Transcription ****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.**** [intro music] Shark 0:16 Welcome back and thank you for joining a sharks perspective. I am Kenneth "Shark" Kinney, your host and Chief Shark Officer. Shark 0:23 First let me tell you about two amazing sponsors who make this show possible and number rather particular shark and only work with the best. Shark 0:30 First of all, let's talk about inbound. I've worked with a great team at Invoca for several years now from marketing to sales to commerce to CX, Invoca is active conversation intelligence platform enables revenue teams to create better buying experiences, drive more leads and increase revenue. Trusted by top brands like Dish Network, Mayo Clinic, Mutual of Omaha pods and SunTrust, the Invoca team is doing some amazing work in turning conversational data into automated action to enhance digital touchpoints and human interaction. Shark 0:58 Secondly, let's talk about outbound I've known and worked with AC and the team at Drips for years. Take a look at Drips, the founders of conversational texting where they use conversational AI to help you reach customers where they're most responsive and that's on their phones and working with major brands like Three Day Blinds, Liberty Mutual, Credit Repair, and Ganesco, Drips is leading the way for some of the biggest brands in the world to improve engagement rates and outcomes for their prospects and customers. Shark 1:24 Thank you Invoca and Drips. And now back to the show. Shark 1:27 Are you vigilant ever aware of your surroundings and knowing what your competition is doing to take your customers away? Or are you complacent and vulnerable to being defeated by the competition? It's a question that all brands should ask and better manage. Shark 1:41 Len Herstein is the CEO and president of Manage Camp, the founder of the Brand Manage Camp conference and the Brand Manage Camp University, the author of "Be Vigilant!, Strategies to Stop Complacency, Improve performance and Safeguard Success," and he also serves as a reserve sheriff's deputy in Douglas County, Colorado. Shark 1:58 And on this episode, we'll discuss marketing and branding, some CPG soup and crackers clubhouse audio being more intentional about your use of sound serving as a reserve sheriff's deputy conferences in person and learning alive, being vigilant complacency, handshakes and vulnerability and a lot, lot more. Shark 2:15 So let's tune into a camp counselor branding, if you will, with a shark who gets my counsel in the water on this episode of a sharks perspective. Shark 2:28 Len, thank you so much for joining us today on A Shark's Perspective. Tell us a little bit about your background in your career to date so far. Len 2:35 Yeah, it's been it's been a long and windy one for sure. I started out in consulting used to work for Anderson consulting, which is now Accenture, doing a programming and COBOL to a while which actually I was just reading this stuff stuff then still being you know, managed in COBOL, too. Alright, so let me ask you this. Were you a DBA? Or an IMS guy? Oh, I can't I was bad at it. Shark 3:01 I just shot Yeah, gotcha. Len 3:04 I was bad at it. I was bad at it. So I moved over to the change management side, which was more people consulting and helping people through those changes. When thank goodness you escaped. Yeah, exactly. And then I got into marketing and worked in traditional consumer packaged goods brand marketing for first, Nabisco and then Coca Cola and then Campbell Soup company both in base business and innovation, sales roles, marketing roles, and then jumped on the.com thing for a little bit in between there somewhere. And eventually I found myself going to a lot of conferences that I found myself coming home early from and there was a lot of things bothering me about the conference industry. My wife got tired of hearing me complain about it and told me to do something about it. And I've been married 22 years without 23 years without listening to my wife. So I did that. And that's why I created a company called manage camp we we do an annual brand manage camp conference, marketing conference that we've been doing this will be our 19th year. We're doing a virtually right now, obviously, but I hope to help you get back alive soon. And about six years ago, I became a reserve sheriff's deputy here in Douglas County, Colorado. And I do that basically, I'm a went through a full train Academy and and field training program and I'm a fully certified field, field patrol deputy I just do it for free. I've been doing that for six years and that that experience combined with my you know, over 25 now 30 years of of marketing experience and brand and business experience led me to my book that I have coming out and hopefully in September it's called Be vigilant strategies to stop complacency, improve performance and safeguard success. And it's all about this, this concept of complacency and how complacency kills not only in law enforcement but in business. And relationships and marriages and brands, and what you know actionable things that you can do everyday to help fight that complacency and be more vigilant. That is my three less than three minutes and offsets of my life. Shark 5:13 Well, first of all, especially because I've had family do this as well had been reserved sheriff's deputies. Thank you one for your service, especially, especially considering what you do for free. That that is always amazed me the first time I heard anybody doing that. It just it impressed me that much more that somebody would do that to serve without asking for anything in return. Makes makes you question the validity of this psych evaluation. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So what we were talking about earlier, we met through clubhouse through him, yeah, again, through a clubhouse room with a mutual friend of ours. And I really wanted to talk to you because I was, as we discussed before about what the value is of clubhouse, and who is there, I think a lot of the conversation that's changed since you were working for these large brands versus where a lot of people have positioned themselves today, it's not really focused on serving the brand, unless the brand is you. When you look at places like clubhouse or any other social channels, how do you look at brands today, and a lot of the education that's out there, including with your own conference versus what is really consuming a lot of the oxygen in the room, sort of the self brand conversation. Len 6:33 You know, for you know, this all gets back to, you know, a lot of a lot of what I do today is built on my experiences and the people that I've met and the things that I've learned and brand manage camp as a conference providing me 19 years of access to some of the greatest minds in brand have ever, you know, shaped the way I think and so what you're asking for me, leads me back to a gentleman by the name of Brewster, Cal. And Bruce is an advertising guy out of out of Florida out of Miami. I don't know if you know, Bruce, but he, he talks about a thing. What he says is, it's all about them. Right. And I think this is this is a universal concept that you can use in life in brand in business, in clubhouse and social media. And whatever you do that I think over and over and over again, people lose sight of they lose sight of it, when they're up on stage, they lose sight of it, when you're trying to sell a product to somebody, they lose sight of it when they're doing advertising. And the whole idea is is not about us, right? It's about them. It's about the customer, it's about the consumer, it's about the recipient of your information and what's what's in it for them. Right, and how do we stay focused on that? I think brands have learned over time, you know, we went from this idea of blogging, right, which was like us, regurgitating information, you know, and advertising or throwing information out. And then social media came on. And the whole, the whole thing is now it's a two way street. Now there's a conversation. Right? And that conversation, when it becomes about me becomes less interesting than when that conversation is about you. Right. And I think that's probably you know, you mentioned clubhouse I think that's a kind of a learning curve that's happening with clubhouse right now, you know, you and I were talking before we went live here about clubhouse and you know how I've dabbled a little bit, but I really have not jumped in with two feet, by any stretch of the imagination. But I can tell you from what I've seen so far, it's a lot about about me, not me particular, but whoever's whether they're the person running the room, or the person raising their hand to say something, a lot of it is, you know, look at me, how about me, here's what I have to say. And there's not a lot about what you know, making it about them. And I think that'll that'll change over time. And especially as people are thinking about what is what are brands relationship with clubhouse or Tick Tock or, you know, whatever people want to talk about these days, in terms of how to brands get involved, eventually, it's all going to come back to that very, very simple concept. If you make it about them, people will come people will listen, people will engage, you will hopefully drive that goal of forming relationships as opposed to driving transactions, right? And if you make it about what's about me, now, if you're a celebrity, and people are super interested about you, that could work, right. But if you're not like I'm not, or you know, brands aren't, you know, you have to eventually make that transition and say, Okay, enough of us talking about us, you know, what it would it would have these people need to know and how can we be a part of providing them solutions, providing them answers, providing them you know, insights or you know, anything that they need to make their lives better. Shark 9:43 So talk a little bit about what the conference does as a whole that's different say from other conferences with brand manage camp conference. Len 9:52 Yeah, so brand manage camp. It's funny because I you know, back in 2003, I was coming back from a from a car In New Orleans, and it was just another one of these events that you know, back in those days, you actually had travel agents that you call within your travel departments within your company, right? And you call in and say, Hey, get me on an earlier flight, I gotta get out of here, right. And as, you know, when those conferences where you show up, and, you know, they still, you know, they serve breakfast for breakfast was like, you know, a cold bagel, and it's, they provided a toaster, you know, for you to do something with that bagel. And, you know, someone showed up with a Mac and forgot their dongle and the whole thing shut down for like, 25 minutes, right? So, you know, I was just tired, I was tired, because all these events looked great on paper. But then in execution, they were not delivering what I was looking for, you know, forget about all those executional things. But you know, they were set up more for sponsors than they were for attendees, right? There were a lot of panel discussions with a lot of people on air so they could pad you know, their attendance lists, so they could sell more sponsorships, there are people trying to sell me every which way I moved. Right. And that's not what I was looking for I you know, they started moving into these things where there were multiple, you know, tracks to choose from, right. And now now all sudden, like I you know, it's like more complicated than picking my college syllabus, right. And it was all this fear of missing out and all that stuff. So when I started brand manage camp, I was on a flight home from this from this conference in New Orleans. And I was writing on the back of a US Air napkin that tells you how long ago this was because they don't exist anymore, right, I was writing down what the next conference I was going to go to had to have. And that those simple principles is what brand manage campus still based around. So it had to be a single track conference, it had to be flawlessly executed, it had to have all keynote speakers. No panel discussions had to be about learning and not about selling. So attendee focused and not sponsor focused, it had to have great food and great drink, and comfortable places and great audio visual with no with no hiccups. And it had to be a 360 degree view of brand, I didn't want something I was going to be super specific, where everybody was going to be saying the same thing or saying the same thing differently. For two days, I wanted a 360 degree view of brand where we had lots of different, really brilliant people talking about lots of different things that apply to a general management focus brand management professional, someone who runs brands, someone who has p&l responsibility for brands. And that's, that's still what brand manage camp is all about, you know, if you look at our agenda, you know, we don't have people overlapping, we don't have tracks to choose from. Now that we're in, you know, virtual, at least for the short term, we are still focused on flawless execution and making it so that people get the most not just taking our live conference and making it, you know, a virtual conference, but redesigning it to be optimized for virtual. So all those same principles that I wrote down, you know, all those years ago still hold true. Shark 12:56 So talk a little bit further about the 360 view of the brand, because I saw that on the website as well. And I'm having worked on the brand side, I think this is extremely important. You know, so many the different conferences, as you said, You mean, obviously, you've got them now dedicated to certain channels and or certain tactics or certain things. And one of the things I think I get nothing arguments with but I just the different ways to look at it is, if you're responsible for a brand and I have been multiple times before, you have to diversify, you can't be so niched, where somebody can put you in a box and call you an expert in it. And although that's important, and you have to have a really rich amount of knowledge, if you're like, if you're serving a customer, you've got to look at it through the their lens, which is that 360 view of the brand, not just how do I do on Facebook or tik tok, or my SEO or everything else? And so I think that's extremely interesting, but kind of elaborate, if you will, on how you see that view of the brand and the audience that brand serve. Len 13:58 Yeah, I mean, this came from my training in traditional consumer packaged goods marketing. So when you go to you know, a company like Nabisco, or Coca Cola, or campbell soup, or General Mills or Clorox, or you know, Cola, Colgate, or whatever it is, right? Procter and Gamble, they all have a similar way that they look at brand marketing and that is with the marketers at what they would call the hub of the wheel. Right. And so, you've got, you know, marketing at the hub of the wheel and you've got all these spokes coming out of it, advertising, design, manufacturing, distribution, packaging, finance, right operations, sales, all these things come out of it, you know, most of those do not report directly into marketing, they have their own reporting structures, but the marketer as a general management, you know, brand marketer is you know, indirectly responsible for providing the direction at all those people and all those people come back into, you know, marketing in an indirect way. And so, when you when you consider marketing that And you don't consider marketing. one specific thing social media, digital marketing, advertising, whatever it is, you have a much more holistic view of what marketing is. And that's why it's called brand manage manage camp is not marketing managed camp right brand because it's everything as it relates to managing that brand. And you know, what the finance, the financials of that brand, market research, you know, social media, all those things have a place to play. And so that's what I wanted brand manage camp to be I want to bring manage camp to be the place where the people at at the helm of making those decisions could come to find out what's next to stay one step ahead of their competition and learn how to better connect with their consumers and customers to better manage, grow, build more profitable brands and become more profitable leaders, and also bring their team members which all have you know, different places to play within within that wheel to come together as well so that they can see it from each other's different perspectives. Shark 16:02 So to talk a little bit about brand management University, I'm assuming that's basically an online extension to continuous learning throughout the year to learn a lot of these principles. Len 16:11 Yeah, so brand manage camp, you are brand manage camp University, is basically you know, where we've taken as now that things have gone virtual, right. So, you know, it used to be that brand manage camp was at one point in time event. But now that things are virtual, you know, it's a different world. And so it's a 365 day, a year, right? It's, it is, you know, a way for people to continue to interact with our content, we are delivering content weekly. So I just did, we just did a new live stream this morning. And we're doing live streams pretty much every week. And then that becomes part of our content library. We have our past keynotes at our content library, we have new keynotes that come in that are just part of that. And so very much can be University is our way of delivering a year round learning experience for the people who come to our conference. Shark 17:02 So you as a former CPG marketer, and now as somebody who's running a conference for it, where do you see what is broken and what is succeeding? holistically, at least from what you think of is best practices or best knowledge that people are, are giving, because so much of the knowledge that's being put out there, like, you know, typically, somebody from campbell soup, or Nabisco is not going to be speaking and telling the world how to do great things with your marketing, it's going to be somebody that works at XYZ agency, kind of library and what you're seeing that's, that's working and what's not working, as far as general knowledge that you see going out there today, Len 17:45 you know, one of the things that we see, because we have people coming from all industries, all categories, is that, you know, whenever someone's winning, someone else is losing. Right. And so we see people succeeding and doing really well right now. And we see people not doing well, and it's hard to say what is that one thing? Because, you know, there's there's two sides to every coin. I mean, I think, you know, the the big thing right now and why I'm super excited about my book about complacency and vigilance is that I think one of the biggest problems that I've seen is people is people, organizations, brands getting complacent, right? And this year blew that up, right? Because complacency works, as long as everything continues to go well, when when stuff goes wrong, that's when you start to see what you've been missing. Right. And I think a lot of folks have not stayed up to date on staying in tune with what their customer wants, staying in tune with what their customer and consumers life is about staying in tune with, how do they communicate with them staying in tune with what's considered competition, right, and all those things go fine until something goes wrong. And this year, she it went wrong, excuse my language, right. And so now we're starting to see who's really able to adapt and change in ways that benefit their ecosystem in ways that benefit their customers and our consumers and their vendors and their, you know, their suppliers and all that. Those are the people that are winning the people that are not able to change the people that are stuck in their ways that are not seeing those changes coming or have any mechanism for for being aware of those changes coming. Those you know, so if I was going to make a generality, generalization, that would be the one Shark 19:33 one of the things I thought was interesting. And obviously we talked about this beforehand, but we work for these large CPG brands, and then went to work for audio brain. Adria Roubini really liked what they've been doing, especially from Sonic branding. She's fantastic previous episode on my show as well. But how do you look at audio today, sort of your 30,000 foot view of what brands should be tapping into more as far as leveraging audio Len 19:59 Yeah. So, like I said, Audrey from rGr Bini from audio brain, she's awesome. She's been involved with our conference since, you know, very, very early on. And so we've worked together for a really long time. And then we kind of created this, like, Hey, why don't we, you know, work together on audio brain as well. And so that's where that came from. But, you know, I've been a big believer in that we've been using her services for a long time. I think, you know, the biggest thing that I've always taken away from it, and I and I think people are starting to now understand, in their minds, I think they're starting to get that voices big, but they're, they're, you know, they're seeing what's happening with Alexa and Google and, you know, and, and all in like, the the voice activated stuff, and, and the interactive stuff and all that. But I think really what it all comes down to is being more intentional about your use of sound. Right? And I think people for a long time have understood, you know, if you pulled the average marketer aside and said, Hey, do you understand how powerful sound is for people as an emotional driver? They would all say, yeah, oh, yeah, I get that sound. Sound is great. Well, what did you what do you do for sound, you know, with your, you know, wet with your website, with your presentations with your, you know, with all the different touch points, you have your in store, your, you know, whatever your IVR, you know, they say, Well, you know, we spent a lot of time on our, on our visual branding, and then you know, and then our agency fills in sound was like, well, that's, that's the problem, right? Because you're being really intentional about everything until that last touch point, right. And I think I think that's the biggest thing, if I you know, if anybody would listen to me about audio branding, the first thing I would say is, what is your brand sound like? Right? And if you don't know why not? Right, and you should be able to have a really specific answer about that. Right? And what are you doing intentionally with your sound? What is your sound meant to communicate? What is your sound meant to? You know, encourage, right? And those things I think most brand marketers even today cannot answer. Oh, completely agree, completely agree. Shark 22:03 So let's talk a little bit more about your book, MIT, what made you choose to write the book be vigilant strategies to stop complacency, improve performance and safeguard success? Your business and life depended on it now, at least what I've read of the book, it lets you know, this has a very heavy influence, and obviously from the title as well as what you're doing as a sheriff's deputy. But what made you sort of pivot in that direction as well? Len 22:27 Yeah, when I, it's a great question. When I, when I started the whole shares deputy thing it was, it was not something I was planning on doing in life, it was an opportunity that came up, it was a Facebook post, I saw, quite honestly, and then and then, you know, I kind of got into it. And it turned into this huge part of my life now. But when I went into the Academy, one of the, you know, I started, when I, when I started doing it, I was thinking to myself, this is gonna be a completely different experience than everything I've done before. And, you know, and I think I felt like, coming into it with my life experience was going to be beneficial. So my ability to deal with people and to, you know, manage through problems, and all those things, which has been, that's been super beneficial, bring that in, I didn't really expect anything to come back from it, you know, towards my other parts of my life. But what I started seeing right away is, there's a lot that I was learning in the academy, you know, as a 45 year old guy and a police academy, right. A lot of things that I was learning that I could immediately frame in terms of this has direct relevance back to my personal life, or back to my back to my business life. And so one of those things that that immediately became clear was this thing that we talked about, right from the very start, which is this idea that complacency kills, right. So, you know, you probably heard the saying, you know, police work is 99%, you know, routine and 1% craziness, right, which is true, you know, most of the time things go right, until, until they go very wrong. And I just had a terrible example of that here in Colorado last week. And so, you know, those are things where, you know, most of the time it doesn't, it doesn't go that way, you know, your calls are not like that 99.9% of the time, but but you have to stay ready for that, whenever that happens. And so a lot of what we learn throughout our entire career, law enforcement is how to remain vigilant, when vigilance is not the easy thing to do, because it's easier just to, you know, just to do things normal, like they've worked out, you know, 1000 times in the past, right. And so we do a lot of things everyday that help us remain vigilant, right. And that's where I started looking at, I say, well, gosh, you know, complacency is not just detrimental and law enforcement. It also you know, destroys businesses. It destroys brands, you know, if you want to think about blockbuster, or Sears or Circuit City, or, you know, you can, you know, whatever ones you want to name off the top of your head that were once great brands that then had a huge fall. You can always trace it back to some level of complacency to things that now you look back and say, How did they not see that coming? How do they not know that they were vulnerable in that way, but they didn't in the moment. If you look at you know, relationships, you know, most most failed relationships, you can, at some point in time attribute back to an element of complacency where people got comfortable and confident, overconfident and forgot about what are the things that we need to do to make this work? Right. And so that's what the book was that that was the idea for the book, as I said, Well, guys, there's so much that I'm learning here that I'm able to apply back to my business life to my personal life. And so the book became, you know, an understanding of what complacency is because we all talk about complacency. You know, you can't watch, you know, a sports game without someone saying, Oh, you know, they're getting complacent. But nobody ever talks about, you know, people will say, don't get complacent, you know, with with Coronavirus, or COVID. Hey, let's not get complacent now. Right. But nobody ever talks about what that actually means. Like, what? What do you have to do to not be complacent other than just not be complacent, right? Well, Shark 26:00 exactly. You don't want to create an environment where people can't be at least at rest. But what I really enjoyed about especially what I read from the first chapter, is just looking at the vigilance check. And it was really exploring to yourself, what does it mean to be complacent, like I don't know that most people even think about that I do the same way as a diver or is when I've done martial arts, most of my career, and I taught combatives, just as you learned as a cop, when you learn situational awareness, when you learn to basically always be learning and you know, from your surroundings in your environment, it gives you a different appreciation to not be complacent and stagnation is what's killed so many brands, but I love the fact that you're asking, you know, what conditions or attitudes make complacency more likely? I love that, like the question, Where are you most vulnerable to be complacent? You know, that that's these are really good questions that people and brands, I mean, any marketer can read this book, not a sheriff's deputy and know the exact same thing. Any leader anywhere can read this and think these are the kinds of questions I need to ask. Len 27:02 Well, and the book is filled with examples. You know, law enforcement is my basis of where I draw the things that we do. But the book is filled with examples from business and marketing and brand, in terms of how do you actually make this work? And how do you apply? I mean, you know, here's a great example. So you're a diver. I don't know much about diving, but I can make some assumptions, right? So one thing I would assume is that you go through some sort of checklist every time before you go diving to check your equipment right. Now. Probably every time you do it, your equipments fine. Right. And if you didn't have that habit in place to go through your checklist, you might be inclined to skip some of those things. Because, I mean, how many times you're going to check it and it's all going to be okay. Right? And then you just assume it's okay. Well, without that checklist without, you know, one of my one of my chapters is about creating habits, right? Because with diving, right, if you if one of those things of going through that checklist every time even though it always works out fine for you. The one time that it wouldn't work out fine. Could be deadly. Yeah. Right. And so that's why you have to have that thing. We were talking you were talking about handshakes. Before we went live. One of my things that I talked about in that chapter is how even before this pandemic, I stopped doing handshakes. Okay. So I don't do handshakes. And a lot of people in law enforcement don't do handshakes, not because we're germophobes, although that's what it would seem like now, but because it puts me at a tactical disadvantage. Absolutely. Right. So when I put my hand out, I'm right handed, that's my gun hand, if I put my hand out, I've now given up my hand to somebody, right? And I've made myself vulnerable. Now 999,000,909, whatever number times out of out of whatever, it's going to turn out just fine. Right? But what it requires me to do, if I, if I, if I sometimes do a fist bump, right? And if I do a fist bump, I'll use my left hand, right? And if I sometimes shake my shake hands, well, now sometime, each time, I have to use some sort of criteria to decide which I'm going to do, right? And so I'm probably going to make the decision based on whether you look threatening, what I know about you what you're wearing, what our environment is where we are, right. So I'm going to make that decision. Eventually, I'm going to make the wrong decision, because I'm going to put that handout without doing the thought process. Right. So my habit is to just fistball no matter what I do, right? Your habit is to go through your checklist, the pilot goes through their checklist every time they they fly a plane, right? In business, there are also things that we do every day, that most of the time go right? But if we mess it up, the consequences are pretty drastic. Right? And so, you know, this is a great way in business, to remain vigilant to to institutionalize things that you need to do where the consequence Is are much greater than the cost of looking at it each time. Shark 30:04 So, Lynn, what do you do for fun when you're when you're not writing a book running a conference or thinking about brand marketing or being complacent? Len 30:13 Yeah, well, I mean, my my family I've got got my family and my daughters and one of my daughters is really heavily into volleyball. So that takes up a lot of free time. Yeah, his club volleyball. If I'm if I'm completely on my own and doing my own thing, it's usually poker. Nice. I do. I do love poker. And it poker is another it fits right in with everything, because a lot, there's a lot of things you can learn from poker to in terms of, you know, taking back for business, and in terms of vigilance. Shark 30:43 So I asked this everybody, you know, shark is my brand. I'd like to know, what is your favorite kind of shark and why? You know, so, Len 30:51 my, I don't know anything about sharks. I'll be I'll be completely honest with you, however, not Shark 30:57 a lot of them in the Denver area. Len 30:59 Well, I grew up on the east coast. I grew up in New York, New York. And you know, I've been you know, fishing in Florida, so I know but I still don't know anything about sharks. But when I was when I joined my fraternity in college, zeta beta tau, one of my, my, my big brother, my fraternity Big brother. He, his fraternity nickname was Miko. Nice, and he's he's a big fisherman, a big boating guy. And so, you know, I have to say, Miko is my favorite shark. Okay, perfect. Shark 31:31 Well, Len, it's that favorite time of the show. I ask everybody kind of a series of questions. So we get to know you a little bit better. Are you ready for the five most interesting questions that you're going to be asked today? Absolutely. All right. So a couple of these are places where you worked as well. So we're going to kind of dive into that you work for Campbell. So question one is chicken noodle soup or tomato soup. Len 31:52 You know, it's funny because I worked on both and and i and i actually led efforts on on tomato soup for a while and we did some really cool stuff. So I have you know, I have an affinity for tomatoes. But my personal favorite is chicken noodle. Shark 32:09 A bad a bad Alright, number two. Is poker player Texas Hold'em or five card stud. Definitely hold them. Definitely hold them. Yeah, I would agree. All right. Number three. Send Nabisco product we're gonna ask about Oh, guys, I was gonna dive into the cookies, but it would just it would be too tough to do that. So Cheez Its or club crackers. Len 32:31 Hmm. Um, you know, I don't I if I had to choose one. Now, when I worked for Nabisco, I worked in their spreads. So back when I used to own parquet, so you Oh, yeah. Okay, so I work on the parquet brand, you know, butter, parquet, right and then. So I didn't even work in the in the biscuits part of the business. But I would have to say, I'm not a big fan of cheesy stuff to begin with. So I would I would go with the club crackers. Shark 33:01 Alright, number four. So this is going to be choosing from this is going to be a Sophie's Choice kind of question, choosing from one of your one of your children, brand management camp conference or brand management camp University. And I'm basically thinking about the in person, you know, multi day experience versus the ongoing throughout the year online learning. Len 33:26 Oh, man, I know you're putting the screws to me, here, here. So this is a cop out answer. But I'll tell you just just my view of what's going to happen moving forward is that we're not going we're not gonna have either one of them, it's gonna be a hybrid, right? Because there are things that we have learned from the online stuff that we don't ever want to give up that we think is fantastic. We also don't ever want to give up the live stuff because there's no replacement for that. If I had to choose between the two, if I if I was making it all about, Shark 33:59 if you were about to make a decision, you were going to go all in with one of the two, what would you do? Shark 34:04 Yeah, I mean, I would think in terms of what probably provides the most value long term to to our, to our customers to our consumers. It's going to be the online and the online if I had to choose one if I had to choose one, but but I don't want to choose one because I know No, are super valuable. Shark 34:23 And they're both super valuable. And it's very hard to look through the prism of whatever day we're in of the month we're recording this, because 30 days out, it's going to be a new perspective and more people will be vaccinated and everybody will be heading to the beach and everything else. So yeah, you know, I don't know, I just know having just come back from my first conference that there was a lot more in person, love and appreciation for being in person than I even expected. It was. Well Len 34:53 just to clarify when you're saying coming back from your first conference because we were talking about this before we went live and just went to your first live conference. First live Shark 35:00 in person conference. Yeah. All right, number five. And the most important question you will be asked today is biscuits, or cornbread. biscuits or corn bruh is definitely gonna be biscuits. Good, man. Alright, so Lynn, where do people find out more about you keep up with a conference, but you know, start looking at getting a copy of the book is it as you get closer to completion with it, and so on? Len 35:23 Yeah, so so first thing is, you know, brand, manage camp calm. So it's brand, manage camp.com. That's where all the information on the conference and brain manage camp University is. If you check me out on LinkedIn, Len herstein, on LinkedIn, or check out brand, manage camp, on Twitter, or Facebook, those are going to be the places where you'll continue to get information about the book as it becomes. So the book is most likely going to be out in, you know, the beginning to mid part of September. So that'll be end. But you know, just connect with me on LinkedIn or connect with me on Twitter. And, you know, you'll get all the updates, you'll get all the information. And yeah, I would love for people to check it out. I think it's I you know, I know, I'm biased, but I can tell you this that I've been I've been around people who have been writing books for a really, really long time. One thing I'll tell you is that it is hard, man, I have a newfound respect for people who write more than one book. Yeah, it's like, it's like people. It's like when you have more than one kid, you know, you have that first kid. And then when you decide to have a second one, you're like, Oh, you already know what's involved in that first one, right? Shark 36:35 Yeah, you just what you do is you get a ghost author or ghost kids. Yeah, Len 36:39 I have I don't have either one of them. I don't and I certainly don't want those kids. Yeah, but But yeah, so I have a newfound respect for authors. And I love it. But you know, it's it's a book that is built around delivering actionable insights that you can use right away. And so you talked about the vigilance questions, the vigilance questions at the end, those were at the end of each chapter, every chapter has questions for you to ask yourself that you can then take the learnings from that chapter and apply it to your business to your life. Wherever you can, and you're going to, you will find that you will walk away thinking about things that you can do right away, how do you keep your threats in front of you, you'll learn what survivorship bias is, you'll learn about this idea of the ooda loop and getting off the axe and, you know, just briefing and debrief. There's so much to each chapter has its own things that you can use right away. So I hope you get a chance to check it out and hope you will. Shark 37:35 Absolutely Len, thank you very much for joining us today on A Shark's Perspective. Len 37:39 Yeah, my pleasure. My pleasure, keep swimming. Shark 37:45 So there was my conversation with Len Herstein, the CEO and president of manage camp, the founder of the brand manage camp conference and the brand manage camp University, the author of Be vigilant, and he also serves as a reserve sheriff's deputy. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from our conversation with him. Shark 38:01 First, I met Lynn through clubhouse, so it only made sense to start off with a comment about social media, he makes a great point about social that we need to revisit always for brands and with people that really make it about them make it about the audience you're having this conversation with. Don't listen to all the advices simply pointed to just the one you see in the mirror. It's not always about you, whether it's a personal brand, or large, CPG brand. This is a social conversation where you're interacting with your audience, having a conversation, make it about them. Shark 38:29 Second, love his focus and reasoning for calling his own conference brand, manage camp as opposed to marketing, manage camp, again, your customers, they're not going to give you a marketing trophy. So even with your marketing and messaging, put it at least through the lens of their eyes, and not just your own or your agencies, big CPG brands often just do the same thing. And keep pushing through that narrative, regardless of what's going on. But look through your customers eyes at your brand. Shark 38:55 Third, being vigilant is not the easy thing to do. It's tough. complacency, though can kill off a business as quickly as anything. It can do it to brands, it can do so in relationships, and he said it can literally kill someone in law enforcement. So become self aware. Even as a brand know your surroundings. Learn where you're vulnerable. And a big shout out and thank you to all the men and women who serve honorably in law enforcement. It's a ridiculously tough job. Shark 39:20 Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at asharksperspective.com. Shark 39:24 Thank you again for the privilege of your time. I'm so thankful to everyone who listens. Thank you to my amazing sponsors invoke and drips, be vigilant Don't be complacent. Keep Swimming in join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective. [music]