SPEAKERS

Christian Klepp, Mark Treleaven

Christian Klepp  00:08

Hi, and welcome to the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast. I’m your host Christian Klepp, and one of the founders of EINBLICK Consulting. Our goal is to share inspirational stories, tips and insights from B2B marketers, digital entrepreneurs, and industry experts that will help you to think differently, succeed and scale your business.

Christian Klepp  00:30

Hi, everybody, and welcome to episode 3 of the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast. I’m your host, Christian Klepp. And today, I’m thrilled to have Mark Treleaven join me, Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Treleaven  00:43

Thanks, Christian. Feelin dunk. This is gonna be fun. And I said, I’m not gonna speak too much German during this podcast.

Christian Klepp  00:52

No problem. Well, let’s just hope right to it. So why don’t you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Mark Treleaven  01:00

Perfect, thank you. And thanks for inviting me on this Christian. We’ve gotten to know each other over the last couple months and we’ve talked about this kind of podcasting and kind of get on the interview because some of the things that you and I uncover while just having our chats are pretty cool. I’m Mark Treleaven. I’ve been in IT since 1988. When I was about 18 years old. Based in Toronto, but I’ve spent the quarantine in Nova Scotia, which has been really exciting. And we’re kind of heading back to town pretty soon as things are kind of opening up. And I have family out here and it’s just been a sort of a outdoor paradise compared to just being stuck in the city. So I’ve been around the world. I’ve lived in Europe for about 7 years of my life. I’ve lived in Asia in Singapore for work and worked with major companies. Got a lot of history and Toronto helped found the Indigo books and music, and worked at Bell mobility. OHIP, hospital insurance, Ontario’s insurance plans. And what else? I guess the big ones have been McKinsey and Company for about 3 years, and then PwC off and on for like 12 years, and I left PwC. It’s an interesting thing like going into these huge companies, and then coming out and being I started my own boutique firm in 2016, and really applying all of those sort of big firm learnings down to really fun and actually challenging, awesome work with my clients. I help my clients really understand what’s happening in the industry. And whatever they’re dealing with technologically, I’m able to really keep them focused and keep them positive about things and really deliver on the vision that they have. That’s really fun.

Christian Klepp  03:02

That’s fantastic marketing. That’s quite the magnificent life that you have lived and worked around the world and you’re all all the better for it.

Mark Treleaven  03:11

Exactly. I think that’s part of like attracted, our conversations are all has got a global focus and I think we can act locally. Obviously, we’re kind of acting in little silos right now. But we can see the impact of global globalization and global thinking and we’re all on this little blue dot having a good time.

Christian Klepp  03:33

Indeed. Let me just quickly circle back to your current company, it’s called Brand Sandwich, am I right?

Mark Treleaven  03:40

Yeah, Brand Sandwich Communications Partner.

Christian Klepp  03:43

Great. So what motivated you to start that like and take that leap of faith into the world of entrepreneurship?

Mark Treleaven  03:52

Yeah, really great. Thank you. I think one of the main motivators was the speed at which things could get executed in the larger organization. So it’s not really an indictment on anyone. It literally is all of them. There’s an independence that comes with consulting and I’ve been a consultant since I was 18/19 years old. And really like getting something done very quickly is does not have to have that kind of pomp and circumstance of a major project inside an organization. So there’s that and I think the innovation, the bend that I have towards innovation in the newer technologies was slower to kind of influence in the larger ship. So as soon as I left I got called back as one of the blockchain experts in the industry I got called back to have client conversations around blockchain which was really cool because moving from an internal to the client facing role like that is pretty rare. But I’m also very comfortable out there having the conversations with people about and simplifying major, disruptive technology such as blockchain in 2016. We can have a whole podcast just going where it’s come from in the last 5 years, but artificial intelligence, computer vision, the crypto world, but also distributed ledger technologies are very powerful and fun to explore. And not just, I think there’s something about the speed at which that I wanted to act and the impact I could have was diminished in in that larger environment. So interestingly, by going small, I can have a bigger impact.

Christian Klepp  05:38

Absolutely. Certainly going down that path was not without its own set of challenges, but it was definitely a much more rewarding experience, wouldn’t you say?

Mark Treleaven  05:48

Yeah, everything’s pretty rewarding. I gotta say, I’m very proud of the work that we’ve done, and the things that helped build like, Indigo and stuff like that. There’s a lot of really great and powerful things. The other thing I would say about entrepreneurship are making that leap wasn’t that hard. All my friends and all the people that I’ve worked with before, and the reputation I have is still with me. And that’s a great experience to go out on your own, but not not feel alone at all. It’s really cool.

Christian Klepp  06:20

Absolutely. So definitely we were going to talk about this topic, but from one day to the next, the world has suddenly turned upside down. And short of stating the obvious, everything right now in the current state of global affairs, you can pretty much say that things are very far from business as usual. So almost overnight companies that have had to make that switch to working remotely. A lot of them have also migrated a substantial amount of their operations online. So, before I go on to my next question, just let me let me highlight some statistics that I’ve found.

Christian Klepp  07:04

So according to Stats Can, as the COVID-19 outbreak began, sometime in late March, almost 40% of Canadian employees started to work from home. So that’s approximately 5 million workers that shifted to home working arrangements. And south of the border in the United States. At that time, there were already 7 million people that were working remotely. So that was about 3.4% of the population. And that was, according to our research done by a firm called Gallup. And undoubtedly, that number has increased since. And then Harvard Business Review released an article which I wouldn’t say it’s stating the obvious, but it’s also saying that, this switch, you know, to working from home or working remotely, of course, it presents its own set of challenges and some of the ones that they’ve listed here are lack of face to face supervision, especially amongst larger organizations, lack of access to information, social isolation, and one that I can certainly relate to is distractions at home, because there’s a lot of people out there that are stuck at home with their children, with family and so forth.

Christian Klepp  08:26

So just from your own personal experience, what are some of the challenges that you’ve seen your clients go through as they make that switch to remote work? Have you helped them overcome these challenges?

Mark Treleaven  08:40

Well, yeah, It’s a great question. I think we’re going to talk about the new normal later. But I think the world’s just turned itself on its ear. The idea of the commute as a valuable time spent. The access to more information, I think is a really key one of those challenges. I think one of the things that I’ve been really clear with my clients is to keep your communications wide heck open. Here is what are our policies are around this, that and the other thing. And then so speak to the employees and speak to the people and the teams and the and the groups and have them really see what kind of puzzle piece they fit into the vision of the whole organization. Massive thing. One of my clients, one of their biggest challenges was not being able to pay their vendors for a couple of weeks, almost a month. And because there was a lockdown or whatever there’s no physical access to the check printing machine, which is like some archaic, really nice, triple bonded blah, blah, blah, great solution in a vacuum. But really when you saw that was the single point of contact or failure that that client had. How to say we get the person in there to go and do the checks, but actually, it was just a very simple shift of identifying which vendors, we have an ETF, like electronic or EFT situation with, and having the conversation with the bank around getting everybody up onto that platform. And so the digitization and the move to the cloud, I think is kind of something I’ll come back to and it’s not just but a little bit of a trend. It’s massive, and I think that’s one of the biggest things is like, okay, let’s stop being afraid of our data out there. Let’s stop being afraid of somebody coming in with a penetration test or whatever. And having your VPN, your Virtual Private Networking, allow the home experience to mimic the in-office security. So, balancing those 3 things, but I think what I’m pointing to is like, let’s get the fear out of the way. There was fear of change. There was fear to disrupt what was working and there’s sort of platitude or like an easy way to stay the course if it’s not broken. Everything got broken, even taxes got broken. But we should take advantage of this time. And that’s what I’ve been working with my clients to get them all digitized. Anything that they’ve got in a friction-filled environment, is to really be ruthless on yourself. Looking internally and check what are the processes that are just broken right now? And how is it and who have I not been listening to, about how to get this thing to the next level? And what was I afraid of a 5 year old project that failed to move your CRM up into the cloud, doesn’t mean you don’t need a CRM. And it does mean that that team that handled your vendor and client relations is now sort of hobbled or disconnected from reality. And that’s what I think a lot of my clients and the business leaders I’ve been speaking to like they’re really ready to take on that ruthlessness of internally looking. What is it that’s broken? And how do I find a mark, find a trusted adviser that knows about the things that I don’t need to know everything about CRM systems or going to the cloud or how my back end integration and securing my VPN. I don’t need to know and learn all of that stuff. I need to have somebody help walk me through it. And I think that’s kind of a theme for some of this discussion today is like really grasp that you don’t have to learn everything about it and that your past experience has nothing to do with what you’re actually capable of now.

Christian Klepp  12:39

Those were incredible insights Mark. Thank you so much for that. You touched on several topics which I believe would resonate with the listeners, like what one of them being of course keeping the communication line. This is not this is not the time to have a kind of like Cloak and Dagger culture. The other one that you that you touched on was like embracing the change and the advancement of digitalization, and not to pull up this barrier or this resistance to it.

Mark Treleaven  13:13

Look at what you’ve been afraid of, too. I think you touched on it right there. It’s like, let’s revisit and just now that everything’s kind of tossed up in the air, let’s figure out well, what is working and not working for us. The other thing about communications I want to in. You said, the cloak and dagger, I definitely wanted to mention that. There’s a real tendency in this that Harvard Business Review, think about supervision, and face to face access to information. There is a real pitfall with using some of these key logging and attention, take over the laptop camera and see if someone’s paying attention during the meetings. There’s a lot of big brother opportunities that I think should be 100% avoided. And be clear about anything that you’re doing or expectations around when you expect people to be available. But like you said, and it ties to the distractions things too. It’s that I’ve seen a really powerful shift in communication of here’s what I’m available, here’s what I’m not available. And here’s how I’m going to like show my Do Not Disturb on, and not book meetings and use Calendly, and use your tools, use the digitization of your day. If you’re more productive in the morning, then get up and get that done before breakfast chaos. But be in a conversation and really clear about what you’re producing that day. And what’s expected of you is a match that is like so critical and you do not have to put any big brother tips in there. That would just be disastrous.

Christian Klepp  14:54

Right, that’s exactly right. I find myself doing some of these things to where I just make sure that I get a certain amount of work done like, say before lunchtime. And then in the afternoon, you allocate a certain amount of hours to having calls or working on proposals, doing research, so it became a little bit more of more effective way to manage your time.

Mark Treleaven  15:18

Yeah, really get in. And I think that’s another myth is that this, pandemic is really shifting our sense of time. When are we productive? How long does things take? How long does this take? What is the cost of opening that social media app for 10 minutes? Where did you go? Your attention span, and I use a lot of tools like to help me keep focused. I definitely put on the deep focus by neural beats, those YouTube videos, and audio really, is just really a powerful way for me to use that. There’s another app on my phone that does sort of quiet noises for 15 minutes. So set those timers set your intention, get that focused in there, and really try and take that time, maybe it’s 45 minutes in the hour, and then get outside. I’m always outside, and I really, half of our half my Zoom calls are with an ocean view, I’m very lucky. But it will get balance between being in a bunker and being sort of just try and figure out how to get outside and what works for you,

Christian Klepp  16:27

Indeed. And especially now that the weather has gotten a little bit warmer, and for those of us who are deprived of an ocean view, you can probably just set your desktop screensaver to the Pacific Ocean.

Mark Treleaven  16:40

What is those virtual desktops on Zoom or whatever, right? Exactly. Yeah, it might look like a balcony. It might look like a walk around the block. It might look like whatever, even looking forward to something is is a powerful motivator for that kind of new stress we are under.

Christian Klepp  17:01

Exactly. No, I love it. Mark, let me try to do this, because you’ve touched on some of these topics already. I’m going to try to like wrap these 2 questions into 1. And we’ll let’s go out of that way. So, one is about, you spoke about digital trends. So I guess the first question was really about, what are some of the interesting trends that you’ve seen coming out of this recent digital migration? Number 1, and number 2, we were discussing the topic of getting over that fear of digitalization and that resistance to change. And what your advice would be, people who are still doubting whether this is all still worth it, because it might be a budget issue or a bandwidth issue or whatever other concerns that they have.

Mark Treleaven  17:50

Yeah, really get up to. So number 1, the trends I think, the tools are evolving and they’ve been here but it’s like the adoption has not been there. I think one of the things I’m very proud of is the PwC transition to work from home. During this time, I’ve got still got lots of great friends there and everything. They were like god wasn’t even a blip on my radar. I was 4 days a week at home already. So we had already kind of instituted that cultural change in that shift. So I think that, watching what the bigger people are doing, and then not being afraid this is kind of my premise of my business. ‘Not being afraid’ then apply to the smaller organizations, you can take advantage of all of the investing and investment in crazy developments. It’s happened over the last few years to get things like tools like Slack up and running Trello. So communications tools, like the old status report that you used to fill out in Excel is pretty dead. There’s a very powerful real time tools that allow teams to be clear about where they’re blocks are, where the issues that are happening. And it doesn’t have to wait till tomorrow’s stand up meeting or the or the town hall with your leadership. You can instantly get at and understand what where the hell anything is right now. And that’s really exciting. I think the digitization of information and status is not as hard as it used to be to figure out. You’re literally taking a widget from A to delivering it to the client at C or D or E or whatever it is. When you can see where it is in those steps and who’s got the ball, who’s gotten football, that’s a shift that I think is highlighting why the digitization is kind of just naturally occurring.

Christian Klepp  19:46

Right so you could almost say it’s a natural evolution in the in the world of working at least anyway.

Mark Treleaven  19:53

You better be where else you’re definitely left behind and in the dark. I mean really when you think about it’s not easy to implement these tools people despise sometimes right? There’s pitfalls, no question. But again, I’m gonna go to the trusted advisor mode and say this is where you have the pitfalls and the tips and trends and things like that. When having someone who’s got the finger on the pulse of what’s going on listen to what your challenges, and maybe its status maybe it’s capturing… I think one of the things I wanted to mention is personal promises are so powerful right now. When you say to a roomful of a Zoom room of people that you will get that done by Friday. In the development world, software development, we’ve been doing that forever, that’s like the Agile and team-based execution is super powerful. And if you’re struggling with your promise to raise your hand as soon as possible, we’re in a world war that is digitally very simple to have the support you need on getting personal promises done. And I think when we get to that micro level, that we’re just people interacting, and you’re set in your canvas, and you’re clear on the vision and where you fit in, and as the puzzle piece. Then those promises can be really, really powerful. And you can be like, holy crap, this is so much easier than I thought it was going to be. And I’m more productive, and I’m happier. And I’m done at 3:30, whatever it is, and I can hang with the kids or whatever.

Christian Klepp  21:29

Absolutely. It was all of those things. For examples, Zoom’s got that feature where you can record the call. So it saves you the trouble of having to like, some meeting minutes and send it to everybody after the call, because it’s all been documented already.

Mark Treleaven  21:45

Yeah, really good. And I also think like things like Dropbox Paper. I don’t know, if people have heard, like, literally one of the coolest new digital creation content creation mechanisms. It’s hard to describe, it’s called Paper and it’s hard to describe, imagine. But it really is like a real time documental assignment tool where everybody’s editing at the exact same time very, very powerful connections there. There’s two views, there’s calendars, there’s, you can pop a video right in. So if you refer to something in a meeting, You don’t have to remember to send it out to people. You want to put an @ symbol to Mark that by Friday, and it gets all this stuff like by Friday, I’m going to send Christian that awesome by normal beats YouTube video. You actually just copy paste it right into the document. Everybody has it from now on, and it’s completely searchable and fun. So things like that, where it’s like a paradigm just got broken. I don’t have a Word document with a template for my meeting and it’s that had URLs in it but no one’s ever going to go back and read them. It’s like real time simultaneous editing. Things that kind of blow your paradigm for how things used to go. That’s a really powerful one.

Christian Klepp  23:06

Well, absolutely, first of all that. And secondly, it saves you the time of like having like, type up all those meeting minutes afterwards and then just send them across.

Mark Treleaven  23:16

Here’s a piece of paper right in front of me, and I’m scribbling away. But that helps me stay focused on the questions in the conversation, right. So find your tools that work for you.

Christian Klepp  23:28

Great. There’s another concern that a lot of B2B businesses and digital entrepreneurs will have, in terms of like, moving closer towards digitalization, and that’s of course things like, the loss of productivity, motivation, and there’s a certain degree of disruption that will take place if they do make a switch. So, what do you think companies can do to ensure that the switch goes smoothly. Just keeping in mind that there is no such thing as like 100% guaranteed.

Mark Treleaven  24:02

Yeah, I think you should be ready for it to not go smoothly. I think being prepared to have a work stream that just catches the challenges that you’re facing. Like have someone who’s tasked with. I want you to watch us during this process. I want you to  interrupt me and tell me on a certain time or whatever pace you can handle, but really like, embrace the problems that you have, because that’ll help you to really shape what’s going to be successful long term. Just like anything when you’re starting it. You’ve got a lot of assumptions and if you go in thinking your assumptions are correct, you’re pretty likely to stumble and fall and I think that’s one of the things that kind of… to answer the second part of your master question is: What is that fear? What is that based on? Let’s examine it, put it out on the table, have a conversation. The last project we did that smelt like this sucked. It was awful… and 14 people are not here anymore because of that project or whatever it is… Deal with that, get it up on the plate and say, I’m assembling something and that was x. Here’s why that was x. And this is y, here’s how we put up work streaming. And Bob over here in the corner, it’s gonna be Bob’s our sheriff, for making sure that we catch these pitfalls that we know are already on the plate, but we’re not stopping. That’s the other thing too is leadership has that acting in the face of the uncertainty and sort of unknown and fearful. But really set yourself up for success by putting in the systems that are going to catch not only like the failure before it happens, but really the learnings that you’re catching along the way. Don’t think that everything’s gonna go smooth in one month and then you’ve entirely disrupted your processes or something.

Christian Klepp  26:01

Exactly. It all boils down to accountability and ownership, as cliche as that sounds: Listen guys, we’re all in this together. We need to we need to try to make this work. So, let’s help each other out.

Mark Treleaven  26:17

Well and being clear on what’s not working with how it currently is, like, if people are really stuck with the way things were before COVID, they can’t be stuck in the paradigms. They have been forced to change. So I think, the last tool we use that was big brother-y and watching what we’re doing and people didn’t fill out their status reports and change their things and things like that. Or there’s always crickets at the meetings or whatever it is. Listen to it, capture it and say what was it that was in your way that you didn’t feel safe, or that we were listening to how you saw things going off the rails ahead of time. Perfect. Let’s put something in place, You’re in charge of that. Like give more stuff, give people different things, I think is really important too.

Christian Klepp  27:08

Exactly. No, that’s awesome.

Christian Klepp  27:11

Hey, it’s Christian Klepp here. We’ll get back to the episode in a second. But first, is your brand struggling to cut through the noise? Are you trying to find more effective ways to reach your target audience and boost sales? Are you trying to pivot your business? If so, book a call with EINBLICK Consulting. Our experienced consultants who will work with you to help your B2B business to succeed and scale. Go to www.eliblick.co for more information.

Christian Klepp  27:41

I recently attended a virtual event that was hosted by the Toronto network of the Customer Experience Professionals Association or otherwise known as CXPA. So this is probably one of a few events that they’ve already hosted virtually. Prior to COVID, this was all like in person. You’d get all these people into a room and then you’d have the these events and now they’ve completely shifted it to online, which worked out really well. So there were a lot of great takeaways from that session. But I think one of the takeaways that really stood out in my mind was that they were saying that: Now is truly the time of the customer, because of the constant the innovation and the digitalization the rapid advancement of the digitalization that has come out of this crisis, that the expectations of the customer have now been elevated. So, in your opinion, how do you think that tech and digitalization can help to address these elevated expectations that customers have?

Mark Treleaven  28:48

Yeah, I think I’m gonna push back a little bit. I think the elevation of customer experience… it’s kind of a little backwards too. When you actually think about what we’ll put up with. It’s okay to get your Amazon package in two weeks because you know the PPE is on the first 10 trucks or something like that. I think what part of what the disruption here is that, the normalization or the expectation of instant gratification, and instant, like entertainment event around things, the entertaining part of an experience of going into a store and having somebody bring you green tea or whatever, all of that stuff. I think it’s kind of gone the other way people are pretty realistic about what it is. So, I think there’s a couple of answers to your question. Number 1 is communication, your digitization of your communication of status of where things are, for the client it is definitely a new bar, like there’s just a new floor for how much you need to be really clear on what you’re delivering to them when. I think that’s a really key part of this customer experiences is the communication that you’re doing, and there’s no reason to have any kind of manual processes around that. There’s so much opportunity for automation of sequences and timing. Really, I think the message the other answer I would give is just put yourself in the customers shoes to do the hard looking up, what was that experience like for that person such that I got that level of a complaint, or that, this is the part of the pipeline where they’re dropping off. And that how expensive that is to your business is like something that has to be looked at right now. This is such a good opportunity look at where your clients are dropping off and what they’re telling you, even in your website, all the data analytics, it’s not that sexy, it can be pretty fun. Like you can ask some really powerful questions, but literally look through the logs as to when people are getting out of the your pipelines and being responsible for that. That’s what I think is the opportunities to say, wow, that really does land like a push or two weeks dark on this process on the thousand dollar transaction or something like that is not acceptable. I wouldn’t put up with that from my grocery store or from my Service Ontario or whatever we do have an elevated sense of, I want to understand where things are. And if you need anything from me that you’re clearly telling me what it is you need from me at this moment. And otherwise, I’m just counting on you to keep your word.

Christian Klepp  31:36

Right. Oh, that’s fantastic. Although you did speak at length about aspects of the customer experience that are consumer focused. These principles can also apply in the world of B2B. Some of the things that you mentioned definitely resonate in that.

Mark Treleaven  31:53

B2B honestly, like I was trying to think about that like, do I have any B2C projects? I don’t. No. Everything is about being clear about where I am and where you are and who’s got the football. That kind of clarity of what, where I need you to add value right now is this department, and where I need you to not go dark is this department Why? And then quiet. I’m going to be telling you, Hey, client, this is where I’m at. And here’s what my expectations are from you too. Yeah, that’s a B2B situation. I used grocery store, but that, again, we are B2B, but we’re also just the same people. We are Cs everywhere else in our lives, right?

Christian Klepp  32:42

Great. Mark, everybody’s obviously talking at length about the current situation or the current crisis, if you will, on all the problems that it’s costing. We’re clearly facing something that’s of an unprecedented scale, and we know that. But let’s try to look at it from a more positive perspective and that positive perspective is that this crisis to going back to some of the things that you’ve spoken about in the past couple of minutes, it’s also really, like, propelled innovation forward. From your experience and in your professional opinion, what potential do you believe is out there for B2B marketers and entrepreneurs or even organizations of large to improve their product and service offers through innovation?

Mark Treleaven  33:32

Yeah, I think one of the really powerful things that I got out of this and I was on a couple of different webinars, and different levels of people from an organization were participating and there was like an opportunity with the person leading the webinars to like, explain what’s basically been challenging you. And all levels of the organization from the C suite to the VPs to the managers to the employee who’s being asked to reduce their time, then the disruption and the pace of change was something that, I think it’s calming down now as things start to open up, but that pace of change was super disruptive for people, not knowing the unknown. So having I mean, it’s kind of not answering your question, but I think that talking and listening to your people from all levels, and understanding, like even your clients, if you’re just like me, I’m a small company, but my clients, I want to hear from them. What are their pain points? What’s changed for them and what’s actually stayed the same? So I think there’s like a couple of spins to answer your question. If you can actually get at that you’re providing, you’re moving your football from here to here, and that’s what your your gig is or your job or your puzzle piece in the organization. Are you good at that? Are you enjoying that? We literally have an opportunity to disrupt the heck out of ourselves. I personally am in the middle of that, because I left 2 great apartments in Toronto, my girlfriend and mind. And I just gave notice on June 1st or whatever to give mine up. All my stuff’s still there. Are we allowed to swear?

Christian Klepp  35:21

Try not to.

Mark Treleaven  35:26

I’m like literally questioning where do I need to be to have this kind of business transaction and business input, and impact that I want to have in the world? And the answer is anywhere with Wi-Fi.

Christian Klepp  35:40

Powerful Wi-Fi.

Mark Treleaven  35:42

Good, powerful, consistent Wi-Fi. Exactly. I’ve got a good friend Dave CD, shout out to his project to get rural, high speed internet out there for very, very cheap. This is a really, when you look at where do you want to live in the city? Where do you want I want to live in the country? What kind of place in the world do you want to be? You guys wouldn’t know that I’m in Nova Scotia, it doesn’t matter. I’m still having an impact on the world, no matter where I am. So Molly and I are like digital nomad life. We’re really planning for that. I’ve got a bunch of things to do and clean up and have fun in the summer in Toronto. And then we’ll see you later. I just need some Wi-Fi. So I don’t know, like I think, challenge everything, find what you love, what you love about, what you love about what you’re doing. And then also like, look back and be with your partners and your family and look at what is really powerfully important to you right now. And just roll with whatever you come up with. Have fun with whatever you’re doing because it’s no fun driving across town for one every day, Yeah, just take this opportunity to kind of reflect. I wanted to mention self-care too. I think it’s not like my bailiwick or anything like that, but I’ve totally succumb to the fact that like surrender to the fact that this is actually super important. Your time and brainpower can be focused, and it could be not focused, and you could be grumpy, and you can be powerful, and you can look at when and what happened to have all that. What’s working for yourself and just really being clear about that and communicate that to the people around you. And then do it.

Mark Treleaven  37:44

It’s not deep, but it’s definitely from experience.

Christian Klepp  37:48

But mental health and wellbeing is equally important, right?

Mark Treleaven  37:52

Yeah.

Christian Klepp  37:53

You both got though these times as well.

Mark Treleaven  37:56

Yeah. And whatever, like, bye self-care.

Christian Klepp  38:02

Exactly. You touched upon this a little bit earlier, but I’m gonna circle back to it again. So, what do you believe is a new normal that we’re going to be returning to?

Mark Treleaven  38:22

Honestly, I don’t know, if I knew I would probably invest in some of these companies. I think right now. We’re going to be back on the patios, we’re going to be slowly getting back to normal and hopefully, some sense of sort of normal, but I think people are kind of embracing the fact that there’s been a gateway that we just pass through, and there’s probably no going back. I think that’s something I would want to leave people with or talk about is like, how do you see your role on the planet right now from your living room, from your desk, from your stand up desk or from your backyard, on your porch, where are you actually adding value? Where are you? What do you enjoy, and look at that, and then start to do those kinds of shifts that I was talking about, it is time to have your own your side hustle that you’ve been dreaming about. It is time to, represent yourself as, as a big company. The little guys, you don’t need a physical location to have an impact on what you’re good at. And I think another thing, I would say is like, find your agency, find your personal brand, that kind of stuff is really powerful, especially in B2B and marketing. Like I’m a marketer. It took me a while to like, kind of match that, but I have to sell my projects. I have to sell the simplification, I have to sell, invest in yourself in which direction you’re going. But don’t try and do it all. I think another thing that’s come out of this is that the are a heck of a lot of smart people that are offering themselves to help and coach you. And I think that like it really is very, very powerful to get something that you’re not necessarily. You don’t have to be good at everything. Find the trusted advisor who understands things like what the next five years is going to look like for communications and tools and efficiencies and, and moving to cloud and security and things like that. Just find those trusted advisors, but even with ourselves, like find your fitness coach, find your shout out to Molly and get real to heal team. Find your nutritionist that’s really going to listen to you as the goals that you want to get and create for your life. And really, let’s just start sharing our knowledge really like on this podcast even. It’s about it’s not about technology. It’s not about just innovation. It’s really about what are we doing like how do you want to actually impact the world right now?

Christian Klepp  41:04

Indeed, Mark, this has been such an excellent session. I mean, it was informative. It was insightful. It was thought provoking. It was so you. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing. So what’s the best way for people out there to connect with you?

Mark Treleaven  41:23

Sure. Check out BrandSandwich.com, I didn’t talk about LinkedIn very much. But I really did. You know, when I went out on my solo thing, I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn. And there are connections to be made. There are people out there that are looking for you. They’re looking for your talents and your uniqueness. Get out there and promote yourself and definitely everyone connect with me, tell me that you found me with Christians podcasts or whatever. I’m happy to join in and continue the conversation with anybody about this. And if you do need that kind of trusted simplification, a very complex integrations or moving from an old DRP system or upgrade, your idea is stuck in your brain, how do I get it out there to the market? That kind of thing. That’s where I’m powerful. And I love like, I love having an impact on people and I love creating things from nothing. That’s why software so much.

Christian Klepp  42:23

Beautiful. Mark, thanks so much for your time. And I wish you and Molly the best of luck with your digital nomad life. But please do think about us, here in Toronto and do come with us once in a while.

Mark Treleaven  42:36

There might be some couch surfing going on or I’ll pitch a tent in your backyard, Chris.

Christian Klepp  42:41

Absolutely. Mark, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Mark Treleaven  42:45

You are welcome.

Christian Klepp  42:48

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast, to learn more about what we do here EINBLICK, please visit our website at www.einblick.co and be sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or your favorite podcast player.