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OhHello - Betsy Adelstein
75 Plays2 years ago
With nearly 30 years’ experience, Betsy started her career in “offline” advertising at various ad agencies learning the ropes in local broadcast media buying for P&G, direct mail personalization and automotive national TV and print advertising for Chevy Blazer.
Once digital advertising took hold, Betsy got lured over to a newer company (at the time) called America Online spending 6-years, first as a strategic account manager leading large scale multi-million-dollar integrated content/commerce partnerships and evolved into a top Midwest sales rep.
Once rich media hit the digital scene there was no turning back, Betsy fell in love with the creative technology side of the business spending 5-years at Pointroll spanning verticals winning over clients like Kellogg’s, Sears, Nintendo, E*TRADE and NBC Universal along with hiring, training, and growing the Midwest sales team.
Betsy co-founded the US subsidiary of Flashtalking in 2010. In the following years, her Central Region set the pace for the company’s growth. Betsy’s region delivered consistent, strong performance in terms of both growth and client retention, and in doing so, sets the basis for many of the company’s methods and best practices. Betsy’s ability to “live the example” as a mother of four and a successful senior executive inspired women throughout the company and industry. In 2019, Betsy was named a Top 50 Women Leaders in SaaS of 2019 by The Software Report.
After 12 successful and rewarding years at Flashtalking, the company was acquired in July 2021 by Mediaocean. Betsy remains very much invested in the success of Mediaocean team and business but has chosen to step away from the company.
Currently she mentors a high school business incubator class working with a student team on taking a startup idea to commercialization opportunities.
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Transcript
Jeremy and Betsy's Friendship
00:00:10
Speaker
All right. Hello, Betsy. Oh, hello. Oh, hello, Jeremy. How are you? Fantastic. How are you? I'm great. I'm really excited to have you on this pod. We became friends to be here. This is like the best thing I've heard and read about in like years. So this is an honor for me.
00:00:33
Speaker
Thank you. That means a ton to me. Thank you. We became friends several years before the pandemic. We were always running in parallel paths in our industry. And I remember setting aside an hour for breakfast with you. And we wound up having like a three hour breakfast. I don't know if I've ever had a three hour breakfast during a work day, but it was such a blast and we've become good pals through it.
Betsy's Career Beginnings in Advertising
00:01:00
Speaker
We're so excited to have you on the Oh, hello podcast today. With that said, I know who you are. Who are you? Why are you here? Hi everyone. I am Betsy Adelstein and I am the US co-founder of flash talking. That is a company that was acquired about a year and a half ago by media ocean. And I've been in the industry for nearly 30 years. I started out in.
00:01:27
Speaker
offline advertising, working through TV and print ads and local media buying. And all of a sudden, America Online is invented. And one of my previous bosses from an ad agency I was at was like, hey, do you want to work at this new company called America Online? And I literally was like, oh my god, when can I start?
Transition to Creative Advertising at Point Roll
00:01:48
Speaker
And I started to work at AOL prior to the bubble bursting and working on big strategic multi-million dollar deals. And then the bubble kind of burst, if you will, on those big strategic partnerships. And I quickly became a Midwest sales rep.
00:02:06
Speaker
and loved that entire process of kind of taking something that you know is going to change somebody's business and helping them understand why and then ultimately making sure that that what you've sold delivers on what these advertisers were hoping and dreaming about. Loved the partnership in media side and then I kind of
00:02:31
Speaker
somebody walked into the AOL office talking about the creative side of digital advertising, the ads that were engaging and expanding and had video in them. And I was like, oh yeah, I'm all in. And I loved what
00:02:48
Speaker
the story was, and I loved the business. At that time, there was a company called Point Roll, and I literally said, okay, that's my next move.
Co-founding Flash Talking in the US
00:02:56
Speaker
Ultimately, when I was working at AOL, I was kind of selling that kind of technology and functionality along with media packages. And finally, there was the opportunity to go over to Point Roll, which was a small company at the time. Loved it, fell in love with the team, the people, the story, the results, everything about it.
00:03:15
Speaker
And then shortly thereafter, maybe five years there, a few of my friends that worked there with me, we co-founded a company called Flash Talking and worked there for 12 years. So we founded this company in the US, meaning we like literally bought some computers at Best Buy and just got started. We had non-competes, non-solicit, we were bound by all kinds of things, but we're able to kind of work through those.
Mentorship and Individualism
00:03:45
Speaker
grow the business to a global company of over 300 people and ultimately lots and lots of friends that we were able to hire through the years and built a team that I loved with all my heart, a company that I loved even more, and then ultimately accomplished the goal of selling it. And now I am currently looking to help others achieve their hopes and dreams for their career.
00:04:12
Speaker
That's amazing, Betsy. And you're such a fun, exuberant, optimistic ball of energy, which makes this conversation so much more fun than if you weren't. So I feel like if you feel strongly about something, and you really buy into it, and you love it, and you know it works, it doesn't even feel like you're trying to sell. It just feels like you're trying to help somebody
00:04:39
Speaker
learn about what it is that you know works. And that feels different than what I think how sales is defined. It's just sharing something and making them aware of something they didn't know of before and hopefully delivering on what it is that you said it would do. And that is just a very basic description of sales. But I mean, when you're passionate about something and you love something and you know it works, it's effortless to talk about that with other people. You want to and you can't wait to. It doesn't feel like you're
00:05:09
Speaker
cold calling or trying to get somebody on the phone. It just feels like as excited as you are, you want them to feel the same. So passion, love, effortless.
Inspiring Young People in Digital Advertising
00:05:19
Speaker
You're a mom of four kids.
00:05:22
Speaker
So which also helps obviously as you grew your career as an executive leader, as someone who just planted the seeds and grew a business, sold the business, having four kids, I'm sure that that absolutely helped just characterize your skillset and just helped you essentially define how you view different people. I'd love to hear a little bit more about just how you characterize just that, how you characterize your skillset as a mentor.
00:05:51
Speaker
what you what you have always done differently than a lot of your peers what kind of guidance would you give give some folks sure sure so when we started flash talking i had just had my fourth kid. Basically a newborn so i had ages zero two four six.
00:06:09
Speaker
And to me, that was just a big moment. I could do what I wanted. My kids were young, and I could just be the mom, put them to bed, and then work as much as and hard as I needed to to start this company, which is a good point in time with such young kids. As they each started to grow up and
00:06:35
Speaker
have their own unique and different personalities, it really occurred to me. And my mom once said to me, gosh, I don't know why you and your sisters are all so different. I did the exact same thing with each of you. And I was like, okay, well, each one of my kids is very unique and different. I need to figure out what makes each one of those proud of themselves.
00:06:55
Speaker
Motivate them make sure they feel good about themselves and each one is so unique and different I kind of realized that as I would be on different teams and be a manager that each one of these team members that I was working with they're like genetic makeup is totally different and if I really really really understand them understand where they come from understand how they think I Understand their birth order in their family even even though you're not really supposed to ask that professionally You know if you understand that about somebody
00:07:26
Speaker
then you can help guide them in the right direction to solve problems or issues or situations or really excel at what they're doing in the most effective way possible. So I just come into it with never the same solution twice. It just really all depends on you. And. Individualism is really like the encompassing word of just treating everyone as their own unique individual self.
00:07:54
Speaker
Right into, I mean, correlated a little bit to flash talking, the story was all about personalized messaging and being able to deliver a unique and specific message for your brand to each and every unique and specific audience segment, which is exactly kind of that personalization of what it is that each and everybody needs to make them as productive and successful and work through issues as they need to be. So it's like hearing through the ad tech story all the way through to mentorship.
Mentorship Approach and Real-world Experience
00:08:22
Speaker
writ long, really good pivot, good, good parallel for sure. What excites you about mentorship? I mean, I can tell from your passion, I can tell from what you've been saying. But also with regards to just how would you tell you what would you tell your your 25 year old self, or in this case, we were talking beforehand, and your daughter's a junior Wisconsin, at the University of Wisconsin. What do you tell her? What do you tell her friends? What do you tell your second child, your third child, your fourth child? What do you tell
00:08:52
Speaker
as you mentor so many different people, both online and offline, and just give so much back to your community, what would you tell your 25 year old self looking back?
00:09:03
Speaker
Right. Well, I think everybody that has kids, when your kids are a certain age, all my kids, friends and kids would know is that my mom loves her job. She loves her job. She loves going to work. She loves the people she works with. She loves the clients she works with. When she travels, she loves the people she meets. That's what they knew of my job. Periodically, they would be like, really, what do you do? Try to explain it. And sometimes it would make sense. Sometimes it wouldn't.
00:09:29
Speaker
but now so many years later when really like a lot of my kids friends are starting to figure out what it is they want to do when they grow up they all want a job that's fun and they'll say oh you know Mira your mom
00:09:43
Speaker
You always said your mom loves her job and her job is really fun. What is it that she does? And so because I really do love my job, it's really easy to talk to some of these college students to be like, here's why a job in digital advertising is so incredible.
00:10:04
Speaker
Not just financially but here's why it's fun to come to work every day. Here's a type of people you get to work with. Here's why it's inspiring to do what we do and if they don't have a parent that isn't our industry and they have a parent who's a teacher or a parent who
00:10:21
Speaker
as a contractor or a consultant or any various jobs that have actual names on it, they don't know what digital advertising is. Maybe they have a course or two on it kind of nestled in their marketing program, maybe, but they just don't know as a career why it's so incredible and why they can get a four-year degree. Now, I know many people have strong feelings about graduate degrees and MBA is cool. Same. In our industry, if you have a four-year degree,
00:10:51
Speaker
you can have a really rewarding career and really get that financial reward that's on par with doctors and lawyers and consultants. They just don't know it. So that to me is really inspiring to be able to kind of lend the same like sales. I'm not trying to sell them on our career, but I love it.
00:11:13
Speaker
and I am passionate about it and I have had a great career. So it makes it effortless to tell others why that is the case too. And specifically when we start to talk about people of color and kind of increasing their awareness of the job opportunities, that also is just very near and dear to my heart because these are great careers where
00:11:35
Speaker
you can afford to take your family on a winter vacation or spring vacation if you are if you have a career in digital advertising which that's not possible in a lot of careers that are out there so when you start to kind of put that into perspective really when you get back down to the high school level then they know they want to find college programs that you know have a specialty in digital advertising we really start to get that ahead of the game
00:12:00
Speaker
rather than all of these agencies doing all the heavy lifting to train people right out of college where really they should be getting that background and experience in college. So these agencies have people that are kind of ready to go versus a year or two of investing in them prior to them being anywhere near knowledgeable about what their career is.
Dedication to Charity and Conclusion
00:12:20
Speaker
So kind of taking this workload off the agencies and putting it back in the hands of the universities where they could do a much better hands-on job of this.
00:12:28
Speaker
That was a lot. It's a lot. I was listening to every moment of it and it's like we like I said earlier, there's so much passion and something that makes you so authentic is just the way that you present yourself and you give a shit and it's so it for those listening, you can hear the passion and Betsy's voice I can see for those watching I can see it within our zoom window.
00:12:54
Speaker
who are different mentors that have made an impact on you? And if it hasn't been an individual or two, just what are the different characteristics or traits that have made you who you are today? And, you know, helped carve? That's the Edelstein. You know, it's funny, because I, you know, I really, really try to think hard about that. Because I know a lot of people have like, very clear, like, oh, this person, or,
00:13:20
Speaker
you know, whether they're, you know, somebody they've worked with or not. But I really think like, since even when I was, you know, in high school, I was kind of one of those people that I would meet somebody and I'd be like, I really like that about them. Okay, I'm going to weave that into my personality. Okay, I work with somebody, I'd be like, okay, I like that aspect of what they do. I like this perspective they have.
00:13:41
Speaker
I like this approach that they took. That was really good advice. And I just kind of have taken all these things and listened really hard for them and really just wove them in one by one as I've experienced them through the years. And even so much so that a lot of times it's seeing what I
00:13:59
Speaker
don't like or what I don't want to be like. At what point in what point I had a manager who every week we'd have our one-on-one calls and every week it would drive me crazy because this person would be like you know what you should email that person and ask for a meeting and I was like okay yeah okay what else is that what okay great oh let me write that down email and ask for a meeting.
00:14:28
Speaker
cool, you know, like those kinds of things where you're like, is this, this is the advice that I'm getting, you know? So I'd be like, okay, don't, don't, don't get on the phone with somebody and state such obvious insulting things to somebody and just pay attention. Assume they're doing all the right things until you have reason to believe they're not and focus on the things that people in fact move. So, well said.
00:14:58
Speaker
As you know, as a hello, you're going to have the opportunity to to donate not just your time, but a portion of your revenue to different charities. What charity is near and dear to your heart? Right, I do have a charity that is so near and dear to my heart. I had with the boat parking queue, Sarah McLaughlin, like we can play that music and before I turn around at my dad and go,
00:15:28
Speaker
And then come back. So one of my really good friends and a coworker I worked with for 10 years across both Point Roll and Flash Talking, Leslie DeMeo Duffy, passed away in 2018 from lung cancer, which was
00:15:45
Speaker
a pretty heartbreaking experience across the board for myself as a friend, as a teammate, as a manager to kind of live through that entire process with Leslie and their family and their extended family in the digital industry.
00:16:05
Speaker
And so anything that comes from this would be donated to Leslie DeMeo Duffy Lung Cancer Foundation. So that is the one, or the broader American Cancer Society in general. Kind of love it. Look, Betsy, we so much appreciate you being here. We so much appreciate you being part of the NREL community. You rock. Really appreciate you. And thanks so much. That was great information for our community.
00:16:32
Speaker
Bye, everybody. Thanks again for listening. Catch you on the next one.