Jeff Perkins With ParkMobile

Intro: [00:00:06] Coming to you live from Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for another episode of tech talk with your host Joey Kline

Joey Kline: [00:00:17] Welcome, everyone. All right, we’ve got a good show today, we’re talking to Jeff Perkins, CEO of Park Mobile. You know, one of the themes of the show tends to be transitions. It can be a transition from someone. Starting a new company could be a transition of someone raising money for a company and can be a leadership transition. I’ve known Jeff for a number of years, and you know, Jeff’s background is traditionally marketing, but, you know, recently took the helm as CEO of Park Mobile and wrote a book. So we got a lot to talk about today, Jeff.

Jeff Perkins: [00:00:50] Thanks, Joey. Great to be here with you.

Joey Kline: [00:00:52] Yeah. Ok, so let’s let’s let’s leave the book for a little bit. All right. I definitely do want to talk about that. I want to talk about the writing process, but let’s talk about kind of you as an executive. So you’ve taken. You were the chief marketing officer of Park Mobile for the last several years. Correct. And recently took over as CEO. Yes. Ok, so did you ever see yourself in a CEO role before?

Jeff Perkins: [00:01:16] It’s hard to say so many things have to fall in place for you to get to the CEO position. So I never focused necessarily on being a CEO. I focused on doing a great job and maximizing the impact I could have on the organizations that I work for. And the rest kind of took care of itself, I guess. So if you’re someone who you know is really focused on results and impact, you know that path may lead you to the CEO position if things go your way. But it’s hard. I mean, when you get to the CEO position, you’ve essentially made it to the top of the organization and there’s only room for one person at the top of the organization. And so it’s, you know, it’s one of those challenging things where I, you know, I always thought I could do a CEO job, but I didn’t want to get so focused on becoming a CEO that it would take away from the the greater focus on making impact on the business, driving results for the business and being as good as I can be in the position I was in.

Joey Kline: [00:02:30] Sure, but but it is somewhat of a unique path because typically, if you know, like not that I have numbers for this, right? But you know, if you look at sea level positions that have become the CEO, usually it’s tapped from maybe CFO or CEO. You know, it takes a very unique type of marketer because I think a lot of marketing, of course, as it should be extremely creative. And sometimes I would imagine it can be a little bit tough for some folks in that role to transition it to the big seat. Obviously, not for you so much. And so it’s just it’s a very different lens, I think, than most people come to the CEO role as opposed to from finance and operations.

Jeff Perkins: [00:03:12] A lot of people have said that to me since I took on the CEO role, and but I think that’s a very technology centric view. Yes, in technology companies, usually the CMO does not become the CEO, but. Look at Procter and Gamble, every CEO of Procter & Gamble has come up through where the brand management track essentially the marketing track, right? Most large CPG companies have people that have been in marketing at some point that have taken the helm as CEO. So it’s probably not quite as as uncommon as it seems, sure. But in those companies, there’s more of a system to get you from assistant brand manager to the CEO role, whereas in most tech companies, if you’re in marketing, your real focus is on communications, branding, lead generation and sometimes many marketers, you know, are comfortable in that silo and kind of tend to stay in that silo and don’t branch out into other parts of the organization. Yeah. What I have always tried to do in my jobs is to master the role I’m in and then look for opportunities to expand my portfolio, so not necessarily move out of the job I’m in, especially if I like that job and I feel like I’m doing a pretty good job at it. But to expand the responsibilities and that’s what what’s what’s happened to me in most of the jobs where I’ve had, I worked at a company called PGI, where I was VP of marketing there, and they gave me a sales team to run. I’d never run a sales team before, but that was a good opportunity to learn something new, expand my portfolio while still doing the core marketing work that I was good at and trained at. At Park Mobile started as CMO and then added product to my portfolio and then added Actually technology to my portfolio. So when our last CEO, John Ziegler, decided to move on into a new role, I was running essentially 75 percent of the company between marketing, product and tech at that point. And so it kind of made sense that I would step into that role.

Joey Kline: [00:05:19] Well, does the final little bit. So let’s actually back up for a second if anyone listening to this for some reason does not have park mobile on their phone, which if you’re listening to sports right now, go download Park Mobile. Give us the high level elevator pitch. What is Park Mobile, right?

Jeff Perkins: [00:05:36] So Park Mobile is the number one app in the United States for paying for parking on your phone. So in the past, when you were parking, usually had to pay it a parking meter, sometimes a parking meter that only accepted coins. There’s still cities out there that still have those parking meters out

Joey Kline: [00:05:54] There, hopefully not for long before you

Jeff Perkins: [00:05:56] Charge. I know. Yeah. But quickly people said, Why do I have to go to this piece of hardware when I have a mobile device here and I could pay on my phone? So people really were looking for that as a solution. So we rolled out in the United States about 12 years ago and right away it started gaining traction at the time. Actually, it wasn’t an app because there weren’t apps 12 years ago. It was a call in number. So you would dial in to an IVR line on your phone and you would set up your account and punch in the number and you’d be able to pay for parking on your phone. And as technology evolved, we built the app and that’s what twenty seven million people use today, and we’re adding another million about every 30 days. So the business is growing very fast because it’s just something that people are demanding, especially in a sort of a post-COVID. I don’t know if you could call it post-COVID yet, but as the world comes out of COVID, as cases decline, as more people get vaccinated, you are clearly seeing more people on the roads and that means more people parking. And that’s very good for our businesses, our business in the cities that are collecting and rely really on that parking revenue.

Joey Kline: [00:07:09] I do want to talk about that and how people’s driving habits, you know, is affecting you guys. But I mean, look, it’s like I I vividly remember that initial version of your product, and I sort of remember I feel like I’ve there have been several stages of parking, right? First is, you know, you’re carrying around coins, OK, second is, oh my god, you know, this thing takes a credit card. That’s incredible, right? That was, I mean, just huge game changer alone. And now it’s like, I even have to take a credit card out of my pocket and I can’t just do this on my phone. You know, what is wrong with this, you know, city or owner that hasn’t actually signed on park mobile? It just the the convenience factor. You can never go back.

Jeff Perkins: [00:07:53] Right, right. Well, even for us, we see that too. Yeah, because we we first rolled out an iOS app and everyone was very excited and they said, Well, but I have an Android device and I want to use Park Mobile on an Android device and then we roll out an Android app. So now you have an iOS and an Android app at both work very well and then people say, Well, I don’t want to have to download an app to pay for parking. Why? Why should I have to go to the App Store and download something I just want to pay in a web browser, a mobile web browser? So now we have a mobile web app, and then people said, Well, why do I have to download any app or use a web browser because I do everything in my Google Pay? App, so now we’re available in the Google Pay app, and so I keep fielding

Joey Kline: [00:08:31] People’s complaints and you’ll get there well.

Jeff Perkins: [00:08:34] Well, it shows you the constant evolution of consumer needs, right? And you think back to the old framework of Maslow’s hierarchy, you know, as you meet one need, it creates another need. So as something gets easier, people start to think, well, that could even be easier than it is now. And and so it’s an interesting all tech companies actually have to deal with. This is that, you know, once you solve one issue, you’re on to the next one quickly because consumer, once you meet, one need consumer needs will evolve and then you’ll have to meet the next need and the next need. After that,

Joey Kline: [00:09:08] It sort of seems I have little kids, so this is top of mind. It sort of seems like this can all be summarized with the book if you give your mouse, if you give a mouse a cookie, right? I think we need to learn everything from consumer behavior about that. It just it never ends. Ok, so I’m interested to talk to you about the future of cities and what that looks like as people kind of get back into their old habits. And I guess when we say old, we should, you know, it’s hopefully hopefully we paused our habits for about, you know, a year or so, and now they’re just sort of picking back up. But I’m also curious, you guys are thinking about what does. There’s a lot of talk about autonomous vehicles and what that’s going to do to cities. And frankly, I’m curious about your opinion, but I think the technology is maybe a little bit further ahead than most people think it’s going to be. But I am curious if you think of a world in which people are using personal vehicles or using shared vehicles much differently and how that plays in with Park Mobile’s technology.

Jeff Perkins: [00:10:13] It’s something we think a lot about because when you’re doing your annual strategic planning and you’re thinking about, OK, what are the what are the threats in the business? Autonomous vehicles clearly is a potential threat. It’s also a potential opportunity, right?

Joey Kline: [00:10:31] Kind of kind of depends on what the storage situation looks like.

Jeff Perkins: [00:10:34] Right? Yeah, right. Well, one thing I’m pretty confident in is that even as autonomous vehicles are on the road and taking people around dropping them off, the thing that they’re not going to be allowed to do is just to circle the block aimlessly and create all kinds of congestion. Right. So cities are not going to allow that, you know, congestion in major cities. It was bad before COVID. It’s bad again now. And really, it’s only going to get worse. And so what? What modern cities need to do is not just think about, OK, we have we have a transit plan and we have a parking plan and we have, you know, all these other things that we do around mobility. But they have to think much more broadly about an overall mobility strategy and how our city is going to make their environments livable over the next 10 to 20 years as more and more people move into urban areas. And it’s a real challenge for city planners, for people who run transportation departments because it’s totally fragmented now and there’s nothing that’s bringing everything together. So I think the the smart cities of the future are going to start to say, OK, we need to stitch together transit and parking and ride sharing and autonomous vehicles, and we need to have much more collaboration among those entities, so they’re creating a better overall experience for the consumer. Otherwise, our city will get crushed.

Joey Kline: [00:12:14] Well, and so is Park Mobile partnering? Look, I understand that transit planning and things like that is somewhat outside of the range of Parc Mobile’s business. But are you partnering directly with cities from a park and perspective? Are you typically approaching this from just a private operator of a deck or a parking lot? What is the outreach and customer acquisition look like?

Jeff Perkins: [00:12:37] Right. So most of our clients or our customers, our cities, municipal cities, right where we do the on street parking in those cities. And you know, when we first started the business, mobile payments was a very small percentage of the overall parking payment. So, you know, we didn’t have a lot of data to share with the cities. Now, in a lot of the cities we’re in, you’re looking at for parking payments. 50, 60, 70 percent of parking payments are through the mobile phone. So now we have very interesting data for cities to look at around time of day, day of week, what specific streets are more congested, less congested. And I think it’s very interesting the way that cities are going to start using some of that data to make smarter decisions around parking policies potentially rate. Because if you’re running a city and you have one price for parking across the entire city, yet you have some streets that are completely empty and some streets where you can never find a parking spot. It really means your parking policy is out of alignment. And now what’s really exciting is we have data that can help them make smarter decisions around their parking policy. So maybe in certain streets that are empty all the time, you may not need paid parking or maybe paid parking is very, you know, very low from a monetary perspective. But in areas where you can never find a spot. Your parking rates should probably be a lot higher because you. Those spots are clearly in high demand, and these are the kind of decisions that city operators haven’t been able to make effectively in the past. And now we finally have the data so they can really make smarter policy decisions in the city to drive more vehicle turnover in high volume areas to drive people, maybe to lower volume areas, to park their car and then walk a little bit. So it’s a pretty interesting area that we sit in around, you know, city government, city decisions around parking policy

Joey Kline: [00:14:34] That that really is, I guess, I never thought about. Obviously, you know, technology companies have a treasure trove of data riding this about what you use that for. And, you know, do the clients, partners or customers that you’re working with actually utilize it to make decisions? I mean, I’m almost thinking like, you know, it can help guide development patterns and where you know, certain, you know, types of development should be incentivized or not. Do you find so you have all this data, right? That’s one thing. Ok, but do you find the municipalities that you’re working with are actually one interested in it to actually utilizing it to plan and inform policy?

Jeff Perkins: [00:15:16] It’s pretty early on right now, but we’re seeing more and more interest from our clients in our data and what our data is saying about their program and how their metrics may be. Compare to other similar sized cities so they can learn so they can get better and improve their overall parking program. So it’s it’s early, but I think over the next five years, cities are going to be able to make very, very smart decisions around parking policies and using actual data as opposed to just saying, Oh, this is what we’ve always done and we’re going to do it again, or we’ve been charging two dollars an hour, let’s bump it up to two fifty or three dollars an hour. Just arbitrarily, they’ll be able to actually look at data to make more informed decisions around, you know, the rates and policies related to parking.

Joey Kline: [00:16:04] Yeah. And basically figure out, you know, what will the market bear and in what locations, right?

Jeff Perkins: [00:16:08] Right? Or maybe in some areas, you know, in high volume areas, they may say, Hey, we need to shut off parking here because it’s too congested. And what this data shows us is there’s never a spot here. As soon as the spot opens, another person comes in. Maybe we don’t want people parking here because traffic’s also a big issue here. That’s right,

Joey Kline: [00:16:27] We don’t have people, you know, just, you know, stalking the, you know, cars that are just lined on the road and slowing everyone

Jeff Perkins: [00:16:32] Down. Yeah. So it’s it’s a super interesting space. It’s rapidly evolving. And like I said before, you know, cities and the people who run cities are going to have a lot of pressure over the next couple of years to do something about congestion, to do something about parking issues. And, you know, hopefully we’re very well positioned within these cities to be a consultative partner partner and help them with those issues

Joey Kline: [00:16:57] When we need it because it is a very uniquely American problem to we really, I mean, outside of a couple, you know, really only a handful of major cities that truly have a World-Class transit system and even those World-Class Transit systems pale in comparison to their European brethren. We’ve just built this entire country around the automobile, and it just sort of is what it is, right? Look, I’m a huge proponent of transit expansion, but at a certain point we have built our lives and development around an automobile. There’s only so much infill transit development that’s really going to happen. So OK, at the end of the day, now we all want to live in cities. You know, this one is projected just the city limits alone to double in the next 25 years. So you have to learn how to make life easier for people in a vehicle heavy city that hasn’t ever had that number of people driving around.

Jeff Perkins: [00:17:51] Yeah. And, you know, vehicles, according to our research, more and more people now are relying on the personal vehicle and not even opting for public transportation. And I think that’s a dynamic and COVID. It may shift a bit. But people generally right now and you could see this in the car sales data, people are you can’t find used cars, you almost can’t find new cars, right? And you know, they come into the to the dealership and then they are off the lot within 12 hours. So it’s it’s really interesting. But it’s not going to be sustainable over the long term. You can’t have so many cars on the road where nobody can ever get anywhere. And so I think cities are really going to have to look at solutions and that’s going to include transit. But it’s also going to include looking at the data that they have that maybe they haven’t been taking advantage of and looking. Can that data help them drive smarter decisions about policy in the city?

Joey Kline: [00:18:52] Yeah. Well, I hope so. Certainly. Ok, let’s talk about leadership for a little bit. Ok, so you’ve been certainly in leadership roles, you know, throughout your career. The various organizations you work for, I’m curious if your view on leadership has changed one as you transitioned from past roles into park mobile and to as you’ve transitioned from Chief Marketing Officer to Chief Executive Officer.

Jeff Perkins: [00:19:19] I don’t know that my my overall view on leadership has really changed that much from when I first became a VP or a CMO. I started really managing large teams. I’m definitely managing different types of people now. So instead of just managing a team of marketers, managing a CFO and a CIO and a CRO. So you have to adjust a bit for the kinds of roles that you’re you’re managing. But overall, I think, you know, the core leadership philosophy that I’ve had are pretty much the same. You know, it’s all around, you know, leading from the front, rolling up your sleeves, being in there with your team, being very visible, you know, effective communication on an ongoing basis and encouraging really, really high levels of collaboration across the organization and transparency. So I think a lot of the things I’ve done in previous jobs I keep doing, it’s just you’re doing it at a very different level and sometimes you have to recalibrate a little bit. The way I’m managing a maybe a CFO that works for me is different than I would have managed a marketing manager that works for me. Sure, a little more hands off, you know? But but the fundamentals are the same. You’ve got to be there for your team. You’ve got to show them that you’re in it with them. You’ve got to lead from the front and you’ve got to be very clear on where we’re going, how we’re going to get there and then making sure you’re tracking progress along the way.

Joey Kline: [00:20:50] Yeah. So, OK. So that that all make sense. And look, it’s you know, I would imagine that, you know, you have obviously, we have certain principles that sort of stay with us, right? It’s not like they, you know, drastically change with every organization you learn things you, you know, learn what works and what doesn’t. I am curious as you have, you know, very different levels of folks that you’re working with now. And you know, it seems that the challenges of the modern workplace have just, you know, exploded, right? And so I am curious kind of how you help to manage the team through the past year. You know what your goals are for, call it, the next 12 to 18 months. And this can be from a culture perspective. It can be from a business perspective. You know what? What sort of happened? Where are you now and what are you looking for in the future?

Jeff Perkins: [00:21:39] Yeah. So if we go back to to the pre-pandemic park mobile, you know, we had we still have very clearly defined core values as an organization. It’s actually when I joined in 2017, that was one of my first projects was establishing the core values because we actually didn’t have them at the time. And we’ve really built the culture around those core values. It’s how we hire, it’s how we fire. It’s how people get bonuses and promotions. So it’s really been a big part of how we operate, and it’s helped us build what I think is a very special culture within the organization. What I learned during COVID is that, you know, that culture was largely an in-person office type culture, right? It relied on people being around each other and forming the bonds. You can only form when you’re with people and going out to happy hours together and hanging out at lunch and in the break room. So what was really challenging with COVID is that we went totally remote and, you know, we basically lived our lives on Zoom for the last two years, almost. And that’s been really challenging to the culture, and we we’ve tried really hard to to translate what was a great in-person culture into a virtual culture. And I think in some ways we’ve been successful. You know, we the transparency we have with our teams, we do every other week, we do an all hands meetings. We do happy hours on Zoom. We we’ve really tried to keep connected to our team members. But you cannot replace the physical connection you have when you’re with people together, it’s just impossible.

Joey Kline: [00:23:36] It’s just built. It’s it’s built into our DNA. Yeah, yeah. You can’t, you can’t. You can’t ignore. Obviously, we have incredible tools to try and bypass for a certain period of time. But yeah, I mean, there’s just, you know, you sit across from someone, there’s just nothing like that face to face conversation.

Jeff Perkins: [00:23:51] Yeah, and that’s created a huge challenge for us as a, you know, we’re a smallish company. We’re about 200 employees. And when you’re a smallish company, one of your real competitive advantage is so you keep all the big guys from poaching your people is that you have a great culture and people maybe won’t go and take a little bit of a pay increase because they they want to stay with the company. They believe in the mission, they believe in the core values, and they have a lot of friends at the business, right? And it’s hard to leave your friends. It’s hard to leave people who you like to be around every day to go to some unknown. Yeah, and and that really helped us have very high retention up until Coit. And so once COVID hit, I mean, we still had pretty good retention because there was so much uncertainty. But right now, we have higher attrition than we’ve seen, and I don’t think this is just our company. I think it’s every business is going through this now because if you’re virtual, you’re basically you’re not going to have a culture. Even if you try, you’re really not going to have a culture. And if you don’t have a culture, people are just working for a paycheck. And if they’re just working for a paycheck, it’s very easy to bounce around to get another 10 percent, you know. And so I think going forward, that’s going to be critical to our success is getting back into the office, maybe not five days a week. You know, I’ve really I’m a I’m kind of an office creature. I’ve worked, you know, 20 plus years in an office, five days a week. I don’t know if we’re going to go back five days a week, but we’ve got to get back a few days because we’ve got to get together again and we got to rebuild the culture that we had before COVID. Because really, I think that’s so important to the future success of the business. And we just can’t do that if everyone’s sitting in their home office on Zoom all day.

Joey Kline: [00:25:41] Well, it’s I’m thinking back to what you know, you mentioned Maslow’s hierarchy, right? Ok, so the bottom of the pyramid, you take care of things like food and shelter. You know, the basic needs of humans to feel OK in the world, right? And then you, you know, sort of graduate to self-actualization, right? You graduate to, OK, I don’t need to worry about where my next meal is coming from. If there’s a roof over my head, I can really think about the greater things that in that fulfill me, OK? And if you take away that fulfillment, right, I’m not saying that everyone gets some sort of, you know, soul enlivening fulfillment out of their job, right? Some of us do. Some of us do it for a paycheck. Some of us don’t like it, right? There’s a wide gamut, OK? But yes, to make an organization really sticky. If everyone is just, you know, concerned about kind of that basic level of, OK, if I’m not getting anything higher out of this, then this is just a commodity. Right, then my work is a commodity and I can take it to the highest bidder. And that that is not I. It’s not a way to sustain an organization, obviously. I think you you, of course, would agree with that, but that the recipe there is for people to consistently jump from one thing to another without really investing themselves in something higher within any organization.

Jeff Perkins: [00:27:10] Yeah, I mean, it’s a great way to put it, you know, we want people to be all in right when they work at the company and that you, you believe in what we’re doing. You’re excited about what we’re doing. You celebrate the wins, you there when we have the losses and we console each other, so. So that’s really the kind of culture we want to build within the company. And from what I’ve seen in my career, those are the kind of companies that are able to attract top talent and retain those people over time. And, you know, I just don’t think you can do that unless you’re together some of the time now. What’s interesting, though, and this is where I think my mind has changed on virtual work, is that, you know, I think people can be very productive virtually and more more so now than ever before. And in 2020, I mean, we launched, we did had a 111 product releases. We signed on a ton of new clients. We had a great year in many ways. You know, the revenue was down because people weren’t parking, but sure, a lot of the core business. We were just we were crushing it. And so that was that was great to see. So it shows you that, hey, you know, people can work effectively. When they’re not in the office, but you miss out on that culture piece, if they’re not in the office, and that’s what that’s what you need, and I think I’d like to get back at least two days a week in the office. But have those weeks or I’m sorry, have those days be structured around collaboration, so I don’t want you to come to the office and sit at a computer screen for eight hours and then drive an hour and a half home, right? You can do that at home.

Joey Kline: [00:28:53] Yeah, you can do that on your off day. Exactly. An off day, home day, whatever.

Jeff Perkins: [00:28:56] You know what? I’m yeah. Yeah. But I think that’s the the mindset change leaders need to think about is, OK, if you’re having people come into the office, are you doing it just so you could look at them and make sure they’re sitting in a seat? Or are you doing it to enable some kind of broader collaboration and culture building that’s going to help your organization?

Joey Kline: [00:29:16] I have. So look, I think the good thing that has happened out of all of this is I always thought, and look, obviously, I have the privilege of being a commissioned salesperson that no one really cares if they’re in the office or not. I enjoy going to the office when I need it. Otherwise, I do whatever I want, OK? And I always thought that. I always thought it was wrong for people to have to sit at a desk where a manager could see them for whatever, eight nine hours a day, OK? It seems it always seemed to me that and of course, I had the privilege of not, you know, doing that based upon my role, but always seemed to me like, if you need to see your employees that much, maybe you don’t have the right employees, right? Like if you don’t if you don’t trust your team to be productive and effective, if they’re not right in front of you when you have trust issues too, you might need another team. And so what I think is really good now is that finally, employees have a little bit of power to say, I mean, come on, we it’s twenty twenty one. We have the technology. We all did fine, right? You can give me the flexibility to stay home a couple of days a week and deal with the laundry or the, you know, the roofer or whatever it might be. So I think that is a really good development for employees. That being said, you know, I always think about in terms of how much we have all been alone, OK? You know, why is solitary confinement the most severe punishment that you can give a prisoner will because we just sort of crumble into ourselves without that stimuli. And I’m not equating being at your home office to solitary confinement, obviously, but I’m using it as example to, you know, show how much we need other people around us to be, I think, bring out the best in us and our creativity. And that, of course, relates to, you know, culture and your best work.

Jeff Perkins: [00:31:02] Yeah. And you know, I think as leaders, you don’t serve any of your employees well. If you just say, all right, we’re all virtual. You know, have fun. You know, make sure you’re checking in with your boss every now and then because you have a couple, you have a couple contingents in a company, right? You have the extroverts who love being in an office. And this has been a hard, you know, year and a half for them because they’re, you know, they’re working virtually. It’s hard to connect with people. It’s not as fun as it used to be. And so maybe they’re not as productive or they’re not they’re not getting the most out of the work experiences they could then. On the other side, you have, in our case, we have a lot of software developers, a park mobile. The software developers overindex usually on introvert as a general rule not to not to totally say they’re all introverts, but they’re generally more introverted. And, you know, during COVID, they’re living best life right there. They’re at home. I mean, I was talking to one of our developers, he’s like, Yeah, I could, you know, go go play video games in between breaks and it’s I love it and it’s so fun. But I don’t think we’re serving that employee very well, either, because if you’re an introvert, you got to get out of your comfort zone a bit and you got to get with your team and you got to learn how to collaborate even if it takes a lot of your energy. And so I think for for both contingents, leaders really have to get them back at some capacity. And I think when we do, I think you’re going to see the culture come back, you’re going to see the retention improve and you’re going to see the business do better overall. Mm hmm.

Joey Kline: [00:32:35] Well, I think about the companies who are going to default too far in the guys. Just go for it, do your thing direction. What I worry about are, is the younger generation and what I worry about is career advancement, skill building and mentorship. Because, you know, OK, look, if you’re a couple decades in and maybe you have, you know, a core group of champions, you know, the lay of the land, OK, fine. But early on, you know, are we just going to have a generation of people that don’t have know how to properly navigate an organization, build skills, build buy in and get mentors because you can’t do that if you’re just off on an island with no one, you know, really giving you any sort of support or direction that that’s concerning, and I hope that we don’t see too much of that.

Jeff Perkins: [00:33:25] Yeah. And I mean, I think I think you probably will see some of that. I know. And you’re going to have a different kind of workforce, you know, growing up over the next 10 years where, you know, probably more used to being virtual, more used to the flexibility. And we’ll see how that works out. Yeah, but you know, I know that it’s more fun to be around people. It’s more fun when you win together, you get more done when you’re together and, you know, having a career in marketing. I mean, marketing is all about collaboration and stopping by people’s offices or cubes and just talking through things and not being able to do that and having everything kind of pushed to, OK, I got to set up a Zoom meeting and then we’re going to get on. We’re going to turn our cameras on and we’re going to look at each other. I mean, that’s terrible way to work overall. I know. So you got you got to have that time. And you know, I’ve been going back to the office, you know, probably like three days a week and it’s been super energizing for me. You know, I come out of the office. I was like, Wow, I’m really glad I stopped in today, and you have people that are popping into my office and be like, Hey, let me let me pick your brain on something, Jeff. And. That interaction would not have happened if I was at home and they were at home, they wouldn’t have just slacked me and said, Hey, can we jump into Zoom? I want to pick your brain, but because I’m there in the physical space, it kind of gives that permission that, oh, I can go talk to the CEO. I can kind of brainstorm a bit. And I think that’s a great thing. Much more approachable.

Joey Kline: [00:34:52] Ok, let’s finish up talking about your book. Sure. So you wrote a book? I wrote a book. Ok, what’s the book called?

Jeff Perkins: [00:34:57] The book is called How Not to Suck at Marketing. It’s it’s kind of

Joey Kline: [00:35:02] Seems appropriate for marketing professional.

Jeff Perkins: [00:35:04] It’s kind of a survival guide for a career in marketing, which is a highly perilous career. And I was trying to think what I had actually advise my kids to pursue a career in marketing. At this point, I might say, yeah, maybe go into accounting or something a little more stable, but it’s it’s a great career for a certain type of person. But there are a lot of ways you can be a failure. And you know, I write from my personal experience of things that I’ve done well and not done well, and I tried to create a roadmap for people in marketing, regardless of your career stage, to try to navigate through organizations and to try to maximize your impact and avoid a lot of the common mistakes that that marketers do make that, you know, results in, you know, the marketing function sometimes being the one that turns over the most in the organization.

Joey Kline: [00:35:59] Why did this book need writing now and why were you the guy that should write it?

Jeff Perkins: [00:36:06] So why did it need writing now? Well, I go back to the beginning of my career and I started it Saatchi and Saatchi advertising in New York City doing television ads. There was no internet, so there was no opportunity to do internet advertising. So if a client wanted to do marketing, you had television and radio and outdoor and print and those were your your four basic options, right? And it was very simple. And so for five years, I did that and I learned a ton about strategy and branding and how to develop effective copy. And all of those skills are some are still applicable today. But today, when you look at marketing, it’s it’s much more vast and it’s highly analytical. And now there’s all these digital tools you have. There’s all these digital media that you have options to run. Really, marketing today does not resemble the marketing when I started my career. And that’s that’s kind of interesting to think about because if I had started my career in accounting, I would still basically be doing the same thing. I, you know, I’m in the spreadsheet and I’m doing closing the month, you know, and beyond. Just maybe tax law changing. Not a lot has has evolved, which is probably a good thing from a finance perspective, but marketing is a totally different function today. And so for people who want to pursue a career in marketer marketing, you have to go and realizing, Man, I have to reinvent myself basically every few years. And if you’re someone who likes doing that, it’s like the greatest career you can have. But if if change scares you, please don’t go into marketing because you will hate it. Yeah, it won’t be the career for you.

Joey Kline: [00:38:00] That is a it’s a good point. Of course. Now I’m racking my brain thinking about, you know, what professions stay the same and what and which ones don’t write. Can I think of one that I think changes more than marketing? You know, I’m sure I could maybe come up with a couple that maybe change just as much. But I guess I think through the different functions of the org chart, there is just so much to keep up with. And I feel like I’ve had this conversation with a number of folks I know who work at agencies, the constant pressure to just stay on top of it, you know, like your your twenty five year old self, you know, version of yourself that just is, you know, plugged in to all the new stuff. That could be exhausting.

Jeff Perkins: [00:38:44] I would imagine it’s a big challenge. And so I was speaking at a marketing conference and it was one of these digital summit conferences when they have like three sessions going on at the same time. And you know, I wanted I wanted to have the best showing in my session of the three. So I said I need a good title and I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about. And I said, I really want to address the challenges in the marketing function today. And so I use the title how not to suck at marketing for my session. And so I got to the room where I was presenting about 15 minutes before I was supposed to go on and the room was already totally filled. And I mean, people were standing like everybody was waiting. And I don’t think anyone was in any of the other sessions because everybody wanted to see this session. How not to suck at marketing. And I was like, Wow, I’m really on to something here. This kind of struck a nerve. And I realized we all in this profession. We all have the same struggles just keeping up, figuring out not just what to do, but also what not to do. Oh, that that thing over there that you know, that Joey is doing looks really cool. I need to do that. There’s tons of shiny objects out there. But but what I found is that to be successful in marketing, it actually requires huge focus. And that’s really hard when you’re in a function that is so unfocused in many ways, right?

Joey Kline: [00:40:05] And really supports being the most up to date on any sort of new technology or trend or what might have.

Jeff Perkins: [00:40:10] Yeah, now you have to stay on top of the trends and you have to kind of keep an eye on and watch it. But at the end of the day, the most successful marketers are the ones that can tie basically create a straight line between what they are doing and the impact on the organization. And that’s the most important thing. And so if you can’t figure out what are the things that are going to make that impact, you’re kind of in trouble and you should read my book because it could kind of help you figure that out.

Joey Kline: [00:40:42] You should read his book anyway. I imagine your book is available on Amazon and all major outlets.

Jeff Perkins: [00:40:46] It is, I think I don’t. I’m new to this publishing thing. So I just, yeah, I think I think if you just Google it or

Joey Kline: [00:40:54] Google, how not to suck up. Well, I am curious. So was this an enjoyable process? Do you anticipate writing other books or did you really just need to get this information out? And you know, it happened to be in book form, but now you’re kind of. Moving on,

Jeff Perkins: [00:41:11] Well, I never thought I would actually write a book, this is I was kind of surprised. I actually finished it and got it done and had to publish or publish it. The book actually started years ago. I was I was at this company and I had hit this kind of this wall there where I was a senior marketing manager and I just couldn’t get to the next level. And I was there like five years and I was really struggling. And, you know, I didn’t know what to do and I said, All right, I’m going to I’m going to go find a director job because I should be a director of marketing because I was in my mid-thirties and I was I was thinking, I really need to kind of take my career to that next level. And so I started looking for director jobs or VP jobs, and all the recruiters were saying, Hey, Jeff, I can’t put you up for those jobs because you have senior manager title. I was like, Well, that’s great, but I was like, I have all these experience, you know, and it’s OK. And so I said, OK, well, what am I going to do is I’m going to go do a lateral move to another company, and I’ll just I’ll go be a marketing manager somewhere and all but a company where I see opportunity to move up.

Jeff Perkins: [00:42:14] So then, you know, I started talking to recruiters about marketing manager jobs and they said, Well, you know, what’s your salary range? And I would tell them be like, Oh my gosh, you’re like, I can’t possibly get you a marketing manager job at that salary. It’s way too high. So I was in this catch-22 where I didn’t have a title, so I couldn’t get the the director job and I made too much money to get a manager job. And so I was like, Man, I’m totally screwed here. And so I it was an important lesson for me at that point because I realized I was I was letting everybody else define me, but I wasn’t defining myself. I wasn’t building my own brand as a professional. And so I would just say, All right, you know, look at my title on the resume or look at my salary, and that should tell you who I am. And that’s the worst. That’s the worst thing you can do, especially as a marketer. We should be good at branding and marketing ourselves.

Joey Kline: [00:43:06] There is much more to you than right.

Jeff Perkins: [00:43:09] And so I said, All right, I need to build my personal brand. And so I started writing and I said, I’m going to write one blog post a week, and I did that for a year. And so I ended up having a pretty big repository of blog posts about marketing and that that was really kind of the nucleus for the book. I think I kind of stitched a lot of that early writing together and send it to the publisher. And that was about 20000 words. And then I wrote the other 30000 over about, you know, three months. So you get about 50, 60000 words in the book. But but it was a fun process, and it was a lot faster than I thought it would be. The hardest part of it is the editing process because you basically have to reread your own book multiple times. Luckily, my wife loves editing my writing because she could point out all the mistakes I make. And so, so she actually, she really helped me with the editing, and obviously the publishers did extensive editing on the book. But no, I’m really proud of it. I think it turned out pretty well, and it’s it’s it’s probably a more fun and irreverent read than a lot of the marketing books out there, so it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Joey Kline: [00:44:15] I would imagine by title alone the content, unless it was a total bait and switch, the content inside would probably match that.

Jeff Perkins: [00:44:22] That style? Yeah, and it tried. I tried to really be myself within the book. And you know, it’s I think it, you know, no matter where you are in your career, though, and even if you’re if you’re a big company or a small company, I think you could probably get something out of it actually wrote a whole section because all I’m constantly getting asked by small business owners what they should do for marketing. And these are people who can’t hire an agency. They can’t hire a marketing manager or a VP of marketing. And so I tried to say, All right, here are the things you can do as a small business owner that can really move the needle from a marketing perspective. So that’s a chapter in the book. I also talk a lot about my career journey building your personal brand, building your network. So it covers, I think, a lot of ground and it’s a pretty quick read.

Joey Kline: [00:45:07] That’s great. All right. Well, everyone listening, you have to to homework items, you’re going to go and look up how not to suck at marketing Jeff’s new book. And if for some reason you’ve been living under a rock and don’t have park mobile on your phone, stop using coins or paying with your credit card directly and go do that. Jeff, thank you so much for coming by today. Great to hear from you. Thanks, Joey.