Digital & Dirt
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?
00:12:27 · Lucy Markowitz
[00:12:27] S1: Well, I think that I sort of joke that my time at Goldman like taught me a bunch of valuable lessons. So I'm glad that I started there. I had amazing mentors and bosses, but I think the other piece about it was that I was given a lot of liberty to do a job and a lot of trust was given to me even at a company that was that large. Now that being said though, you're in a fast paced environment. You have to be able to handle a lot. You're handling stress, you're handling pressure, the expectations are really high. I think what I learned from that was that I then had those expectations of myself. So coming into Vistar, I sort of felt to a degree like that could be my superpower, which was to know that I would push myself. I didn't necessarily need to be just pushed by the person that I was reporting into. And I think in that regard, I was lucky enough, Michael really trusted us. And I think that I've sort of felt that even in our earliest conversations that he was gonna trust for us to go out and do what we needed to do. But also he was realistic in knowing that you're probably not gonna make the sale on your first, second, third try. So I think setting us up for success and sort of us all knowing what the goal was, but also what we were up against. I think that that makes everyone be on the same page and feel like we're working towards something as a group to kind of get people to change their opinions and thoughts. And so it's funny early on, we actually sort of positioned what we were offering in market to be an extension of location based mobile. And that was really how we sold it in because we needed to figure out what is something that people will buy. We were using location data. We were using this idea of people based marketing of where individuals are going is a really good indicator of almost a real world cookie. And we were able to parlay that into out of home of these just being another screen that existed outside of So the once we sort of found a place where people could say yes, I would say that's when things kind of took off.
00:14:36 · Lucy Markowitz, Ian Dallimore
I joke and I tell this story sometimes to people that first start out at Vistar or a bit more junior, that the first deal that I closed at Vistar Media was $14,000 And at the time I was dating someone that wanted to celebrate this monumental win, which to me was like extremely small and embarrassing and sent flowers and balloons to the office, which I popped the balloons in the hallway. [00:15:00] S0: I was about to say this is not you. [00:15:02] S1: And like pretended that this was like for something else because I didn't want people to think that I was like celebrating, this huge win that was actually pretty small. But I mean, that was my first deal that I closed at Vistar. Following up on that, ironically working with then a different telecom that now has been bought by T Mobile who bought Vistar became like the behemoth that then I would say the taste of that win and then wanting more of it was like, Oh, this is what sales feels like. This is what it feels like to win getting people convinced that what you have to offer is something that they want. And I think we all have that belief though in the start, which was this was actually meant to make an industry better, not just to change it. And I think to me having something that was differentiated product that didn't exist, also a real product that I could see, that I could watch how it worked, knowing we would continue building on that and building for what our customers wanted was a really exciting proposition.
00:16:07 · Ian Dallimore
[00:16:07] S0: Yeah. And I think that's what's interesting, right? Because you're selling something that's not only for the brand and the agency and this new idea and new methodology. And I'm thinking back to my first time I ever met you and the conversations we've had, it had to have been super challenging as well, because not only are you selling that campaign for the brand or the agency, but you're also selling the vendor the believability into it. I'll tell you my first side story, my first sale programmatically, because at this time Sean Reilly had his pulse on everything. Like I've never texted and spoke on the sale more with Sean than the first few weeks, and John Miller as well, of programmatic, because internally there were a lot of people that were like, This is nonsense, what are we doing? There's a lot of agencies that had that. So our first sale ever was, I won't say the agency CEO name, but she's, since moved on, but she had a GM campaign that we sold for $83,000 and I think our entire first year of programmatic revenue was like a $100,000. And we celebrated that, other people celebrated, and I was like, no, no, no, this this isn't enough. So I guess the question is, you're selling both the story of the idea to the brand, the agency, but more importantly, you're also selling vendors to, like, believe in this. Because at the end of the day, if you don't have enough, I say vendors, publishers, award companies, transit companies, place based companies, then you don't have a product to go out and sell. So what was that like having to push the other side of the shop to make sure that you're getting enough supply? And quite frankly, some of the big names like the Lamar's, like the Clears, like the JCDecaux and Outfronts that believed in this as well.