Mark Jobson 0:00
So we rang the stock exchange Bell, which was an absolute ton of fun. If you haven't ever seen that, everyone's like clapping. You know, it's a very unique experience. And then our CEO was, you know, on the rat, you know, the investor rags, and he's being questioned in the interview about so tell me about these Airplane, airplane hangers that you guys provide and and he just kind of double blinks, you know, to process that. The reporter has no idea what a datacenter is, right? And so he's like, you know, yeah, that's an interesting industry. That's not really what we do. He handled like an absolute champion, and then was able to provide a very succinct, you know, description of what our business was, what The industry was, and why it was important.
Mark Jobson 1:02
Welcome, Eric bell to the Eric Bell podcast.
EB 1:05
Before we dig in, I want to learn about you in 60 seconds. I'm going to ask you a series of quick questions and provide the first answer that comes to mind. Ready? Sounds good. All right. Do you prefer late nights or early mornings? Early mornings? Sweet or salty, salty. Introvert or expert, what's an introvert? I figured. Favorite food, a
Mark Jobson 1:29
nice juicy filet with some type of French sauce on top. Favorite sport, ice, hockey, nice. I like that first job marketing coordinator for the for Argosy Alton Bell casino in the St Louis metro area,
EB 1:49
fiction or non fiction? Oh, definitely fiction. Secret talent. I speak Japanese. Wow. I'm impressed. Now you can just stop skis or snowboard.
Mark Jobson 2:03
Skis,
EB 2:06
pineapple on pizza. Yes or no.
Mark Jobson 2:07
Hell no, no pineapple. Get away from my pizza.
EB 2:11
Okay, let's get into work. Questions, meeting or email, oh,
Mark Jobson 2:15
email, please, please
EB 2:17
zoom or teams.
Mark Jobson 2:21
Oh gosh, they both are terrible. Let's go with Zoom. Okay,
EB 2:24
I like that pet peeve during conference calls,
Mark Jobson 2:30
conference calls in general, okay, just
EB 2:33
any conference call.
Mark Jobson 2:35
I think we like poor network connection is probably the worst. Like, if you keep having someone going in and out and then get to stop and start, or you've got that latency where you interrupt somebody, I would say a poor network connection is the worst. Can
EB 2:50
you hear me now? Exactly. Yeah. Remote work. Banner, skeptic,
Mark Jobson 2:54
well, I've been doing it for 20 years, so I'd have to say, I love it.
EB 3:00
What's a marketing buzzword you've banned for life?
Mark Jobson 3:03
Oh god. How much time do we have again? Is this 90 minute? We might have to bump this to 120 because I so redefining is got to be number one now, because everyone's redefining what they just defined, which drives me crazy. Future Proof, flexible. I mean, I could go on, but let's just leave it
EB 3:25
favorite marketing tech tool.
Mark Jobson 3:28
Tech tool, if Adobe counts as Adobe, I've been an Adobe enthusiast since page maker back in my high school journalism room where I was the editor in chief of the yearbook in the newspaper. So all Adobe tools, to me, are just the best in the world.
EB 3:47
Adobe for life. First website you check every morning for industry news,
Mark Jobson 3:53
it's LinkedIn immediately, just to see what's going on, see how the world is doing, and again, get my motivational people lined up.
EB 4:02
All right, cabinet versus rack.
Mark Jobson 4:04
Oh, gosh, both. I use them both. But I would say I probably use rock more than the cabinet
EB 4:13
in one word describe the current data center buyer, busy. Okay, finish this sentence. In five years, the data center market will be the
Mark Jobson 4:24
most critical industry worldwide.
EB 4:29
That is amazing. We've come a long way. Okay, last question, who would play you in an in the Netflix series data center wars?
Mark Jobson 4:37
It would be Robin Williams, and anyone watching would weep uncontrollably.
EB 4:43
I love it. Okay, a good delivery. Um, okay, let's, let's go into the meat of the podcast. So you're, you're a marketing expert, right? How would you just, how would you describe what a datacenter is to non tech friends
Mark Jobson 4:59
in. Is where all of the technology experiences you have on a day to day basis are born and delivered from,
EB 5:08
okay, and so early on, you pivoted your career from casino marketing into datacenters. I think it was around 2008, what transferable skill surprised you most, or what skills were transferable, going from casinos to datacenters.
Mark Jobson 5:25
So I love data. I'm a tech geek when it comes to the MAR tech stack, getting more information, data driven decisions, insights. You know, we had a $20 million budget, you know, at the height of my marketing career in casinos. We were in stadiums, we were on billboards all over the place. But the thing that really had the most impact on me was the database. They have information, and even in 2008 they had information on everyone and everything. When you put a player card into a machine immediately the technology would trigger, the casino host would know that you were there, everything about you, your children, right? I mean everything, all your preferences, right? I mean, these database were worth millions and millions of dollars, and so I learned very quickly how powerful, you know, data driven insights can be from a marketing perspective. And that's never left me
EB 6:25
interesting, yeah. I think a lot of us in this industry could do a lot better from a data perspective. I think there's some improvement even in 2520 25 we can prove as an industry from a data
Mark Jobson 6:37
perspective, yeah, I think in general, Eric like marketing, or it can be, you know, has a tendency to become like this, make it pretty function. But to a marketer, there are few things less offensive than being like, Hey, can you just make this pretty real quick? Because marketing is a Bachelor of Science degree, right? And most people don't know that. And you know, so that when people think marketing, they can think branding creative services, which is important, right? But to me, marketing is so much more than that, right? And so in the digital infrastructure industry, you know, I think marketing can have an incredible impact if elevated properly.
EB 7:14
Correct me if this is wrong, but I believe you said that marketing is only as powerful as the revenue it drives. How did that mantra originate?
Mark Jobson 7:23
Well, originally, that was from the casino days, right? And so they were very, you know, very specific about, you know, attribution, what you did, what were the results of that, right? And so in a BTC world, it can be easier to monitor and measure that. But for me, there's things like a term called coin in. I don't know if you're old enough Eric to remember when they actually had coins coming out of slot machines, but basically, in a coin in was a revenue metric that they continue to use, but it was really more slot revenue. But it's like, you know, how were you increasing coin in by way of the marketing programs that you delivered, right? And so, you know, not to toot my own horn, but we created the the industry's first digital promotion in the St Louis metro area, me and a very, very skilled IT person named Steve picasik. And it just absolutely killed their digital entries that were created, and people just went wild for it, and we quadrupled coin in the first weekend that it really hit, took off, and it was like, wow, marketing can really have an enormous impact on revenue, but within the data center, the digital infrastructure industry, right? It still can have an impact on revenue, right? And so, you know, I preach Account Based Marketing in a big way, you know, depending on the type of, you know, digital infrastructure company, right? If you're selling cabinets, it's a little bit different. But if you're selling data center by data center, right, there's only a certain select number of organizations that can purchase from you, that can lease from you, right? So, being excellent at Account Based Marketing is absolutely critical, in my opinion, and it takes an incredible collaboration between marketing, sales and product, you know, and product development to that point to be very specific to where you're impacting revenue, not just in sourcing, But you're impacting revenue across the entire customer life cycle. Sales site. You know, the sales cycle in our industry is long, right? Some of these deals can take even a couple of years to complete. And so if you're just, you know, sourcing the revenue, and then just, you know, leaving, you're going to lose a lot of deals, right? And so when marketing comes in, right? It's the whole lead life cycle, right, the awareness before you've converted it into pipeline, but you're there all the way through the win, and then you're all the way through the renewal, the expansion, right, all the way down the line to what we call advocacy, right, in the customer life cycle, from a marketing perspective,
EB 9:59
yeah. Yeah, interesting. So from a CMO perspective, what? There are so many priorities to balance, you know, the SEO, ABM events, that sort of thing, what brand, what are kind of the top top few? How would you force rank it? Or how would you characterize the top ones that you focus on? Does it depend by company, or, you know, where you are as a business? I mean, how, how do you kind of think through
Mark Jobson 10:31
that? Yeah, I do think it is, you know, it needs to be specific to the business and the stage of the business, but, you know, at a high level, right? You know, again, alignment with the C suite, alignment with core business objectives, value creation at the sea level table, is important, right? Because that establishes credibility, establishes trust, and you're architecting your program, your department, you know, to achieve the goals that the entire business is looking to achieve. So to me, that's absolutely critical. You know, tying to revenue extremely important, right? Again, if what you're doing is is driving revenue, driving profitability program return on investment, it demonstrates that you're not just a cost center, you're a value creation center. And again, that's another way the CFO has a positive view of marketing is if you can demonstrate that, and again, data driven insights, to me as a bucket, very important, right? And so, you know, from a market intelligence perspective, research data gathering, data aggregation from different sources, you know, that's something that marketing can deliver, uh, to demonstrate, you know, incredible value creation, especially from things like site selection. You know, what are the underserved markets? Right? Where is the market going? Trying to be ahead of that, or at least early movers in site selection can be something that, you know, increases profitability for the business. So I would say those are kind of the three core things you know, at the CMO level that you would focus on. But again, if you're an early stage company, brand development is another core critical component to make sure that the marketing function is moving forward in a consistent, data driven way, but also that the market is aware of you and perceiving you the way that you want them to
EB 12:20
gotcha and then, from a SEO perspective, Baxtel, you know, at Baxtel, we've really focused on SEO, and it's, it's driven a lot of traffic to our website, but I've noticed a lot of data center providers have turned almost wholesale. Even those that have edge in the name are all focused on, you know, six or 10 different customers. So with does SEO matter in this age where many datacenter providers focus just on a handful of customers, the hyperscalers, effectively,
Mark Jobson 12:55
SEO always matters. It always matters, right, even if it's just a brand validation or credibility thing you know to be displaying, you know, amongst the top five providers, demonstrates a professionalism, certain excellence and go to market. So while it's tactical, I do think it's important whether it's going to be a lead generation thing you know, for the, you know, for the big hyperscalers, or, you know, the top Neo clouds, you know, maybe right, if they're unaware of you, that's a problem already, but it's definitely something where, you know, in my opinion, SEO is what it's going to do, is going to lead, you know, these hyperscale targets to engage, consume the content that they want on your company, which is important, because a lot of times, by the time a hyperscaler will reach out to a salesperson, they've done an incredible amount of research on their own. They've already down selected on their own, right, and so it's not an RFI or a RFP sweep where they're going across the entire market and saying, Hey, give me all your information. There's a very specific project that they're researching. Right? They might go and consume on their own, things, you know, and only do it for a handful of providers that are, you know, air quotes above the fold. That's an antiquated term, right? But here's another thing to think about, right? SEO eventually is going to become geo right? Generative optimization is really where people need to focus on, because generative searches are going to eventually outpace the traditional Google search. And if you haven't built your website with geo in mind, it's a fail, right? And so this is definitely something that people need to start thinking about
EB 14:38
interesting. So last year, 2024 at Baxtel, we specifically blocked robots that weren't Google or the major search engines. So in other words, we're, we're still showing up in generative results. Ai generative results, I don't know how maybe they're ignoring it, but. We, which
Mark Jobson 15:02
is probably true, right? Artificial Intelligence, Eric, it's, it's programmed to be smarter than you.
EB 15:09
Robot stocks text, you know, you put in there say you're not allowed to call
Mark Jobson 15:15
ourselves, but, but I guess
EB 15:17
what you're saying is that we shouldn't do that. We should actually invite the robots in scraper content, and then, because it can be geo generate, generative search engine results, right? You know.
Mark Jobson 15:30
So it's, if you think about it, Eric, it's, it can be, you know, selective as well, right? So you might have stuff that you want behind the paywall, so to speak, that's protected that you want people to subscribe to obtain, right? But then you might build your site with CEO teasers, right? That drive conversion on the subscription side, but also have enough content to get picked up by the generative engines to produce that result. So for you, it might be a hybrid strategy there, but it's definitely something. If you're looking to drive traffic at the site, which I can't imagine, that you're not, I would definitely focus on
EB 16:10
it. Okay, interesting. We're gonna have to update that. Yeah, if you want a
Mark Jobson 16:15
marketing consultancy, like, I know a guy that might be able to help you with
EB 16:20
that. Okay? Is that guy you
Mark Jobson 16:23
it might be. We'll see.
EB 16:27
Okay, okay, so when you're targeting datacenters, right, data center targets, you know, end users, that sort of thing. What? ABM, Account Based Marketing tech stack, you know, deliver the best signals or intent, or, you know, what would you use from a ABM tech stack perspective, to target datacenters?
Mark Jobson 16:50
Yeah, so again, I mean, the tech changes so quickly, right? I can give you some of the tools that I've used in the past, but there's always aggressive new entrants out there. I'm actually vetting some new stuff right now. I'm not going to mention them, just because I don't have complete data set on them. But historically, you know, I've always been a Salesforce aficionado. As my core single system of record, it can do so many things. It's, you know, it integrates so seamlessly across, you know, new tech, and it's like the new Tech's first integration. So you can stay ahead of the market with Salesforce as your core CRM, I have bolted on to CRM with marketing automation. So, you know, what I've done is like a Salesforce Marketo as kind of like the CRM marketing automation tether, you know. I know people use HubSpot. I found HubSpot. It's okay, you know. And the nice thing is that it's kind of like a marketing automation CRM in one but for me, Salesforce is an unlimited environment, and Marketo is, again, another unlimited environment in terms of all the logic that you can build into the campaigns. It's, it's pretty amazing. So as a core foundation, I would say those two, you know, get things started. You know, I've used zoom info for data data platform for a long time as well. Can be expensive. They've dropped it down. I think the minimum spend is like 2500 bucks a year now, which is not really that much money. Doesn't get you a lot of contacts. But the nice thing about zoom info is, not only does it provide you with human being contact information, but it provides you with an intent data source, which is really nice. You can configure a certain number of topics in there. It also, now you allows you to manage your digital advertising program from there, which is pretty cool. And so you can actually, you know, really tether, like your marketing spend and your marketing engagement, you know, very effectively through zoom info. It even does a website tether, where it allows, you know, it has these things called websites, that lets you know what companies are there. And then, you know, there are ways where you can tether to drill down to users that you've cookied so you can understand what the user is doing on what pages. You know their duration. And so really, like zoom info can be a very useful tool for Account Based Marketing to understand engagement at not only the company level, but the human level. You know, the people on the buy team that you're trying to influence. Other tools like demand based six sense can be very valuable as well. They're extremely expensive, but if you have the budget, a tool like demand base can actually turn your website into a personalized, dynamic experience. So I can convert my website to basically being a wire frame. And so, you know, if Baxtel comes and I really want to have a customized experience, I can turn my website into a one to one Baxtel Plus my company experience, it's unbelievable. So. So those tools, those tools can be very nice. Which tool was that that could that's demand based, but there are other other tools out there that have similar capabilities. You know, obviously going into the AI side, right? And there's a million different AI tools out there right now. You know, one of the ones that's got me interested is this tool called soulmates.ai I don't know if you guys have seen that one yet, but it's an actual market research based AI tool where it, you know, you basically create kind of like personas in there, and it can give you, like aI persona feedback from what would be your target market on campaigns, and it like, basically cuts your research time down to indefinite, to like a matter of like hours. And so there's all these different data tools to extract sentiment online, pick up on your company online, but this is one where it's like, you can pre campaign, you can really test things out in a new, unique way. I've forgotten Tableau, by the way, on my stack earlier. I'm going to throw that just randomly in here. From an analytics perspective, Tableau is it will always be the best and with its connection with Salesforce, yeah. So you definitely want Tableau,
EB 21:19
right? Makes sense. And then you're part of core sites, IPO, which happened in 20 2009 when was it 2008 2020, 2011 wasn't it 2011 it was a while ago. But you're a part of that. It's IPO
Mark Jobson 21:40
there at the time I
EB 21:42
was there, but I was, I was not on the team that did the road show, so you and marketing did that. I was more on the interconnection, you know, business development piece. But anyways, any stories from that, from that era, or from that period, I haven't thought about in a while.
Mark Jobson 22:03
Wow. So Eric Nolan, the producer, has just whispered in my ear that we're both wrong on the IPO date. Isn't that pathetic,
EB 22:13
by the way, Nolan won't show up on the on the on the track, but, but yeah, whatever. I'm right
Mark Jobson 22:22
here now, 2010 IPO at $16 a share. I don't even want to tell you what I sold my shares at, because that will put me in a really bad mood.
EB 22:41
I'm in the same boat with both core site and Equinix. Sold them way, way, way, way, way too early. 10x too early.
Mark Jobson 22:51
Yeah, that was honestly one of the highlights of my career. I feel very privileged to have been a part of that. You know Tom Ray as our fearless leader at the time, people like, you know, Chris bear, Chuck price, David Dunn, Dominic Tobin. I could go on and on, like, just a great group of people. And, you know, I just, I remember, that was the first time I'd ever, you know, been a part of a public exit before. So leading up to the IPO, you know, marketing was playing the role in really increasing, you know, let's call it the professionalism of the program, the engine, the data, the systems, right, making sure everything was airtight. No custom built stuff that couldn't be scaled or could be hacked, right? And so as part of Sox compliance, right? All the departments were tightening things up. I just remember, you know, the road show, obviously, you know, being a part of the pitch deck creation, you know, being part of the feedback from those decks. You know, it was evident at the time that, you know, people were not in tune with what a datacenter really was, what the potential for the industry was right, and the impact on society as a whole. So there was a lot of education that was involved, even with, you know, the investment bankers that we were talking to. And then an anecdote from the actual day of the IPO itself. So we rang the stock exchange Bell, which was an absolute ton of fun. If you haven't ever seen that, everyone's like clapping, you know, and it's, it's a, it's a very unique experience. And then our CEO was, you know, on the rat, you know, the investor rags, and he's being questioned in the interview about, so, tell me about these Airplane, airplane hangers that you guys provide and, and he just kind of double blinks, you know, it's a process that the reporter has no idea what a datacenter is, right? And so he's like, you know, yeah, that's an interesting industry. That's not really what we do. He handled like an absolute champion, and then was able to provide a very succinct, you know, description of what our business. Was what the industry was, and why it was important. And so it was interesting, like at that time again, we were still that secret society, right, Eric, where we didn't want, necessarily, people to know where our datacenters were and and now the logos the whole data center, right? I mean, so it's times have definitely changed. But I do think education, educating the market, the mass market media, is still important, especially now as we start to see detractors move in, who may perceive our industry, may perceive our industry as power hogs, things like that, right? We need to continually educate the market so they understand, you know, the true benefits that we provide.
EB 25:40
It's amazing how far this industry has come. You know, from that perspective. You know, back in whenever it was 2011 or whatever, the IPO, where CNBC anchor, has no idea what a data center is. Now they probably, I wonder if there's some sort of metric on this. They probably mentioned datacenters a couple of times an hour on CNBC, right? It's such a huge difference. There's such an awareness now of datacenters, and there's so much capital flooding into the space. It's such a for those of us who've been there since the beginning, and going back even further, I remember in 2001 after 911 right to your point, absolute secrecy of where these datacenters locations are, and now there's lights in the buildings like neon signs outside the datacenters, just on some of them.
Mark Jobson 26:29
It's amazing. I actually spoke at DC, New York, the i basins gathering, and, you know, I had a, you know, lick my thumb and put it in the air metric that was saying, basically, over the past, you know, 12 to 18 months, there's been more mass media coverage of the datacenter slash digital infrastructure industry than the previous 10 combined. And I it's, it's definitely the case, right? It's just, it might even be more dramatic than that, but I just got, and I'm sure you have the same got your alerts, your AI alerts, triggering constantly right now with new datacenter announcements. And, you know, to your point, I think the investment audience is really what's driven this. And you know, specifically, Nvidia has had an unbelievable effect, right? The hyperscalers, obviously, as well. But Nvidia, specifically, as the market has understood the difference between their gaming infrastructure and their data center infrastructure, I think it was really one of the catalysts for people paying attention.
EB 27:34
Okay, so you just told a good story. There any other data center war stories that you can think of in your career that,
Mark Jobson 27:41
oh yeah, I've got a million of them, as I'm sure you do my friend having seen more than I have, but yeah, so we mentioned earlier, I started in Casino marketing. I had no idea what a data center was until they showed me the corporate data center at, you know, the second casino that I was working at, it really didn't land with me. But then in oh eight, I actually got a job at a company that was called CRG West at the time, and they really kind of got my feet wet in the datacenter industry. And then as time would go on, right, I would I would experience different challenges that would really just underscore, like, wow, this industry is absolutely critical to life as we know it, even back in oh eight, when I had started. And so one company who, I'm not going to say, who it was, because they're an amazing company, it just there was an outage, right? And it was a absolutely critical datacenter, one of the most interconnected places on the planet, and we had an outage, and a third of the world's internet traffic went away. And as a marketing person, you know, I started to go into, you know, public relations, you know, crisis communications mode. And I go down the hall and no one's having any issues, that everyone's just normal, like day, like, we're gonna fix this, right? This is everyday operations. And I was just blown away by why people weren't in FREAK OUT mode. And this gentleman who was an IC is like, Oh yeah, no. You know, these types of things happen, and we're on it, and, you know, here's the communication that we're going to send out. And it turned out that one of, one of the things that happened was, like, there was a cleaning lady that had plugged in a vacuum or something into an outlet that was already at max capacity, or something trip to breaker. I don't know if that's actually what happened, but that was like, what was the rumors that were going on? I was like a vacuum cleaner took down one of the most important datacenters in the world. So now this is way back in the day, and I don't know if that's true, but what I can tell you is, you know, that impact was felt across the world. Just one data center, you know, being taken offline, and so just it. Really underscore, like, now, a date without datacenters would be absolute chaos. Like, I would not want to go to Denver International Airport. I don't even want to want to be within 100 miles of Dia if there are no datacenters, it would just be absolute pandemonium.
EB 30:17
Yep, such an interesting story that the vacuum that took down that the internet, at least for All right, so getting on to some personal questions, how is coaching youth hockey? I understand you're a youth hockey coach, or was or still are, I'm not sure. But how has that influenced your management
Mark Jobson 30:38
style? So I coached Little League Baseball, so I actually was the baseball player. I played baseball, football and I wrestled in high school. My youngest is the hockey player, and he played. I'm not going to talk about how much money I've sunk into that one, so I would say like coaching in general, right? You know, it influences my management style, because, you know, I subscribe to servant leadership, and I'll let people figure out what that is, if you're unaware of what it is. But you know, it's about being there and putting others ahead of yourself, right? And, you know, career development being a core, you know, pillar of you know, your management style, like wanting the best from the people that work for you or work with you, right? And you know, in Little League Baseball, right? If you think about you know that some microcosm of like wanting the best for each of these kids, right? I was in coach pitch, right? And so I've never been more nervous in my life, right? I was on stage, you know, for the Beach Boys concert in Elk Grove village, in front of 25,000 people last year for the Fourth of July, not nervous compared to throwing one baseball and trying to hit the bat of like a little kid, right? Because you want every single one of those kids to get hit right. And it doesn't matter if you're terrible at pitching or not right, if you throw it and they miss it, or, if you like, you know, it's all on you as the coach to put it right where you know they can hit it. And so, you know, being there to, you know, be a part of that and do everything that you can to make sure that they're having a great time, you know, loving the sport of baseball, just, you know, becoming immersed in the sport of baseball, right? But also just prioritizing life and having life moments with these kids as they're growing up, developing them as people, but also with their love and skill of the game. And I think everyone should have a chance to coach or influence or mentor, you know, kind of young, young kids as they're still kind of, what's the word innocent before things get crazy? Because it also has a positive influence on you, reminds you, you know what life is all about,
EB 33:00
indeed. And I think this question was generated by, I had aI help me with generating these questions, and it totally hallucinated the fact that you were a hockey coach, but it knew that you're a coach of a few sports. So
Mark Jobson 33:12
yeah, hockey, hockey, for me, it took a lot of my time. I took a lot of conference calls from the arena and arenas around the world. My son, you know, not to be that guy, but, like, my son, played a pretty high level. And so, you know, competitive sports are a monster. Now, it is amazing to watch, but you know, what's impressive is these young adults are these, you know, let's, let's call it the continuum. Now, let's say 11 to high school, right? These kids are under incredible pressure, and watching them deliver under this pressure like you're just so impressed of what the youth can can do, you know, in certain circumstances, because they're going through puberty and things like that, which is hard enough, right? And you know now they're being micromanaged, you know, shift by shift. You know that triple A level. So like, kids are so resilient these days, and I think they have to be because, you know, things, think about the concept of 24 hour social media cycle, right? You know, the youth is constantly on and constantly being evaluated, and so I can't imagine how exhausting that's been for them growing up without the ability to just, you know, go outside like we had in our generation, go light fireworks off somewhere.
EB 34:32
Yes, well, in my generation, we used to, I don't know if I should admit this, but we used to shoot fireworks at each other. So the
Mark Jobson 34:39
bottle. Rocket wars. Best. Those are the best.
EB 34:44
Get a little two liter and fire them at each other.
Mark Jobson 34:48
Or the Roman candles. Those were good as well. Yeah, that's when
EB 34:52
I got serious. Well, also when you like these, you know these bees, the ones that just start spinning. You can light a whole pack of that and. So,
Mark Jobson 35:02
yeah, I think I got grounded for that one time. It's like, growing up in Saint Louis, you could go to, like, Illinois, some, like, redneck gas station in the middle of nowhere, pick up like, a 30 pack of natural light and some fireworks, and then come home and have a really good time with it. So yeah, like, I remember bringing home fireworks and and shot off a couple of Aaron's bottle rockets that got our neighbors pretty upset, that came over and had a talk with my parents, so I think I got a couple of week ground station because of fireworks there pretty bad.
EB 35:33
Luckily, there's no teenagers listening to that. That's
Mark Jobson 35:36
right, yeah, this is an eight This is an 18 plus podcast.
EB 35:41
I only, but from that point, from what you said earlier, I mean, I think it would be good for I think it's tragic that a lot of teenagers aren't outside, aren't doing these type of things. They're on their phones or just kind of doom scrolling Instagram or whatever, whatever they do, right? You know, it feels like they're on their phones too much. See groups of teenagers just, you know, neck down and looking at their phones as a group, but regardless. So maybe, maybe shooting battle rockets would be healthy in some ways. Ironically,
Mark Jobson 36:15
you're right, like, it's honestly, the bonds that you develop with other people. I think we're, we're deep, right or deeper back in the day, just because, you know, all your parents were just like, we'll see you at 10 o'clock. Like, I don't want you around goodbye, and so, like, you just were forced to kind of hang out with the neighborhood kids or whatever, and just go to 711 grab a Slurpee, you know, play some Hogan's Alley or something like that. And Eric, I don't know if you remember this, but back in the day, the TV would parent for the parents. It'd be like, it's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your children are? Like, how many parents were? Like, oh, yeah, we have children. Where are they? That's right, you know, true. Remember that they had a curfew. I think as well. It's like 10 o'clock or 1030 I can't even remember, but like, yeah, so you would go out and debauch for, you know, a set amount of hours, and then the structure would pull you back in and make sure you were okay.
EB 37:11
So kind of, we only have a few minutes left here, but one to ask you for a top pick. So every, every would love to have a top pick from every guest you know. What would you recommend? Anything you've thought of based on what we talked about earlier, for a topic for the audience,
Mark Jobson 37:33
a top pick. So I guess my topic is going to be more like a top recommendation for all of you out there right now we're all incredibly busy, right? I mean, you are on the clock, 24 hours a day, work. Life balance can be challenging, and I encourage you to find things that motivate you, right? That drive emotional response. You know, every day in the morning, you know, it's my time, right? And so I harken back to Robin Williams, carpe diem, oh, captain, my captain. I'm a cheesy, emotional person, and so, like that movie just gets me going. And so you'll see on my LinkedIn, you know, my background says carpe diem, seize the day. And you know you can get so locked in, you know, into what you're doing. You know that life can just become mundane from time to time. And so I encourage you to find people that motivate you, things that motivate you, media that motivates you, to just you know, you know, each day. Right on the LinkedIn, I've got probably a set of 20 people. Steve Foster is a great guy to follow. He's a local CEO here in Denver, just posts really uplifting, motivating stuff online, on LinkedIn, and so every day I'll pop open LinkedIn, not only to get the news today, but just to go straight to the people that I know are going to be uplifting and put me in the right frame of mind, right? But also the opposite, right? Find a way to disconnect from media from your screens, to just give the brain upstairs some downtime, right? I don't know if you've ever had a computer blow up on you because it's overheating, because you've had it on for too long with too many apps open, causing your cameras to be blurry, right? Right? I mean, it's a situation where, right, you're going to have brain fatigue, and that can really affect mental illness in a negative way. And so I encourage you find time to D app right, to take time away from your screens and just relax, turn the brain off. Silence is golden, and see if you can do it. Because I tell you, I've been doing it a lot for the past three months, and it's been really therapeutic for
EB 39:49
me. Silence is the crucible for creative thought, no doubt about that. So if you want to be good at marketing or anything you do, I think, yeah, the silence can. And birth good ideas, or, you know, I think that's where you can truly
Mark Jobson 40:04
think it's a great point, Eric, it really is. And I find that in that that time, right? I do have thoughts that that pop in, that, you know, really are great ideas. There's some terrible ideas. But there's a time when I was doing zazen, when I was in Japan, the second time, I stayed in a Buddhist temple for about 30 days, and they were explaining like this, the way to keep your mind clear, right? That the objective was to keep your mind clear of thought. And this idea was that if a you know, if a thought comes into your brain, you like, let it dissipate away before it takes hold. And so it was almost like a mental video game where thoughts were just at first or bombarding, right? Because your brain is just used to it, and then eventually, as they were dissipating, they were coming in less frequently and less frequently, until your brain was completely clear of thought. And it was very peaceful.
EB 40:57
Can I, as we wrap up, tell us a little bit about active position. You know, what services does active position provide, and where can we find more about you as a kind of a follow up?
Mark Jobson 41:09
Sure. So active position is a BTU tech marketing firm, and so we work with folks in the digital infrastructure space. We work with it channel companies work with cloud, you know, fortune, 500 logos all the way down to startups, since 2014 so and again, the services. It's a full services agencies, so CML, CMO, level consulting, data, tactical execution for things like search engine optimization and web development, Account Based Marketing Program, implementation, so on and so forth. So again, BTU, tech marketing services, if you're looking to augment your existing marketing department with some fractional, you know, fractional requirements, we would love to learn more about your needs.
EB 41:59
Awesome. And then how do we, how do we find more about either active position or yourself? How do we so
Mark Jobson 42:06
active positions online at active position, there's no E in the word active so, A, C, T, I, V, as in Victor position.com. And feel free to follow me on LinkedIn. My slashes, Mark W Jobson. So you know, I've got about 5000 people on LinkedIn that I'm connected with right now, but I try to put out informative content. Like today, I put out webinar series on utility power management from NREL. Take a peek at it. There are basically, like, every week there's a new power management webinar that they're going to have now through the end of July. And so a couple of them are very, very important for the data center industry, things like large load management, power transmission and distribution. So a lot of excellent content coming out of NREL these days. So by all means, please follow me on LinkedIn, and I will follow you back, and hopefully you'll find my content engaging and useful,
EB 43:06
awesome. I appreciate it. You join us here today. Mark,
Mark Jobson 43:10
this has been an absolute blast. Eric, I've known you for such a long time. Congratulations and all the success with Baxtel, you deserve all the accolades and the success that you've had lately. Really excited to see where you take the platform from
EB 43:25
we're going places. And look forward to seeing, seeing what you're you're producing here in this next year. So thank you.
Mark Jobson 43:31
Thank you