TOP CMO: Vince Venditti, American Residential Services - 'Embracing Experimentation and Failure'

Vince Venditti  0:00  

Your tests may be something that you think is gonna go super super well, and you might pull that down very quickly because it bombed.

Ben Kaplan  0:06  

This is the podcast where we go around the globe to interview marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies and most disruptive startups, re ideas

Speaker 3  0:15  

packaged a certain way want to spread, you want to be told us someone else's simple, surprising and significantly created. Unlocking viral creativity is to make it rapidly scalable.

Ben Kaplan  0:27  

This is top cmo with me and Kaplan. today I'm chatting with Vince Vendetti, Chief Marketing Officer of American Residential Services, who oversees marketing for more than 47 local brands and 7000 professionals in the residential HVAC and plumbing industry. What I love about Vince is his journey from entry level finance and marketing role all the way to cmo with a laser focus on performance marketing and revenue growth, but also an emphasis on leading with authenticity, and even vulnerability. Want a CMO who will never show their imperfections and never own up to their mistakes? That's not Vince. So how do you reimagine marketing as a discipline that everyone from the boardroom to the frontline can really get behind? Let's find out with Vince Vendetti. You have this varied background between marketing and finance. And you kind of got started in your career at humble beginnings, at a Panera not working at the Panera for the Panera was your office. So So kind of take us through your journey to to cmo and how you navigated that star.

Vince Venditti  1:35  

Ben, thank you so much for having me on. It's it is a an interesting story. I studied both marketing and finance. And I always thought it'd be one or the other. And when I, you know, when I first kind of got into the workforce I did, I started a rising star. But I was part of a startup company that was an agency and we had three clients. We also had three employees. And this was at a time when you know right out of college, you think a lot about status. And you think about where you're positioning yourself and your career and where it's starting. And we were we were working at a Panera. But the benefit is that I got to sit across the desk from a former VP of the Fortune 200. And I guess across the coffee table and learn everything that, you know, she taught me. So it was such a great experience for me. And you know, the tough thing about those startups is that there's not a lot of security. So when you lose a couple clients, you sometimes don't have a business anymore. So I went the exact opposite direction and ended up at a fortune 200, which was a quite the opposite experience for sure.

Ben Kaplan  2:32  

And you have the experience to have really growing something and growing something you come from a performance marketing background from a company that, you know, you think is a nice size $35 million company but becomes a multi billion dollar company while you're there. So how does that prepare you for your cmo role now?

Vince Venditti  2:53  

I didn't know it at the time studying marketing and finance. Again, I thought they were very different tactics and topics. But the reality is, is that performance marketing today in the way that the data has progressed and the way our ability to analyze and gather data, the combination of marketing and finance really is what performance marketing is. So it prepared me quite well. I can't say that I knew it at the time. Exactly. This is how it was going to come together. But you know, I've been been very blessed at my stint at Fortune 200 company in finance, I did pick up a lot of the finance skills, a lot of the analysis skills, a lot of the analytic skills. So this was first energy. Yes. And that was that was between the startup and then I like to call my Goldilocks kind of right in the middle of the startup in the Fortune 200. There's there's a there's a middle ground and that was that $35 million cutter company,

Ben Kaplan  3:44  

you rose there to be you know, senior vice president performance marketing, you came from an analytical background. What did you learn that now? And we'll we'll talk about it soon for American Residential Services. But what did you learn that you bring with you now, you're kind of in a new role. You've been elevated to Chief Marketing Officer, you're a new chief marketing officer, what are the lessons you take from performance marketing, analytics and everything prior to get us to the present day?

Vince Venditti  4:10  

Yeah, you know, when I when I look back at it, and I'm so blessed, and happy to be part of the ARS organization, it really is a special special company. And what brought me here was always this really a focus on marketing operations, I think so oftentimes, we focus on trying to do things perfectly. I use the example of like, when when you're building something in marketing, I think so often, we try to build the Mona Lisa, and we try to build something perfect. And I always think about it is in a way of do we need to build this out of playdough? Or do we need to carve this in marble, and a lot of times with marketing, your tests may be up for two, three hours, right? Depending on the size of your budget, it may be something that you think is gonna go super super well. And depending on your budget, you might be able to you might pull that down very quickly because if it bombs it doesn't do well. So what I learned is that you need to always find the right amount of effort and the right amount of hours that you're willing to invest into something without knowing the impact of that, right. I think the beauty of a really successful marketing campaign is that you don't necessarily know it's going to be a successful marketing campaign when you're building it. So I would say it's, it's in a way, making sure that you're investing the right level of effort into a project, trying enough projects and really encouraging a fail fast culture. I think so often, cultures are afraid of failing, and you're afraid of a marketing test that doesn't go well. But the truth is, is that you're still learning something, it's still a winning away. So iterative testing, fail fast, learn fast, and really just encourage a growth mindset of always, Hey, how are we going to get 1% better each day?

Ben Kaplan  5:50  

So do you have to be a perfect marketer? Should all of your campaigns meet expectations, just as you laid it out all nice and pretty in your official marketing plan? If that's describing you, then you're probably not an innovative marketer. Marketing innovation is the process of discovering that one marketing insight approach or tactic that doesn't just drive incremental change, say boost your customer conversion rate by a percentage or two, rather, can transform your marketing approach as you know it. To do that, you have to be willing to experiment not haphazardly, but with great intention, a clear hypothesis, and a way to measure results. Maybe all of your budget isn't spent on innovative marketing experiments. But if none of your budget is, that's a big problem to

traditional marketing, fear failing 20% of the time, people might come and come and look at it, or hey, what's going on here? Why are these not working. But a growth marketing mindset is that you set up a series of experiments that you can test, and to your point about kind of having a hypothesis and ideas that you might fail at 19 of them to get to the one, the 20th, that suddenly can 10x your growth is the one thing you were looking for, that totally transforms your marketing. And so what's difficult is that easier, a little bit easier to say, when it's a startup or a scale up, you can do that harder, when you're a publicly traded company, you got a board of directors and everything else. And so you have to kind of navigate, how do we carve out this experimental approach that we know can even have higher returns, that we have to do that in the context of bigger organizations, you know, more conservative organizations, stock prices, investors, board of directors and all that,

Vince Venditti  7:40  

you know, you use the word stock. And that's exactly what I was thinking of, I was thinking of the finance side of this, when you look at your stock portfolio, and you want to try something new, you don't sell every asset you have and throw it all in, right. So I think like that finance approach is very much true, you have to hedge your bets, right? So if you're gonna fail, fail with a very small amount of your holistic marketing plan, right? So that's the if you set it up, right, like any, you know, good investor, or, you know, and that's this combination of marketing and finances, you can afford to lose 1%, right? So be aggressive with that 1%, I wouldn't recommend saying, Hey, we're gonna try this test and putting like, 40% of our daily budget into it, because that's a big gamble. Right? So it's all about, I guess, depending on the organization, depending on the progress of how that quarter or how that month, or you know, that fiscal period is doing that could really help determine how aggressive you want to be with that test. And ultimately, it again, is going to come back to the culture and the leadership and how aggressive of a company or app? Well, and

Ben Kaplan  8:39  

what's interesting is that if you're going to adopt more of this growth, marketing mindset, there's like three factors that become critical factors, that as a more traditional marketer, you might not encounter a lot. So So one is, how do you minimize risk, or cost? So what's different is that if you come from a more of a big company, annual marketing budgets sort of plan, you can't wait a year to figure out that it's not going so well. So you have to like move up your time horizon, you got to test and you got to, like, kill things fast that clearly have no chance of working and that that's one aspect to what's a little bit different is you have to have a clear measure of how do I know if it's working? Meaning what is a metric? What is a bar that you have to set to say like, Okay, if we get if we convert x amount percent, then we know that, that our test is successful. If it's y percent, which is a bit lower, it's not successful. So you actually have to set that up. That's the second dimension. And I don't know if you think about this one. The third dimension is if you're going to experiment and test, you might as well pick something with a high upside of what it means if you do figure it out. So why do all this testing if it's just going to be like a little kind of blip? That doesn't mean anything, test the thing that if you're right, you know, you're gonna get to use your stock market example. You're gonna get that skyrocketing stock that's gonna Transform, in this case, the marketing and the business ROI of your company. When most people experiment through trial and error, their sole goal is to confirm initial assumptions. If they are sure a particular approach will fail, they won't see the need to test it at all. But what if your initial assumptions are flawed? Legendary advertising executive David Ogilvy, for instance, was known for his love of ad testing. And the way he did it was truly unique.

Speaker 4  10:32  

That's the single most important word in the lexicon of advertising his test. Always keep testing, testing new ideas, new headlines, new levels of spending, new media combinations, new kinds of commercials, Test test test.

Ben Kaplan  10:51  

Despite being the most knowledgeable advertising expert of his day, Ogilvy would challenge his own core assumptions to drive discovery and innovation. He did this by including so called mistake ads in his testing, ads that violated his own rules, and that he was certain wouldn't work? Well, most of these ads were disastrous, as expected, a few became surprising hits, leading him to study them more closely for the hidden lessons and insights they revealed.

Vince Venditti  11:23  

I love that Ben and I, I've always encouraged the teams to take big swings. And what I mean by that is, let's say we're doing an AP test, the one way we can do it is we can change one little element of each ad, and then iteratively find out over the course of time, okay, this is this is what element it was, my approach has always been to go drastically different, right? Like, we're going to put up two ads that are incredibly different. And if that one wins, we know there's a winning element within that ad. So then let's start to kind of like, break down that ad and and you start to dimensionalize it and say, okay, is this part of it? Is it this part of it, the benefit to that is you already have a winning recipe, you're just starting to reverse engineer it right, instead of building it forward, you're kind of reversing it backwards. So that that has been one thing that I've always really leaned into is be aggressive. And I think that it's so important as a marketing leader to push that culture and really give people on the team the confidence that you have their back, right? Like if we're making smart decisions based on data, and we know when to pull it, when to push it, you know, support the team and let's, let's take some big swings, because that's how you grow right? That's how you grow. You have to be you have to be aggressive.

Ben Kaplan  12:42  

I love this one story about Thomas Edison, perhaps the most prolific American inventor and businessman.

Unknown Speaker  12:50  

I spoke in the original phonograph portrait, Mary.

Ben Kaplan  13:00  

And Mary went on. Not only did Edison develop many groundbreaking inventions such as the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, but he was also one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork, to the process of invention, even establishing the first industrial research laboratory. When Thomas Edison hired someone for his invention lab, he had lunch with them first, over a bowl of soup, Edison would observe, they add salt and pepper before tasting what was in their bowl? Or did they wait until they tasted it? Before proceeding with the seasoning. Edison would pass on the premature seasoned errs, because those who relied on assumptions instead of curiosity, wouldn't be great innovation partners.

Vince Venditti  13:53  

It is so funny, you said that I haven't thought about that. In years, my father used to do the same thing to us. He'd be like, you don't even know how it tastes? How do you know how much salt or pepper you need to put on it? So that's like one of those things I learned at an early day. I don't know that he got it from Thomas Edison. But like, What a funny kind of memory for me. And I've also heard it's insulting to chefs, too. So you definitely want to you definitely want to taste the food before you decide how much spicy you need on it. So that's, that's quite fun.

Ben Kaplan  14:20  

Nothing worse than I don't know if you've traveled much abroad, but you travel abroad. You're an American there. And if you ask for the ketchup, Oh, no. here and they're gonna get they're gonna get mad at you a nice steakhouse here. Do

Vince Venditti  14:30  

you see that going? Oh, yeah.

Ben Kaplan  14:33  

The ketchup on there. Without trying it first? Yes, then you can put the ketchup on. Okay. So let's, let's bring it to the present day, you're in a new role. You're a new CMO. You've had very senior marketing positions before you've been an SVP, you've helped grow a company that grew from 35 million to a couple billion, does it feel different to be a CMO? Is there a different considerations than then then being like a very senior marketer is there is there others Things that you feel like you have to think about, or is it more of the same for you?

Vince Venditti  15:02  

I think so. I think one of the biggest things that, you know, my career has obviously progressed quickly. And I'm very blessed for that. But a big part of that has always been a very hands on keyboard approach, I up till very recently was still writing my own SQL statements, I was writing, building landing pages, I was I see myself as much more of a captain than a coach, right? Like I'm on the floor with the with the other people. So for me, one of the things that what I'm realizing is that the difference is that you really, really, really have to lean into delegating. And that's been something I've been challenged by challenging myself with is, yes, I could build this dashboard. And yes, I could write the SQL statement, but we need to make sure that, you know, everybody around us is growing. And we're all we're bringing each other up. And that's always been a core belief of mine in career growth is the fastest way to grow is to bring people up next to you. And I think it's a bit counterintuitive, because so many leaders or professionals think that the way to separate themselves from the pack is to actually push other people down. So I've always been so focused on almost making myself replaceable, to some extent, because I think that what that allows me to do is focus on bigger and it just kind of continues to raise everybody's skill set. So delegating, that would be the difference for me, between SVP and CMO is you've got to really, really, really, really delegate and get good at it.

Ben Kaplan  16:27  

As you do that. I mean, I think one of the challenges that, you know, I don't I don't know, anyone who says, oh, yeah, I don't want to I don't want to delegate. You know, like, I'm not into delegation. I mean, maybe you could, it's rare, a senior person, you'd say that, but it's harder to do in practice, because here's the situation, let's say, you could do something, you could do it yourself, and you could do an hour, give delegate to someone else, it's not even question that someone else is doing it an hour, it's going to take them a week to do this, right. And they're probably going to come back to you multiple times to review, you're gonna give them feedback, ultimately, it's going to take you longer than the hour, even in your personal time, that you could have just done it. And it's not the most efficient thing for the company, right? Because maybe, I mean, you're, you know, a higher price person, you're more expensive person for that time. You know, maybe it's, it's so costly for them to do it. And maybe it's an important result that you maybe should have just done it, the given all that do, you still have to have them do it, because to your point, you're playing the long game. And if you do it, they don't have the experience of doing it. And that has value. And on top of that, you have a limited amount of mindshare. So even though it's easy for you, if you're thinking about this at all, you're not thinking about something else that other person cannot think about only you can think about it. So how do you navigate that it's way more complex,

Vince Venditti  17:48  

I still deal with that. That's, I mean, that is so real. What I do in that situation is, I do it with them, like, hey, let's sit down, I'm gonna show you how to do this. And I'm not just going to talk you through it, you're gonna have to go do the research, let's literally sit down. And this is pre COVID. Right, but now we can share our screens, let's sit down and go through this together and treat it as a training exercise. If it's something I have to do two, three times, I'm going to do it the first time, you're going to do it the second time with me watching and helping along the way. And then on the third time, if you feel comfortable enough to do it alone, great. If not, come ask me questions along the way. So I always try to have a very hands on approach to delegating. And as only as much as that person needs it, right? Like you never want to be too hands on. If somebody says hey, I got it, you got to trust them and let them run. But I think that's such a valid thing to bring up in is It's tough when you know, something can take you potentially an hour, and it's going to take you 45 minutes to even explain what it is because it's complicated, and you've been doing it forever. So then it's like, well, in the short term, the short, the short term decision is absolutely like I'm gonna keep doing it. But that doesn't provide any scale in the long run. So it's kind of balancing that at time. But I totally see what you're saying. It's a great point.

Ben Kaplan  19:04  

Let's talk specifically about the business of American Residential Services. What is unique about it is you're a sizable business with national scope. You're doing a lot of home services. So that could be any number of of home, repair HVAC, or other things to improve those services. And you have the challenge of being a business that has acquired a lot of other companies to grow on your side, meaning they have a different name. Last I saw, I think you have over 40 different individual brands that might be a certain location in Boston in the northeast, they're known by a totally different name. You don't want to get rid of that brand equity. So you keep it but how does that impact your marketing where you have you grew through acquisition, you have different ways of doing things, you have different brands, and some of what a CMO often does is standardize this, make it more efficient, make it more scalable, make it more consistent. Is that Is that difficult to do?

Vince Venditti  20:07  

Yeah, you know, I think it is difficult. And I think a lot of CMOS make the mistake of coming in and trying to change that far too quickly, without knowing all the details without putting the boots on the ground. So part of what I'm doing is I'm traveling to each one of the locations to to get to know the GMs to get to know the people who've had their boots on the ground and have interacted with the customers and really understand because without that core understanding, you can't make any decision. Now the reality is, is we've done pretty extensive brand research and AI and identity studies within each Geo. And some of these branches have absolutely phenomenal brand recognition. So you never ever, ever want to consider even thinking about taking that away in their community. They're well known, right. So I think the biggest thing is just really from a marketing perspective. And knowing that it's a nuanced decision, there is no single decision that can just go across the entire company. So one of the challenges is always there's there's micro cultures, of course, because it is a product of acquisitions, but part of what we're doing at ARS is really bringing things together and from the systems and processes and buying power perspective, supporting these field operations teams really seeing ourselves as the support to them, or as so often I think companies get it backwards, they think about, you know, a corporate office, and then the fields the support, I think it's the exact opposite. We are the support to enable the the field teams and these individual branches across the country to generate business and to, to scale and to grow and, and to overall just be better each day. So I think it just it has to be a very nuanced approach. And in my first 60 days, I've just had a ton of value and getting the boots on the ground, I think many marketing leaders get that wrong, you have to have to go out meet the people roll up your sleeves, and quite literally like climb in the basement, check out the plumbing and just gain the respect for what these people do it is it is truly amazing how the skilled labor what they do. And it's a it's a special

Ben Kaplan  22:08  

when you have that many different I think I see here 47 different individual logos that make up our American Residential Services. How do you think about mapping out marketing channels, when many of them may have grown, particularly, they have high brand equity and a local community? I mean, they may not have for instance, what your background is, which is, you know, kind of sophisticated performance marketing, digitally oriented marketing, they might not have that at all, they might not need that. So how do you think about that by you know, and move the business forward, you need to grow it. So you can't just do what's always been done, otherwise, you're gonna get the results we've always had. So how do you think about kind of merging in new things, but but sort of, it sounds like respecting what got them to that point as well. And understanding that there may be some different dynamics locally, that you might not even understand yet.

Vince Venditti  23:01  

I think at its simplest form, my core belief is that you do not change successful businesses, you tweak them, you enhance them, right. So just like in the the testing approach we had where we said, we're going to try this little thing, and we're going to hedge our bets. And we're going to add through tweaks and enhancements. I think that's the approach you take when you have a successful business, you tweak it, and ARS is an incredibly successful business. Now, if you're a CMO, and you're joining a, I don't know, like an unsuccessful or a failing business, yeah, you might have to be a bit more radical with your choices and change might be more necessary than tweak and enhance. But I think that's the truth is, it's an incredibly successful business that's been around for a long, long time. And really what we're looking to do is, again, help support and help grow and through tweaking and enhancing and lending some hands on expertise from a marketing perspective to help ultimately drive more demand to each location, which ends up growing the business and ends up being, you know, not only great for the community, but great for the business as well.

Ben Kaplan  24:05  

What are the channels that are your demand drivers? What are you What are you using to to grow demand in these areas a lot, a

Vince Venditti  24:11  

lot of both traditional and digital channels, it would be nothing surprising compared to you know, what most organizations are doing, they had a great foundation in place, even though the decisions were being made 75 Different times at each location. When I look at the data, they were doing a great job. So, you know, there's obviously TV, local TV, local radio, you know, elements of digital marketing and print advertising, but a lot of your, you know, standard marketing demand generation as well as brand building mediums. So, you know, what I'm looking at is really bringing incremental opportunity through more of like performance marketing type opportunities, which is really what my background is. So I'm really looking to add to the successful platform that they have versus get in and try to change something that has clearly We've been working for

Ben Kaplan  25:00  

it. What is the most important marketing channel that you have in many of these markets? Like most critical to the business? And then what is the most underutilized channel where you think there's the most opportunity right now?

Vince Venditti  25:13  

I think it may depend by location. So I hesitate to give a blanket answer. But I think in a, in a need based category, like age back and plumbing, being top of mind to consumer to the consumer is always super important. So when you think about your media schedules, and you think about your TV schedules, or your mass media having that brand that people remember, and that when they do have a problem, because let's face it, you don't necessarily buy new HVAC unit when you don't need one, right? So it's not necessarily something where we're like, we're, you're always trying to kind of catch people at the right time. And that takes repetition. And that takes, you know, quite a bit of frequency. So media, in TV, mass media, those are incredibly important channels, I mean, for any business, right, but for, for a company like ARS, I mean, it's, you'll see our commercials quite a bit on TV. And it's, it's it, they're fun to watch

Ben Kaplan  26:05  

this. I'd love to chat about some of the other companies that you admire from Marketing, and maybe some of the other individuals as well, one to start off with Coca Cola, quintessential marketing company, the kind that it's like, okay, why would a beverage company be in the middle of this like statement about democracy in the world? And all this kind of thing? And yet, Coca Cola? Coca Cola is there? What do you think of the Coca Cola? Coca Cola? Does marketing? What do you take from a company like that?

Vince Venditti  26:37  

I think what I admire about Coca Cola is that each one of their brands stands on its own. When you think about it, when you look at Sprite, when you look at Fanta, when you look at a number of their other products, it's not called you know, coca Sprite or a coca Fanta like it. These are brands that are totally standalone. And there's a small tie back a were part of the Coca Cola company. And I think that's, I think what that does is it really it just shows how you can build brand across several different brands, but also have meaning that ties back up to a parent company like Coca Cola. So you know, there's obviously there's so many different brand architectures out there and different different ways to think about it. And let's face it, a lot of it at the beginning is just general research, and to some extent throwing darts until you get it right. But also, at the same time, Coca Cola is built over like 100 years, right? Maybe more. So it's it's aspirational, but obviously a lot of baby steps to get there. But ultimately, if I could, you know, really just wrap it up, I would say it's all about I just really admire the brands and how they stand on their own and each represent kind of their own values while tying back to something that is a bigger purpose.

Ben Kaplan  27:46  

What about What about like a brand like Nike? You know,

Vince Venditti  27:50  

I was just listening to the recent Nike podcast that you had put out, Ben, and it was, it was such an amazing thing to listen to, because talk me talk about a different industry, what I've always really admired about some products, like and I use a shoe example all the time. The beauty in shoes is that there's obviously a category awareness is near 100. Right? So when you think about other products that don't have high category awareness in the same 30 seconds that Nike is simply saying, Hey, here's Nike, here's the experience, here's the brand. Here's why there are brands better than other brands, at no point do they have to explain what a shoe is and why you wear it and what the need is, right? Whereas in many, many categories, in that same amount of time, you have to create the need for the product, as well as explain why your brand is the brand of choice. So Nike took what is you know, obviously a commodity, it's a shoe, and they are absolutely a hero, brand archetype. But what I think they've nailed. And I think a lot of companies follow suit in this is that the shoe itself isn't the hero, it's, you are the hero when you hit the game winning shot, right? So it enables you to be the hero. And I think that when I think about the hero, brand archetype, Nike nailed it. There are many companies that nail it, but I think they're the ones that did it the best and I'm a sports guy. So that's another reason to certainly look up to Nike.

Ben Kaplan  29:15  

And finally, I just want to touch on that. One of your influencer says as a marketer is someone who's a well known marketer and well known in kind of, especially social social media circles. Gary Vee, what do you take from Gary Vee and why do you consider him a role model? He's not a performance marketer, really like you are? Why do you why What do you take from him?

Vince Venditti  29:39  

At its core, if you're a marketing leader, at any point in your career, marketing centers around authenticity, people are able to smell inauthentic behavior very quickly. So I would I really admire about him as he represents the word authenticity in every way possible. But more so I mean, authentic Sitting in consistency, and finally, vulnerability,

Ben Kaplan  30:05  

if making mistakes, and the willingness to experiment is actually a driver of innovation, to all of us as CMOS need to be mistake free, this points out another benefit to owning up to your mistakes, being authentic and vulnerable. If you as cmo are willing to let your guard down, then others will feel willing to do it too. And that has some tangible team benefits.

Vince Venditti  30:32  

You know, I think it's important to be yourself each day and show people to a large extent, your unfiltered self, right. So he is he has taken a risk in that and like this, this is who I am. And this is what we represent. And I think it's done a lot for not only him personally, but also his brand. So when I think about the values that I have, as a marketing leader, I really lean into authentic vulnerability, there's so much power, I think people see it as a negative to say, like, I don't have the answer to that they see that as like, a negative, but there's a lot of power in being able to say, You know what, I don't know the answer to that I don't have the answer to everything. Of course, nobody does. But guess what this person on the team does, they're gonna take the lead, and they're gonna go to this meeting and speak on behalf that is like the ultimate way of leading in my mind. And it's brought me far up to this point, but three words authenticity, vulnerability, and consistency. And being yourself each day, I think those are so important. And I actually had the chance to meet him just very recently, and had a quick call with him. And it was, it was it was super, super cool. And I'm very grateful for it.

Ben Kaplan  31:36  

Well said, it's also a humble way to do it. And as you said, as marketers, and certainly as we get to senior points in our career, you're not going to get further along, rolling the belt yourself, you're not going to be in your small little rowboat. Are you real on real, real hard, even if you're real strong, even if you're real determined, you're just one person in a rowboat, you're only going to get so far. So you have to start thinking differently and complimentary. And you have to start enabling teams to do it. And it sounds like you've done that and excited to kind of see what's next for you events. Because I love your trajectory I love you've, you know, been clearly risen fast and been very successful. But you've done it in a in a humble in a team building in a way that allows others to rise with you. Final thing, at least I'll say, and I'll give you the last word, which is besides all of that, besides that, it's good business and good karma. And it just makes sense. It's a heck of a lot more fun to do it with other people. It is fun, right? It's like let's succeed, let's do with other people. And what's the point of being like successful or accomplish a goal if you're gonna do it by yourself? Do it with others, so why not have everyone rise up?

Vince Venditti  32:43  

I so so so resonate with that. And I have had a lot of very strong mentors throughout my career. And I've been very blessed in a right place. Right time. Right Action all along that and I feel deep down like I don't mean this to sound rehearsed. I mean, I think oftentimes people say and it is but like, I feel it strong obligation to pay that forward, right to recognize the tomorrow's talents that that want to grow and to help arm them. And in doing that, right, you don't do it for them. But like if they want to be pushed, and they're looking at one of the funniest things, and this is kind of one of the last things I'll say, but I know we're wrapping up. But a long time ago, a mentor of mine told me that you don't find a mentor, a mentor finds you. And I always thought that was so powerful because I thought man like I've, I've had people, I've just been so blessed with this. But so what that means for me is it's so important for me to find these these people who have what I call the three eyes. It's Can you come up with an idea? Can you influence that idea? And can you implement that idea. And if you can do pieces of those three things, you are going to go very far in your career and with the right mentorship, you can grow very quickly. So it's all about giving back and everybody grows, everybody grows together.

Ben Kaplan  34:00  

According to Vince Vendetti cmo perfection is often the opposite of cmo results. To be an innovative marketer, you've got to experiment. And to really experiment, you have to be willing to fail. You also have to be willing to challenge your assumptions and remain curious. Even if that bowl of clam chowder looks like it could really use some ground black pepper, you might be wise to try it first. That's why the CMO title requires a different type of leader, one who Vince says is authentic, vulnerable and able to inspire their team to achieve great things. The currency of the CMO role isn't just KPIs and ROI. It's trust and transparency too. If you enjoyed today's episode, please don't forget to subscribe and leave us a rating or review. For top CMO. I'm Ben Kaplan.

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