#358: How To Think of Business Like Marcus Aurelius w/ Pasha Irshad
Is B2B Marketing closer to B2C Marketing than we realize? Pasha Irshad, VP of Digital at Merritt Group | Demand Generation expert | Agency operations leader, joins Sweat Equity podcast to discuss stoicism, MarTech. digital strategy, Washington Commanders leadership, Washington Bullets brand name, marketing infrastructure, data, analytics, people and process
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Connect with Pasha Irshad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pashairshad/
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, linkedin, talking, thought, stoicism, hostile work environments, marketing, b2b, b2c, b2b marketing, commander, wrote, technology, grew, book, big, nice, business, point, remember
SPEAKERS
Speaker 2 (49%), Law (39%), Eric (9%), Matt (2%)
Law Smith 0:00
Oh yeah, yep. Sweat equity podcasts and streaming show the number one comedy business podcast and the number one business comedy podcast in the world. Former guest Dean Davidoff just sent us a thing a predominant adult put it out there. Yeah, I'll put it out there stepping Oh, man, you gotta know you gotta get an invite. That's the deal. I don't have an activation code, but make money off your after steps. Who knows?
Eric Readinger 0:29
Let's say look,
Law Smith 0:30
we can put it out there. We'll see how many people act on it. We are 20 one's best podcast and streaming entertainment studio eastern United States media vintage infinity award
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is that one of my long gray hairs on your on your laptop somehow? Because I don't think that's the only that's your ladies. I don't think she hasn't always isn't
Eric Readinger 2:25
that well, maybe. Well, there he is. Hey,
Pasha Irshad 2:30
guys. How are you? Good. Good.
Eric Readinger 2:33
Good. How are you?
Pasha Irshad 2:35
It's Monday, man. You know? But it's a good Monday so can't complain. Appreciate you guys having me on.
Law Smith 2:43
Yeah, we're I mean, we're we're going man, so we don't do any. We don't do any preface or anything. We just get right into it.
Pasha Irshad 2:52
Works for me, man. I mean, I listened to some of the pods today. I pale in comparison, but I appreciate it. So I definitely cracking up.
Unknown Speaker 3:01
I like this guy.
Law Smith 3:02
I know I was confirming earlier and I was like, Oh, the rare guests that's actually listened to the episodes we're coming on. Now. I'm nervous. We're tickled pink man.
Pasha Irshad 3:13
I just talked to Leland today to actually while you remember him.
Law Smith 3:16
Yeah. You don't know Leland. Our mutual friend. That's how we got connected originally. I think you know when
Eric Readinger 3:22
Hey, well, so let's get this out of the way right out of the gate. Did law do any work for you? He couldn't remember. Pasta. It's pasta.
Pasha Irshad 3:32
Yeah, it's pasta. Yeah, he did actually helped me, you know, back when I started or we live?
Eric Readinger 3:37
Oh, we're gonna Well, I mean, we're not. We're not.
Law Smith 3:38
We're not live streaming. But we're live right? Yeah.
Pasha Irshad 3:43
Okay, cool. Sorry. Yeah, you know, Ron helped me out probably like five or six years ago, I was really a silver silver marketer in my current agency. And so, you know, I mean, five, six years ago, you can pop on a podcast and talk to Chris Walker. Right? You can hop into Rap Genius and be like, Hey, I have questions. So put me in touch with law. He helped me out and then he got a job pretty much right after so.
Law Smith 4:08
Oh, that's right. That's what happened. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's when I went to work as the president of the Florida markets writing department and camera over
Eric Readinger 4:17
yourself. And that was it. Yeah, no, I
Law Smith 4:21
just remember being I remember talking to you on the phone. When the I think the rays were in the playoffs or something. It was real late at night, talking Facebook ads while in the gym. That's probably at the game. No,
Pasha Irshad 4:35
I actually. It's funny. I vividly remember that. I don't know what that says about my life. But I do I remember that. I definitely remember, like working out.
Law Smith 4:46
I get I actually get my best ideas. If I'm doing some physical activity. It's weird. It's like if I have a joke I'm working on or something business II kind of thing. Like a problem. Like I'll either go for a walk, run or like Just go lift weights. And somehow I had
Eric Readinger 5:02
so many videos of you working in the office, I just was like, this isn't even like funny anymore. Like, it's just I look like I'm obsessed with you.
Law Smith 5:10
We had a spin bike in the office. I don't know, I think, you know, this, like, it kind of dovetails into a lot of this remote workforce stuff. And I think a lot of people, it's gone. A lot of people are, you know, I think he like if you're on a computer, most of the time, if you're doing like kind of keyboard soft work, I think you really have to mix it up and make yourself go stretch or go for a walk or something. Because like, I could sit there for hours and do it. And then I find myself being miserable. And it's like, oh, yeah, we're, we're humans, or we're mammals. You know, it's like, we're not really made to sit here like this. And the standing desk is nice and everything, but it's not doesn't really do it for me.
Pasha Irshad 5:57
It doesn't. I mean, I can be in the office 10 hours. I mean, there's some days where if you let it slide, you literally wake up. It's dark outside on the East Coast, and then it's like seven at night, and you literally haven't left this, I don't know. 200 by 200 room, and it's it's tough on the mental for sure.
Law Smith 6:15
Yeah. And you're out of DC is that right?
Pasha Irshad 6:18
Yeah. I mean, dc in lifelong resident grew up right outside of DC. was obviously a lot worse than but been in the Prop city proper last like 12 years.
Law Smith 6:28
Well, you probably remember my dad he played for the Washington Redskins. 1975. When you're under George Allen? Yeah,
Pasha Irshad 6:37
yeah, I think I remember you telling me this. I definitely
Law Smith 6:41
my my only connection to DC really? Is that an eighth grade field trip?
Pasha Irshad 6:46
Well, yeah, that's why I
Law Smith 6:48
didn't go to DC or no team. I thought every like middle school goes to you going to DC at some point.
Eric Readinger 6:56
I didn't go but now I think I might not have been allowed to go or something. Why don't I don't got warrants? I got in trouble. Oh, that's stupid. I'm
Law Smith 7:05
sure. Well, now you can now you have to?
Eric Readinger 7:07
I don't remember. I don't remember. Honestly. plead the fifth.
Law Smith 7:10
Nice. Take it to the grave.
Eric Readinger 7:14
I mean, it's great is 14 year old boys. What are those dangerous things on the planet? What would
Law Smith 7:20
you you know, you've had an interesting LinkedIn feed, which is kind of how we'd reconnected because you and another friend of mine are are really kind of doing real talk on LinkedIn, which is unusual. We consider this show a little bit of an anti LinkedIn newsfeed because everything's so Sacra. Nice, sweet and like, hearts. Yeah, very PC. Before even this PC movement kind of came back around. Do you remember in the 90s, it was PC was like a big deal. And then it kind of disappeared. Now it's
Eric Readinger 7:52
bad. Really? It wasn't even PC? Like, still awful,
Law Smith 7:56
right? We still don't want gays to marry. I don't think that's that cool. So, you know, one thing that I was going through your feed just going into the backlog of it, and you weighed in on the Washington commander's name. Now, we didn't have a subscription to the biz journal, so we couldn't read it.
Eric Readinger 8:15
But first three lines were amazing. But what do you how do you feel
Law Smith 8:19
about the Washington commanders?
Pasha Irshad 8:22
Yeah, um, I mean, as a fan of the team, and I mean, I grew up right first generation immigrant like that was probably the one thing that really made me feel a part of the community, right, because that was Pakistani mom was Dutch immigrated here.
Law Smith 8:37
RFK field.
Pasha Irshad 8:39
Exactly. So we grew up watching racial slur,
Eric Readinger 8:42
somebody other than you.
Pasha Irshad 8:47
We grew up watching them. And so with, you know, over the years, and Snyder took over, it's been a, you know, it's been the worst owner. Yeah, it's been a descent. And so with a name change. I think it was an Emmy. If you're talking about kind of just being safe, it was playing it safe, right? You're already in a ton of legal trouble as the owner. You've got different lawsuits. You're kind of just a reprehensible human. And they went with something that I think wouldn't necessarily inspire the fan base, but it would make it more attractive to get a stadium out of Virginia. And I think that's what they did. They came up with commanders. That was pretty much my feedback, right? I mean, as a fan of the team, you would like a tie to something with the hogs or just something to the tradition in the past. Oh, yeah. Unfortunately. Unfortunately.
Eric Readinger 9:37
Yeah. Hogs. Dogs.
Pasha Irshad 9:41
Yeah, you'd have to ask. So yeah.
Law Smith 9:45
So we're, we're Yeah, Eric was just saying Off mic or right before we got on is like the teams are being very safe. And now we're just gonna get these very vanilla names.
Eric Readinger 9:55
Cleveland guardians. Where do you Bartels where?
Law Smith 9:59
Yeah, I was trying to run a job role popped. I was like guardians. Well, there's was no legal dads.
Eric Readinger 10:06
Nobody was trying to invade Cleveland. Right?
Law Smith 10:09
Yeah. But what was
Pasha Irshad 10:11
weird is I looked up that name because I was so interested in the roller derby thing came up. Seattle. Seattle did a really good job. Actually. They got a hockey team out there. Yeah. Cracking, I
Eric Readinger 10:21
think yeah, that's that
Pasha Irshad 10:22
was like, just really cool. Like, a lot of thought behind it. The logo was injured. We kind of just, you know, growing up, we would play like the offer and Madden video games, you know, and there'd be like, I don't know. The commander's is like, A is like a team that wasn't licensed
Eric Readinger 10:40
Lido command. Yeah, they
Pasha Irshad 10:43
couldn't get the license. So it was the commanders and
Eric Readinger 10:46
guardians probably
Law Smith 10:48
will really when y'all change from the bullets, that's when it really started. That's, that to me might be the when it started going downhill. Yeah. Because it's like, well, we're gonna really solve this crime problem, right.
Eric Readinger 10:59
I mean, I liked I thought it was cool. Man, Washington pull
Law Smith 11:03
the bullets is awesome. Yeah. I don't think it's a good name. I don't think it had anything to do with guns. I think it was more of like a
Eric Readinger 11:11
sure the plane or something named the team was like, their best, fastest bullet or something like that. Oh, because there's the murder rate so high, we should be the bullet.
Pasha Irshad 11:20
It was. It was just the victim of the times. Yeah. I mean, that was paced like I, I grew up around them, like the city was just the watch and violence. So it just didn't look good. At that point in time. I think they had talked about maybe changing it back. They'd been I don't know they've been talking about it. I think I might have just done fake news like, well, I don't know. I do that too. I feel like I heard it. But I might have just made it up in the spot. In that case.
Law Smith 11:47
Don't worry. Anything I've said on this show is under the guise of comedy, so nothing is. Yeah, there's no you don't have to say allegedly before anything. Really. Yeah,
Pasha Irshad 11:58
I can go on Rogen. Next tip. I'm spitting half truths. And we go
Law Smith 12:03
well, being let's go into b2b marketing stuff. What? Yeah, what have you what if anybody's Listen, so this, the show is really like, you know, we're trying to speak to anybody that's out there trying to do a side hustle or trying to get another career move going. And b2b marketing is very, let's say, I'd say it's harder to find out how to get into it until you're in it. Because yes, consumer base b2c, like consumer base marketing, you kind of get it because you're usually the target of it. But b2b is a whole different world. Where are you seeing in that that kind of landscape that maybe a lot of people aren't aware of?
Pasha Irshad 12:49
Yeah, I you know, it's funny, I've been thinking a lot about this, just because I've been talking about transition a lot. I, you know, a lot of people I know, in b2b marketing, I follow on LinkedIn, I respect, it didn't start, you know, in marketing, and, you know, a lot of transitions. So just the theme of transition, I think applies to b2b marketing. And that, you know, the ways of the ways of b2b marketing five or six years ago, has just changed so rapidly, and like I was telling you, five or six years ago, I had to reach out maybe to you or vendor to get just advice, especially in a small team today, there's so many communities out there where you're able to go and get that advice you can like, get that advice. Rev genius is one among that slack channel, a bunch of smart people on there. There's a there's paid like pavilion where you can almost take classes, take courses, getting there network with a bunch of people, I would just say LinkedIn, in general, if you just go into LinkedIn, search and follow whatever it may be, you can pretty much find out the best information, people are just giving away information for free. So to zoom out, I think b2b marketing is going through a change, it's going through a transition, the days of requiring DNA blood tests for an ebook, or that's not the way it is anymore. And I think the market will always be the commander of change if I can use the commander nice there. And that's just what you're seeing, right? So I think you have a lot of opportunity to get into it and get smart really quickly. That's really a long winded way of saying there's so much knowledge out there. If you are able to take that knowledge, apply it test it, I'm not just saying watch videos and talk to people but actually start a side hustle, right? A lot of people that I follow that are just big Chris Walker's one of them always talks about, you know, mastering something else in the side to uplevel your skill set because once you've got that skill set, I think you're able to really do things differently in 2022 than you ever could before, right? Like you can just freelance you can be completely mobile. And I think we're for privileged in order to be able to do that, but it's I think it's an exciting time. It's just that there's a lot of change. I think the industry realizes there, there needs to be changed. And I think a lot of people are open to really apply more of a b2c lens and b2b marketing,
Law Smith 15:17
meaning making it more personal on the end user side or make exactly so more palatable for for the decision makers, retargeting.
Pasha Irshad 15:28
There's always been this weird dichotomy in b2b marketing where, like, people are like my audiences and on x, right? Look, here's the reality, your audience isn't going to be on a trade journal website for longer than five minutes, right? Your audience is on LinkedIn, they're on Tik Tok. They're on Quora, they're in Reddit. They're in these communities. They're on Discord. And they're all active on those channels. So the notion that, you know, just because somebody is making the b2b purchase, they're only consuming your information on again, you know, trade publication, trade show. That's not really looking at the complete picture. And I think, you know, b2c has always done a good job of making things personal. And I do think b2b marketing is heading that way. Like one of those things is, it's just not asking for information when you're looking for the answer to a problem. You know, I mean, that would have been like me reaching out to you, and you'd been like, hey, I want to work with you. But let me run a background check real quick. Just even before I asked you the questions, right, it's completely it doesn't even make sense.
Law Smith 16:32
Well, it's like dating, right? I always thought of lead generation a little little bit the same way. Like, you know, if I'm talking to you, if I'm talking to a girl, and she's like, let me run a background check on you. I'm like, Okay,
Eric Readinger 16:44
I mean, that's good news for things. I'd
Law Smith 16:46
be like, that's fine. I have nothing to hide. I actually use that to my advantage as a value add. If I might, yeah, I couldn't find me. Could you know, I got great. I've got a list. I might look never had an STD never been arrested. Never put my hands on a woman. What, uh, what else? I don't know. I'm a generous lover. Now, I just like to say that because I think it's gross. I overheard a guy that two women go, I'm a generous lover. And I was like, No fucking way. That guy said that seriously. But, you know, the beat a beat? Like, I think you're right. I think there's a lot of things that if you're in the marketing world, those b2b to b2c, there's like, we can't do these personalized things. In that in the b2b world that you see, in the consumer level. It's like why the in person is a person, you know, the day? Yeah.
Pasha Irshad 17:44
100%. And, I mean, it's, you know, I think I even you know, if you're in it so much, you kind of get trapped in that mindset, right. And so, on the agency side, when you talk to clients, you find yourself not recommending necessarily what you'd like to recommend you almost get into this weird zone of just going with the flow. And I don't think that's good for anything. Right. So
Law Smith 18:06
you know, what, what's interesting, one tactic I had, I don't know, if you get these from the previous agency as worth where Eric is now still, I get these, I get these LinkedIn messages from like, this, like, kind of hot chick that wrote the name of the agency on on a whiteboard, and said, Hey, we're, we want to get a conversation going with you. And I was like, Oh, well, that was a good try. At least it looks like you actually gave a shit to do take five minutes to do that
Eric Readinger 18:31
it probably have a dry erase marker for No, I
Law Smith 18:34
know. But I was just like, go for it. You know, like, that's new. That's something I've never seen, at least it looks like, Look, you took that amount of time. It's not programmatic messaging. Yeah. You know, which is tricky. Sure.
Pasha Irshad 18:47
I think any personalized outreach goes a long way. I mean, I think for me, and I've been saying this a lot. You know, if sales reps or STRS reached out to me via email, I'm just not it's not even that I don't want to answer I just email us so transactional at this point, but that same person, like something I posted, or they say, Hey, like, we have this in common. Already, I'm in a much more open mind state to hear what they have to say. Right? There's actually a there's a book culture Co Co Daniel Coyle, and he talks about this social experiment where if somebody asks for your phone, and it's raining, people have just asked for the phone, got the phone, maybe I don't know, 30% of the time, people that said, Hey, I'm sorry about this rain or sucks that it's raining and then ask for the phone. It was like a 400% increase. So when I just think about when I think about the interaction, like I just think about, there's just being able to connect with somebody as authentically as possible on that first touch is really important. And so why you would do anything to put a boundary around that. I just think Is it's It's idiotic. Yeah, I think at this point, I mean,
Eric Readinger 20:04
it's, you know, it's people putting in an effort, you know, they're using their energy in a way that, you know, they didn't have to. And there's, that's the same idea is like manners. Yeah, like manna is saying, please, thank you. The only reason it's nice is because you're going out of your way to say it. And yes, point you're going out of your way to do a handwritten note or you're going to, you know, where it's like you're not taking the easy way out, you're putting in a little bit of effort, you do
Law Smith 20:27
have to worry about saying, Yes, ma'am. To women now, because I've said it to women and been clapped back, as they say, and I'm like, You're a man. You're older lady. Like, what do you want? Prefer? I just be like, Yes, ma'am. And they're like, Excuse me? And I'm like, sir, is that like the N word for ladies? Like?
Pasha Irshad 20:47
Definitely a generational thing. I think,
Law Smith 20:50
like we've I mean, we've been tricked by people in programmatic messages via LinkedIn. We just had a recent person come on that was like, Yeah, that was we I had someone gross writing messages. I was like, Well, they did a good job. Because they're like, Hey, we really liked the show. And I forgot to ask my follow up question, which is always what episode did you like? Why, right. And I just totally forgot to do that. And it was like, we needed a guest. And the font, I mean, that and if you listen, if you listen to that, when that was a tough one. That was a tough interview. Not taking anything away from her. But that, you know, the cannabis industry. I thought we'd have a little bit more Kush on that bone. Okay. I saw you mentioned books. A book you were just reading I saw you posted about the stack of books you read. One of them was traction, which we both Wait, traction wasn't the one scaling up is the one we both wrote. tractions another kind of scaling scalability book. Any any advice on what to read? Just like there's a lot of stuff you can find. I want to kind of figure out if someone's trying to better themselves. How do you decipher between what's garbage? And what's good?
Pasha Irshad 22:11
Yeah, man, I mean, I think for me, I tried to center it around a few things getting older. You know, one is obviously going to be around just business. Like I think as marketers. It's really easy to like immerse yourself in the world of marketing and everything marketing, but understanding just business in general. And the forces that kind of drive business right from like a CEO or CEO perspective is so valuable. So that's why I kind of picked up traction. Again, that came through a recommendation. You know, I'm big into any type of self help books, so anything like you know, around just controlling your emotion, emotional IQ, a lot of stoicism, stuff. I wouldn't say I was great at it, but working at it. For me, I use it, you know, again, it's helped for me so much is network driven write anybody in my network makes a recommendation. I'm just more apt to go for it. Good Reads is good as well, if you have that app tied into Kindle and Amazon, but for me a lot is definitely network driven. And just you know, I keep I try to always be consuming knowledge. So you know, I do follow like, just business book. You know, top 10 lists all that stuff. Refresh it every couple of months. There's usually something good in there.
Law Smith 23:27
Yeah, I saw the love Ryan Holiday. He writes a lot about stoicism. And you know, it's one of those things that it's philosophical. It's a lot of psychology and stuff. But that was the one that stuck out that that I've read, like a third of the come back to it and like,
Eric Readinger 23:51
what's that fucking feelings?
Law Smith 23:53
No, but that's a good book title. Yeah. Is that a real book? Oh, yeah.
Eric Readinger 23:57
No. First name is Ryan. I think that wrote it. Ryan
Law Smith 24:00
holidays. I've heard him interviewed on a couple of different podcasts. That's how I got into them and talking about stoicism and Marcus Aurelius. And, you know, basically, the way is through it's not around, and that's kind of that's my biggest kind of takeaway from a lot of stoicism, philosophy. Any anything you've kind of, you know, sponged up from that kind of philosophy. Yeah,
Pasha Irshad 24:27
I mean, I think one is just trying to be this is kind of tough to say because the mother was so good at it, but just trying to, for me, it's just think before acting, I think a lot of times we're moving so fast that something happens and immediately you just kind of go right into that emotion I've been trying to work on again, easier said than done right? But just taking some time to pause before going into the next thought or the next emotion or the next reaction. You know, That's probably one that's kind of stuck out with me loosely from that book, but just the idea of stoicism, right? You kind of take things as they come in, you don't get to hire although I think in marketing. Sometimes it feels like you're only as good as your last block is what I say write shares. There's constant pressure, right, especially in b2b, b2c. I mean, it's a metrics driven industry. We don't even know what those metrics are right anymore. So, like I said, not trying to get too high with a victory and not trying to get too low with a loss and really just trying to stay even keel. I mean, I think as I get into my fourth decade, that's really dry. That's how I'm trying to live my life, especially when it comes to work.
Eric Readinger 25:45
That's awesome. That's what I would have said to that, that pause in between. What is it? There's a word they use for action, not action, but like, there's something that happens when you have that pause, or you get to decide how you react. And it's really hard to take that millisecond to be like, Wait a second.
Pasha Irshad 26:06
Yeah, what exact what I don't want to happen is you don't want to end up on social media losing your ship over right. I don't know. It's me wearing a mask and a target line. Because your your whole life is gone.
Eric Readinger 26:18
From canceled canceled.
Pasha Irshad 26:20
Yeah. I mean, yeah, I just, I remember my dad having road rage. Yeah, pretty sure he would have been on social media somewhere. I think that
Law Smith 26:31
Well, I mean, that's an extracurricular in Florida. Road raids used to be huge, like one of the bigger deal growing up. I feel like I saw guys getting out of trucks and
Eric Readinger 26:40
stuff. And I heard a story about it this morning. So Oh, really? Yes. Like what work? What happened was some guy that like, I don't remember what the guy did, but four other guys got out of their car and started whipping on his car, like stopping traffic. So it's still out there. Yeah. Well, you know what, those people
Law Smith 27:00
in Florida, Florida is the second chance state for everybody. Everybody fucked up somewhere else, you know, so we're gonna get some of that. I feel like you're about to say something there. It looks like it took a pause. So
Eric Readinger 27:16
say what you were gonna say? What?
Law Smith 27:18
Who wrote fuck your feelings? Who was up? Oh, yeah. Ryan, Muncie was the guy's name Muncie.
Eric Readinger 27:23
I've never read it. I don't know what you said. Ryan. So I thought it was the same guy. I think it's a stoic thing.
Law Smith 27:29
Yeah. It sounds like it sounds like in the title alone
Eric Readinger 27:32
is as stoic as it gets. Yeah,
Law Smith 27:35
well, stoicism. Yeah. I mean, I always thought of stoic like, your stoic person as that adjective. It's so yes. You know, but it's a little different in the philosophical, yeah,
Eric Readinger 27:50
yeah. Stoic person. It's just if you're stoic, doesn't necessarily mean you don't want feelings. I feel like yeah, process them better.
Law Smith 27:58
Right? In a better? Yeah. And it's not about it's about, like we hear we hear a lot of people on the show talking about, you know, getting out of that double talk or that, that emotional, yeah, that emotional based logic. And it's like, yeah, I mean, that part of me bring it back to like working out. Sometimes if I am getting to like manic, it would calm me down to make a better decision, or like, here's what I'm gonna do, instead of like fretting about it, you get so exhausted, you can't really ever, like, take a yoga class. That's, like, pretty intense. And then right after you're like, I don't care about anything like, right, nothing, nothing matters as much as I thought it did.
Eric Readinger 28:45
That energy was gonna be in your brain before,
Pasha Irshad 28:47
right? And that's really it. Like, again, I've been in the agency world. This is 13 years, 10 years before that. I was in restaurants, right bartender waiter. I think those are probably the two highest stress industries. So I've been doing this for 26 years. And again, I think, in my 30s, I used to deal with that more unhealthy ways. And I think as you get a little bit older, a little bit more grounded. You just don't want to be like that anymore. Right? So I work out, you know, as much as I can, at least four or five times a week, I try to eat healthy. I look, I've tried medicine, it's not really for me, but I'd be believe in exercises, right? I go to therapy, like I do a lot of things too. Because I lead I lead a team now, right? And I don't want to mean when you lead a team and you It's not like I have a large team of hundreds of people, but the people underneath me, I want to make sure that I'm as whole as possible for them. So their experience under me is something that they can, you know, take them to the next job and, you know, hopefully I've impacted them in some way instead of when I came into this industry again, we talked about things being different, man, no one cared about how much you We're working or if your boss was yelling at you in 2008, I'm just being honest. Yeah, right. I saw I saw some crazy things. And I would call those somewhat hostile work environments. So
Eric Readinger 30:12
I want to circle back to that.
Law Smith 30:15
Yeah, that's, that's it. And a lot of Digital's rough and you're you're very much in the digital space. I mean, a lot of that we didn't know really at the time, but it's very much in its infancy, infancy. Totally. We're I know, you're martec kind of purveyor, let's say. Or surveyor, I don't know. I mean, the martech 5000. If you've looked at an infographic of just all the data out there, like Facebook and Google aren't small specks on that map, anything you see on that front, because that that alone can give people anxiety, if they really know what what it is, you know,
Pasha Irshad 30:53
yeah, you know, I mean, it's funny at Mar tech martec day, I think it's next Tuesday, seventh, and they're going to release the marketing technology, I'll probably be I wouldn't think nine to 10,000 pieces of marketing technology software. Again, as the more I get into this stuff, and I, you know, I've, the more I get into this stuff, I just have found myself going back to marketing principles, right. So like, technology is great. And technology can serve a lot, it can do a lot of good, you know, today, I'm working with a client, you know, helping them with their sales and just marketing process, and how do we support that with technology to make things more efficient, that inherently is great. But what are the most important things, they're the people in the process, right, but technology is just the mechanism. And so within that technology, no matter how much it is, the more you get, there's never solves problems, right? It's just it usually adds to them and compounds them. So things like branding, positioning, understanding your customer through research, like these are bedrocks of marketing that have been around since Ogilvy was, you know, sipping a martini, right? Like it's it's in, I think what you're going to see in the next five to 10 years is, I feel like, at some point, there's got to be a Mar tech bubble that bursts, right. And I think you'll probably have some major players that continue to do well, but I think you're gonna see a lot of these smaller, smaller solutions go by the wayside, because honestly, I just don't think there's enough, especially if things slow down, right, with VC, and things slow down, God forbid recession. There's not even enough people, usually on these teams to support all this technology. And so that helps increase burnout, right? Like one of the biggest things about solving your technology stack is not putting people in your organization in positions they don't want to be in, you don't want your event person having to run Salesforce, they didn't sign up for that. Right. Like, and I just think, yeah, five to 10 years, not as much marketing technology, I think, a return to I don't want to say like print ads, but madman data, you know, data, the privacy is just going to get more stringent, right, like
Law Smith 33:10
we saw with Facebook advertising in February. Look what happened. We saw it with iOS 14. Yeah. Those are big
Pasha Irshad 33:19
relay. Yep. Apple relay. Now with email. It's, it's all there. And I just think we're gonna have to get back to more tried and true forms of advertising and not being able to solve everything with attribution, or technology, just because it usually doesn't solve anything. What do you want to circle back to?
Eric Readinger 33:40
Oh, the hostile work environments? In the UFC? 1000s. Just give us a good story. Well, I
Law Smith 33:47
mean, oh, eight we're dealing with. Right, right. Right, when everything fell to shit,
Eric Readinger 33:51
right. We're high. The stage is what I think.
Pasha Irshad 33:56
Because yeah, I don't have one story. I just think it was there. Look, the pandemic, for better, for worse changed the way the world views work, where we can work from how much we want to work, do we give a shit about what we're doing right now? That wasn't around in 2008. Right. And again, recession. So I think at that point in time, it was more of a it was an employers market where now that's completely shifted on its head, right? It's in the white collar. That's even still a thing acknowledge work, really, the end really received even in labor, right? I think it's more of a workers market. And so within that, we start to define the rules, right? Like the market will kind of demand the change that the market sees fit. And so now remote work. I mean, six months ago, we were talking about, hey, well, people might now Airbnb just said, Hey, everybody can work remote. Right? And that's going to be a trickle down effect, whereas in the 2000s you gotta go to the office every day. If you work 12 to 20 I don't know. Again, 1214 hours. Me If no one really cared, right, you're not going to go on LinkedIn and say I'm in a hostile work environment. So
Law Smith 35:06
well, you also didn't know, you didn't really know. Like you just thought. It's kind of an American attitude to is like, you just you hustle, hustle culture, that whole thing started to really rise. And your policy if you bring it up, you know,
Eric Readinger 35:21
wonder if anybody at Airbnb was like, shit, because they've been sleeping at the office, and they're in there. I think we should all go to the office. What do you guys think? You guys
Law Smith 35:34
think we should stay in the rentals? All right. Well, we're gonna have you back on soon. I think in June we were talking about earlier via messages before this off air. But everybody who comes on the first time we asked them this question, what advice would you give your 13 year old self?
Pasha Irshad 35:53
I wouldn't care. It's a funny question. I would tell myself. Yeah. Honestly, I would tell my advice, I would say just stick with it. That's what I would tell myself. I would say stick with it. Stay consistent. And stay true to yourself. Those are probably the three things consistency. You know, staying true to yourself, your integrity, and everything's gonna work out if you do that, because I really do believe whatever energy you put out. As long as it's good and you work hard, good things happen. Things happen the way they're supposed to. Right. That's probably what I tell myself.
Law Smith 36:31
Interesting. Yeah, well, yeah. I feel like we just got a little bit of the onion Ania peeled off. We'll definitely have you back on soon. And him and thanks for coming on.
Pasha Irshad 36:44
Yeah, I really appreciate it guys. Take it easy, buddy. Thanks, man. See ya. Alright, see ya. Bye.
