- [INTRO] Welcome to SkyeTeam's "People First" with Morag Barrett.

- So, Lisa Nirell is the chief energy officer of Energize Growth. She brings more than 30 years experience working with innovative companies such as Google, Gannet, Adobe, and Hilton. To gain fresh insight, formulate new strategies and launch breakthrough marketing ideas. Lisa is also an award winning Fast Company, Forbes CMO and cmo.com contributor. And her two award winning books include "Energized Growth: The Marketing Guide to a Wealthy Company" and "The Mindful Marketer: How to Stay Present and Profitable in a Data-Driven World." So Lisa, welcome.

- Happy Monday, Morag.

- And to you too. And I'm looking forward to our conversation, I can see your two books on the shelf behind. But before we get into the books, the here and now I'm curious about your origin story. 'Cause one of my focus with people first is the leadership journey that we have all been on and are all currently on. So when you go back to elementary school, when you were a wilas, what did you hope to be? What did you think you would be doing when you grew up?

- Well, I'm still stuck on wilas, I love that. I've never been thought of as a wilas, so thank you. I was very active in kickball. So I always had, I needed to do things that kept me competitive and on the move. So it was very exciting to be able to be selected to be on the kickball team. However, I got edged out many times by boys. So there was some fist fighting that would happen between us. So I was a bit of a fighter and a bit of and very much a very active child. My parents were very smart, because they said we need to keep this girl busy. So I was very active in a panoply of things ranging from kickball to tennis, to running the Spanish club. As I got older, I ran the Spanish club and then I was class president a few times. So they said, let's just keep her very focused to take that energy and channel it somewhere. And so it was really a balance between keeping physically active in competitive sports and running stuff. I was running stuff.

- Well, that was going to be my question. What was the pivot then from the physical effort of kickball to the mindfulness in the cerebral process that is marketing? What brought you onto this side?

- It was a couple of things really. One of them was serendipitous, and one was not so serendipitous. I mean, the unfortunate event known as 911 really rocked my world. When that moment happened, I remember living in San Diego and the phone ring back when we had landlines. And it was my parents, it's 6:30am. And they said, you have to turn on the news. I said, what are you talking about? So when you're in that dream state, you're kind of half awake, and you're out of bed, but you're not really awake. So I thought it was a joke, like what's going on? But they woke me up in more ways than one because I realized I was in a job that was paying me really, really well and rewarding me financially. But I was really in a dead end career. And so I had realized at that moment that I had to do something radically different. Because working for this large software company, owning a business unit just was not exciting to me anymore. It was prestigious, but it wasn't exciting. And so that was really a big one. And then the other big pivot was that all of the trappings of success were no longer of interest to me. And so I was on the treadmill, the career treadmill, and I just wasn't energized anymore. And somebody suggested meet my friend, Greg. 'cause Greg, he's an executive coach. And I said, well, what is an executive coach? I don't get that. Well, they help you set your goals. And I thought, well, I'm a kickball player, I love goals. I love winning, let's go win something. So he was a spiritual sneak, because even though he called himself an executive coach, what I soon realized is he had many layers of talent. Namely, he was a mindfulness teacher. And he taught very successful people how to get off the ego treadmill just for a while to really ask some introspective questions. Like, what do you want? What's important to you? What do you value? So I got more than I asked for when I hired him. And so between him and 911, my world was never ever the same again. And I have big thanks to Greg, for teaching me about the power of having someone who's looking out who's got your back. And is conspiring for you to succeed.

- Don't you just love that? See, this is what's brought us together my first book, "Cultivate", which you can see on the screen here, actually, the other way, there you go. Is all about this concept of allies and who's got your back? And so I was curious, as I was reading through the mindful marketer, I know you bring a lot of Eastern philosophies into the book. We'll talk a little bit about those later on. So how do you now then define mindfulness when it comes to marketing?

- It is a universal definition that I learned from one of my other teachers, Jonathan Faust. Who works with his wife globally to teach people the benefits of mindfulness. And they run the insight meditation community of Washington DC. It's simply in four words, it's non judgmental, present moment awareness. And how can we be non judgmental and be in the present moment when it comes to marketing? How can we actually just be with our customers without forcing them to make a decision, without creating artificial urgency or manipulating them into believing our idea is the best idea? What if we just sit with them? I just did this the other day with the CMO of a billion dollar software company. We were on a path to start a new initiative together and I was going to advise her on this new direction the company was going. Except the call ended up going in a completely different direction, because they lost their job they got let go.

- Oh, wow.

- So I just sat there and I said, Okay, I'm just going to sit here with this person for a little while and just see how they're being about it. And what happened, well, they said, actually, I'm shell shocked, and I don't know what to do. And then the tears just started rolling. And they said, "Oh, I'm really sorry, I'm crying." I said, never apologize, it's just water. It's just water, it's got to come out at some point 'cause you're going to grieve for a while. And they're like, thank you, you're letting me be human. I said, "Well, what other alternative is there? Just be human." And they said, well, we're going to work together, we'll just do something different. But I didn't go in there with an agenda of we need to go close this other thing. We need to go steamroll this person and go find out who the new CMO is, and go, do... I didn't even think about doing that. I just said, I'm going to be present with this person. Because they need to just let go of the identity they once had.

- I love that. And it's so such a great real world, near term example, as you say, being present, being who they needed you to be in that moment, and being mindful. And in my experience, that ends up paying back for everybody in the months and years to come. But it seems like it's also the polar opposite of how we may have been taught about marketing and business. I think about my first career in finance being told it's not personal, it's just business. And I've turned that one I know businesses personal hence relationships matter. And so right now, all I read when I'm looking at marketing is big data, big data, get big data, give me your email, give me this give me that. Inside leg measurement, firstborn child, big data. So you come at it differently. I mean, what are the consequences that you've seen in your career of that obsession with big data?

- Yes, well, big data means a lot of different things to different people. As I share in my book, "The Mindful Marketer" there are some very clear definitions of what big data is and what it is not. Has it helped marketers better predict what kind of products and services people are going to buy, absolutely. Is artificial intelligence mind blowing and rocking the world of many organizations and turning industries upside down, absolutely. There's a lot of disruption going on and some for the better. And that's a cool thing. It's fun to be alive during this time, isn't it? Like to see all of this disruption and some of these amazing innovations coming together. On the other hand, sometimes what happens, and this happened a lot before COVID is I saw having now advised hundreds of CMOS around the world and interviewed many hundreds for my CMO research over the last seven years. I saw this huge movement right before COVID around making sure that CMOS become Chief Marketing and Technology Officers and double down and hire data scientists. And really become adept at understanding the 7000 marketing technology products available at their fingertips. And then when COVID hit it got people to step back and go, oh, okay, so we're really only as good as our people and our brand? Which our brand is really imagined in people's heads. A brand is not a an algorithmic formula. A brand is what happens in people's minds about their perception of your identity as a company or as a consultant for that matter. So I have found that people pre COVID big data was very sexy and yet I could see some of the cracks in the bell. What I share oftentimes, Morag is contrary to common beliefs. But going back as early as 2012 and 2013, if you look at the work of a great columnist, a great journalist by the name of Alexis Madrigal, he discovered and he published this for the first time in The Atlantic. That up to 57% of social media traffic was invisible to all the different data analytics programs.

- 57%.

- 57%. So, you know, hey, I'm the first person to say I love watching companies grow, I love the technology space. I spent 14 years in the tech space before I started my own business. I used to sell million dollar software products to big companies when I was in software sales and marketing. So I have a true appreciation for the innovation in the technology space. However, if CMOS or any leader is over investing in big data, and ignores the human element, the importance of actually talking directly to customers, they are going to be missing out on huge opportunity.

- So how does leader, excuse me, how does a leader listening to our conversation start by just putting a stake in the ground and assessing their organization's brand health? How do I know where I'm at right now in order to then decide where an what should I focus on going forward?

- Well, that's a great question Morag. I'm going to flip that and say, instead of focusing on our brand health plan, why don't we focus on our customers health? Because here's what I know about customers right now do many of your customers sell products and services to other organizations?

- Yes, yeah.

- Yes, so in those circumstances, why don't we talk about our customers health? What if we, instead of navel gazing at our brand, and hiring a really fancy agency to come in and create a whole new brand for us? If we could just step back for a minute and say, why don't we shift our focus as marketing leaders or CEOs or CFOs, what if we all started spending more time actually speaking directly with customers? Because here's what I know. They're facing three big problems right now. And these questions and problems need to be asked but identified and need to be explored further before we worry about our brand health. The first thing that people are really worried about is they're worried about protecting the safety of their teams, of their people and their customers. So their customers, they're worried about keeping teams engaged behind a screen. You and I met behind the screen through the Marshall Goldsmith 100 coaches community. And we've been able to stay very engaged. However, that's not the case when your boss is forcing you to sit through seven, eight, 10 meetings a day on zoom. Or asking you to get up for a 5:30am meeting.

- Yes.

- Right?

- It's shifting the focus from me to a we and how do we succeed together? And I think it's very easy, or it has been too easy to dehumanize our customers clients, the why of business and who we serve, for the sake of the avatar that we need to talk to. And it takes the soul out of the message which goes back to your earlier comment about, let's assume that our clients have freewill choice. And how do we connect with that? Versus just having the showiest advert or whatever it might be on TV?

- That's exactly right. And then the last two issues that we can all be looking at around our customers is their need to preserve cash and be more operationally efficient during this time and manage free cash flow. And then the third is preparing them for new opportunities. And for the economic recovery, the post COVID world which will not be the new normal it will be the new reality.

- Yes, I think most people have started to turn the volume down on that whole getting back to normal. And recognizing now this is fundamentally shifted how we approach work and careers and living in general going forward. So I'm curious, I mean, you've mentioned COVID, you've talked about some of the impact, how is 2020 impacted the rules of marketing?

- The rules of marketing one of the most significant changes is that if a marketer and this is important, I want to see any CEO or COO or CFO that's listening to this right now, I want you to remember this, the world of big live events, it's not coming back for a while. That is really bad news for a lot of my friends in the events industry. But it's really good news from an operating expense standpoint. Because you now have the opportunity to give your marketing leaders and teams funding to create new innovative ways to connect with customers. So I am seeing opportunities to create small, intimate gatherings of four to 10 people. Small, regional gatherings of your customers, socially distance safely done. So it's not that events are dead, it's they're going to be reconfigured. So that the experience of an event is reinvigorated. Right now we don't have, I mean, please don't tell me you're going to spend a million dollars on a fancy conference software product and replicate the experience of sipping a glass of wine after the big conference with a lovely person you just met in the line with the rubber chicken.

- Yeah, a rubber chicken.

- The rubber chicken in the buffet line. By the way, there are no buffet lines anymore.

- Thank goodness.

- Do you see what I'm saying is that it's not that we stop funding events, it's that we redesign the events in a way that is safe and intimate.

- Yep, so what are some of the unhealthy practices of old that you're going to be glad to see the back of?

- I am glad to see the beautiful pause that's happening in our society that is trickling down to how we do business. To be able to sit behind a screen and I see somebody's daughter runs into the office and says, "Mommy, can I have a hug?" I'm okay with that, I am perfectly okay. Because it allows me to see the whole person. So that I'm really seeing the trappings of this person wearing the corporate armor dissipate. And it's like, no, I am a competitive runner, I'm a mom. I am a CEO. We get to see all the different layers of that leader and say let's work with the whole person. Not some propped up identity that they felt they had to bring to the office. I was talking to, and the other thing I'm glad to see go away is maybe the old belief that there was only one way to create a career. That was to do a great job work for a company. And maybe if you work really hard, you'll get a promotion or you'll move up the ladder, whatever that means, right. But now, people are saying most of us have been having some existential crises of what's important to me? What is no longer important to me? What parts of my ego can I say goodbye to? And make room for some new things to emerge. So maybe buying that new Jaguar is not as important as I once thought it was to prove I had a certain status in my social circles. Maybe spending more time with the parent teachers organization is much more important to me now.

- Yes, I've heard that consistently through the leaders that I'm working with that opportunity to pause and reflect. I mean, the competition now is in the fancy green screens, and I have seen some creative uses of those. But the challenge remains is there's a misunderstanding that social distancing means that we can't connect. And of course, that's further from the truth. As human beings as professionals, as family members, as social members, we need that connection. So I'm curiously so what are you doing to proactively remain connected with the people important in your life whether it's at work or at home or at play?

- Thanks for asking that. I am doing a few things. We focused on instead of trying to move 18 things forward an inch, my team and I have just chosen to do move three things forward a mile.

- Say that again, that was really good.

- So instead of moving 13 things forward one inch, I'm just moving three things forward one mile.

- Love it, yeah.

- So what we're doing is A, we reconfigured, this took us a no more than two weeks. We took our marketing leaders communities, which are private CMO peer communities. Which people are welcome to ask me more about separately. These are private peer communities where CMOS can innovate, solve problems in a non competitive setting and be held accountable. We took that entire model and we flipped it within two weeks. So now, the communities used to be regional and now they're national in scope.

- Oh, wow, okay.

- So, I'm leveraging technology in new ways. The second thing we did is we said, our members because things keep changing every day with COVID, and the CDC rules or updates come out daily, our members are overwhelmed and stressed. So we changed the frequency of communication. And this is what I invite people to consider is maybe instead of having that half day meeting once a month, or every two months, your groups, your customers, your team members maybe it's better to have one 30 minute meeting a week. Find out what that sweet spot is, but increase the frequency of outreach to the people you care about. And those are a couple of things we're doing differently. And the third is upgrading our hardware. Ask me anything about technical support right now, I mean, network configuration. I haven't had to do it all myself. However, I had to get smart real quick on how to improve the quality of the experience of my clients and my teammates behind the screen. So that it's a pleasant experience.

- I'm with you on that one. I went from a complete skeptic on virtual facilitation to kind of quite liking it. And like you it's like a mini film studio in here now. And so I know that no matter, what we will be carrying this forward into whatever iteration of the future is held for us. So I'm curious as to what are you hoping to carry forward in how you show up in the world as a result of this 2020 crucible that we're all going through?

- Yes, well, I want to share what I've learned so far. So I took a bunch of content and lessons learned that I had and I put them on this webpage that everyone can see here, themindfulmarketer.com/bonus. So we put together seven different resources that people can use to create better hybrid events for their customers. To stay more centered, more focused, so they can make those big decisions and answer the existential questions in front of them right now. And how I want to be better is I want to continue to wake up and treat each day as a unique moment and opportunity. So I want to continue to invest and I'm asking my clients to consider doing the same is continue to invest in healthy lifestyle practices. Great sleep, great diet, a some kind of spiritual practice. Whether that means meditation or it might mean walking in nature, free of constant digital interruption. And it might be, just lying on the floor, lying in the grass and looking up at the sky for 20 minutes. Find what works.

- Find what works. It was funny, as we were getting ready to go live on this recording, we were talking about the fact that you and I both traveled quite frequently in BC before COVID. And it's now 170 days since I've last been on an airplane and I miss elements of it, I miss the new places that I would get to visit and the people that I would get to meet. But it was also the reality. And it took me a couple of months to get into this is reinvesting that time that was spent on airplanes or travel in a different way versus just sitting at the desk and working more. So I love the fact that you flag there, whether it's lying outside and looking at the clouds or meditation, but that mindfulness of coming full circle to your book being present in the here and now. And how do we connect to the people that are important to us again, family, and clients and client customers. So that we can leave a legacy of which we're all proud.

- That's how I feel. I mean, it's the environment we choose to design for our lives. And how do you want to design your environment and make it so that it is conspiring for your success? And this is the time as journalist David Brooks says, to design and create our identity capital. I don't think this is the time to be going back to our investors in our private equity firms and saying, "We promise you, we're going to triple the size of the company in the next three years. And we're going to do whatever it takes." I'm saying, hey, scale back some expectations. Invest in some things that are outside of your normal realm of your knowledge that can enrich your life and excite you. Maybe even just make you a better learner, a better students. Do you have a hobby you say, gosh, I really want to get to that one, that's super fun.

- So now is the time to reprioritize it. So what's captured your attention right now?

- In what regard?

- Well, this exciting you in terms of what are you learning in addition to becoming the IT support?

- Oh, please don't spread that rumor. I will not accept any calls or emails about technology. I'm just putting it out there. Recently, I invested some additional funding and time in open water swimming. So I hired a coach because I was getting a little rusty. I've been open water swimming since I was six. Much to the chagrin of my mother. So I wanted to improve my skill there. I have learned a few skills, I learned how to operate a drill this weekend. So I'm learning a few home improvement skills. And then I'm learning the art of online. Really raising the quality of my online learning, my eLearning skills. So I'll be announcing my third eLearning platform partnership in the fall with a company that provides eLearning through audio. So for people who want to learn while they're exercising or driving or doing housecleaning, we're coming out with a series of courses on building powerful communities.

- Oh, fascinating. I look forward to you'll have to share more when that goes live 'cause it sounds something right up my alley as we would say in England.

- Well, thank you. Yes, it should be fun. I mean, I think that online learning being the tiny $190 billion industry that it is. This is my way of helping as many people as I possibly can leverage marketing and customer outreach to change the world for the better.

- So on that note, Lisa, for those who are listening, if they want to learn more about how you go about doing that, or they already know that their organization might benefit from your wisdom, how do people get in touch with you?

- They can reach me at themindfulmarketer.com/bonus. And they'll read more there about me. Or they can just go to Lisanirell.com. And download some additional content there and follow me on my blog or my LinkedIn courses.

- Okay, and I encourage everybody to do that. I am on your weekly newsletter and benefiting from those pearls of wisdom. So Lisa, thank you very much for your time today and I'll make sure that all that information is in the show notes below.

- Well, this has been a really enjoyable afternoon Morag, thank you for making my Monday.

- Thank you.

- [Narrator] Thank you so much for joining Morag today. If you enjoyed the show, please like and subscribe so you don't miss a thing. If you learn something worth sharing, share it. Cultivate your relationships today when you don't need anything, before you need something. Be sure to follow Skyeteam and Morag on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And if you have any ideas about topics we should tackle, interviews we should do, or if you yourself would like to be on the show, drop us a line at info@skyeteam.com. That's S-K-Y-E team.com. Thanks again for joining us today and remember, business is personal and relationships matter. We are your allies.