Episode 39 - Tarek Kamil

Today's guest is an innovator and leader in the telecommunications space. Tarek Kamil is the CEO and founder of Cerkl Broadcast, an internal communication platform supporting employee engagement. During this episode we explore Tarek's entrepreneurial journey that has seen him delve deep into the realms of digitalisation and data-driven value creation. As a former executive director of Online Strategies for Info Motion Sports IST and VP of Interactive Games for Fox Sports, he shared his passion for problem-solving and how that led to his fascination with artificial intelligence (AI). Drawing from his personal experience and grounding in cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics, Tarek shares insights on how AI is revolutionising the field of communication, the potential challenges AI might pose, and his enthusiasm for AI-driven growth. Tarek has genuinely had a career where opportunity has seen him navigate his course from a passion for digital to supporting value-driven internal communication.

Transcript

Adrian Cropley: 0:09

Hello, and welcome to another episode of A View From The Top. I'm Adrian Cropley. A View From The Top is a regular podcast from the Center for Strategic Communication Excellence, where I interview some of the world's leading communication professionals as we explore their career journey. It will be hard not to dive deep into AI with today's amazing guest. But I promise we'll have him on our Vantage Point podcast, sharing his vast knowledge of all things digital and AI. Topic of the year. Tarek Kamil Who is the CEO and founder of Cerkl the internal communication broadcast software, has built a career through the digital path and found a home in the internal communication space. Tarek is passionate about creating value in a world using big data and AI. Is a former executive director of Online Strategies for Info Motion Sports IST, and also was the VP of Interactive Games for Los Angeles Based, Fox Sports. Tarek founded Whatif sports.com in February, 2000 and sold it to Fox Interactive Media in September, 2005. What If Sports was a platform using AI and statistical modeling to power sports simulations? In just five years, he grew What If Sports from an idea to over 500, 000 members and orchestrated partnerships with some of the largest names in sports. Tarek is truly an entrepreneur and was named as a finalist for the Ernst Young entrepreneur of the Year. Welcome, Tarek! It's great! Oh my gosh, you have had a busy life.

Tarek Kamil: 2:00

Adrian, it's great to finally talk to you. Thank you so much.

Adrian Cropley: 2:03

Thank you for joining me. And before we, talk about the work that you're doing now, certainly finding a founding circle I'm fascinated about what led you into the digital world. Now, I noticed in your profile, you studied cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics. Tell me about that.

Tarek Kamil: 2:25

Uh, you know, before we started recording, we were talking about our generations and we're very similar generations. So I had started writing software when I was 12 years old and it was really just starting to come into its own, programming software development. I was a kid, but I found it fascinating. I had no idea that you could make that a career.

Adrian Cropley: 2:55

yeah.

Tarek Kamil: 2:56

It really wasn't a common thing at the time. Certainly writing software for a PC or a Mac, that wasn't common. Everything was mainframe at the time. So I didn't know. And one of the threads that I'm sure we'll discuss is that my real passion is I love to solve problems. What bigger problem is there to solve than human behavior? And so how the brain works in psychology and that's what I ended up studying in college, as an undergrad, just because I found it fascinating. I'd never thought I would go into the field. I just thought, here's an amazing opportunity to study Something that I find interesting. And that was the sole decision behind it. It was nothing to do with money or career trajectory. It was just, this is a very interesting topic. I want to study it.

Adrian Cropley: 3:55

It's almost like you. You knew what you were going to do down the track. There was a sixth sense there somewhere that said I needed to study that because it's going to come in handy down, down the path of my career, which I'm sure you have put well into practice in the work that you do now.

Tarek Kamil: 4:13

I would say. Everyone should have some level of exposure to human behavior and psychology because it doesn't matter your occupation. It does come in handy.

Adrian Cropley: 4:24

Yeah, I have no doubt and it's something that, I really want to go back and study because I, there's a natural ability around and I found working in HR and human behavior and organization psychology that's come in handy so much. But friends of mine who've worked in communication for years are all going back and doing their psych degrees now. So it must be a thing you've got to, you've got to write early in your career, but you went on and did your MBA in business information systems, right? So that's, that kind of complimented it.

Tarek Kamil: 4:59

Funny story. So I graduate with this degree in psychology knowing I wasn't going to go into the field and I started a master's degree in computer science. as I was doing that, I realized that companies would pay for your continuing education. So I thought, why don't I get a job and have the company pay for my master's degree?

Adrian Cropley: 5:28

Yeah.

Tarek Kamil: 5:29

No idea. I know this sounds silly. Especially this day and age, I had no idea that people would pay you to write software even, but it was just starting. And so I find this posting, this is back in the days of a newspaper, classified, ad, job open. So I apply, and I'd never really taken a course on programming, I had all self taught. And so I apply for this position, and they hire me. And I cannot believe that you talk about when you are doing what you are born to do and you know the feeling, that was it. It was, I could not wait to get to work. I loved it and I didn't want to go home. On the weekends I would ride my bike to the office. This was back in the days when everybody was still in the office.

Adrian Cropley: 6:25

Yes.

Tarek Kamil: 6:26

I could not get enough of this and I could not believe they're paying me to do something I would do for free. That's how it started. I then worked on my degree in computer science and my MBA. So business information systems also.

Adrian Cropley: 6:44

It's, it's amazing to get that. early grounding, but also having something that drove your passion early. And I can, look, I can tell you're absolutely passionate about what you do to develop that early and continue through your career, but it feels like you've made the right choices as you've gone through your career. Tell me about some of those early jobs that you did and that then led into the work that you're doing now. Take me through your career.

Tarek Kamil: 7:13

iT really, I think started if I go way back. So I was born in Egypt and we immigrated to United States when I was very young. three, three and a half, somewhere in that neighborhood. As you can imagine, being the son of Egyptian parents, you're really only allowed to be a dentist or a doctor. That's it. And so that's all I'd ever heard. My entire childhood is you're going to be a doctor. But, Adrian, we have a problem. I hate the sight of blood. So being a doctor was going to be very problematic for me. So it was after, I think, my third year of college where I finally got the courage to go to my parents and say, I don't want to do that and they said what do you want to do? And that's the first time I think they'd ever asked me. It just was assumed.

Adrian Cropley: 8:15

It was assumed. Yeah, this is

Tarek Kamil: 8:16

It was assumed. Yes. And it was at that point really in my life, and I think it's one of those life lessons that I'm so fortunate it happened to me in the way that it did, was around the age of 20, I realized you need to do things that you are interested in and passionate about, and not make decisions based on what other people think or expect or The worst one is to make money. I know it sounds horrific,

Adrian Cropley: 8:51

Yeah,

Tarek Kamil: 8:51

but you're guided by the wrong things. So early in my life, it was all about doing things I find interesting and problems. That I want to tackle. And that was it. And that has been my career there's one common thread of everything that we'll talk about. It is that. It is, I found it interesting, and there's a real problem there. And I feel like if we could figure this out, the world would be a better place.

Adrian Cropley: 9:22

I

Tarek Kamil: 9:23

everything.

Adrian Cropley: 9:25

agree with you on that one. And if it's finding your passion and then I think the money comes later, doesn't it? I often. We find that we fall into the trap very early in our careers is what job is going to pay me the most, rather than which job is going to give me the best experience, which one is the one I'm going to enjoy, the one that's going to fill my boots with energy, because then it flows on, because if we're open to that learning, we build, our value. That we can offer back because we're so interested in what it is that we're doing. I remember when I was in school that the subjects I did really well in was the ones where had a great relationship with the teacher and I loved doing right and I remember math was my worst subject, but my best subject year 11 I was. top of the class. It was because I had a great relationship with my teacher. And then year 12, I failed because I really had this terrible relationship. So you realize the things that build that passion are the things that you excel at, right?

Tarek Kamil: 10:35

Yes. And I think it's such a great story, right? You're living proof. of how you see the world when you're really engaged. So it's a topic that you find interesting, your teacher you really have a good relationship with, and look what's possible. And then you saw the following year, the opposite of when those things aren't true. I would say the one additional piece, so there is what you find interesting, and that's going to mentally stimulate you and help you grow as a human. I would say the one additional piece to that, that I learned is, I don't want to have any regrets. I had a story in my career. So you mentioned in your very kind introduction of me, um, I had a sports business. It was all around AI and sports analytics and whatnot. And this really, again, started as a hobby. And I remember major league baseball, which obviously is a big sporting organization here in the United States. They had reached out to me and said, we see what you're doing. It's very interesting. Come to New York. We want to meet with you. And again, this was just a hobby. This was something I built on the side. It wasn't intended to be a business, but I fly to New York because I grew up such a big baseball fan and we start talking about working together. And I remember the moment where they said, we want to do a deal with you. We want to work with you. And once you say yes, we're going to really stress test. All of your hardware to make sure your site can handle all the traffic we're going to throw your way. And at the time there was, it was nothing. It was just a pet project running in our closet in an office. And I knew in that moment. When they said, if we do this deal, we're going to stress test your hardware. I knew we're going to go from spending. Nothing really for this pet project to 200, 000 a year just to support it.

Adrian Cropley: 13:06

wow.

Tarek Kamil: 13:06

so that is where you say no regrets. What if I was afraid and I said no, because I was afraid I was going to fail or I was afraid I was going to run into debt because I'm spending 200, 000 on this and it doesn't work out. No regrets. I can't get to the end and say, I wish I would have. Those are the things that scare me the most is taking the path that you found interesting versus the path that you were afraid of. And so that's. All these things add up, but it was a very key moment in my career of No regrets.

Adrian Cropley: 13:54

Fear is huge, right? And it's not stepping into it. That fear of failure that fear of it's too big. It's too complex. And what if it doesn't work? And I think this is beautiful advice because if you overcome that fear, step into it and don't have regrets in doing it. I do remember my partner and I some years ago decided to go into retail. And now we've never done anything around retail ever before. And we went in and we failed miserably because we do we and we invested an awful lot in doing it. And it seemed right at the time, but unless we'd had that experience, we wouldn't have learned in business what to do in the next opportunity that we had. So I think taking those brave steps are very important for people, but you've learned a number of lessons through your life and tied to the work that you've done. But some of those other lessons that you would share with communication professionals, certainly about getting ahead in their career. So that, step into it. No regrets, I think is a beautiful tip for communication professionals. What else would you share?

Tarek Kamil: 15:10

I think it's a great question. I think some common threads that I've seen in my work with communications professionals is they are eager to show their value it's difficult to do, and I clearly can see the difference when we work with an organization where the communicator really owns the function, meaning they're strategic. They push back, they understand all the communication, and I'm sorry that you want to get this message out, but it can't. We've already got these things scheduled, and by the way, this is my area of expertise. So they elevate their role from taking orders and checking boxes to being a strategic part of the business and showing their value. I think that move, that mindset is really powerful and honestly, the business wants it. They want everyone to show their value. They want everyone to be tied to a return on investment. They want to be able to show, because we did these things this year, we had this positive impact on the business. Just everyone else, right? Marketing does it, sales does it, operations does it, finance does it. Why is internal communication excluded from this?

Adrian Cropley: 16:39

Yeah.

Tarek Kamil: 16:39

And that mindset, that shift of, we're, not only are we just as important as marketing, I would argue, You are infinitely more important than marketing. The reason that doesn't come across is because we have a lot of internal communications professionals that don't then take the next step. They do great work. They don't then show off.

Adrian Cropley: 17:06

Yeah,

Tarek Kamil: 17:07

humble. They're so humble.

Adrian Cropley: 17:09

you got it.

Tarek Kamil: 17:12

And they shouldn't be, right? Marketing is talking in this campaign had 194 percent return on investment. Great. And we should be doing the same in the world of internal communication, but they're always off to the next thing. They don't stop and finish there. They're so close. It is one more turn of the dial to show this was the positive impact we made on the business when we did this thing.

Adrian Cropley: 17:42

Yeah, and we often talk about it certainly in our training of communication professionals that you have to put the effort right up the front in the planning and understanding and what the business needs to achieve. But you have to put all of that effort to. At the other end of communication is what do I do? Because I've got these results, it's talked to the executive, show them the ROI on communication, have the conversation of what's changed in the organization because of what you've done. And I think you've really nailed it in that we're humble as a profession. And I think we need to take a little bit more of that marketing approach, take a bit of a leaf out of the book of going, we need to sell our value, right? So You get this space. Now that just doesn't happen overnight. You obviously had a passion towards getting results, which you said very much early in the piece. What is it that then led you to do the business that you're doing now? What were some of those things that said, Look, I get this space and I want to support communication professionals. I need to develop something that helps them. How did you get to doing the work? Yeah. founding Cerkl, basically.

Tarek Kamil: 19:02

I wish I had a really elegant story for you. I do not. I wish it was that thoughtful. I did not know anything about employee communication, internal communication, employee engagement. Zero. None. where this started was, I'm in Cincinnati, Ohio. That's where we're headquartered. And I love education. I was serving on my children's school board here in Cincinnati, Ohio. And the girls at that time were younger, middle school. I remember when I was their age, the things that stood out to me were field trips and assemblies and speakers that were brought in, and I was noticing across our educational landscape that was really missing. I Wanted to solve the problem of engagement for my kids and that's what happened. So this whole thing, Circle as a platform around solving this problem of engagement really started with education. I wanted the community members, the alumni, the parents to be really engaged with what's going on in our school district just to drive better educational outcomes for these children. Because you never know what speaker that is brought in. We bring Adrian in and it might spark a child. I didn't know I could do that because I've never seen it before. I feel like that was missing. So as I thought through this problem, back to where we started, I love to solve problems. It really was simple and complex at the same time. Simple in that the problem is very apparent. Too much communication.

Adrian Cropley: 20:58

Yeah.

Tarek Kamil: 20:59

And the signal to noise ratio is too low. So as communicators, what has happened is. We just keep communicating as we always have, we keep sending emails and the emails get longer. We don't realize that we're one of hundreds of thousands of people trying to reach that same recipient. What makes you stand out? And when I thought about that specific question, I thought about The brands that actually really engage me. So Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Spotify. And I thought about what is the common thread between those brands? They make you feel as though Adrian is the only viewer, watcher, subscriber, reader, you fill in the blank. As far as you're the only one they have because everything is tailored to you. Once I figured that out, I thought, why can't we do the same thing with communication? Why can't we have a repository of content and let the AI build it for every single recipient? And that's where it all started. So I didn't know anything about internal communication, but I did know we had a problem with attention. So I love this line. I forget what book it's from. iT says we're not in the information age. We're in the attention age. And that is it. That is exactly right. If you can figure out how to crack the code on really grabbing someone's attention, you will win. So that's the founding story. Then it's segued into employee communication, but certainly not where I started.

Adrian Cropley: 22:53

What communication is all about is finding the problem and then communicating on that particular issue. So it's really about don't blast it all out there and everything that you've got to everyone. It is actually being So much more targeted. I think people get into fear these days because they're scared of technology. Particularly if you come from a writing background or you're, you've worked in internal comms and the organization's still asking you to do the newsletters and update the intranet. And we're focused on the task that we don't step back and say, really, we need to navigate the organization in this era of lack of attention due to the fact that there's a tsunami of information coming at you, right? So this is where it becomes really important. And so that experience for you as you then developed the organization. You obviously had a natural bent towards internal comms. It's in your blood, Tarek, I could tell

Tarek Kamil: 23:57

Well, I think it's my love of, so when you build any company, so speaking now as an entrepreneur. Your employees are your most important asset, and it's by far, and so we need to make sure that they are both informed. So they have all the information they need to do their job without overwhelming. I think what a lot of organizations do is. They're in essence spamming their people. They're sending the same information across multiple channels. Whether you've done the action, read it or not, it doesn't matter. It's just volume. So that doesn't make me feel good. It doesn't make me feel like an individual. And I, this is no fault of the communicator, by the way, this is how Their internal communications infrastructure has evolved, which it's very email heavy, but I would say if Netflix treated their subscribers the way most companies treat their employees, Netflix would have no subscribers,

Adrian Cropley: 25:04

yes.

Tarek Kamil: 25:06

right? They're forcing the, that, the same model would be Netflix decides what you're going to watch. They decide everything and they mass shoot it out. If you started a show on your laptop and you went to your TV, you have to start over. Because they're disconnected siloed channels that would never fly with Netflix subscribers. And so how do we bring the same level of technology and that same experience inside the organization? That's all I think about.

Adrian Cropley: 25:43

And isn't it funny when you think about models like Netflix and the, you've given me some great reflective points here, and I'm sure you have with our listeners, because If you think about the Netflix experience, Netflix seems to know exactly what it is that you want to watch. It's got your it's got your preferences. And I know when I am always running late to try and get on the next flight or go somewhere I always like to have a lot of downloaded stuff so I can watch it on the plane. Netflix has already given me a whole lot of shows. I went, Oh, this one's great. This one's great because I don't know what it was downloading in the background. I just set My, my preference say just, have X amount of hours of content and and then I get these little surprises when I get on the plane and I go, actually, that's something I would watch. Let's talk just for a moment about AI. We could talk for days on this one. Again we're going to interview you on vantage point and share a lot more information around some specifics around the skills that you can share, but AI. What excites you about AI as it comes in, or actually what terrifies you? It could be either way. I don't want to lead you down a particular path, what is it for you?

Tarek Kamil: 26:56

It's like anything. it's used properly will have a massive positive impact on an organization. So when I think about the convergence of internal communication and what AI brings to the table, I'm coming at it from, I understand machine learning and AI and how It really can drive value and where I see that. So when I look across our customers, for example. They are excited about, I don't want to build a newsletter it build it for me, it's, and we never come in and say, this is going to, you can get rid of people, we've never seen it, not a single time, the organizations that care about this are saying, we have really bright people working for us. Why are we having them spend time, play around with HTML to build emails? It's not a, an effective use of their time. What if we could automate that so they can do more storytelling so they can shoot more video so they can tell more personal interest stories, which is what the communicators really love to do in the first place. It feels as though the vast majority of communicators that I've run across come from a journalism background. They've been in newspaper, they've been in magazine, they've been on TV. They love it. They love the storytelling aspect of communication. There's so many great stories within every organization. They don't have the time. So when we think about positively impacting the communicator, it is freeing them up to do less. Work that they don't really want to do and to do more storytelling. And we have seen that literally a hundred percent of the time is what happens when we introduce AI. The positive impact to the employee is less noise. If we know Adrian has read this piece on the intranet, why would we send him the same thing that he has read? In a newsletter, let's reuse that space with something he hasn't seen. We can also learn about his interests and make sure that we are unearthing content automatically that is aligned with what he cares about as a human being. So when we think about the modern employee experience, we think about communication in two distinct buckets. One is, what does Adrian need to know to do his job? This is not optional. This is where it's very different than Netflix. Netflix is all optional. You watch it, you don't watch it. We make great recommendations, but it's ultimately up to you. Communication inside of an organization, frequently, is not optional. You need to know this. Your family could lose their benefits because you missed this communication. That is not a pleasant scenario to find yourself in. So it is a big distinction between internal communication and marketing. Internal communication has the additional complexity of our employees must see this, not optional. How do you ensure that without spamming them? That's the complexity. So that's where AI can help with that. I know Adrian has already consumed it on this channel. I don't need to show it on another channel. We make sure it's front and center for Adrian because it's required. But once he engages with it, it goes away on all the other channels because he's seen it and we don't want to spam him. That's the first piece. The second piece is around engaging. Again, this is what do you care about? And if you're really passionate about community service. So this is the second bucket. It's information that we're creating outside of what's required to do your job that you might be interested in. How do we make sure that Adrian is receiving all the community service related content? That's really important to him as a human. That's where AI is amazing and your best friend, because it will, if you have a company with 10, 000 employees, 10, 000 versions of what is going on at that organization down to the individual. It is not persona based. It is literally building that experience for Adrian wherever he goes on any channel. They're all your existing channels, right? So we're not talking about replacing teams or slack or your email. It is making the things that you've already invested in intelligent and tying it together. So that's to me where I get super excited, right? We're doing this today. We're rolling that out. Of course. There's a conversation to be had around chappy GPT, and I think there's pros and cons there. I think the pros there are, of course, ideation. So this is non sensitive company information. You can enter, Hey, give me an idea for an agenda I'm going to have with my HR business partner and I want to talk about these three things. Great. Let it start ideating for you. It's just going to save you time or write me a script that is two minutes long to talk about this new product. Great. Let it do that for you. As long as it's non sensitive and you're not violating any policy within company, I think it can be super helpful to the communications profession.

Adrian Cropley: 32:56

It's really interesting when I talk to government organizations at the moment and it's been fairly black and white. Oh no, we're not allowed to use it because, it's sensitive information. So it's good that you brought that up, but I think there's a big chasm that's opening between people that are going, no, don't need to deal with it right now. Don't need to. Invest any of my thinking time into exploring AI and but the reality is it's coming. It's going to be here. And for communication professionals, it's looking at the opportunities where it will support them and give them a better relationship with their employees.

Tarek Kamil: 33:34

You are a hundred percent correct. I have seen a lot of technology emerge, come and go from the PC to the internet, to digital marketing. I've never seen anything grow as fast as what ChatGPT has done around generative AI. Never. anything like this. So the idea that this is going to go away, I think is false. We talked about this briefly, where, if there's something that makes you a little nervous, a lot of people want to shy away from it and I agree with you. You said this, and I agree, and I'll just reiterate it. Run to the things that give you pause or nervousness. Those are your largest opportunities to grow as a human. And so don't be afraid of chat PT, GPT, make it your friend, of course, within the guidelines of your organization. I think where I get nervous. So you asked this question around what about AI is terrifying to you. I think. It will blur the lines between real and fake, and you will no longer be able to tell reality. People using that, you've heard already horror stories of... People sampling your voice from LinkedIn videos or YouTube channels or Instagram, what they are doing. And this is horrific. I have two girls. I can't even imagine this. They are sampling their voices. They train AI to that person's voice, and then they can make it say anything they want, and they call the parents and say, I've been kidnapped. You need to wire money. And it's the child's voice. This is just the tip of the iceberg about how AI will get away from us. It could be used for really negative purposes. But from a communications lens, don't be afraid of it. I think it's going to be your friend. But in general, Yes, I think we're going to need some regulation around it in some way.

Adrian Cropley: 36:32

Oh. I think there's going to be a lot more conversations around AI and regulation and ethics, comes into to play as well. Some really great examples there, and I would. talk to you for the rest of the day, but it's got to the end of our time on this episode. We will explore a lot more. We'll do a podcast with with you on Vantage Point, where we'll dive into some of these topics a little bit deeper. But Tarek, thank you for spending your time with me today.

Tarek Kamil: 37:03

Oh, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to finally get to speak with you. And I've really enjoyed the conversation.

Adrian Cropley: 37:10

We've been trying to make this happen for a while and I am just so blessed that we've had this time. So thank you again and thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in to A View From The Top and look forward to catching up with you next time in our next episode of A View From The Top. Thank you and goodbye.