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OhHello - Todd Gordon
74 Plays2 years ago
Most recently Todd was VP, Client Development at Tatari, an advertising technology company focused on utilizing TV to drive business outcomes. At Tatari, Todd helped drive the business transformation into a self-serve platform including signing on Tatari’s first agency partnerships. Prior to joining Tatari, Todd was GM of Adobe Advertising Cloud TV. Under Todd's leadership, Advertising Cloud brought many innovations to TV advertising including new data sets for audience targeting and improved accountability in measurement. Todd joined Adobe via the company's acquisition of TubeMogul, where he was GM of Programmatic TV. Prior to TubeMogul, Todd was EVP, U.S. Director at Magna Global, where he guided media negotiations for IPG Mediabrands. Additionally Todd is the co-founder of Pasciuto Sisters CRUSHN, a direct to consumer spice company. Outside of business, Todd spends his time with wife and partner Dana, son Gus, puppy Milo and Kitty Blue.
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Transcript
Introduction to Todd Orton
00:00:09
Speaker
All right, all right. Oh, hello. Hello. Hi, Todd. How are you? Jeremy, I'm good. How are you doing? I am great. So good catching up with you right before we started this podcast. So exciting to hear about what you've been doing. Why don't you tell the world who you are? Why did who who are you? Why do you want this? Oh, hello podcast right now? It's a good question, Jeremy. Todd Orton. Hello, all of you out there.
00:00:39
Speaker
I think I'm someone who define myself in a lot of different ways. I'm a parent, partner, aspiring entrepreneur, a friend, a brother, collaborator, co-conspirator, troublemaker sometimes. I think in this context, mentor. So.
00:01:06
Speaker
Yeah, really admire what you're doing Jeremy and excited to be a part of this. Thank you, Todd. That means a lot.
Entrepreneurial Ventures with 'Crushin'
00:01:15
Speaker
You had mentioned co-conspirator. You had mentioned entrepreneur. Why don't you tell us a little bit about just one of your entrepreneurial journeys right now?
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah, well, my wife and I started a direct-to-consumer spice company. I say we started that original concept about 18 months ago. The product is called Crushin. And we are big fans of pizzas. I'm sure a lot of our listeners are. And we're also big fans of Crushred Pepper on our pizza. We found that the actual experience of
00:01:53
Speaker
Shaking out some crushed red pepper on your pizza fell short of our expectations and we went on a mission to see if we could disrupt the crushed red pepper market.
00:02:03
Speaker
And yeah, pleased to say, you know, about 18 months in, we launched the actual product in September. People seem to love it. And we're just trying to get the word out there and learning a lot about direct to consumer marketing and marketing on different types of performance channels and learning a lot about starting a business. So it's been it's been quite fun.
Innovative Marketing and Advertising Insights
00:02:25
Speaker
Amazing. Well, having 25 plus years of
00:02:28
Speaker
advertising and marketing, plus tech experience. It's probably a fun journey to go and start your own thing and be able to just use the experiences and shifting and shaping of what you've seen with giant enterprise and mid market based customers. And I use it, you know, for your own business. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's, it's, it's combination of, of
00:02:54
Speaker
leveraging a lot of the knowledge that we both have from our experience in marketing. But it's also when you're trying to get content to go viral on TikTok, it's a whole different world from the marketing world that I grew up in. So a lot of learning, a lot of new experiences.
00:03:14
Speaker
I think it all relates very much to what you're trying to do and the concept of mentorship. I feel like I've been incredibly blessed in my life and my career to have really strong mentors. I've been overwhelmed by the generosity of people.
00:03:31
Speaker
willing to share their time and experience as we've started this new venture.
Influences and Leadership Style
00:03:37
Speaker
Who are some of those mentors that have made a profound impact on you, Todd Gordon? I would have to start with my parents. I grew up with my family running a small manufacturing business and my mom and dad worked together.
00:03:56
Speaker
a lot big chunk of their life together. My dad's now passed. And yeah, I think I learned a lot about hard work and empathetic leadership. And yeah, I would go to work with my dad and do very, very bad summer jobs.
00:04:16
Speaker
working for him. But he really believed that if you wanted to be a leader, then you should understand the job of every single person that was working with you and for you. And so I never saw him managing a company from a corner office. He was out with his people, seeing what they were experiencing. And that's a lesson as I started to grow up in the business world that I really
00:04:41
Speaker
took to heart, you know, so I mean, they're my, you know, first and ultimate mentors. I was incredibly blessed. My very first day in media actually didn't have a desk. There was no desk for me. My desk was a chair on the corner of a gentleman named Bob Flood's desk.
00:05:05
Speaker
And Bob was, you know, an established TV buying professional at the time and became, you know, a manager leader, mentor friend to not only to me, but to
00:05:21
Speaker
a number of my contemporaries at the time. And this goes back many years. Bob's a mentor to me and to a nice crew of early friends from the media business to this day. We actually still try to get together once or twice a year and have a flood dinner and just sort of celebrate the
00:05:43
Speaker
successes that in a big way Bob led, Bob helped all of us sort of get established in our career and it has been a resource so he's just like a ultimate example of what mentorship can do both in impacting individual people but also creating a community of people who have like worked together, worked with Bob and mentored by Bob so
00:06:09
Speaker
It's a pretty great example and one that I've always aspired to. It's awesome. Sounds like Bob made a profound impact along with both of your parents as running a family business and exposing you to real life and the dynamic of working with different people and just being able to get your hands dirty, which obviously now being
00:06:35
Speaker
very well-versed within the advertising, marketing, and tech communities. With your experiences that you've had, what would you say characterizes and defines your skill set of what you're going to be sharing with the Oh, Hello community? Look, I've worked in media and advertising and at tech and more tech for a lot of years.
00:06:57
Speaker
and both on the agency side as well as the technology platform side. I have a lot to offer in sort of more specific advice if someone wants to get into a certain area. I think a lot of people right now are
00:07:13
Speaker
in a position where they are trying to pivot in their careers a little bit, either their own choice or choice that's been pushed down upon them. So I think I have a lot to offer. I've tried to be nimble and pivot and move with the flow in my career and sort of understand that journey more specifically from traditional TV into all the more data and technology driven parts of our business.
00:07:42
Speaker
And then more personally, I think I have a good knack for helping people find their true passions in their career. And I've always really focused a lot on not only the development of the skills of the people that I work with to do their job better, but also everyone asks, where do you see yourself in three years, five years, et cetera? I don't think anyone on their own has a good answer for that.
00:08:11
Speaker
But I do think that there's a discipline and being a good listener and recognizing talent and helping people tease out the parts of what they do and the things that they're passionate about and where that could lead them down the road is something that I personally have a lot of passion for and I think it's something I'm pretty good at. So that's an area that I've always liked to lean into. Absolutely. And you and I were also talking about just
00:08:39
Speaker
With ohhello.io, one of the capabilities and one of the areas that will help be able to provide help guidance assistance to people is that expertise, having access to specific companies, people. For those that are, when we hear about
00:08:59
Speaker
as I said, tongue in cheek a week or two ago, several weeks back of millions of people in the tech and marketing communities losing jobs, but really every day it's another 10,000 people, whether it's Google, Amazon, Facebook, meta, excuse me, Salesforce, Stripe, Twitter, the list goes on and on and on. If someone's looking for expert knowledge, what are some of the areas of your expertise? And then with that, your expertise, like if you were able to
00:09:30
Speaker
help the O's, help the up and commerce, help people figure out what's next.
Embracing Risks and Overcoming Fears
00:09:35
Speaker
Like what's some advice that you would give yourself if you were, whether you're 25 or 35 year old Todd. Yep. So, you know, from a, from a more technical expertise and, you know, I'm also in the spirit of entrepreneurship, also working on a,
00:09:57
Speaker
a consulting practice that I'd say is still in stealth mode, but stay tuned there. But I do think, right.
00:10:05
Speaker
I have a particular expertise in advanced data driven TV and helping brands think through how to make the transition from linear into connected TV and more traditional buying to more audience-based buying, even from audiences into outcomes, which I really think is the future.
00:10:32
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, I think I've been working with agencies to help them think about how to modernize their offering or appeal to different types of clients with smaller brands that haven't done TV before that might want to get into TV, bigger brands that are trying to change the way that they think about premium video. And yeah, and I think there's a lot of opportunity there with
00:11:02
Speaker
innovative small companies in the edtech space that really just needs that have great products that just really need to think through their go to market. So lots of lots of expertise there. And then
00:11:18
Speaker
What's your second question about advice or advice? So being able to there you go as you're a fantastic listener, picked up on it. Being able to provide guidance to a younger Todd, if you were 25, you're 35. For those that are that have been
00:11:38
Speaker
that are on the bench or trying to figure out their next steps. What would you tell yourself being a bit more, I don't know, seasoned? Get it? Because of the red chili pepper. Good one. Yeah, thanks. I'll be here all week. I would say that to me like being willing to take bigger risks
00:12:00
Speaker
It is a big one where I think a lot of times in the moment, you're just afraid to make that jump, right? It's like even when you're 25, you still feel like you have bills to pay and responsibilities.
00:12:14
Speaker
And it's scary to take risks. So I think, I'd say when I look back, like I think I've been maybe like a step or two slow in taking that jump. I've found my way there. You know, when, when I made the jump from the agency world to, to mogul, like one of the best things I ever could have done in my career, I'd say it was probably, probably should've done that a few years earlier. So I'd say we want to take those risks.
00:12:43
Speaker
I think that a big one for me, and this is advice that was given to me, is don't rely on the things that you're best at. There's a tendency to just say, this is what I'm good at. I'm going to focus my energy at being as good as possible at that thing, and then you neglect the things that you're not.
00:13:07
Speaker
conquering your fear doing the thing that you're afraid of doing the thing that you're not that you know that you're not as good at and then you shy away from it is actually the best way to develop and I think challenging yourself to go after the things that scare you is a pretty good way to Get ahead in this world challenge yourself and you you decided to challenge yourself and you realized by challenging yourself it helped you get to where you are today, which is amazing amazing
00:13:35
Speaker
amazing lessons learned from just going for it.
The Power of Mentorship
00:13:39
Speaker
With that, I feel the same. I mean, it's the same way. It's it doesn't change, right? Whether you're 25 or 45 or that it's like the same things and trying to figure out what's next. And
00:13:50
Speaker
figure out what risks to take and how to put yourself in interesting and challenging and dynamic positions. So I think mentorship, being mentored and mentoring people is a lifelong thing, right? It's not just late career professionals and people new to the working world. I just think. I think people are incredibly willing to be given of their time and
00:14:17
Speaker
If you extend yourself and ask someone for help, you'll be shocked at how generous people are with their time. Speaking of generosity, speaking of helping people, as you know, the hellos, so the supply side of oh, hello.
Charitable Pursuits and Personal Motivations
00:14:34
Speaker
have the ability to give back and to donate and to have that feeling of altruism. And within the states, we are plugged into 40 plus different charities. And around the world, there are going to be several hundred since this is a global company, what charity amongst the charities that we are intertwined with
00:14:54
Speaker
is near and dear to you, and why? Thanks, Jeremy. Look, I absolutely love that this is a part of your company mission. I think on its own, you really have something special, but that really adds another element that I think brings a lot of value. My mom is a breast cancer survivor, and so that's an area that is near and dear to our hearts. I think that's probably the direction I would go to with my charitable contribution.
00:15:22
Speaker
Thank you, Todd. Thank you for sharing your story. Thanks for being part of the Oh Hello podcast. Love catching up with you. This is great. I have music. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Jeremy. Always good to see you. Appreciate it. You too, Todd. Take care. Thanks everybody for listening. Until the next one.