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OhHello - Ishan Bhaumik
81 Plays2 years ago
"I had no other choice than to get all straight A's; it was mandatory. There was no such thing as risk taking when I was younger." ---> some real vulnerability that comes out in this episode
This MIT Sloan School of Management MBA holder and University of California, Berkeley alum sheds some great light on risk-taking in his middle-age, vulnerability, and really finding himself as a leader in the research and data space.
This 'Hello' is beyond stoked to be a part of the OhHello platform and community. He is currently at GfK, leading global relationships, and brings 20 years of experience in martech, big data, business development, and startup roles. Prior to Gfk, he led Advanced TV/Data Partnerships at MRI-Simmons, was a sales specialist at Microsoft and held BD/partnership roles at Samba TV, Visible Measures, and TubeMogul, Inc.
Special shout-outs to the mentors that have helped him along the way:
Andrew Feigenson
Darren Mowry
John Solarczyk
Brett Wilson and the TubeMogul, Inc. team/network --> a culture of great leaders and people (all discussed post pod: a small + mighty network that just hits different)
Episode 32 of the OhHello Inc. 🌞☕️ OhHello.io - where we chat about the intersection of (previously) being risk averse to turning a new leaf as a father and new resident of 'the magic city'. Looking forward to having you with us when we officially launch this summer, Ishan Bhaumik!
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Transcript
Introduction and Oh Hello Platform
00:00:00
Speaker
Good grief. Oh, come on, Charlie Brown. There we go. Bye. I love it. Hello, Eshon.
Eshon's Career Journey
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello, Jeremy. How are you, my friend? I'm excellent. How are you? I'm great. I'm great.
00:00:26
Speaker
So good to reconnect with you over the past couple of weeks. Great to see your face right now. Excited to have you be on the Oh Hello Platform. Excited to have you as a mentor. I have the pleasure of knowing who you are. Why don't you tell our audience that's either watching or listening, who our guest of the Oh Hello Pod and Vod is right now. Who are you? So I am Ishawn Baumig for those that don't know me. I worked with you at Tube Mogul, but we
00:00:56
Speaker
have kept in touch since then. And it's been many different stops on the way since our two mobile days. And so yeah, so I've gone and worked at a TV data startup and Sama TV. I've worked at, you know, co-founded my own data startup for a short amount of time. And from that, I've gone to the market research end of the marketing tech spectrum.
00:01:24
Speaker
worked in Simmons and MRI Simmons. And then most recently I've worked in my current role, which is GfK. And that's a multinational consumer market research company that's in 67 countries and, you know, top line billion dollar company. So from a from a very, you know, like a nine person startup to very large companies, I've done a range of things in the marketing world.
00:01:50
Speaker
Amazing. Yeah, you've got some great experience. You've worked at some awesome companies. The global experience of being a partnership lead is really unique in comparison to what a lot of people have done within the marketing technology space.
Personal Life and Geographic Moves
00:02:06
Speaker
You're also a dad. You're a husband. A Miami resident now. I was waiting for you to say that.
00:02:15
Speaker
From California to New York, down to Miami. You got to stop in Chicago again sometime. Oh, yeah, I love Chicago. I just need to visit in the summer because I've been in Chicago in the winter and I've been in Boston for six years and Chicago is colder and beat the pants off of Boston. I will leave it at that. We will not going to fight over Chicago versus Boston, both awesome markets, very similar weather.
Mentorship and Helping Others
00:02:45
Speaker
would love to hear about what defines you just in terms of what characterizes your skill set that you're going to be sharing with the Oh, hello community. It's a great question. But it's one that I'm passionate about. I think passion is part of that. I think part of part of what people know me for is I've I feel really passionate about helping people. This is why I wanted to get involved. Whenever whenever you pitch this, I was I couldn't click faster on becoming
00:03:14
Speaker
mentee and giving back. I also think that, you know, the mentors that I've had have sometimes been informal, right? So somewhat more categorized and more structured approach to mentorship is something that I wish I had, or I wish I had more of. Like, for example, when I worked at Microsoft, there was a pretty structured mentor mentee program, and that was something that I was fortunate to have. But since then, it's been kind of less formal, and I'd love to
00:03:44
Speaker
introduce that to a lot of folks that are needing that today. Oh, what else makes me who I am?
Learning and Skill Development
00:03:53
Speaker
I do love knowledge and data, and that's why I think when I got the opportunity at TubeMuggle, which was my first gig in the data side of this marketing business, I was inspired to learn as much as possible. And so I learned everything I could as much as possible about the data industry.
00:04:12
Speaker
And even comes today, I'm learning constantly about clean rooms, and we're in a very multi-scale project about that. And it's continually fascinating. It's something that I think I have a broad-based generalist skill set. And I think that there are a number of specialists at my company, but there could be more generalists. And I think that's a very important skill set to have. So I would say that I think I'm good at being kind of like a generalist with specialist
00:04:43
Speaker
tendencies. I respect that. Having worked with each other. Yeah, that's that's pretty valid and accurate.
Embracing Risks and Overcoming Fear
00:04:50
Speaker
What would you tell your younger self as someone who I consider you an academic, you've also have worked really hard to get to where you are. When you look back and we're at the same age and point in life, when you look back and what would you tell your younger self? What would you tell 2535 real D. Sean
00:05:11
Speaker
I think back then, and this is a philosophy that I'd love to dig deeper on. Please. I am. I'm a little risk averse. I wouldn't like to say that I am, but this is why I kind of jumped into being a co-founder, because I was so paranoid and terrified of taking risks. And I think that comes a little with kind of like an academic background, like you know my background and you know that, you know,
00:05:39
Speaker
getting straight A's was a mandatory, right? So what does that produce as far as a career? Well, I'll tell you, there's pros and cons, man. So the pros were like, I got great experience in academics in my resume, right? But then the cons was, I think it created a bit of risk averseness in my career that I don't know if it was a pro, right?
00:06:09
Speaker
Like when you're going to school, for example, and you're trying to get nine out of 10, or you're trying to get A's, right? And for me, it was like A's or bust, especially in my family. I don't know if that prepares you for the real world, right? Like if you're getting nine out of 10 sales calls, right? You're not truly selling, you're order taking, right? You know, what was Jordan's career, you know, percentage, shop percentage? Was it 90%? No, then he'd be...
00:06:39
Speaker
Yeah. Then anyone who's like, like the best, the best baseball players, the best basketball players, like five out of 10, four out of 10 is more like real world statics, statistics. Crazy for baseball. The shot percentage for basketball, even half of the shot someone takes is crazy. So exactly. So, so what happens when you start trying to like achieve perfection from the academic world in the real world?
00:07:05
Speaker
What happens when you're trying to do that in the business world? What happens when you're trying to do that in the startup world? It doesn't exist because then you start avoiding failures. And avoiding failures is a great way to stop learning, right? And that's something that, you know, I've learned a lot from you and your goals around empathy, like the goals around sharing and understanding and being vulnerable. Like one thing I would have told my former self is to take more risks and be more okay with failure.
00:07:34
Speaker
Thank you for the nice compliment.
Corporate Risk-Taking
00:07:35
Speaker
I appreciate that. But I hear you. And I think that that's something that's part of the reason we are creating this platform is to be able to provide that guidance and that it's OK to take swings. And even taking a swing right now, leaving different roles that I've had in the past to say, you know what? I'm going to give it a shot. Why the hell not?
00:07:58
Speaker
Can I always go back to the corporate world? I can always go back to sales leadership, commercialization, go to market strategy, whatever it might be, any title, any role, but life is too short to not take risks. So I love that you said that, that hits home for me. And just even jumping on, I don't know if I'm cutting out, but the same applies in a role. Like taking risks in a role, even a corporate role, even a role,
00:08:29
Speaker
you know, that's established. Like that's how you make it. That's how you achieve success in the role. That's how you separate yourself from your peers. I, to be, to be perfectly vulnerable, I might have suffered a little bit of that at two mogul, right? Cause I was doing my thing. I was managing all the data partners, but you know, could I have pushed myself a little bit more? I think a hundred percent. And, and I think ultimately it's what, you know, what, what's led to,
00:08:59
Speaker
my pathway attitude mogul. So, you know. Those years, yeah, but that was also years ago and learning and growing, looking back, like that's the value, it's the benefit of understanding that it's a journey, that there's not a linear path and that as you develop yourself and your confidence and your skillset, and the more you get smacked in the face in different ways, or in my case, just even
00:09:25
Speaker
right before this pod, being kind of red in the face from just being outside and balding to go get my son. Sometimes the life just smacks you in the face and you just jump back and you figure shit out.
Mentorship Impact
00:09:38
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. With that, Ishaan, just tell me a little bit more about who some of your mentors are within this ecosystem, whether it's professional and or personal. Yeah, most recently when I was coming off my failed startup,
00:09:56
Speaker
I think who took a chance on me in this new organization and was, I think I consider him a mentor, even though I don't check in as much as I should, Andrew Feigenson. He was someone who was like, hey, I think Ishawn has a lot to offer in this particular site, space of the MarTech world. And he was managing Simmons at that time. He was the CEO of Simmons and came off from Nielsen and was kind of a,
00:10:25
Speaker
quote unquote, turnaround CEO to the Simmons business to make sure that it grew in the eyes of its new acquirers. So Andrew's been really, at that point, was really someone who valued my input, even though I was outside of the partnerships experience, pulled me into a lot of meetings about strategy at the highest level. So it's something I really needed at that time, because I was pretty licking my wounds from
00:10:53
Speaker
my failed startup. So, you know, most recently it's been Andrew. You know, when it was at Microsoft, I can shout out Darren Morry. When I was an iBanker before my stint at business school, it was my manager, direct manager, John Szlarzic. He really taught me about how to really work in a business and have really exacting standards, as is the case in iBanking. So, we got a lot of that.
00:11:23
Speaker
work ethic from someone like John. So yeah, a lot of folks really helped me out.
Commitment to Education and Charity
00:11:30
Speaker
It's amazing, amazing. As you know, Oh Hello is going to be created into approximately 50 different, an ecosystem that has access to 50 plus different charitable causes. What are some causes that are near and dear to your heart?
00:11:48
Speaker
I think anything that's like an education-based cause is near and dear to my heart. Okay, so back in 2015, I think it was 2015, I even tried to create a cause within the marketing tech, ad tech industry, along with a friend of mine, Ali, and he and I, and a bunch of other leadership people, a lot of people on the board,
00:12:16
Speaker
wanted to create kind of like a pro bono model for the marketing world. I didn't think there was one available. You all know about pro bono from maybe lawyers or other kind of professional services. And what they're doing is they're taking their expertise that they charge at a very high rate and offering it for people who can't afford it. And I said, wouldn't it be great if we did something like that in marketing? And we built this 501c3 called ChiefGood.
00:12:45
Speaker
Since then it's kind of fallen by the wayside, but I feel like the concept of pro bono should be in more industries. And I'm welcoming to get that band back together again. So the idea of doing what we do, which is ad serving, partnerships, marketing services,
00:13:09
Speaker
but doing it for charities, for doing it for those that don't have the expertise, nor do they have the budgets. So what we did is we had a three-pronged stool. We had people that had expertise helping out with people who built ads for charities, and then we had donated inventory from the publishers. And that donated inventory is written off as tax write-offs. So instead of giving someone the bottom of the, you know,
00:13:36
Speaker
the bottom of the list inventory that turns into the worst belly fat ads, you would give it to a charity. That charity would then get someone from the Pratt School of Design to add to their portfolio a high-quality ad for that particular not-for-profit. And so that was a great three-legged stool that worked for about I think a year and a half. And then I think Ollie got really busy with his
00:14:04
Speaker
with his family and I moved on to other things. Well, there's always time to do it again. You've got time.
Closing and Appreciation
00:14:10
Speaker
This is so good to have you, Ishaan. Thank you for being a friend. Thank you for being part of the Oh Hello community. Thank you everybody for listening, for watching. Appreciate you. Absolutely. I would do anything for you, Jeremy. Thank you, Ishaan. Thanks, everybody. Until next time.