Christopher Lochhead Follow Your Different™

We continue our run of legendary authors and today, we hang out with one of the smartest people in business, Joe Pine, one of the godfathers of “The Experience Economy.” It’s the 20th anniversary of his seminal work and he is reissuing an updated version of the book In this episode, we dig deep into the future of experiences and how companies use it to differentiate and create massive competitive advantage. Pay special attention to Joe’s radical insights around building a data flywheel and the big strategic difference between Facebook and Amazon. From UI to UX Joe Pine shares with us about the re-release of The Experience Economy, bearing a new preview, that he and his partner wrote. They focused on the subtitle: Competing for Customer Time, Attention and Money. Companies embraced the importance of user interface in the past and now, user experience, or UX.  “When the first book came out, we talked about it as a nascent, an emerging, a forthcoming experience economy and now, we say it’s here. It’s all around us. I used to have to argue with people that this was happening. Now, I just say it: people want experiences. People now say, ‘yeah I get it.’” - Joe Pine Further, Joe shared how the internet was at infancy back then. The www was just created in 1994 and in 1999, they didn’t have much to say about it. However, later over time, Joe shares they looked at it thoroughly and found the reason why people were on the internet was to surf the web—to have the experience of things that they couldn’t have otherwise. Data Flywheel Christopher shares his insights on how companies achieve category domination today. He shares that a big part of their strategy is getting their data flywheel spinning. “The data flywheel is a learning relationship. If you cultivate a learning relationship, it grows and deepens over time. You can almost lock your competitors out because you know more about these customers than they do. Even if they switch, they have to teach them all over again what you already know.” - Joe Pine Data Privacy Further, in the discussion, Christopher remarks about how other companies cannot replicate the “data on customer-intimacy” that Amazon has with its customers. Joe agrees with Christopher as Amazon has yet to sell data to anybody, as they want to use it themselves at the moment.  “From an authenticity standpoint, that corrodes them [Facebook and Apple] from the inside out, because they are selling your data. They're in it for the data, to sell to somebody else, rather than in it, for your best interest.” - Joe Pine To hear more about the co-author of “The Experience Economy” Joe Pine, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Co-author of The Experience Economy, Joseph Pine II is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and management advisor to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial start-ups alike. In 1999, Joe and his partner James H. Gilmore wrote the best-selling book The Experience Economy: Work is a Theatre & Every Business a Stage, which demonstrates how goods and services are no longer enough; what companies must offer today are experiences – memorable events that engage each customer in an inherently personal way. In 2011, The Experience Economy came out for the first time in paperback as an Updated Edition with new ideas, new frameworks, and many, many new exemplars. Each of Mr. Pine's publications add a wealth of knowledge and experience to the business world, but The Experience Economy has become a quintessential read. Mr. Pine also co-wrote Infinite Possibility: Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier with Kim Korn, Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want with Mr. Gilmore, and in 1993 published his first book, the award-winning Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition. Each book details Mr. Pine's breakthrough thinking as he has accurately charted many structural shifts -- from individualizing goods to today’s focus on customer experiences and many other changes in ...

In this episode, we continue our run of legendary authors as we feature Buster Benson and his new book, “Why are we yelling?: A fascinating look at why and who we argue.” Buster shares with us the inspiration of his book, the constant-learning that he is having and how it can be applied to work and life, in general. Agree to Disagree Buster candidly shared with Christopher that of all the hard topics he decided to take on, it was the topic about disagreements that he deemed to be one of the hardest. He still pursued this topic as he was challenged to tackle this topic. He also admits that the inspiration for the book was his curiosity on cognitive bias. “That is the initial problem. in order to have a conversation about disagreement, we have to be open to the idea that we don’t have the right answer.” - Buster Benson Birds and Biases Buster shares that cognitive bias is an evolutionary term. It is a threat that could potentially lower our survival. It has the connotation that if we’re wrong, we would want to avoid it. In modern society, being wrong leads to being ousted from a certain group. To illustrate this, Buster shared the habits of birds looking for a nesting ground. These birds fight off other birds and other animals to have authority over a tree. In real life, human beings as a bird, are not going to engage other “birds” in civil disagreement.  “You’re going to just try to be the bigger bird and force the other one out. When we’re no longer in a situation and there’s only one tree and we have to have a nest here, or else we’re gonna die, we ask, is this tree big enough for multiple birds?” - Buster Benson Growth is the Consequence The consequence of being wrong is actually growth. Further, Buster shares that if we are good at several skills, it makes us more skilled at everything else. For example: talking, being literate, being able to self reflect magnifies the value of other skills. He introduces the importance of productive disagreement as well in this episode. “‘How do I treat somebody that is normally a threat to my survival, as an opportunity for growth’ is the core cognitive dissonance in disagreement.” - Buster Benson To hear more about the author of “Why are we yelling?” Buster Benson, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Buster Benson wrote the book titled "Why Are We Yelling? The Art of Productive Disagreement". He also run 750words.com with my wife. His interests include creative businesses, collaborative disagreements, cognitive biases, enterprise software, messaging platforms, behavior change, social games, silly drawings, making life a little bit better through technology.  Read more about his through this link.  Links: Book: Why are we yelling?  Cognitive bias cheat sheet Linkedin: Buster Benson We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

We continue our run of legendary VCs and legendary authors like our guest for today, Ted Dintersmith. He’s a former top tech VC and he’s the author of the book What School Could Be: Insights and Inspiration from Teachers Across America. This is a powerful look at what’s possible in education from a smart, committed, super thoughtful guy. What School Could Be Ted Dintersmith went to all fifty states, visiting some 200 schools and spoke to different school personnel and students. He says he was stunned by the innovative classrooms and schools he found across the USA. However, he also talked about schools who he described as good in paper, but not as good in reality. “There were so many schools like that, where on paper, it looks likes the kids are doing really well. Good grades, good test scores, reasonable to good College placements. The point I make is that I think these kids, are not really being helped in terms of being prepared for a world defined and shaped by innovation. They're actually being impaired.” - Ted Dintersmith Shifting Mindsets Ted shares his conversations with school teachers, administrators and students shifted his thinking. He further says that the measure of success in so many schools is aligned with a few narrow capabilities. He questioned the schools, asking if he puts a kid in their school who excelled at memorizing material, replicating low-level procedures and following instructions, he bets that kid would be on the honor roll. “SAT tutors say, ‘don’t be creative when you take this test. Don’t think of unusual ways to answer it. Think clearly, simply and formulaically. The 2nd thing is, if it’s hard and it’s going to take a while to figure it out, skip it.’ Is that a great message for the kids?” - Ted Dintersmith Education is a Pie Eating Contest Ted continues to share with Christopher his insights that many kids are being told that they're not gifted because they don’t match up to those narrow skills. Christopher also remarked in an overly simplistic form, that education nowadays is like a “Pie Eating Content” where you jam everything, regardless of what kind of pie it is, and know that the more you take, the better. “It’s crazy. We organize most of education around what’s easy to test and not what’s important to learn.” - Ted Dintersmith To hear more about how to encourage kids, unleash their passion and support dedicated teachers and more about Ted Dintersmith, download and listen to the episode. Bio: About Ted Links: Ted Dintersmith Twitter: @dintersmith We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

This special episode is with Chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce.com Vala Afshar. Coinciding with Dreamforce —Salesforce.com’s annual mega-conference in San Francisco, Vala shares with us what it’s like to be a leader in the digital media age.  He also shares some of the key practices that have made Salesforce #1 on Forbes most innovative companies list. Social Business Excellence Vala is the author of The Pursuit of Social Business Excellence. He is also the co-host of DisrupTV and one of the most visible and impactful thought leaders in enterprise tech. On the side, he is a contributing writer at HuffPost, which he claims were one of his ticket for his CMO career. “I was a CMO for 4 years. Complete impostor syndrome from beginning to end because I never had Marketing experience, I never went to school to study the art and science of Marketing. My CEO called me on  a weekend saying ‘on Monday I'm gonna announce that you’re going to be the CMO.” - Vala Afshar He narrates to Christopher how the energy and confidence that he used to have as an athlete, did not translate to who he has become as a business person. However, he got through this challenge as he had the passion to share information. From An Introvert to a Keynote Speaker For an introvert, Vala narrates how he spent 10 years writing codes. He was perfectly happy locked up in a cube, just writing software. He is still amazed with how he opened himself up to people and to be able to share the stage with Christopher in various events.  “Movement is the ultimate status symbol. Movement of information. Again, in my first 40 years, if I read a book or listened to your podcast, I would just consume it and then that's it, it stayed with me. In the last 5 or 6 years, when I learned something, I try to capture that and share.” - Vala Afshar Salesforce Innovation Vala quotes other professionals on why they think Salesforce is successful: it’s because of technology disruption. This disruption is in terms of ‘how do you build an ecosystem, how do you give away your time, money and profit, how do you build a company based on emerging technology and how do you create new business models. “The 111 Philanthropic model was pretty unique and now about 10,000 companies have adopted that. The subscription model, pay as you go, that's like the envy of most business..” - Vala Afshar He also shares about the Salesforce module called V2mom, a mobile compatible app where employees align with the company vision, values, methods, obstacles, and measurements.  To hear more about the best practices of Salesforce.com and leadership advice from Vala Afshar, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Vala Afshar is the Chief Digital Evangelist for Salesforce. Afshar is the author of The Pursuit of Social Business Excellence. Afshar is also the co-host of DisrupTV, a weekly show covering the latest digital business and innovation market trends. Links: Twitter: @ValaAfshar Linkedin: Vala Afshar Salesforce Blog: Vala Afshar HuffPost Contributor: Vala Afshar We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

Today’s guest is none other than Silicon Valley Legend, Heidi Roizen. She is an accomplished, Entrepreneur, former head of developer relations at Apple and now, a legendary VC. She shares with us why today is the Golden Era for entrepreneurship, how any company is literally a tech company and more about VC-backed company, Memphis Meats. Silicon Valley's Greatest Connector The Financial Women of San Francisco honored Heidi as Financial Woman of the Year in 2018. She is also dubbed as “Silicon Valley's Greatest Connector.” She is currently sits on the board of companies such as Zoox, Planet, Memphis Meats, HelixRE and DMGT. “I talk about the fact that there should be more women entrepreneurs and there should be more women venture capitalists and diversity. Not just gender diversity but other diversity and I try to support that through my actions. I think it’s appropriate given my role in Silicon Valley. If I have an opinion about that, I should be vocal about that.” - Heidi Roizen Other than these achievements, Heidi is a self-proclaimed animal lover. She adopted several dogs from the shelter, which she fondly shares in her social media. Golden Era of Entrepreneurship Heidi describes the market as a seller's market when it comes to early-stage equity. There are a lot of sources of capital in the market, its very competitive. She enumerates all the positive assets entrepreneurs have in today’s world. “There's just so many different avenues for funding. There are so many tech breakthroughs that can be built upon, whether that is networking or processing power, sensors, devices, GPS, next-gen VR technologies, ubiquitous platforms. When you think about the kinds of businesses you can start today for pennies, which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past.” - Heidi Roizen The only negative she can mention is about competition, as she believes everyone else can also solve many big, interesting problems. Additionally, she mentions why companies nowadays are considered tech companies. “I do think it’s interesting today is, every company is a technology company, right? For the most part, how they interact with the customers, how they distribute their products, how they garner feedback, how they handle customer service, tech support, logistics, supply chain, internally, HR systems—every company is deep in technology now.” - Heidi Roizen Memphis Meats. Cell-based Meat Heidi shares more about Memphis Meats and why she believes there is a huge growth potential for cell-based meat. First, she discusses how meat is inefficient to produce: from breeding to feeding to slaughtering and distribution to markets. Not only does it requires more resources, such as land and water use, it is also highly prone to contamination. “The great thing about being a venture capitalist is, we don’t have to actually invent this stuff. There are really awesome entrepreneurs that are way smarter than we are who come up with these ideas. We just have to make sure they want to come to talk to us, and that we can validate sufficiently what they are doing through our own research learning.” - Heidi Roizen To hear more about legendary Silicon Valley stories of Heidi Roizen, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Heidi represents the voice of the entrepreneur, having been one herself. But she also represents the voice of the user, as those are the roots that led her to start a company in the first place. She is on the boards of directors of Zoox, Planet, Memphis Meats, HelixRE and DMGT (LSE:DMGT.) After Heidi earned her undergraduate and MBA degrees from Stanford, she co-founded T/Maker, where she served as CEO for over a decade through its acquisition by Deluxe Corporate in 1994. Next, she joined Apple as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations, and from there, Mobius Venture Capital. She's been named to the Corporate Board Member's "Top 50 Women in Tech" list and Hot Topics' Top 100 Women in Tech. In 2018, Heidi was named the Financial Woman of the Year ...

For the second part of our two-part series on legendary category king companies, we are featuring John Rossman, author of “Think Like Amazon.” We have a fun, insightful conversation about how Amazon became arguably the most innovative category king in the world and most importantly, how you can learn to think like Amazon in your career. Digital vs. Traditional Christopher probes John on his thoughts about the distinction between traditional businesses versus data-driven, digital ones. John shares that other than the technological aspect, he could relate digital businesses to athletic attributes such as speed and agility. In detail, John said speed is about doing a repetitive motion, extremely well and efficiently. In business terms, that is considered as operational excellence.  The second attribute, agility, is the ability to sense and make change happen.  “Part of being digital is about the eternal pursuit of becoming perfect. How do we reduce cycle times? Improve quality, reduce costs? Cut out little pieces of friction from both our customers and employees?” - John Rossman Embracing New Niches John cites Amazon’s business strategy in terms of embracing new niches. The other aspect of finding problems, then working on a solution, is the notion of working into the future. He defines the future as a “time and a place for unconstrained thinking.” “Amazon’s answer to that, their philosophy or their technique is: start with the customer and work backward. ” - John Rossman When teams are brainstorming, all of these constraints come to the table and they deliberately understand which parts of the solution they are. Afterward, they identify the right mindset, then the right tools and ultimately, the right approach in order to solve the problem. Architecture is the Business Strategy Citing some parts of the book, Think Like Amazon, Christopher asks John the idea behind the concept architecture is the business strategy. “You have to plan forward on how you build things, because the constraints, the flexibility the adaptability on how you build your operations and your technology architecture—will either be a key enabler or key constraint in your ability in going forward.” - John Rossman In the end, John shares that his whole goal is to give a business person, who is not technology architect, a set of tools and questions that they utilize to be a better partner with their technology expert To hear more about how digital businesses like Amazon innovate across entire the entire value-chain and John Rossman’s thoughts on how to make wise bets on new business ideas,  download and listen to the episode. Bio: John Rossman, Digital and Innovation Advisor Mr. Rossman is an expert at digital business models, operations and organizing programs. He has led engagements on developing innovation processes, Internet of Things strategies, marketplace and API driven platform business models. He is a sought after speaker on creating a culture of operational excellence and innovation. Mr. Rossman has worked with clients across various industries, including retail, insurance, education, healthcare, consumer products, industrial products and transportation. Mr. Rossman’s notable assignments include The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Microsoft, Nordstrom and several of the world’s leading retail and insurance organizations. Prior to Rossman Partners, John was a Managing Director at Alvarez and Marsal, a performance improvement consulting firm. Prior to A&M, John was an executive at Amazon.com where he launched the Marketplace business and third party selling platform, and ran the merchant services business. Links: Linkedin: John Rossman Book: The Amazon Way Twitter: @johnerossman We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life.

Category King Marc Randolph, the founding CEO of Netflix, joins us today for a stunning conversation about business and life. He’s got a legendary bestseller out called That Will NEVER Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea, which he also talks about in this episode. This is the first in a special two-part series about two of the most legendary category king companies in the world now Netflix and Amazon. Next episode is with John Rossman, author of “Think Like Amazon.” Book: That Will Never Work After nearly 16 years after he left Netflix, Marc Randolph talks about his book That Will Never Work. He candidly shares that all those years waiting for the right time to write a book helped him to gain perspective. First, he says he is wiser business-wise as he worked with a lot of startup companies in the past 16 years. He says he can now identify patterns as they emerge and can safely say he can tell between what works and will not. “The other cool thing that came out of waiting was, being able to look back and be honest about myself. To really say, ‘I don’t care how it’s perceived. I want this to be a real true portrayal of what it’s like in a startup.’” - Marc Randolph Remembering Moments, Not Details Marc also shares that he tried to get it right, but since he is writing about events that took place around 20 years ago, he shares how ridiculous it would be to remember every line and dialogue that he featured in the book. He also shares he focused on remembering the moments, especially the mood of the conversations that he had. Christopher even remarked a portion of the book where Marc wrote: “This is a memoir, not a documentary. This is kind of how I remember things. I'm not trying to get it 100% right.” Everything is Intermingled Christopher chides with Marc on the part where he mentions that personal life intermingles with business life. Marc stressed the importance of devoting time for spouses and kids, as this is a realistic portrayal of a startup. "I think part of being successful is having balance in your life. I preach about culture is not about what you say, it's what you do. So I wanted to show how we did it, how do you really have balance in your life." - Marc Randolph To hear more about life and business lessons from Netflix Founding CEO Marc Randolph, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Marc Randolph is a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, advisor, and investor. As co-founder and founding CEO of Netflix, he laid much of the groundwork for a service that’s grown to 150 million subscribers and fundamentally altered how the world experiences media. He also served on the Netflix board of directors until retiring from the company in 2003. Marc’s career as an entrepreneur spans four decades. He’s founded or co-founded six other successful startups, mentored hundreds of early-stage entrepreneurs, and as an investor has helped seed dozens of successful tech ventures (and just as many unsuccessful ones). Most recently, he co-founded analytics software company Looker Data Sciences, which was recently purchased by Google for $2.6 billion. Outside of the tech and startup world, Marc sits on the boards of Chubbies Shorts, Augment Technologies, the environmental advocacy group 1% For The Planet, and the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), which he’s been involved with for most of his life. A resident of Santa Cruz, California, Marc travels and speaks all over the world, and still probably manages to go surfing more than you do. Links: Website: Marc Randolph Twitter: @mbrandolph Linkedin: marcrandolph We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

As California is suffering another horrible season of wildfires, we thought it would be powerful to give you some inspiring insight into how heroes fight these massive fires. On this special reissue episode, Retired Battalion Chief TJ Welch gives us an insider’s view of how thousands of Firefighters and first responders spring into action in a matter of hours to save lives and property. TJ Welch – Starting Out in the City TJ spent the first years of his career dealing with brush fires and structural fires. He also had his fair share of wildland fires as a chief officer. But he and other city firefighters pretty much only stood guard in front of the houses. It wasn’t until the late ‘90s when they made full use of city firefighters. They went to timber and brush areas to stop fires and perform other operations. “This was my moment where it kind of changed my perspective of my role as a chief officer.” – TJ Welch Wildland Fire in Numbers Back in the day, the biggest of wildland fires reached up to 160 thousand acres, which is equal to the same number of football fields. This number has been expanding in recent years, reaching up to 200 thousand acres of wildland catching fire. The terrifying numbers make sense when taken in the context of the number of residences, the timber that is involved, how exposed the wood is, and how quickly it burns. These wildland fires burn a couple of football fields per second. They are impossible to outrun and risk many lives. There’s a lot of reasons as to why wildland fires catch so quickly. On the other hand, timber could take a while to dry and get moisture back. With the drought that has gone on for so many years along with other forest products left out in the open, the wildland fires have become more gigantic. A Turning Point There was one fire that forever changed TJ. This gave way to a collective effort to train firefighters in the art of effective mobilization when tempering these massive fires. “When I left that fire, I said I’m not gonna be so ignorant when I come to another wildland fire.” – TJ Welch To hear more about how California firefighters move as a unit and how TJ Welch dealt with the massive responsibility of being a leader, download and listen to the episode. Bio: TJ Welch is a 32 year veteran of the fire service. Throughout the course of his career, he served in volunteer, industrial and municipal fire departments. TJ was a member of CAL Fire ICT 3 from 1997-2005 and a founding member of CICCS. He was a qualified Type OSC2, OPBD, DIVS, and STEN. TJ retired in 2014 as Battalion Chief with Alameda County Fire Department. He currently teaches and writes Officer courses for OSFM, and is a Firefighter Safety Specialist for California Department of Public Health and NIOSH where he investigates firefighter line of duty deaths. Links: How to donate to victims of Fires in California: How To Help Victims Of California Wildfires As Tens Of Thousands Are Forced To Flee Homes RedCross Supplying Aid To Victims Of Emergency (Save) California Community Foundation: Wildfire Relief Fund We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

Former adult actor and now digital media star, Mia Khalifa, joins us today for another riveting conversation. She walked away at the peak of her popularity to design a new life and career. She shares with us today about her past and how low self-esteem affected her decisions and how she’s moving forward with her life. Sports, Punk Rock, and Pets Mia Khalifa is a sports commentator, with a special love for The Washington Capitals Hockey team. Other than hockey, she used to watch basketball a lot when she was a young immigrant from Lebanon. “It's kind of just been a common ground that I could have with people and a way for me to connect, a way for me to feel like I am part of something or feel like I'm a part of this group even if I don't know anyone. Sports is the unifying factor in this world.” - Mia Khalifa Other than being a huge sports fan, she is a self-proclaimed foodie and she loves punk rock. She also shares in this episode how she loves her pet dogs so much and how she is trying her best to be the person her dogs think she is: a better human being. Battling Low Self-Esteem Mia is also a digital celebrity, raking a total of 17.7 million followers on Instagram alone. In fact, she met her fiance on Instagram. Her fiance is a Swedish Chef, whom she candidly shares, as someone who doesn’t know who she is. She has never gotten used to fame as she shares how she battled low self-esteem when she was younger. She admits that due to low self-confidence, she made decisions that she regret at the present time. “I think it was being overweight for such a large part of my life and on top of that, I didn’t really have many friends in highschool. I never fit in in any certain group or the popular crowd or anything. I think it also had a lot to do with never feeling like I belong.” - Mia Khalifa The Ugly Side of Adult Entertainment Most of her followers had known her from her previous career as an adult entertainment actor. In fact, she used to be #1 in the biggest Adult sites in the world. She started her adult film career when she was just 21 years old. What most people do not know is her career only lasted 3 months. She shot about twelve scenes, where produces paid her only $12,000. Adult actors do not receive any kind of royalty, while producers amass millions. “I was fooled into thinking they had my best interest at heart, when in reality, they were just looking out for themselves. They looked at me and saw a huge paycheck.” - Mia Khalifa on Adult Entertainment Producers To hear more about #1 Adult Actor to Digital Media Star Mia Khalifa, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Mia Khalifa is a social media personality, sports commentator and former adult film actor. She’s a passionate Washington, D.C. sports fan with a love for the Washington Capitals hockey team. Links: Instagram: @miakhalifa Twitter: @miakhalifa TwitchTV: MiaKhalifa Patreon: MiaK Youtube: RobertandMia Mia Khalifa is among the world’s most-watched women. Yet the porn industry is keeping the profits. Mia Khalifa: Why I’m speaking out about the porn industry - BBC News We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

We have another riveting and insightful episode today with Viviana Faga, Operating Partner at Emergence Capital. She is in-charge of marketing and helped create over 150B in new market cap. Today she shares some of her amazing experiences working both with startups and VCs. The Importance of Marketing Viviana Faga worked in Senior Marketing roles with companies like Salesforce.com and Zoom Communications. She was the Head of Marketing at Yammer and pioneered the enterprise social space. At the moment, she coaches CEOs and Founders and leads them in finding the importance of marketing in scaling their businesses. “You just got $5-15M and you're thinking, ‘where do I want to spend my money? I want to spend money on building my product and I don't know who to hire? Why should I hire a marketer? It just seems like one big massive waste.’ That’s what I deal with and those are the kind of questions that I get everyday.” - Viviana Faga The Best Doesn’t Always Win Viv narrates her current client who has a great product, but is currently in a category that his competition built. Viv find it fascinating to explain that the best products doesn’t always win. If a CEO doesn’t believe in this, the CEO then finds himself in a never ending cycle of “catch-up.” “There are plenty of cases where it does. The company just sort of takes off, without great marketing. We've seen that. But for the most part, in the competitive market, if you don't define the category, if you don't create it, you're going to really struggle because now you're gonna look like you're playing catch up.” - Viviana Faga Viv advises her clients that the company will never be able to catch up if they continue copying the competition’s message. “You have to change the game. Come up with completely new messaging. You have to go so hard at writing that message ⁠— from your press releases, website and sales collateral. Every single piece of content that is external facing has to speak this new language.” - Viviana Faga CEOs Who Listen  Viviana was proud to say that she embedded herself into her client’s company. Other than this, she believes that she can only help those who are willing to listen. She narrated how she turned down the CEO of Yammer, twice. “It was hard to turn him down, but obviously he convinced me. I wanted to work for a CEO who understood the value of marketing and after that conversation, I wasn't so sure but a lot of folks from Salesforce have gone there. It's our job to convince him Sales & Marketing matter.” - Viviana Faga To hear more about  Startup Marketing: Viviana Faga Emergence Capital and more relevant information about Viviana Faga, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Viviana brings over fifteen years of experience designing and building brand categories for successful cloud/SaaS and enterprise social companies, helping them create scalable growth engines that drive successful exits. Her particular passions are scaling and structuring go-to-market SaaS teams, messaging and positioning, category creation, freemium product strategy, and sales enablement. Before joining Emergence, Viviana served as VP of marketing for Yammer, where she defined the enterprise social category. After Yammer’s $1.2B acquisition by Microsoft, she became its head of marketing for enterprise social, which included Office 365, Skype, and Lync. She also spent over six years at Salesforce, where she launched several key product initiatives. Additionally, she was the VP of marketing for Platfora (now Workday) and the CMO of Zenefits. Links: Emergence Capital - Viviana Faga Linkedin - Viviana Faga Twitter - Viv Faga 103 The Power of an IPO with Eric Yuen 011 The Perception of your product is your product We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life.