Digital & Dirt
00:39:01 · Ian Dallimore, Lucy Markowitz
[00:39:01] S0: Have you seen, inside our note, I've seen your people in the wild and you could tell there's little pieces of Lucy, but they're out there in their own personality. [00:39:10] S1: Those could things that I learned from them too. Yeah, [00:39:13] S0: exactly. Yeah. And goes both ways for sure. And so have you had employees that were really, you mentioned the peer to peer and then becoming the manager, obviously that comes with some angst, but have you also seen employees that maybe were in certain positions where you've seen them and you're like, Hey, let's move you over here and try this out. Have you seen those type of evolutions as well? [00:39:35] S1: Yeah. And how [00:39:35] S0: did you approach that?
00:39:36 · Lucy Markowitz
[00:39:36] S1: I think there's a lot of people that are actually receptive to feedback when given the feedback in the right way. Like we have people that are, a little rough around the edges, but at the same time, those might be people that I know that I can count on. And so it's refining some of those pieces that have helped them to continue moving forward in their career. I'd also say one of the things too, you talk about, and I know I mentioned it before of kind of going from people's peer to then moving up. I've also been really lucky to have people around me that they might have a lot more experience than me, but they see the value that I can bring and have actually kind of helped me to build confidence within myself that I can still offer a lot, even if it's not necessarily because I've had X number of years of experience. And so I think part of it is people can prove themselves whether they have one year of experience or ten or fifteen or twenty. And so I think like my perception has changed as well. I think people's want to learn and grow are very different and kind of giving people pointers of where they can refine certain things can go a long way. But also I think I've tried to do more observing of some of those behaviors of even things that work really well for some, but also some of those things might not work for other people. So it kind of goes back to like that same lesson with Michael of like fail fast. That can both be with a new product, but it can all be also be with like trying out a new tactic or something along those lines, whether it's in market or just like a managing style that may or may not work, give it a try. If it doesn't work, abandon ship.
00:41:20 · Ian Dallimore
[00:41:20] S0: Yeah. And I love that managing up is big and that that takes a lot of like trust from your side, but also it takes that like believability that like, hey, your manager's like, hey, tell me more. The other thing that I kind of take away from that is it's kind of like a micro lab, right? You're testing little small things and seeing how that works. But one of the biggest motivators that we've seen in the company is always, to your point, peer to peer. Like giving that ability where you're like, hey, that was a very good job on how you handled XYZ. I want you, not me the manager, not me the SVP and GM, but I want you to go share that with your peers. And then you kind of watch that blossom or fail and how that's received and maybe it becomes replicated. Maybe that becomes one of the ways and the staples.
00:42:07 · Lucy Markowitz
[00:42:07] S1: Yeah. So it's balancing like humility and self advocacy sometimes people won't know exactly what you've done behind closed doors. You don't want to be the show off, but at the same time, like it's important that we celebrate those wins. It's not just telling everyone like what they did wrong or what they could do better. Like I feel really that it's important to make sure that we celebrate hard work. And to your point, that might not be because you closed the biggest deal, but it might be that you worked through a really challenging situation. You're able to win back a client. I think those are some of the things that it's not just about the mistakes and failures that we're going to talk about and unravel, but it's also making sure that you celebrate those wins amongst the entire group that was a part of it.
00:42:56 · Ian Dallimore
[00:42:56] S0: So back half of the podcast here, last couple of ten minutes or so, I really want to dive deeper into two scenarios. So to kind of manage time here. First, we're going to talk about breaking through as a woman in an industry that's been previously very male dominated. And then to wrap up the podcast, I really want you to kind of tell the story how you're talking to brands fresh coming off of Cannes, coming off of a handful of massive events where global brands exist. How are you selling through out of home? So first, in a very male dominated industry, How does someone, and I kind of bragged about you, I'm not going to brag about you anymore on this, but how have you kind of become this? Not because maybe it was a goal, but how have you become like one of the iconic women in this industry at such a young age? And what does that mean not only for men, but also women in this space?
00:43:48 · Lucy Markowitz
[00:43:48] S1: Well, thank you for that. I think one is both at my time, working in finance as well as actually being at Vistar, There's been a lot of senior people that are women, whether they're my peer set, whether they're on our C suite. So I feel like to me it's not as though it's just been a one size fits all. And I think that especially being driven, our C suite, we have Janet who's our CFO. But also outside of that, I think we have a bunch of males that I would say are like very pro whoever is the right fit for the job. And we see that throughout our entire company. I think that there's a lot of diversity in a lot of different ways. I think also an aspect of it is we'll call it, how are you gonna get what you want? Part of that is not gonna be just by brute force. And you also have to be realistic that there are certain stereotypes that might be associated with acting a particular way. So I think that one of the things over the time of my career has also been like much more data driven about the things that I'm saying. So that there really is no rebuttal and trying to act as fearless as possible and put myself in the same rooms that I want to be in. And part of that is something that I try and ignore the gender piece. And I feel like if you don't really make that something that is in the back of your mind, in a lot of ways it doesn't really inhibit you. But it obviously does exist and I think there's a lot of other great women overall in the marketing and ad tech world that advocate really hard for both like how brands are approaching females and equality and also female equity, which is obviously different than just the equality piece. And so I also look at what these women are doing in other places. And I think having it be more of a conversation as opposed to it being something that people are kind of like silently suffering or discussing. I would say I've been again fortunate to not necessarily be surrounded with that in my own company, but it's also helping people that are other companies and kind of talking through some of the scenarios that they might be in and trying to work through it.