She was CMO at Honeywell

Welcome to another Founder Wisdom podcast. We have Erica Brinker with us today. She's a founder at The Brink Media. She's an investor. She's also board director and public officer advising founders and CEOs. She's been part of many, uh, Fortune 500. She's been CCO and CMO there in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is super hot right now. Erica, welcome to the pod. Tell us a bit more about yourself and, uh, what you've been up to.

Sure. Well, as you mentioned, we are off and running with At the Brink Media. We launched in May after a long 20-plus career, 20-plus year career in corporate America. I've worked in everything from fashion and luxury goods to aerospace to software, and the last 5 years have been really focused on renewables, renewable energy, and sustainability businesses. Businesses. So At the Brink Media is home to our flagship podcast, At the Brink, and I feature founders and anyone that kind of has a moment that breaks their life into two, like a before and after. And it's an in-person video format podcast. So, so far we've filmed season 1 in both Scottsdale and in New York City, and we're getting ready and booking for season 2 right now in the fall.

Looking at your background here, and it's pretty interesting. Let's start with the early, early days. So you spent time at Kate Spade, Tiffany, and Polo Ralph Lauren. Did you want your early career to be fully focused on fashion? Tell me a bit more about that.

No, it was actually an accident, and you're gonna have to take the Wayback Machine with me to understand how this even came about. Um, back in the day there was like the internet, but you weren't finding inter— you weren't finding internships that way per se. And so I had an internship book that was called The Top 100 Internship Books that I think I picked up at Barnes Noble. And at the time I was in school in Washington, D.C., and so I was— I'm an East Coaster. I was born on the East Coast and I found my way out west 15 years ago, but back then I wanted to stay on the East Coast, so I went through the book and I crossed off everything that was on the West Coast. I crossed off everything that didn't pay because there was a time when you didn't have to pay interns. And the only thing left was a company called Liz Claiborne, which now is kind of Kate Spade, but, um, it was a fashion company and it wasn't something I necessarily had an interest in, but I actually applied for a design internship without having any design experience. And I interviewed and I was surprised when I got a letter that I, got in. But what they didn't tell me is that I ended up in marketing, which I was wholly unfamiliar with. I had no idea what marketing was. And so it turned out to be one of those happy accidents in life where the thing that you were supposed to do actually found you. Because for me, marketing is really the best balance of both kind of your business brain and then your creative brain and bringing those two things together and figuring out how to accelerate go-to-market, increase sales, tell the brand story. And so those are all the things I really love to do even to this day.

Did you study Kate Spade? I think was stratospheric type of growth back then, but yet with like a very unfortunate ending. Like, did you study your story?

That was long after I left. That was my first job. I moved on to Tiffany after that. I think Kate Spade acquired parts of Liz Claiborne. Kate Spade is part of what Liz Claiborne was. There's a kind of— it got broken into pieces, but it was a very sad story. But it's also a testament to the strength of the brand that after the tragic ending of the founder, that it's been able to carry on so strongly still after so many years. That's really the power of brand.

How would you describe the environment in which you were back then, like as a woman and trying to get into these power roles? Was it a struggle?

Yeah, I equate being in the fashion industry very much to someone that maybe wants to get into the sports industry. Um, there's so many people that want to do it because it looks so glamorous that salaries are low and you know that there's 20 people behind you that would kill for your job. And so unfortunately, the way that many companies and many individuals are able to promote individuals is bringing them in from the outside. And so I moved from Liz Claiborne to Tiffany because it was a pay increase and a bigger opportunity. And then that's again, there was a role at Ralph Lauren and, you know, iconic branding. If you want to learn brand, Ralph Lauren is one of the best places to learn. And Ralph himself is very engaged in the business. I actually came into Ralph Lauren through their licensing businesses where they were licensing the name to third parties. And so it was really interesting to watch how closely they manage those licensing businesses because not all companies do that. They're not looking to have such a mark on their— they really see it as just great to the bottom line. You know, it's like pure profit. But Ralph really cared and he reviewed the product. And the two things that he was like obsessive about was the product and the marketing. What did the advertising look like? And so to learn from them and so many people in that marketing department who I think many of whom were still there. It was like such an honor and such a great way to learn the ropes of what great marketing and brand looks like.

And then 10 years at Honeywell. How does one survive 10 years at a corporation?

It's a good question. I have to say, first of all, a lot of people don't understand how you can transition from something like a Ralph Lauren to a place like Honeywell. I would say 90% of what you learn in marketing and sales translates. You just have to really get smart on what the business is. Honeywell was huge though, and I came in through aerospace, and in all honesty, it was the, by far, the steepest climb to learn all of the products. I mean, there's hundreds of thousands of SKUs in the aerospace business, and so many Honeywells on every single jet, commercial airplane, NASA. I mean, they're everywhere. They're global. And so what I liked about it and what maybe some people don't realize if they've never worked at a place like this is in a, at a place like Honeywell where performance culture was the way they ran the business. If you're a hard worker, what you put in, you would get out. And so performance culture means that if I put in the effort and I do the work, there's a way to keep moving up. And that's what I felt very— it was very easy. It didn't feel political. It didn't feel mysterious. It really felt like it made perfect sense to me. And to be honest, when I interviewed there, I wasn't that interested. I'd just done my MBA and I was ready to go anywhere in the world. And I got this interview. Someone had forwarded my resume unbeknownst to me. And it was a 6-month interview process. And I met 11 people. And every single person I met was smarter than the next one. And I was so blown away by the talent. And it's an engineering culture. So people think a certain way. And so, and I don't think like an engineer. I'm married to an engineer, but I don't think like an engineer. So I really saw an opportunity for my skill set to be able to sell and translate the technology to the buyers who are actually buying. So it was actually a great balance. And I got to move up. I got to see the world. I got to, you know, spearhead spinning off their software business. I got to rebrand the company. I mean, there were some really incredible opportunities. And I call that the best corporate university you could ever go to, a conglomerate like that. And still some of the best friends I've ever made are still friends to this day.

And the CMO position, um, were you like CMO, CMO?

Yeah, so the first, they didn't have a corporate marketing structure. So if you think about old Honeywell, they just recently announced the total breakup, so they're all standalone businesses now. But back when I was there, there were 4 publicly reporting businesses that rolled up into one Honeywell. And so they didn't have a corporate marketing structure. That wasn't what the old CEO really prioritized, and a new CEO CEO came on board, and one of the things that he wanted to leave as his legacy, Darius Adamczyk, was to have a one Honeywell approach and to tell our software story. And so I was the first VP of Brand that they had ever had, and I sat under the first Chief Commercial Officer that they had ever had. And so that brand campaign, um, was something where not only the CEO but the whole— his whole you know, all his public officers were very closely involved. And then when the CMO role came open to spin out the software role, the software business on its own, that's where I was also CMO and I also led their sales excellence process. It was really about pipeline health, ensuring sales were meeting targets, margin maintenance. Making sure that we had the right product market fit, because in a software business, as I'm sure you interview lots of software executives, product market fit is everything. And really understanding your customer and getting the feedback from sales so that we were constantly upgrading our software offerings so that we had something that the customers actually needed and wanted and had a willingness to pay for.

That's crazy. CMO at Honeywell is like such a gigantic position. What about Vice President of Commercial Excellence. What does that mean?

Well, here's the thing, uh, and this is a philosophical difference that maybe I might have with some others, uh, I don't believe in separating sales and marketing under different leaders. Um, I think that inherently, particularly as you get into bigger organizations, medium to larger size organizations, I think you start to see that sales and marketing kind of point their fingers at each other. And it's very common. You kind of like see it everywhere. If you have like, say, a CMO and a CRO, they kind of are like, oh no, it's your fault. No, it's your fault that we didn't meet our numbers. When you have one leader like you did in that role, 'cause it was both of those roles at the same time, you have a sales team and a marketing team that's working through the same mission. They have the same goals. And one thing that's always been important to me, particularly managing a marketing team, is that the marketing folks go out on the sales calls with sales teams. They have to understand what the customers are actually saying firsthand. They're not making up these like, you know, meaningless value calculators or, you know, putting together these trade show booths on things that the sales team doesn't even need. I think if you bring those two organizations really closely together, it means that you have sales and marketing alignment that actually accelerates the sales velocity quite well. And so that was the real advantage of having those two things come together.

Why launch your own company after such a successful career? Why not keep on climbing the echelons?

Well, I considered it before I did this. I did look at some CEO roles and ultimately where I have found the most joy in the last 5 years is working with smaller companies. To grow their business. One of the things I learned at Honeywell was how to scale and how to make things into processes that are repeatable regardless of kind of who's there. You have a leader leave, you can kind of plug people in. I get a lot of gratification out of meeting with companies that have really interesting technology or something great to offer the world, but they don't— a lot of times founders don't know how to scale it or communicate it to customers well or market it, or even, even more simply segment their market. Who are they selling to? A lot of times you'll see companies where they kind of have one offering for every different kind of customer they could have. And so in being something for everyone, there's something for no one. And so for me, that the way that you can impact the smaller entrepreneurs' companies and see that growth and invest in them. Like, I'm an investor now, and so seeing these companies grow and watching them really learn and become, you know, their CEOs to start, but then they get to learn from people that have been there, done that. So for me, it's just about the way I want to spend my time and having the flexibility to do so.

You have a great podcast as well. I'm looking at a couple just right now. Like, what's the angle, and, uh, why do you think the world has a need for yet another podcast?

Oh, isn't that the truth? Why do we need another podcast? Um, well, listen, I feel like, um, there's business podcasts and then there's kind of personal growth podcasts. And the fact of the matter is we are people that have all those things going on. Uh, for me, I had a real turning point in my life 10 years ago. I lost my son Luca, um, suddenly. And it changes the way that you view life and the way that you think about work as part of your life and how you're integrating those two. And so we say that At the Brink is about the moments that change everything. And one of the things that really helped me when I was struggling after we lost Luca was actually strangers, talking to people that I didn't know because there were so many people around me, whether it was family or friends that didn't know what to say, didn't know how to talk to me, were afraid to talk to me. Even my own mother didn't know what to say to me. And when I found people who had been through the same thing and that could tell me that I will be on the other side of this, that there's another thing to look forward to, it really changed my perspective on how important it is to have connection. And so when I think about At the Brink, I want it to be a place where you're having a conversation with a friend who either you're going through that thing, whether it's founding a company, we, 30 to 40% of the people that we talk to are founders, or they've gone through some personal health crisis, or maybe they're a cultural figure, they're an advocate for some sort of cause. For whatever reason, it gives you either hope, or you can be a better friend or colleague to someone who's going through it. And so it's— I'm not necessarily looking for famous people all the time. I'm looking for great stories. That of people that are on the other side of whatever that tipping point is.

How— I think— oh, you're back. How does one survive losing a son like that? Like, how do you grieve through that? And how— because you had like great commercial success, right? But you lost what was most important to you. So how does one get out of that gigantic hole?

Yeah, it's a good question. Um, there are some things from the very early days that I don't quite remember. I wouldn't say I'm an expert in having dealt with it in a way that was maybe healthy in the beginning. I went back to work a week later because I simply did not know what to do with myself otherwise. Um, it was something about getting back to normalcy, some sort of schedule. So that something could feel normal because everything else didn't. Um, I had— when I got married, I had two stepsons, and then I had a— I have my daughter, uh, Sasha, and then a year later I had Luca. I would say my North Star was staying healthy and grounded for the three kids we already had so that I could be a good mom to them And so the one thing I will say for anybody that's going through something like this is you cannot avoid grief. You absolutely have to go through it. If you avoid it, it will catch up with you. And so that's something that I had to come to terms with, is that I had to face it head on. I had to do the right work, do the right— you know, for me, it was about reading and really being partnered with my husband. I mean, one of the things that was like terrifying to me, I'm, I'm a I'm kind of a natural researcher. And when I looked up parents that lost kids, I saw the stat that said like over 60% of couples get divorced.

Yeah, I saw that one too.

And I, we were pretty newly married and I did not want to lose my husband. I waited my whole life to meet him. And that really became my priority was how do we keep together? So that we can keep the family together. And if we could figure it out, then we could dig ourselves out of the hole together. And that was something that was like just very much a central feature in how we went about dealing with so much sadness, so much grief, and such a big change for our family.

What about like therapy? Because you could speak to your husband, but both of you are like shell-shocked, right? So you can't like look back and have an overview of pretty much everything. Was therapy part of of the healing?

Absolutely. And I would say we dealt with it differently, probably in typical fashion, maybe from a male point of view. My husband was more introverted. He kept more to himself. We did do some group therapy with other parents who had lost children, and they had all different kinds of scenarios. You know, our son was only 4 months old. There were other people there that they had adult children that they had lost. For me, I thought it was helpful. My husband didn't like it at all. And so I think for anyone going through it, I would say find the thing that works for you. I did my own individual therapy as well. And I'm like a prolific reader on topics that interest me. So there's lots of books out there for bereaved parents. There's also organizations that help bereaved parents deal with it. And, you know, it affects the whole family, your extended family. And If I could impart one piece of advice to any family member who has someone close to them that's lost somebody, I would say make sure you say the name of the child that was lost. You have to say their name because the parent is yearning to hear their name because they were here.

Yes.

And that is so, so important. And it feels scary, but I always tell people saying the wrong thing is better than saying nothing at all.

Yes, 100%. Um, my daughter is 4 months old, you know, and I've been researching these things because, um, yeah, we had a healthcare with her on day 3 or 2, right? And I know that Elon also lost his, uh, first child. In your case, I don't think it was your first one, but it's so traumatic, right? Like, as new parents, is, is like this innocent thing that, that goes away and you know, like they're, they're brand new, right, to this world. It's very traumatic. It's, uh, yeah, me, it would probably destroy me. But, um, yeah, it's, it's very impressive that you made it and that you made it through with your husband, because like you said, if you guys wouldn't have stayed together, it usually ruptures the full family, right? Exactly. And that's, that's the cost of divorce, right? And, and fortunately you made it through. It's pretty heroic. Um, what does a day in your your life look like? Do you have like any habits? You look pretty fit, right? Like, what, what keeps you like in this high-octane, high-performance, um, vibe of things on a daily basis?

Yeah, I've always been high energy. I, I grew up as an athlete. I was a swimmer for much of my life. I, I was also a volleyball player. I've always been active. Uh, it was always something, even in New York City when I moved there and I was broke, I had a gym membership. You know, for me making sure that you're sweating it out a bit in whatever that is. I love Pilates. I— but probably in the last 10 years, the biggest change I've made is lifting heavy weights. So that's something that's important to me. I used to be a vegetarian. I'm kind of like a flexitarian. I still love lots of like meat-free, plant-based meals. But knowing that my protein intake probably wasn't where it was supposed to be, I definitely have upped that and introduced different proteins. Mostly fish, but I'll do some other things. I would also say I'm not obsessive about anything. Like, I take supplements, like I'm big into NAD and things like that. And I've taken breaks from coffee, actually, intermittently. And one thing I've found is I actually do better when I'm not drinking it. I've become much more a tea drinker because I just feel better. But I do love the smell and taste of coffee. So, you know, right next to me, I do have a cup of coffee, but It's just staying active. I, you know, walking is great. Obviously right now in 110-degree weather, I'm not going outside, but unless it's early morning. But I would say one of the other thing is I'm religious. I go to bed by 9:00 PM. I get up at 4:00. My first productive hours of the day, like my most productive hours are from 4:00 to 6:00 before the kids get up. And that's where I get so much of my work done. A lot of the thinking work. I do a lot of administrative stuff in the afternoon, because by then my brain is kind of done with thinking. It's more about let's just get some things checked off the list, or let's have some meetings, let's have discussions like this. But it's really about prioritizing your sleep too.

And how do kids see mom? Do they view her as, you know, this high-performance power businesswoman, or—

my daughter's 12 now, so my 6-year-old might say something else. And the other boys are— one's out of college and one's in He's still in the university now, but I mean, I think they'd say that I've tried to balance it all. Most of my jobs up until this point have been like 60% travel, so they've, they've been used to both my husband and I coming and going. He's the CEO of a company and a PE BACS company, and so both of us kind of come and go. We, we manage it with like an electronic calendar. I think the kids see that the work gets us to do things that other kids don't necessarily get to do. So we try to make a point to say, hey, not everybody gets to go. Like this year we've been to Ireland and most recently, you know, we made another trip to Italy to go to their grandmother's hometown where she's from. And so when you work hard, you get to play hard. And so we try to show them the value of hard work. But we also, when it's, when it's time for dinner and in the evenings, we really try to put phones down, put computers away, and be very intentional about spending time with them. So I think it's a good balance. I think it's dangerous to revolve your whole life around your kids because life isn't like that. It's not going to be like that after they leave you. And so I think it also has engendered kind of an independence for them too, that they have to figure things out. I don't, do my kids' homework for them. I have them try it first. So I think that it actually will help them in the long run because you can tell your kids whatever you want, but modeling behavior is the best way that they'll learn.

Yeah, words. I love it. Erica, where can people find out more about you?

Sure. On Instagram, I'm official.ericadrinker. I also I'm very available on LinkedIn or at my website at thebrinkmedia.com.

There you go. So it's Erica and Charles Cormier for another founder