Transcript
Jeremy Bloom: Oh, hello, Mike.
mike: Hello! How many people have had a Seinfeld thing?
mike: I have to ask.
mike: Does it come up once in a while?
Jeremy Bloom: On Zooms and Google Meets, I would say at least once a week.
mike: Okay, good.
Jeremy Bloom: But on the pod, you might be the first. I love this.
mike: Thank God, I love it.
Jeremy Bloom: I love the sign for the reference. loves catching up with you before we started recording. It had been a very long time since we had caught up. You had put up a fantastic LinkedIn post that resonated so well with everything we're building it at Oh, hello .ai.
Jeremy Bloom: And so we reconnected and and started talking and just had a coffee together. I've had the pleasure of, we've each had the pleasure of knowing each other, seeing each other grow within our careers.
mike: Yeah.
Jeremy Bloom: Mike, why don't you tell Our audience, who do I have the pleasure of speaking with? Who are you?
mike: Who am I? Who am I really? So I'm Mike. I'm a Chicago kid. Yeah, I was born in Evanston. I grew up in the North suburbs, the John Hughes suburbs. yeah yeah of Home alone and the Griswolds and and of that stuff.
Jeremy Bloom: Yep.
mike: Went to school down in Carbondale, Illinois, a nice five and a half hour, you know, cornfield line to drive from Chicago to the bottom of the state. And then was an agency guy for many years in Chicago, mostly within Publixis group. And then Worked my way out West eventually in search of, you know, outdoor living and warm weather and landed a role in tech at Netflix. And then I spent the last, you know, dozen years or so within that space of companies like Google Square and now Life360. Family Guy as well, three kids, a dog, two COVID bunnies. What more could somebody want?
Jeremy Bloom: when we were catching up, you mentioned the the COVID bunnies that put such a smile on my face and the fact that you're like, Hey, you know what, right before this, right before we started recording, I have to go feed my COVID bunnies.
mike: Still alive. I don't know how, but they are.
Jeremy Bloom: I love that. That was amazing. So. Uh, and shout out to your Salukis, just shout out to the fact that it doesn't matter where you go to college. The fact that Mike has worked at the coolest, biggest tech companies in the world. He is a CMO and he went to Southern Illinois university and look at him now. He's absolutely crushing it. So there there you go, people.
mike: Yeah, I mean I've got a senior in high school and the stress levels that these kids have, especially now for. where to apply to and what happens if they don't get in, you know, to a top 30 school or whatever it might be.
mike: And they say, look, I know a whole collection of state school people and directional state school people, right? Like Southern Illinois, right? Or Northern Illinois, where these folks are doing incredible things, right?
mike: And so the days of setting your career based on where you go to college are just, you know, so that's such a dated concept.
Jeremy Bloom: Thank you for saying that.
mike: Yeah.
Jeremy Bloom: So Mike, let's kick this off. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about some of the mentors that have made a big impact on you throughout your career.
mike: Yeah. Well, I mentioned I yeah my career in the agency world and happened to land a job, my first job out of grad school working for this guy, Rashad Tabakawala, a really long name. But I showed up. I remember the first day he actually thought I was the new administrative assistant.
mike: which was just a funny misunderstanding but yeah worked at Starcom and Rashad was just the best right I think you know obviously a functional expert in so many ways but what I really learned from him is to play the long game right he did not get involved in entangled and short -term politics He did not build transactional relationships. He was about fostering talent, fostering great, you know, peer relationships, and then following, you know, his curiosity, right? So even today, if you look at Rashad's writing, he's prolific. The guy has so many interests, and so I learned a lot from that, right? And the rest kind of handles itself. Christian Kugel was also a guy. Hopefully many of your listeners know him.
mike: He was my first sort of, you know, solid line, you know, boss. And so, you know, I think what I learned from him is you can be, you can achieve great things, but also we spend a lot of time at the office.
mike: So please be sure to have fun. Don't take yourself too seriously. And, you know, that's not at all at odds with performance, right? So bring those two things together. Those were two good early ones.
mike: Yeah.
Jeremy Bloom: Thank you. Those are those are great. So Rashad has put out a fantastic newsletter and and and Sunday morning musings for years now that and an author of several books and a prolific writer and speaker.
mike: Yeah.
mike: Yeah.
Jeremy Bloom: So great call out Amazing amazing So
mike: He's great. I went to work for him again at Vivikey years later as well. He has that draw with many people.
Jeremy Bloom: With that said, in terms of just with that draw, so that leads us to our next question. In terms of of power skills or some people might call it soft skills. What soft skills or power skills do you find most crucial for for for success within your career that have gotten you to where you are today and that you like to instill your people and your teams?
mike: that point on curiosity is active listening, right? So, so many people start formulating their thoughts when the other person is talking. And I encourage people to just stop and like hold the space and actually lean in and listen. And you know, there was an old boss of mine at Google who had a sticker on his laptop that said, why did the third power? Which really means, you know, listen to somebody then ask why, listen to them some more, right? Peel that onion until you kind of find the goodness there. So I would say that's definitely one of them.
mike: Having an even keel, you know, I think a lot of people can misconstrue that as a lack of passion at times. Like, oh, like they're not super emotional about this. I don't think it's that at all.
mike: It's funny, I've been watching this show. My kids got me into this YouTube thing called Bondi Rescue, and it's all the lifeguards at Bondi Beach in Sydney, and they're constantly dealing with these crazy issues.
mike: And I always think to myself, like, what would happen if they were completely panicking, you know, during these situations?
Jeremy Bloom: Yeah.
mike: It's just not helpful to the situation. So I think maintaining an even keel is really critical. That extends to things like don't ever send the angry email or the angry stack.
Jeremy Bloom: Never, never.
mike: Like I learned that the hard way early in my career. So for any young person out there, wait till the next day, you know, withhold it and then have the conversation. And then I think the last thing is just really model the socialization of failure, right?
mike: So, you know, we're not gonna get it right every time, you know, as leaders. And, you know, I learned from folks like Reed Hastings who had a couple of really high profile mistakes, right? That he really
mike: and you know, sunshine in all the right ways. And we as leaders, you know, at Netflix Netflix got to learn from that. And I think that gives you as much credibility as anything else does.
Jeremy Bloom: This is great. So the Y squared or Y cubed, was it Y cubed?
Jeremy Bloom: Yeah, Y cubed. I love that one. That is fantastic. Additionally, how you said, don't send that angry email. I would even say in this day and age, don't send that angry slack because that can be just as impactful.
mike: 100%. 100%.
Jeremy Bloom: Take a deep breath.
mike: You regret it 100 % of the time, I promise you. Yeah.
Jeremy Bloom: You're so right. I back that up 100%.
Jeremy Bloom: With that, how do you how do you track the impact of mentorship on your teams? When you think through how the advice that you're giving right now, how do you track the impact that you've made on your teams at at Publises, at Google, at Netflix, at Square, now at Life360?
mike: I think the direct link is probably a little too hard to measure. And I really think about it as a two -step process. I think step one is, look, mentorship should create a lot of confidence and optimism, right?
mike: I think about, I have a coach, right, which is a flavor of of mentorship. And, you know, he is just so great at making me feel better about myself and the work, right?
Jeremy Bloom: Yep.
mike: And I feel more confident and optimistic in what I'm doing. And that optimism and confidence then breeds the result, right? So that's kind of the second phase of the two -step process. And to me, that's what entrepreneurship is really about. right by entrepreneurship, I don't mean starting a business. I mean really having creativity and vision and doing important things in the workspace. And without optimism and confidence, you're just not going to have that irrational optimism that you need to succeed. So that's kind of what I look for is finger on the pole. So do people feel that confidence? Do they feel supported? Do they feel optimistic? And so that's how I try and kind of connect those dots.
Jeremy Bloom: All right, that's perfect. So how do you make sure that your teams learn to accept failure? Because when you're in the earlier components of your career, even mid career, so many people in their 30s, early 40s, mid 40s, they still have issues. Understand it's ah know what, I'm gonna take that back. It doesn't matter about age, there's so many people that just get too caught up on not understanding or just being set back on failure. How do you help your teams with that?
Jeremy Bloom: when it comes to confidence and picking picking them up.
mike: Well, um I'll say it's It's sort of scientifically proven at this point that struggle is necessary in most cases for strong performance, right? Lots of studies on childhood struggle and it can't be too much, right? There's a right amount of struggle that's necessary for that growth. Anecdotally, if you look at many of the great leaders in any given field, you know, business, politics, etc., you know, everything wasn't handed to them on a silver plate, right? They definitely overcame a lot of challenge, right? plenty that narrative to kind of go around.
mike: I think also knowing what doesn't work is critical to finding out what does. You know, you think about toddlers learning to walk or crawl, like same thing, like you gotta fall down, right?
Jeremy Bloom: Alright.
mike: Or you gotta run into something and fall down and then know not to do that again, right? So a lot of this is just sort of basic to be honest, but I actually think, you know,
mike: If you look at Jeff Bezos and the code he's had around, I think it's something like if the size of your failures isn't growing or getting bigger, you're not inventing at the right rate. And I think that's absolutely true. If you play it safe and you know a 10 out of 10 on everything, that's not super exciting. The way I extend that to my team in terms of performance management is, yeah, we do use OKRs, so objectives and key results. And if people come and have five that are kind of layup -ish,
mike: and they accomplish them all, they're not going to get promoted or get the best increase in their compensation. If they come with five very stretchy ones and they hit three of them, that's more the formula for success in my view.
Jeremy Bloom: Nice, nice. All right, so Mike, if you were to leave us with a few words of wisdom for growing leaders, for people that are growing in terms of their marketing careers, their executive careers, or just people that are leaning in within the tech community, they just want to to learn and that are engaged with just understanding how to be better people, how to be better business people, and just better in their careers, what what kind of guidance would you provide?
mike: Yeah.
mike: The first one I would say for new leaders is what I just mentioned, which is, you know, when you're working with your, your folks, your team. empower them by stretching them. People don't want to come in and do safe, modestly decent work.
mike: You know, people want to, you know, self -manifest kind of their best self, right? And so help them do that by making sure that they're influencing the goals that are being set for them and that they're stretchy enough.
Jeremy Bloom: Totally.
Jeremy Bloom: You asked him today.
mike: I think, you have to stretch folks and and they have to want to stretch as well. The second is be yourself. This is in my post. I think a lot of people try and be the quote unquote marketing leader or the CMO or the whatever. Acting just, it doesn't feel good and it doesn't get you there ironically, right? So just lean into who you are and and where it goes. And then I think, you know, related to that is lean into your strengths. There's, you know, the sort of discipline of CrossFit is a really interesting parallel. You have to be able to lift weights. You have to be able to, you know,
mike: run really far or sprint or whatever it is, you can't be amazing at all of those things. And it's a waste of time for a skinny guy like me to try and be an amazing powerlifter. So I'm going to lean into the running and the swimming and and of everything else that's better matched with my talents. And so figure out what those are. Be aware of your non -strengths, but definitely spend a lot more time and energy know sharpening and leveraging the strengths that you have.
Jeremy Bloom: I love that. That's why I i lean in the gift of gab and my keen listening skills for that exact reason. Mike, this has been fantastic.
mike: There you go.
Jeremy Bloom: We really appreciate you hopping on the Oh Hello Pod being part of our community. Thank you. Kudos to all the great work that you're doing at Life360 and just thanks for being you.
Jeremy Bloom: Thank you.
mike: Great to reconnect. Thanks so much, Jeremy.
Jeremy Bloom: Thanks, Mike.
mike: Take care.
