California and Silicon Valley and everyone wants to be nice and politically correct, and then you've got this bull in the China shop, then Jones, it comes along and I'm like, I don't care. Do you want the result? Do you want it done or do you want to sit and talk about it for two years?

Sandi:

Well, that's interesting. It actually goes back to the question that I ask founders is ultimately, what do you want to be known for? That is the question. Sometimes it's, Hey, we want to be known for pushing out updates and always innovating on our product or protecting our employees or their apps or being a standard bearer on things like security and employee access or we want to be known for shipping products out quickly better than anyone, quicker than anyone.

If you have answers to those questions, a lot of times that's your north star. That's the deciding factor. And I can tell you I've had, I have had founders push back and say like, no, it has to go out because that's who we are. We push stuff out. It's like, okay, then we're going out. But I think going back to what you said is that trying to agree by consensus and by committee and being fearful of doing something or trying not to step on toes or trying to make it all perfect, those things that ultimately to me, those are big company habits that can ultimately just sort of put sand in the gears and really just slow you down.

Narrator:

And

Sandi:

There does have to be someone in the group who says, why are we even here? And I think back to your point at the beginning of this episode, just what do I want my team to be known for? That's really, I think you being the bull in the China shop and you saying like, Hey, I'm going to empower this person that is brand that really is just going back to we're living our value and we are doing what we said we are going to do and we're fulfilling the promise that we said we're going to make. So it is important even though lots of times people don't want to hear it, it is an important call to make.

Den:

And I think in smaller companies, more possible, I think of it like the bigger the company, the more bullshit per hour. So I'd be like, okay, and Adobe, I'd be 60% of my time is political and politics and bullshit. And then at Cisco, maybe it's 80% of my time now the people doing the work, maybe their life is a little bit less bullshit and more action. At the executive level, you're dealing with clearing the runway and smoothing shit out and stuff. But in smaller companies, startups, I really enjoyed that that bullshit to work output level was really low because ultimately there's fewer people to coerce or partner with. You're more in tune with, in my case, direct with the CEO. It's easy to be like, this is the plan forward, what do you think? Yes, good, let's do it. You ask 25 people if they give a shit or not. Is that what you find when you're engaging with your clients?

Sandi:

I'd say yes and no. I think it's 50 50. I think a it's, it's a different kind it BS to work ratio. I think I've always said, and I don't think I made this up so this can't be a sandy quotable, but I have been saying it for years is if you have three people, you have politics. So if anyone here is working for a big company and they say, oh, I want to go work for a small company, there's fewer politics there. If there are three people, there are politics. But I think the difference is is that you can get to the person who can ultimately make the decision without listening to anyone else quicker in a startup. I think the lesson that I learned in working at bigger companies, because ping ponged between big companies, small company, and that's sort of what my career has been and I loved it.

I just was trying to figure out what size company is best for me, but I got some advice or heard someone say this very many years ago, it was Chu from Sage, he's now CEO at Cornerstone. But Honcho Paul slowly once said, on stage, we move at the speed of our customers. And it was in response to this growing frustration that we had internally about not being able to innovate quickly enough, not being able to push stuff out quickly enough. And what he was basically telling us was, our customers are small businesses. We can't be jamming stuff down their throats all the time. And so the way that we have to move though we want to move quicker is really about being courteous to them and respectful of them. And if that's their audience, we got to move at their speed. And I remember that that statement has stayed with me for a really long time because it is true.

So yes, if in a startup and your customers also big startups that also need to move fast and do stuff, then that pace and that kind of low BS to execution ratio probably stays pretty low. If you're at a place where you're selling to enterprise, you're not pushing stuff out every single week. To them they don't want it. I can't tell you the number of IT teams that are like, your stuff's in a sandbox right now. We can't just deploy stuff in a production, we're not risking it for you. So I do think that there is some variation in that kind of ethos in terms of just being able to do stuff and move fast and break things, which I hate that saying, but we still

Den:

Say it

Sandi:

Versus being more thoughtful and having to plan things out more and all the tension that goes along with trying to balance all of that. I do think it varies. It can be fun, I think to have some of that tension and figure out what's best. But also if you are someone who, if you're thinking about your own career and thinking about where you want to work and what kind of environment you want to work in, whether you're on the dev side or on the go-to market side, I think thinking about who that company's customer is and how quickly they move is just as important as how innovative the tech is of the company that you're joining.

Den:

Yeah, no, that's great. We're looking at my little clock here, we're kicking down on the time, but I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you something about ai, Sandy. So how do you see AI changing your world in the next couple of years?

Sandi:

It is really doing something to marketers all across the board, everything from SEO to content creation to just being a good copilot on some routine things. I think I'm looking at AI with a grain of salt and a bit of caution. I think that it's really, it's a great copilot and I think we'll see more and more that it will take over some routine, just sort of mundane tasks. I'm hoping that AI will help with more of the predictive nature of marketing because a lot of marketing is data-driven. Newsflash marketing is not glitter and making your logo look nice and making stuff pretty. It really is data and analytics. So I do hope that AI will help with that. Just help marketers better predict where the market is going, where they should spend their dollars, where they should spend their time and less about optimizing things like content and various marketing channels.

My caution with AI is I've seen companies try to use it more and more to replace people, and I think that's been a challenge with marketing since the start of marketing. It's sometimes good marketing is almost taken for granted and bad marketing is you sort of get the light shined on it, but there are people behind this and there is real creativity that comes into it. So I mean, my prediction on AI is that hopefully it'll go the data route and the creative route will really be left to the people who really do want to and continue to look for insights about people because ultimately we still are selling to people and you can't really replace that yet. So yeah, that's kind of my take on ai. It's a good assist, but it won't create everything. It won't build your brand. It may help you refine your message, but it won't ultimately get you to the thing that you want, which is for founders, it's more customers that really resonate with what I do that can really see a value in whatever product or service I'm creating. I don't think an engine will get you closer there. I don't think there's any replacement for really getting to know your audience and really thinking about how does that show up in our brand? How does that show up in our product and our roadmap and how we're going to market and how we're engaging with people and how we think about customers and all of that.

Den:

And I mean, like we say, as a copilot, I think it's good. There are some things that it can do that it'll help speed the content creation up. There's certainly some great tech out there that will do graphics or do I go to Adobe stock for the picture or will I go to some other AI platform and see what it can generate that also looks glitzy and glamorous? I use both. I'm an ex Adobe person, so I'd wouldn't be like me to not use Adobe products. I'm very good with their technology and sometimes I would just go to some other app and create some content. And I think it doesn't take away from the fact that we're marketing to people who are humans. They still can see through nonsense and crap and ultimately understand whether your brand or your reputation or what you're building is authentic or not, or they want to think that and recognize that you've put the quality time in because at the end of it, if your brand and reputation is that we deliver quality results as a business, they would like that to be reflected in everything that you're churning out.

Sandi:

That's your brand promise. If that's, if that's what you're promising, that's what you ultimately deliver. And I don't think there's a shortcut there. I just don't.

Den:

He's

Sandi:

Not yet.

Den:

Now the observant viewers, we've got this on video and audio, so the audio people will not pick up on this, but the observant viewers will understand this next question. So Sandy, when you're not working your ass off, it seems like you might hit the slopes on a set of skis now and again. So is that your release? Is that how you get back to nature?

Sandi:

Yeah, so when I started Miracle Max, I got really good advice from an employee shout out to Simoni bu she told me, take some time over the holidays and design your life. Just take out a piece of paper and write down what it is you want out of your life and just carry that into work. And one of the things that I wrote down in that exercise was I want to be able to ski on Wednesdays. And so that's what I do. It's come true. I haven't skied every single Wednesday this season, but I do try to stick with it and the skis are right behind me, always my visual reminder. You'll see them on every Zoom call. You might also see my dog, which is directly behind me, and they're just a reminder that I need to work harder to provide a better life for 'em. But yeah, those are the things that I do. This painting behind me is actually my brothers, I can't take credit for this, but I have taken up art this summer, sketching and painting as a release. I'm hoping some of that DNA is in me and then I have even a 10th of the talent that my brother Steve has, but, but those are the things that I do. And also reading, which you can see kind of on the books on my bookshelf,

Den:

I've

Sandi:

Become.

Den:

So what's the most recent book you read and is it worthy to recommend to others?

Sandi:

Oh my gosh. The most recent book that I've read that has stayed with me that was fiction was the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. That story, it's right behind me. It's by gentleman named James McBride. It was a wonderful story. The very last line of the book haunted me for weeks. I couldn't believe the ride that I was on. I had actual tension turning the pages. And for me, I read for pleasure and I also read for a turn of phrase because part of what I have to do is write, so I just try to look for other sources of inspiration. And so that was the last book I read that really just stayed with me in terms of just being one I can't wait to tell everybody about.

Den:

That's excellent. Excellent. Well, Sandi, thank you very much for your time today. It's great having you on the show everybody. Sandi Green, Merkel Max marketing co-founder, the growth company for startups. And and actually I think one of my lessons I learned today was what a scale-up is. Actually, I was curious and I'm glad you explained that for the newbie in the room, I guess me everybody, thank you very much. If you love the content, please like, subscribe and check out the rest of our content. Sandi was actually on episode 16 with a women's executive leadership panel on women in Technology, so that was an excellent one, and we've got another one of those around the corner as well, part two of that. So everybody thank you and Sandi, appreciate your time, your mentorship and your support on our journey as well.

Sandi:

Thanks Dan.

Den:

Take it easy everybody.

Narrator:

Thanks for listening to Cyber 909. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and don't miss an episode of your source for wit and Wisdom in cybersecurity.

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