Corporate Strategy
Corporate Strategy
134. Interview with a Bruce
What if your career could take a completely different and fulfilling direction with just a few strategic moves? Join us in this special two-part episode as Clark and Bruce bring their usual spirited banter to the table, setting the stage for an insightful and entertaining journey through their professional lives. With a mix of anonymity and personal anecdotes, they reveal aspects of their experiences that are sure to resonate with listeners.
Ever wondered how to transition from a technical role to a leadership position in marketing? Our second segment is packed with practical advice on recognizing your strengths, making calculated career moves, and the underrated soft skills that can propel you forward. Clark and Bruce share their stories of dissatisfaction, discovery, and the importance of aligning your job with what you truly enjoy. The conversation is a goldmine for anyone looking to make a meaningful change in their career trajectory.
To cap it off, we reflect on career regrets and the benefits of early exploration for rapid growth and financial rewards. We also delve into the best tech tools for workplace efficiency, championing the likes of Atlassian's suite and MacBooks. Finally, we'll invite you to join our community on Discord, engage with us on LinkedIn, and stay tuned for more enriching episodes. This is not just another podcast episode; it's a roadmap for career and personal growth.
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I wrote them oh you said you go.
Speaker 2:So I was right, I was. I said let's go.
Speaker 1:You didn't tell for context for all the listeners who just, uh, just jumped in. We were prepping Cause we have a special episode for you all today and we have episodes. This will be a two parter and I was going to look up where I wrote down kind of my notes. Yes, I know, shocker, I prepared for this Same and you just immediately fired in the hole, you threw Craig in there and we're getting going.
Speaker 2:So Clark was like I'm feeling dead inside, I want to die. I'm dying, bruce dead death, murder me. Uh, let's. He's like I'm. I'm feeling dead inside, I want to die. I'm dying, bruce dead death, murder me. And I'm like okay, clark, calm down, let's, it's okay, it's going to be all right. And he's like let's just do this. I gotta be done by four, 30. Let's go. So I invite Craig and he's like I'm not ready, I'm not ready.
Speaker 1:I. Something you realize with me is I'm always ready. This takes me a good five seconds to get oriented and then I'm ready to go?
Speaker 2:I'm always ready, except when I'm not Fair enough.
Speaker 1:Good enough. I would say, that's good enough.
Speaker 2:That's definitely good enough. Quote the previous episode.
Speaker 1:We're going to have the callbacks. We have a super interesting dual episode which I'm going to introduce it, because I obviously am the leader of this podcast and I do all the work.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, do you want to introduce the show so we can do the theme music?
Speaker 1:How have we waited this long to do that.
Speaker 2:Literally. You told me to get cracking here. You said I'm dying.
Speaker 1:Clark, welcome to Corporate Strategy. I'm happy to have you all back. This is Clark.
Speaker 2:I'm dying. I'm Bruce. Hello.
Speaker 1:Hi, I just love messing it up because I can see your reaction. This is like the fourth in a row. We're looking at each other eye to eye and it just kills me every time I mess it up.
Speaker 2:I don't know how to. I mean, at least there's enough room for me to get the music in there. That's true. Usually I try to like cue it up. So it's like welcome back to corporate strategy. The music hits right on the beat of the welcome. What you just did is going to be fun. We'll play it by ear.
Speaker 1:We'll roll back the tape. I think I give you more work every single time I do the intro, so I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that. It's great, it's great, it's fantastic. So what the heck are we doing?
Speaker 1:here, clark, we're skipping news, we're skipping vibration inquiry, we're skipping it all and we're jumping straight into an idea that I had that I thought would be really fun for the listeners. So I'll be traveling next week and obviously we will need to queue up some episodes to make sure we don't fall a week behind. So I said, you know what, let's do a two-parter, and I think we're going to do something that traditional podcasts typically do, which is they interview each other. So I thought it might be fun to ask a couple questions. We don't know what these questions are for each other, by the way, so we'll split it up One will be Brucie, one will be Clarkie, and essentially we'll interview each other with five questions, kind of anonymized but somewhat personal, and get the other person's perspective. Five and five. I love it. Five and five. I thought it'd be fun.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, you have no clue what I'm about to ask you and I'm going first.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, it's your idea. You go first. Ooh, this is going to be a lot of fun then. So kind of the rules around this. We stay somewhat anonymous. If you look hard enough, you'll probably be able to find both of us TBH.
Speaker 2:But don't do that. One of us is very easy to figure out. Join the Discord.
Speaker 1:I guarantee you, and if you really want to know, just ask Goodboy, he'll probably hack us and figure that all out anyway. So if you want to dox us, you can absolutely do that with the help of the Discord, which you can join by going to corporatestrategybiz. You like that? I'm doing the plugs. I love it.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's just as easy to go to our link tree too, which you can get in the show notes of the podcast platform you're listening to right now.
Speaker 1:It's in your ear, it's in your hand, just hit the button. It's that easy. So we're anonymized. Who are we? Yeah, yeah, we're anonymized. We are not going to, you know, exploit ourselves here. That's not the goal of these five questions. The goal of the five questions was really think deep and ask each other things that we think our community would get benefit from you didn't give me that qualifier when I made these questions.
Speaker 2:That was not included in the setup. When we get to mine, I want it to be known ahead of time. Clark did not tell me that was the setup. He just said five questions. Figure it out on your own, bruce go.
Speaker 1:I get these ideas in my head and then I just text them and I'm like random stream of thoughts and I just shoot it over to him and he just said, yeah, sounds good, see you then. And I'm like, all right, cool, see you then. And then like other things come to mind and I probably elaborate on it more.
Speaker 2:So, anyways, we'll see, I want to note that you're a product manager and you are giving me the acceptance criteria of nothing. I go off, do the work, come back. This is not what I asked for. Like you're, you're damn right. You didn't ask for it. Continue.
Speaker 1:Please continue, clark. Go, I'm really good at my job, okay. So yeah, I thought this would be super fun. Hopefully provide some value to the listeners. So my first question for you you have switched your roles. You know you went from like product engineering, you did a scrum master role for a while. You did a sales engineer, you did product marketing. You shifted into kind of product marketing leadership in the technical space. What would you say to those people who realize like their career isn't a perfect fit, because I think you kind of realize that it's like something didn't sit well with you for where you were at, or you thought I can do more and maybe this isn't where I should be. So I wanted you to think retrospectively for all those freshers out there. Maybe people just feel like a little stuck on why you kind of felt the way you did to go through these different roles and kind of what propelled you through it.
Speaker 2:It's a good question. I thought you even might ask it, so I've been thinking about the answer because that's it's pretty unique, right. Not everyone has the drastic career changes at the level that I have. I also saw just tangentially related to this, a really funny post Nike's new CEO I don't know if you've seen his LinkedIn profile, but literally started at the bottom as an intern, then went to, like you know, junior seller, associate sales, like worked their way all the way to CEO, which just I bring that up because one I also started as an intern, right, and it was a. It was an intern for quality assurance at a tech company.
Speaker 2:And the thing for me this is not going to be a glamorous answer at all it's really that I hate working and I hated my jobs. I want to qualify. I loved working specifically with Clark and some of our friends that we made in the very first few years of my technical career. That's like the golden years, but I hated doing the work Like I loved the people, I loved the culture. I hated the work. I was terrible at it. I'm a stupid person and I'm a terrible programmer, and it's not. It wasn't a good fit for me, but what I found was I started doing these demos on behalf of product management because I was the only one who understood how to demo the product. And you know I put together like you could get paid like twice as much money just to talk about a product to customers as you can to be miserable developing it. And I'm good at this. Right Like I've been in theater my whole life, I've been in front of a camera. I've been on the phone like my whole life. I'm very comfortable talking to people. I've been in front of a camera. I've been on the phone. I'm very comfortable talking to people. So, yeah, I'm going to switch to that job and immediately I enjoyed it more and that really got the gears turning. That, hey, I can totally switch my entire career until I find what I love. And that's been in the back and it still is in the back of my mind, like who knows if I'm going to be in marketing five years from now. Right, like I do want to see through my startup experience because I was there in the beginning and I'd like to see it through to the end.
Speaker 2:But if I could offer our listeners one piece of advice based on my own experience is one if you don't like something, that's totally normal. It's okay to hate work. You can make it better, though, and that's what I've learned. For me is, if I'm not satisfied, look elsewhere, and not just in my own specific field, but look at the interesting sort of diagonal steps you can make. I went from software engineer to sales engineer. That was a very easy transition. I don't think I could have gone from software engineer to product marketer. That's too big of a jump right and I needed the sales experience to understand how to get into marketing. So look for those movements you can make that help get you to those very sort of lateral jumps or diagonal jumps into the different roles.
Speaker 2:But don't be miserable. There are better jobs. They all suck, but there are better levels of suck, and don't stop jumping until you know you found what you love doing. And, to be quite fair, out of all the jobs I've done, I do love marketing the most. I'm not saying like I love this current period of my life the most Because, again, those golden years were great. Like you don't know the good times until you weren't in them, but I can tell you this I hated that job. So that's. Does that answer your question?
Speaker 1:Clark, it was great and honestly, we could talk for an hour about any of these. I think you know listeners. If you guys want to hear more on like one specific thing that you think would be helpful to you, go into the discord, ask it and we will gladly spend an hour talking specifically. You know about the situation, what we recommend, because I have a hundred questions just off that one answer but this is like you can do, like exclusive voice recordings for the discord, if you have more questions that would be super cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. Yeah, because I mean I hit you with the heavy one up front because I feel like that is such an interesting perspective to give people who feel like they're stuck in a certain spot and I think you've done it really successfully and you don't give yourself enough credit. But we'll go into that another day in therapy session when you're paying me for it. So question number two for you, and I'm going to give you some softballs because we've got to go heavy to light. You know, be a good interviewer.
Speaker 1:Oh I like that, yeah. So what's an underrated soft skill you'd recommend people learn or develop?
Speaker 2:Ooh, dang Underrated soft skill. You said this is a softball question, but this has got me thinking more than the first one. I want to answer it. Good, right, this is one of those questions where I could easily be like, oh, be confident. And that's like such a crap answer, because I understand, as I've said this before, but I'm I'm like a combination, I'm an ambivert right, I prefer to be alone, but I I can also do very well in situations that call for extroverted nature. I have no stage fright. I can speak publicly. I realize I am a very strange human being, like I don't fit the typical mold for how humans are, so I can't just say, oh, go out there and be yourself, be confident, have, have faith in your ability, like that's such a stupid LinkedIn response that I don't even want to throw out there. Underrated soft skill Do you have? Firstly, while I think on this, do you have one? Can I hear yours? Yeah, you can use it, inspire me.
Speaker 1:If you feel like this is something you'd say, feel free to use it. Inspire me.
Speaker 2:Being easy to work with say feel free to use it, inspire me. Being easy to work with, that's really good. That's a really good one. Yeah, do you want to?
Speaker 1:expand on that. You taught me this in one of our episodes as we were talking about things. I remember I could hear it in my ears of what you said when I listened to this podcast back. I think you said being easy to work with is one of the most underrated things. Podcast back, it's like I think you said being easy to work with is one of the most underrated things.
Speaker 1:Like to get credit as like an employee and to me and it's funny I've been working with someone who's relatively new to our organization, who's a peer to me, so he's at the same level, and we did a working session. You know him and I just two hours in a room. We whiteboarded some stuff and at the end of the session he looks at me and he just goes room. We whiteboarded some stuff and at the end of the session he looks at me and he just goes. That was so easy to do with you.
Speaker 1:He's like you didn't have any ego, you didn't, you know, put your perspective first. You knew what the objective was, but you wanted to hear my perspective. He's like it's just so easy to work with you and he's like it's not like that with everyone because they have their ego in front of it because they, you know, think they know what exactly they want. They need everybody to go do it. He's like it was just really easy to work with you and it put me back to that episode I don't remember what episode it was. It put me back to that episode when you said that because I'm like, honestly, just being easy to work with and a good collaborator and someone who just is willing to hear what other people you know have to say and take their opinion seriously is like the most underrated soft skill I can think of.
Speaker 2:So I love that and you did just inspire me.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite things I tell people now because I you know, when I'm, when I'm mentoring someone, they'll ask me what do you think about this or that? The other, and something I pass along a lot these days don't feel like you need to speak in every meeting, and what I mean by that is if you're in a meeting with a lot of big thinkers, let's just call them big thinkers, right, you know who I'm talking about. But big thinkers, a great soft skill to have is to know when the problem has been resolved and there's no need to speak further to run the time right. Knowing when not to speak is so important and it's something that I'm still learning and working on, but I think it just saves the sanity of everyone when you say, hey, this is good enough to get to our previous episode and me running this more because of my idea I want to get out there it's not going to help, it's just going to frustrate. And knowing when not to speak such an important skill oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:I like that. That's a really good one. All right, you ready for number three? I'm ready.
Speaker 2:I'm not ready. Actually, I'm sorry, I'm not ready After the last one.
Speaker 1:I know I need to breathe. This one is looking back at this. What controversial belief do you think has contributed to your success successfully? Like hopping from job to job is not easy. Getting to your position is not easy. You've done a lot of incredible things that I think the normal person would be like how the heck did you be able to do this like? You must be super skilled. So I'm curious, like what's controversial where typically you'd be like yeah, to climb the corporate ladder, you gotta do xyz and go to harvard and get your mba? Like do you have anything along those lines? That's a little controversial for how you got where you are for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's my dual belief and astral gods, as well as the christian, uh mythology. You know believing in both jesus and thor. Let me tell you, wombo combo, you got multiple people to pray to when things go bad. Uh, you want lightning? I could, I could summon lightning. You need a little goodwill.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's super controversial, but no, in all seriousness, and I'll actually quote my old boss, tony, who we've had on the show before our financial advice episode One of the reasons he hired me at the startup I'm at right now and he will tell you this, and this is not an exaggeration is because I am who. I am right, like. I'm willing to make that joke, I'm willing to be weird. The viewers can't see it, but my office is like it looks like a child lives here. I wear Hawaiian shirts on all of my meetings, unless I'm, you know, repping my corporate wear.
Speaker 2:I am very much my own thing and it immediately establishes my off-kil brand. I talk, I talk in meetings the exact way I talk on this podcast. I don't censor myself or try to act professional in any way, shape or form, and I think it has been a boon for me. I know it also acts as a filter to not get me in settings where I won't do well and that's probably the controversial part, like if you want to make a lot of money and go work at IBM or whatever, probably acting yourself is not the way to go. Be a buttoned up corporate shill, that'll take you very far, but for me, part of the filter that I want to get to where I want to get to and the way I want to live my life and exist is being uniquely myself and it's gotten me very far and I think a lot of people would tell you not to do that because it just spits in the face of what corporate professionalism is.
Speaker 1:I like that answer. Yeah, because I would say I felt attacked that whole time. You were saying that Because me on this podcast is not me in the real world. We'll get to me. Later, though, we'll get to me later we will.
Speaker 2:I've got questions for you. My friend.
Speaker 1:I'm scared, I'll be honest, I'm kind of scared. No, listen.
Speaker 2:You know I interview. I interview a lot of people. I do this is fun.
Speaker 1:I'm ready. Okay, number four. I only got two more for you. So, looking back on your career or, you know, from even you know financial personal perspective, what do you wish you'd started sooner?
Speaker 2:Easy, that one's easy Looking at other jobs to kind of get to the the. The first question I was in development for six, seven years, which was way too long to be as cowardly as I was. It was truly cowardice. Not looking elsewhere, not thinking about other places I can go and, to be fair, early on in my career I didn't have mentorship outside of development. Everyone who mentored me was a developer.
Speaker 2:The first person who got me really thinking about sales and getting outside of my sphere was a product manager. You know I think you know who I'm talking about but basically said like hey, you can't even get to product management until you've done time and sales. Like he basically said you need to do that and I said sales, who's going to ever do that? But I mean, like that opened my mind to the fact that you can actually do radically different things with the skill sets you have. So I do regret not being more exploratory earlier. I think I'd be even further in my career than I am right now. I'd have a lot more experience because the development, all the experience I needed to basically prove my chops, I think I got in two years. Everything else was just filler right. That was wasted career growth potential. So biggest regret right there.
Speaker 1:And I would assume, financially also making those jumps.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Big time.
Speaker 2:Every time I've switched roles, I have come close to doubling salary, so it's very important to also consider that and just think of how much more money I would have had had I done it sooner.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I like that. All right, last question for you, actually this is a saw. I should have sprinkled this in the middle. This is why I don't interview this right here is why I don't interview, because I left the softest one for last and this is just not a good close, but it's going to end well In terms of hardware or software tools that help you do your job, which have been the most beneficial in boosting your efficiency.
Speaker 2:I like that you included hardware in the question, because if it was just software I could have given you a very easy answer. But now I'll answer To make it a hardball question. I'm going to answer both. I have the software question right up front. So I'll just say I actually really like the Atlassian suite of tools, jira, confluence, the works, I love them.
Speaker 1:They're great you ever use Notion.
Speaker 2:You ever use Monday. I've used it with you, I've used it with you and you know what I can say about those tools. I hate them. They're too modern Like and maybe this makes me, maybe this makes me, antiquated and out of touch. You're booming, but I might be. I might be, there is. It's the opposite of my previous answer.
Speaker 2:The thing I like about Atlassian's tool set is how buttoned up they are. When I look at Monday and I see all the colors and the shapes, there's shapes that just don't fit together and it's trying to be creative and minimalist and cool. But what I actually need is a plain white screen with boxes and text that tells me this is the user story, this is the priority, this is the due date, this is who's working. I need very clear-cut sort of explain, paint-by-the-numbers utilities for management and organization. And let me tell you Jira and Confluence are it.
Speaker 2:I can do those things in my sleep, I can automate them, I can do so much, incorporated those tool sets in the switch and made other people's lives better by doing that. So I would use those tools basically in any job I have to the day I die, and I'm sure eventually I will land in a place that says no, we're not going to use Jira and Confluence, and I will have to settle up with a Notion and a Monday and I'll roll my eyes and I'll figure it out. But it's so important to be good organizationally because I can't track it in my mind. I need to have the software to do it.
Speaker 1:Fair Hardware Hardware. I have an answer.
Speaker 2:I have an answer and it's going to piss off 50% of our audience. Having a MacBook is game changing for work, because and here's why, here's why I'm a big PC gamer. I primarily game on PC. I love my custom-built PC. Clark can see it, it's right over there. It's a giant, big black monolith. It's huge, it's pimped out. It's great at playing video games.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing about Windows is it is so easy to quickly wreck that operating system, get disorganized, have a driver conflict, like Windows breaks so spectacularly in so many ways. It doesn't matter if you build it yourself. If you buy a laptop. That is just an unreliable operating system and I cannot believe we still use it so abundantly in the workplace Like Windows Server. Oh my gosh. Punch me in the face before I ever touch that again.
Speaker 2:The great thing about the MacBook is because it's a one-size-fits-all option. You get your MacBook regular, your MacBook Pro. They don't waver, it's all the same chipset, it's all the same everything, through and through. I don't have any problems Like the amount of times I've had to take this thing to. It is twice in my entire what I've been working since 2012. So well, I've been in.
Speaker 2:I've been in corporate with a laptop technically since 2011. I have never. I've only had to take the MacBook in once to the Apple store to have it worked on, and that was because the freaking stupid company I worked for put the worst corporate image on the thing that it wouldn't shut off when it got in my bag and it melted itself. And when I took it to the Apple store they did a diagnostic on it. They're like why would your company do this? And I said, well, they're pretty stupid. I mean, I could give you lots of reasons why they would do it, but the only thing you really need to understand is they're very stupid when it comes to security and managing devices. And it literally couldn't power up. It just melted itself.
Speaker 2:So all this is to say it's reliable. It's a reliable piece of hardware. If I had to run my own business, I would pay the extra money to get my employees on MacBooks, because I know I wouldn't have to replace them as often and I also know that the kind of apps and frameworks that are going to function in that environment are. It's just, it's one size fits all, it's not. Oh, we have to get Visio with our freaking O365 extended version, because it doesn't come with the regular version. Like it's like. You get pages, you get your keynote. All the utilities are to come through the app store. It's just such an easier environment to manage, like bar none. The MacBook Pro best work utility, best piece of hardware.
Speaker 1:Hands down. I agree. You know I used to rock Windows Linux for a while and like it's just the consistency. That's what it's all about it's. I know I can trust it For years and years and years. I can just open it up, I shut it down once a week, I turn it back on once a week. I've never really had any issues and it's awesome.
Speaker 2:I don't even shut mine down. I shut down my PC every day, like I turn it on to play games and I turn it off when it's done because I don't want it to nuke itself. I've had it happen way too many times. Yeah, I have shut down my Mac maybe four times in the last year. Every time it's just for the update, the security update, that's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. It's like gaming is your priority. Yeah, Windows, you know if that's what you're going to do, but everything else, everything is better on Mac. I would also say. I would say back in the day, development was a lot easier on Windows than it was on Mac. Because, yeah, you could only use Xcode, but now with like Visual Studio Code and everything and like everything's in the cloud, it's like you don't need to develop locally anymore. Mac does it beautifully now and I love it, yep.
Speaker 2:I will say I'll give Linux a little credit here because I do think there's an entire use case behind Linux and Kubernetes and Docker development and all of that. You should do all of that in that environment because it is better, but I think for most corporate MacBook Pro is great, I agree, yeah, great job, bruce.
Speaker 1:That was fun, little lightning round. Thanks, clark. Good questions, good questions, and if anybody wants to hear more, let us know. In the Discord We'll do voice recording. We'll do dedicated episodes around the topic. Whatever, we'll do dedicated episodes around the topic. Whatever you guys want to talk about, it was a fun little light year round.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we should close up this one and then start a new one. I guess we should the next episode. So to be continued. But if you're excited to get to next week's episode, which we're going to record in five minutes, do go to our Discord. The way you get there again corporatestrategybiz, or click the show notes, click the link tree. You can support the show there. We are ad free for the next year and we'll continue to be as long as we get enough income to make that continue to happen. And you can also get access to our Corporate Strategy LinkedIn, our merch store, where you can get the Corporate Strategy baby onesie, oh my gosh. There's so many things you can get to with our link tree. And if you enjoyed this show, please share it with your friends. Like it, leave a five-star review, do whatever your podcast platform suggests you to do. I'm Bruce and I'm Clark and you're on mute. We'll see you next episode, which for you is in a week but for us is right now.
