Full Throttle Leaders Podcast with Bryan Mitchell - Episode 5

Now, how you doing, Brian?

I'm wonderful, Michael. Thank you for having me this morning.

Thank you. I'm Michael Filatos. In case you don't know, this is Full Throttle Leaders. It's basically a podcast to talk about what's working, what's not for people that are in GTM, mostly I would say revenue people, founders, and so forth. But it's really just overall leadership and qualities that we want to emulate. So we want to trade off best practices, what's working, what's not, how you got to where you are. So tell me a little bit about your background in growth marketing. What got you into that?

Yeah, thank you. First of all, Michael, for having me, and thank you everyone for joining the conversation today. I hope you take away some lessons that'll be applicable to your careers. I've had an incredibly diverse, dare I say wild journey from the day I walked out of university to where I am sitting with you here today, Michael. Spent the first 10 years of my career in journalism prior to the annihilation of that industry by our friends at Google and Facebook and the like. I was very lucky to catch the tail end of that industry because I got to work with with tremendous editors.

What, what company was that at?

So I worked for several. I worked for the Knoxville News Sentinel in Knoxville, Tennessee. I worked for the Stars and Stripes in England. I worked for the Associated Press, which is basically everywhere on planet Earth. Um, yeah, then I freelanced quite a bit as well for a handful of different publications. And, you know, what was most important though was that 5 years I spent with the Knoxville News Sentinel. And, you know, a gentleman by the name of Tom Chester, who I worked with, who was our, uh, daily managing editor, like he ran the newsroom. And the amount of fair play and equanimity and, um, resolve that he operated with every day was just this incredible lesson for a 23-year-old to come out of college and watch someone operate like that. You know, we all come out of university thinking we have We got the world figured out. We know how to do things. And then the world quickly slaps us in the face when we realize we really don't know anything. And then you get to be our age, Michael, when you realize you really don't know anything, right? The world is so big and so vast, so many people doing incredible things in so many industries. No matter how sharp you are, you can just—

Where did you graduate there?

I graduated in 2000 from the University of Tennessee. I went to school 2 years with Peyton Manning when he was a junior and senior. I was a freshman and sophomore. He wanted me to come out and play receiver to be the final 5th wing on his slot offense, but I was busy, you know, running the party scene on campus. And so I deferred and let Peyton do what Peyton did. And then we spent a lot of time here together in Indianapolis as well when he was a Colt and I was working for several manufacturing companies. Again, Peyton reached out, wanted me to help him manage a lot of his PR communications. Because he's not very good at that kind of stuff, right? He was looking for someone who had that polish to, to make the move to Progressive and Papa John's. Again, I deferred. It just wasn't a right fit for me, but thank you, Peyton, for the opportunity. Um, so yeah, I mean, the thing is about being a leader in my mind, and the journey you go on, is being acutely aware of when you see great leadership around you, taking notes of what it looks like and making sure you store those away so you can emulate those if you ever get the chance to be a leader. And then equally, if not more importantly, taking notes of when you see bad leadership around you. And most of us, if you've survived this far in your career, have seen both. You know, you get blessed with great leaders who you want to emulate, and you get cursed with horrible leaders who you hope to never have to deal with again. It's just the game that we play. In the game of life. Also, I mean, Tom Chester was the first that kind of set this bar incredibly high for me. I don't know where Tom is today. He's retired from the newspaper industry. The paper is a shell of its former self. People don't make the consistent living they once made in that industry. I was lucky to transition into marketing and, uh, quickly found my niche there in the intersection of where I play today, which is the intersection of narrative storytelling, which I learned as a journalist and had honed through working with great editors, and data-driven growth marketing, which is, as we all know, a fancy way to say like SEO, PPC, SEM, running webinars, doing everything you can to get leads in the door to grow a business. And so, uh, in that world, I've also had great leaders I've worked with and people who've taught me the power of critical thinking, consistency, creativity, enthusiasm, positivity, all the attributes that I like to think are core to being a—

what's two strategies or tactics in the last six months that either really succeeded at or really failed at that taught you a life lesson?

The most important lesson I think we can take away from marketing in today's era are two. The first is kind of obvious. It's what we're doing today, right? But even more importantly, what you do, Michael, setting events up in person for people to connect. The Zoom fatigue is, you know, it's a polite way of saying that everyone— not everyone, most of us are frustrated, fed up, just kind of tired of connecting the way you and I are connecting right now. As nice as it is to be here with you, Michael, I would so much more rather be sitting elbow to elbow with you, even at a dive bar in Texas, right? Having chicken wings and a cold beer and talking about this stuff where we can connect and the conversation can be more organic. And more importantly, a person can walk up behind us, hear what we're saying and interject and be able to bring their own energy, their own enthusiasm, their own life experiences. So the biggest thing I've learned is the power of live events. If you're not doing very thoughtful live events and roundtables like you're setting up, like we're trying to work on together, and relying too much on digital, you know, you're missing a major opportunity because digital is so easy. There's essentially zero marginal cost of duplication, replication, expansion, right? It's just putting more money in the machine. Once you've built whatever machine you've built, to expand it takes very little except more time to review what's working and what's not working, which obviously happens when you expand your budgets. So live events is the first one, and not just events, but making things special, making things unique, making things memorable, finding ways to stand out, finding ways to make people feel special. You gotta remember, all of us all the time are mired in our own thoughts that unfortunately are largely driven by a sense of insecurity, fear, scarcity mindset. And so if you can take time to help people alleviate that and demonstrate that you're there to help them improve whatever condition they have, right? And all of us in marketing and sales are there to improve the condition of our client. Right? They've got a problem that our product or service can solve. And so what I found is in these live events, if you can really connect to people and really listen and really understand their frame of mind, you could have a tremendous impact on your business because all of us want to feel that our work is important and that we're being heard and understood and not just sold to.

Tell me a little bit about— I saw you served in the Navy. Thank you for your service. I was in Air Force Reserves. Um, tell me about— I actually was in video production, so I worked in the public affairs office where you were at. So tell me a little bit about your Navy background.

Yeah, my grandfather was in the Navy, my stepfather was in the Navy. Growing up, it was always in the back of my mind, this is what a man must do to kind of pass between the threshold of, I don't know, understanding your country and fully understanding your country, I think there's a different level of, um, I don't know, just like commitment one feels and understanding of what it took to create this country that we all enjoy. When you put the uniform on and you realize that people going back to the Revolutionary War wore that same uniform for this very noble cause, which is freedom and justice and due process and security.

Especially today.

Especially today. Especially today. Um, so, you know, I stress to all young people, you know, I've got a son who's a junior in college, and I'm trying to whisper in his ear as much as you can, if you can't join the military, join the State Department. If you can't join the State Department, join Teach for America, Volunteer for America. Do something that is bigger than yourself and that the input you put in, uh, uh, serves something, a cause greater than your own.

And you're a civilian in these other ones like Stars and Stripes and Marine Corps?

I was a civilian, uh, yeah, that was before I joined the Navy. I joined the Navy at 30 years old, also as a reservist, and I did a couple tours on active duty to some amazing spots you would love to take your family on vacation. And I spent 7 months in Afghanistan, right, um, during a very difficult period. I was there in 2013 and '14 when we drew down the troops. We went from 35,000 to like 12,000 during my period there. And 2 days a week, every Wednesday and Saturday, I would get on a helicopter piloted by Canadian civilians and fly across Mazar-i-Sharif, the northernmost big city in Afghanistan, and train Afghan soldiers on how to conduct public affairs. And so, you know, this is an incredibly rewarding way to make a living, an incredibly rewarding way to feel like you're improving the fate, not just of America, but of humanity, to be able to imbue some of our values and some of our thinking here in America on the Afghans. When I have bad days at work, like, I just fall back on that. Last bad day with my wife or, or in America or whatever. I will— I did that, and you can't take that away from me. And so for any young person under the age of 30, if you're physically fit, of sound mind and body, um, I beg of you, like, your country needs you in the military, in the State Department, Teach for America. If more people served and understood the country at a deeper level and understood all the backgrounds we all come from, I think we'd be in a much better place politically than we are today.

I'm sure you learned assalamualaikum.

Of course. Yeah, I said that 18 times a day. Of course.

Yeah. What's like, what are you doing now? I think you're in IoT space, right?

I've been in IoT for a while now. So I got my first brush of it at a great great company called Carrier. Willis Carrier invented air conditioning, you know, 115 years ago so a printing press could run without humidity. Changed the world. Made Las Vegas and Phoenix possible, never mind.

That's why AC's got— because of printing?

So the story is amazing. Yeah. In Brooklyn, New York, there was a printing press, and when they printed the papers in the summer, the humidity would make them all stick together. And so they— Carrier was a young engineer there in his early 20s, and he was like one of the Zuckerbergs or the Elon Musk of his age. And so he went in and, uh, said— they said, can you make a machine to remove the humidity from the air? So I think I can. So what they found was when you remove the humidity from the air, it also made the air cooler. And so air conditioning—

was that a swamp cooler at the time?

I don't know. I'm cooler— I've heard that term, I don't know what it means. I think that's more of a, uh, Florida grandpa.

Something where you kind of like let the water fall and it's like the old school with the fall and the take the heat out of it and blow air over it versus cooling, cooling the water, which is, you know, what Carrier's known for. But I'm wondering what if the first thing to take the humidity out of the air was, was a swamp cooler. I don't know.

I, you know, I defer as a University of Tennessee grad to assume that it's a PhD program at the University of Florida where most of the washouts end up. Kidding.

What's— what's— yeah, so what's, uh, what's, um, the life lesson of something that you did that you wish you could take back and go, but you learned a lesson?

Oh goodness, where do you begin, right?

Uh, the biggest one in your life that you could tell a story about.

Yeah, I've got so many I don't know where to begin. Uh, I think the most obvious one, unfortunately I'd have to go personally, is like over-invest in your marriage. Always. Like, you know, the stuff I see right now with the Epstein files and Bill Gates and Melinda Gates, like, think about it, guys. Like you had all the money in the world, you reached the pinnacle, no one had done it better. And if you listen to Bill Gates, he says, I regret that I didn't stay with my wife. And now having his name tarnished, being associated with the stuff going on there. I did this same mistake, not thankfully on Epstein Island or anything even close. I didn't invest the way I needed to with my first marriage, and it cost me dearly. Luckily, I found an amazing woman that I'm with now for a second marriage. But like, all your career stuff is ephemeral, right? All the projects you're dug into that you're crazy about that are keeping you up nights, they'll be forgotten about in 18 months. Um, all that matters is the relationships. And then, so then there's just the hierarchy of relationships. It's just like, and your spouse is the most important. If you screw that up, everything else is going to seem quite—

Do you think by getting divorced on the first one made you realize, you know, because I'm going through a divorce now and, and, uh, I know I have to get divorced, but it's hard. But I'm hoping that the second time around, whether it's a life partner, girl, or marriage, because, you know, the marriage thing is obviously very costly, less than financially.

But, um, well, what's even more costly is, you know, being alone.

Yeah, it's not fun, but I'd rather be— you should be— rather be alone than, than someone you're not supposed to be with too. I'm trying to, I'm trying to say, listen, I, I gotta start being happy, you know?

No, listen, matters of the heart are the most delicate and complex, you know, that we've been wrestling with since we, you know, crawled out of the caves and started falling in love with each other. Um, So I'm not here to judge anybody on what has or hasn't happened, but you're saying like, you know, if you stayed married and you got a good spouse and you make the right decisions with her and you overinvest— him or her, however, right— you overinvest in that, all of your career stuff gets easier. Everything else gets easier. If you're with the wrong person, everything gets harder. Yeah, everything gets harder. And then if you're by yourself You know, it's up and down. Some days are amazing because you just go and, you know, float with the wind and end up in amazing adventures that you would have never done, uh, married. But then you also spend weekends, you know, cleaning your garage, wondering, is this all it really adds up to?

Um, yeah.

So in my career, the mistake I say people should be careful about is, unfortunately um, being in a hurry and letting others force your tempo. I've made more mistakes by letting others force my tempo. You have an inner locus of control. All of us do. You have instincts. When your instincts tell you to slow down, listen to them.

Yeah.

And people— there is no doubt that speed and velocity have a quality unto themselves in the business world, um, but so do unforced errors. And so all of us have to live at the intersection of moving with speed, moving with haste, being urgent, understanding that, you know, the, the early bird does get the worm. But in that same story, we forget about the fate of the worm, right? So, and everyone that's moving fast and getting up early, there's someone else who's suffering And if you're moving too fast and not thinking through what you're doing, that worm who got up early is also toast. So I don't know, I think back to the mistakes I've made, almost all of them have come down to in one shape or form moving too fast. And I'm good at it, so it feels natural. And it does have a great quality. It's often rewarded, especially in corporate America, to be seen as someone who's always on top of stuff and moving with, with urgency. But it can also get you in a lot of trouble with unforced errors and putting yourself in positions that you would not have been in had you just been a bit more deliberate, methodical.

That's the way I am. Yeah. What's— what's, uh, closing this out— what's some technologies that you like so right now that you're, uh, hopped up on? Like, for me, it's like Fireflies AI Notetaker. Um, I love the way you can keep all your notes in one place and then ask it questions and use AI and help you write the emails. Um, I use like Blaze.ai to help me write pod, um, content for my social. So those are, those are two things that I'm really geeking out about. How about you?

Obviously the AI stuff is magnificent in so many ways, and if you're not using it across like every spectrum of your work, you're doing yourself a huge disservice. However, I'm also going to go back to the point I made earlier. My favorite technology right now is a handshake and maybe even a hug of people that you're connected with.

How about a salute?

Or a salute, obviously, to people that you are deferential to and respect. But my son just got an internship at L3Harris Technologies because a colleague of mine that I worked with 4 jobs ago, I've stayed in touch with, and he works there. My son connected and he got him in there. I mean, this is like what we do for each other, right? You make relationships, you have a genuine respect and, and, um, compassion and, and endearingness towards people, and they to you. And then when your children need help, they're there for you. And like, that's the ultimate technology, is just like being a good listener, staying connected to people, handshakes, hugs. Like, this stuff is timeless. Like, the technology will come and go. If you're not world-class in those skills, I think you're on the road to irrelevance.

So why should people get a hold of you, and how do they get a hold of you?

I'm on LinkedIn, of course. I'm prolific on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn. Um, I admit it, I'm on there every single night. I love seeing what my former colleagues are doing, um, the successes they're having. I love people's hot takes on all the different ways they're using, to your point, technology to be successful. All the different ways people are selling, all the different way people are positioning their product, and the way they're trying to stand out in this incredible avalanche of signal and noise that we have. So find me on LinkedIn, Brian E. Mitchell, um, and, or my email, brian.e.bryan.bryan.e.mitchell@gmail.com. Uh, I'm always up to connect with almost anybody, you know, as long as you're civil and on the path to self-improvement. Yeah. And problem solving.

And then the LinkedIn URL is Brian Edward Mitchell, just so if you want to find Brian, because there's a lot of Brian Mitchells.

There is— Edward is a salute to my grandfather, God rest his soul. He was a Navy veteran, missed WWII. He was just too young, got on a boat and sailed around Latin America instead. So, you know, the dumb luck of your birthday.

Well, thanks for making time. I'm gonna close it out with a little, uh, name, uh, mention from our sponsor. The sponsor is, interesting enough, Full Throttle Full Auto Leads.