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OhHello - Dave Simon
62 Plays2 years ago
Episode 42 just hits different.
One of our earliest OhHello Inc. 🌞☕️ OhHello.io hand-raisers, a good pal, and mentor to many, just so happened to be in the neighborhood recently, so we decided to record an impromptu pod...IRL! 🚨😱🚨
This exec is a great dad, a loyalist to those around him, and balances his even-keeled demeanor w/ a dash of humor, and a pinch of sarcasm (we left out the music for some add’l comedic effect). As a father of two, husband to one, and dog dad, this 'Hello' pays homage to his mentors that have shaped him into the leader that he is today:
-Robin Sloan - how to treat everyone with respect
-Brad Piggott - how to be a confident manager
-Yannis Dosios - how to approach conflict resolution
-Josh Hare - how to leverage the power that one has within an org in an efficient way
This well respected sales leader started his career in radio, but has built and led teams across some of the biggest names in #adtech - BrightRoll, Yahoo, Cuebiq, and Viant Technology.
He's ecstatic to be a mentor within the OhHello.io community and platform (🚀 this summer)
It was a blast to record this straight from the global HQ., Mr. Dave Simon! Always appreciate your POV, dry SOH, and our catch-ups. Thanks for stopping-by (figuratively + literally)
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Transcript
Introduction and Greetings
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, hello, Dave. Oh, hello, Jeremy. Dave, I have the pleasure of knowing you. I have the pleasure of having you in the, oh, hello, global headquarters right now. I'm in the global headquarters. It feels good, doesn't it? Yeah. It feels good. Feels good to be on this side. Yeah. This side of the camera and in the same room as the pictures. Yeah. But why don't we tell our guests, our viewers, our listeners,
00:00:30
Speaker
Those that love the Oh Hello Pod and VOD, who I have the pleasure of speaking with. Sure. Well, hello, everyone. Oh, hello. Oh, hello. I'm Dave Simon. First and foremost, I am a husband, a parent. I've been married to the same woman. I am not your child, just to be clear. We are a few years apart. Thank you for explaining that to the audience. Thank you. Thank you. Now, I'm not saying who's older. We'll leave it up to their imagination. They'll never know. They'll never know.
00:00:58
Speaker
but I am married to the same woman. Her name is Cindy for almost 20 years. We have two amazing kids. We have a daughter Avery and a son Luke, and we are the recent adopted parents.
00:01:10
Speaker
of a very small dog named Harper. She's a cute dog. Thanks. Thanks. I love her a lot. Outside of
Role and Insights in Sales at Viant Technologies
00:01:17
Speaker
that, so that's the family. I am an athlete. I like to work out. I like to play golf. I like to play paddle, much like yourself. And from a work perspective, I'm the vice president of sales at Viant Technologies, which is the DSP.
00:01:30
Speaker
So I'm in the ad tech space. And what is a DSP, Dave? What is a DSP? It is a demand-side platform. So it is a software platform that allows clients to go in and buy media schedules by themselves. Ah, so as if I was trying to buy stocks on TD Ameritrade in real time. Very, very good analogy. We like to use E-Trade, but it's very, very similar. Understood. Thank you. I prefer E-Trade as well.
00:01:56
Speaker
Thank you, that is very helpful to know. And for those listening, Dave and I both have known each other for a while in the programmatic and ad tech space, hence being able to play off of one another. With that said, Dave, how would you characterize your skillset that you're going to be sharing with the Oh, hello community? Sure. So like you have a background in sales, so I think I can help people understand how to either start a sales career, transition into sales from another line of work.
00:02:25
Speaker
I have a lot of experience managing people. So I enjoy that aspect of it. So I think there could be people that are interested in getting into management, want to understand how to make that transition or sort of the growing pains that are associated with that.
Career Experience and Approach
00:02:38
Speaker
Your skill set also, you have had the fortune of being part of small startups and you have worked at giant companies. And so you've gone through a lot of just blowing up your sleeves.
00:02:53
Speaker
and also understanding the politics and the bureaucracy from former companies. And the benefit is just you've worn different sales hats over your 20 plus year career in this ecosystem. Thanks for outing me with the 20 plus career. Yeah. Well, I'm 20 plus years too. Yeah. We're on the same page. Okay. Fair enough. But you're right. I do have an experience working in a wide gamut of different sized companies.
00:03:23
Speaker
And that has shaped how I go about my business and has helped, certainly given me experience to help me grow my career as well. Sure, sure.
Mentorship and Influence
00:03:31
Speaker
When you think about mentorship, when you think about just looking back and thinking through who you've become throughout your career, who your teams have become, as you've seen them ascend, what does mentorship mean to you? What excites you about mentorship?
00:03:48
Speaker
When you are helping those that are either your peers or they're up in commerce, if they're feeling lost, if they're feeling, if you see the drive that you had when you were a little bit younger, what are just some of those traits that excite you and what would you tell your younger self looking back? Sure. So a few different questions there. That's how I ask these questions. I try to load them like a baked potato. That's okay. That's okay. I would say from a mentorship aspect or what I enjoy about being a mentor,
00:04:17
Speaker
Look, everybody in sales likes to close deals. We like to have that winning feeling. But in order to truly scale a business and scale a team, you have to scale the knowledge. And so that means you have to teach other people how to do what you do. You have to empower them to make the right decisions. You have to teach them the ways of being a successful salesperson, a successful sales leader. So for me, mentorship means, one, being able to grow my business faster because I can't be everywhere and do everything.
00:04:46
Speaker
But also selfishly, I love seeing the success of what we call a tree, right? A coaching tree or a mentorship tree. I love seeing the places that the people I've led, where they go. And some of them have turned into real friends, some have turned into competitors, peers. It's a wide range of where my sort of tree has gone. And I get a lot of satisfaction out of watching their success.
00:05:12
Speaker
Well, and ideally you've helped them set the foundation and the roots of those trees. Sure. Well, like anybody, we all need help along the way, right? That's one of the reasons I was attracted to this mission is I would be foolish to think that I didn't have any help growing up along the way. I had some great mentors that helped me along the way too. So it feels right to do the same for the next generation. I love that.
00:05:40
Speaker
Help us understand, toss us some of those actual mentors. Give us some names, give us some meat on the bones that helped water you, so to speak, and made the impact on your career thus far. Sure.
00:05:56
Speaker
want to be clear, I've had poor leaders as well, right? I think everybody has had bad management experience. What's interesting about that experience is that you can also take away positives by learning what not to do, right? I love that. For today, we'll focus on the positive. And I want to call out, I think it's four leaders in particular,
00:06:17
Speaker
And what's interesting is that they're all at different stages of my career. So when I first got into network radio, which I'm sure everybody is unfamiliar with this stage of life, but clear channel alum, I get it. Yeah, that's right. Parallel lives.
00:06:32
Speaker
So my first manager in network radio was a woman named Robin Sloan. She gave me some really great advice as I was just learning the craft and starting off. And it was really more around treating everybody with respect. It was understanding that you might not win every single time, but you have to work with these people for hopefully a long period of time. And what's important is that, again, you treat them well, you learn to live and fight another day, and you sort of stand by your word, honor your commitments, et cetera.
00:06:59
Speaker
which gave me a really nice footing for my big sales career to start. And then- That was helpful, what Robin said. Yeah, especially as you're younger in your career. Right. And then when I got into digital, I made the transition to digital. I worked at a startup called Brightroll and I had a boss named Brad Piggott. And Brad gave me a lot of advice for us, you know, like you starting at two, it was just the two of us in this small little office building out the territory.
00:07:27
Speaker
And while I wasn't an overly negative person, I certainly wasn't a very positive one. And Brad taught me the power of positive thinking, sort of the way you look at situations, the vibe that you might give off. But more importantly, he taught me really how to manage people. This was one of the first management roles that I had in this company.
00:07:49
Speaker
And he told me to be a confident manager, to support your team, to give them the spotlight, to make them the center of a meeting, of a relationship, and really give all praise to them. And this breeds a tremendous amount of loyalty. It's a really important leadership aspect that I try to maintain today. That makes a lot of sense, having in your Bright World days, in my tube days, the company is running such parallel paths. And the culture, culture is plural.
00:08:20
Speaker
being so similar yet different in that sense, because they're just so alike in the ways that we were building teams out and people out. So that's really interesting to hear that just obviously, you know, sitting this close being a good eight inches apart between two firms, if you will.
00:08:39
Speaker
But that's great hearing that about Brad, because I've always heard great things. Sure. And two other quick stories. At Yahoo, when I transitioned there, I worked for a man named Giannis Dosius. Giannis taught me about conflict resolution, which is a really important skill to have. And I had none of it when I started working there. And you can imagine working in a larger company.
00:09:02
Speaker
You're working with lots of different people. They have their own agendas, their own needs. There are competing drives, competing issues at stake. And Yani taught me to think about conflict from the perspective of the other person and to always give them positive intent or think that they're acting in positive intent. And that was mind opening for me in terms of being able to work with and settle conflict with teams.
00:09:27
Speaker
And then my current manager is a man named Josh Hare that I work for at Vine. You've mentioned Josh. And what's interesting about the relationship with Josh or the information that he's taught me is really how to leverage the power that one has within an organization in an efficient manner and one that really doesn't drive conflict.
00:09:50
Speaker
And that's a skill that, while everybody thinks that they have, I've really learned to refine it based on some advice that he's given me over the time that I've been there. So again, what's important about this and why I bring up these four individuals is that it spans a really long period of time. And people can use mentorship and benefit from leadership at any stage of their career. That was really the point of that long rambling story. It wasn't that rambling. There wasn't that much rambling, maybe a little bit. But I agree. Essentially, it's a journey.
00:10:20
Speaker
Over the few years, we'll just round down. Thank you. We're rounding up. Yeah. Warning to be having people that influence you in a way to have a positive mental attitude. Others that helped with coaching you with being pragmatic. And it sounds like others just being optimistic and learning how to work well with all different facets of people and being empathetic.
Personal Contributions and Future Aspirations
00:10:50
Speaker
Dave, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. As a hello, you know that you're going to be able to share some of your revenue, your earnings towards 40 different philanthropies that are integrated within our platform. What are some causes or a charity that's near and dear to your heart?
00:11:09
Speaker
whether it's in the platform or not in the platform. Doesn't matter. Well, I took a look over the list. Oh, I did. I took a list. I took a look over the list last night. Cool. And as a recent pet owner, pets are near and dear to my heart. So I'm going to donate to the it's called the American shelter, the animal shelter crisis aid fund. Nice. That's the one that we're going to be donating. Nice. Nice. Thanks for putting that on there. Absolutely. Well, that is part of the journey of Oh, hello is being able to give back and have that sense of altruism.
00:11:40
Speaker
It feels good. It feels really good to be able to get back. Anything else that you want to cover, that you want to talk about, what excites you about this platform? What excites you about being a well-respected veteran within the marketing, advertising, sales, tech community? Well, I appreciate the kind words. We'll see if it's actually true, but I just think being a part of this mission, one, I think it's great that you're launching this platform. I want to support you as a friend. Thanks.
00:12:10
Speaker
And I also want to help the new generation or the next generation get started in this space. We all need help getting started. And so I'm happy to help out along the way. Cool. Mr. Simon. Thank you. Thank you. Always a pleasure. I don't know where my music went. So thank you everybody. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. We'll see you soon. Thanks, Dave. Bye.