Digital & Dirt
00:06:14 · Ian Dallimore, Lucy Markowitz
[00:06:14] S0: Yeah. We always say that. And that's a great podcast listen. We've actually had Michael on twice, but his journey and he touched on it on the last podcast about that, right? This past season was kickoff and it was all about the people for him. So what was it about him? You know, here you are. If I'm thinking about, I'm thinking as like your parents and you're like, my daughter, she went to the U, she graduated, she works for this, you know, Goldman Sachs, beautiful job, company's never going anywhere. And then you jump to a data company that's basically a startup, and then you leave that to go off on a blizzard to meet this this guy. What was it about Michael that you... Because it's a trust thing at this point, because you're you're taking a gamble on how old is Vistar at this moment? [00:07:00] S1: So it was about a year and a half, two years old from like inception. [00:07:06] S0: Correct. Which is still super, super. So what was it about Michael that sold through the idea or was it just the journey and the dream?
00:07:15 · Lucy Markowitz
[00:07:15] S1: Yeah. Well, so I think it was a combination. I used to always say to Michael, you guys took a risk on me and he would remind me that it was also a mutual risk at the end of the day. So I think for me it was a couple of things. One, I really enjoyed the creativity of being at a startup, kind of being in charge of your own destiny versus doing a job that many people have done before. And change takes a long time, especially when you're in a very large organization. So I think the idea of working for someone that also kind of believed in failing fast and wanting to change an industry, I think that was really interesting to me. Now at the same time I had to sell myself knowing very little about ad tech, mostly just what I had kind of read. But the way I sort of sold myself into Michael was at the early days of DataMiner, the company has gone far away from when I first started there. But at the beginning, really I was selling a product that no one knew existed and nobody wanted. So I told Michael, I could do that for you. I'm not sure he took that as a compliment that I was essentially telling him that nobody wanted to buy what his company was selling. But I think that it was the reality of things of when you are trying to bring change, which was more than just automation. It was a new perspective on how a really traditional old school medium was being bought that you needed to both convince buyers and sellers. I think that was something that Michael wanted people that weren't afraid of people saying no. And that we're gonna be in it for sort of the fun of getting those wins and not necessarily being being bogged down. It probably also helped that I was 25 and I didn't quite know like what failure felt like. You have less to lose at the time. And so I think my parents did remind me that I was not able to move home and that
00:09:15 · Ian Dallimore, Lucy Markowitz
[00:09:15] S0: Nice little precursor. [00:09:16] S1: Yes, exactly. They were like, you need to pay your bills. But at the same time, I think they were encouraging me to sort of believe in myself. And if I felt like this was a good move, they would stand behind me.
00:09:31 · Ian Dallimore, Lucy Markowitz
[00:09:31] S0: Yeah. And I love that about it because there's so many things and we're going to go deep into what makes Lucy, Lucy, because you've always had this ability to tell your story. But going back to the point, like Vistar was established early on to automate an industry quite frankly, at the time wasn't asking A for anyone to lot of vendors were kind of like, hey, who are you? We don't need you. And the industry wasn't even there yet looking for automation. The word programmatic didn't even exist in our universe. So that part had to have been a lot of fun. So going back to your point, like working for a large company, everything's kind of cookie cutter. So if you go in and it's like sales, it's like, oh, this is how we sell. This is kind of the blueprint. This is the process. And then there's little room, I guess, for storytelling, the cultural side of things. So knowing you personally now, like, I would have jumped all over that all day and been like, this is phenomenal. Like, yes, I yes, I want to go to tell I'm going to go tell an industry that didn't ask for this. And a lot of people throwing up the middle finger like, hey, who are you? Stay away and don't talk to my clients. But also you get to kind of set the path. So you're employee number 12. I always I always jokingly say you're actually like employee number three. And really, if we're being honest here, probably employee one it sometimes in your mind. [00:10:50] S1: Right, exactly.
00:10:50 · Lucy Markowitz, Ian Dallimore
[00:10:50] S1: Right, exactly. [00:10:52] S0: Yeah. So touch on that. So you've walked into a company and I've told this story, so I'll kick it off with this. I met with Sean Reilly, CEO, asked me to fly up there. This was probably thirteen years ago now. Asked me to fly up, Hey, check out this company Vistar. You know, you've told me about programmatic as it exists in the digital universe, fly up, see what this is about. We have a couple agencies asking for it. We won't go into detail and what [00:11:17] S1: Our beautiful office looked like [00:11:18] S0: at the was shared with multiple other [00:11:21] S1: Did you get to meet Steve, our landlord who would wear pajamas to work every day? [00:11:25] S0: I saw some random guy walking around. I saw some people sleeping on a couch. Saw some people [00:11:29] S1: They were not Vistar employees. Were not Vistar want to
00:11:29 · Lucy Markowitz, Ian Dallimore
[00:11:29] S1: They were not Vistar employees. Were not Vistar want to [00:11:31] S0: There, I think there was like a photo shoot happening at some point. But the short story is, is I walk into this, Michael comes out, shake his hand. You were probably somewhere scrambling around as well. And I walk into it, I'll never forget this, Lucy. I walk into the conference room and like the door like hit and we had to like shimmy ourselves in and it looked like it was like a catch all room. And you could tell Michael at that point was kind of like, I don't know if he was embarrassed because I don't think he gets embarrassed, but he was probably like, this isn't going to go. He tells his story, I fly back home, I tell our executive team like, hey, we should jump all over this programmatic thing. But as far as it relates to that company, like they'll be around for maybe six more months. But let's let's go on this journey together. You coming in the other side of that walk into this environment and you have to, as a young 25 year old woman, to just be like, let's go. This is phenomenal. Yeah. So what was that like?