How to Manage Through a Crisis with Joe Marinucci: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to manage through a crisis. To drop these vibe bombs, I brought Joe Maranucci in the EO Fire Studios. Joe is the co-founder and CEO of the award-winning digital performance advertising company, Digital Media Solutions, which is a leading provider of technology-enabled, data-driven digital performance advertising solutions. And Fire Nation, stress is inevitable.

0:35How you deal with that stress usually leads to the decisions that you make. And if you can get yourself comfortable with being uncomfortable, having the mindset that no matter what happens, you can handle it. There's nothing you can't do and to owe so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Joe and our sponsors. Fire Nation, this is your year to get unstuck and to grow a successful business. Attend the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and now featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOFire.

1:07Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOFire. Joe, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Morning, John. Really excited to be on with Fire Nation today. And that's a great opening question. I love it. something I believe in about becoming successful that most people disagree with. I'm going to go with vulnerability and authenticity being the key to connecting with others because connecting with others creates mutual respect. And that mutual respect is what gets people to go the extra mile.

1:51And a lot of times people are not OK with and are, you know, scared to become vulnerable and authentic with those around them because they think it's a sign of weakness when it's actually a sign of strength. No one wants a pale, weak imitation of somebody else, Fire Nation. They want the real, authentic, genuine, vulnerable sometimes version of you. And Joe, we have a lot to get to in the present moment, what you've done over the past couple of years specifically, but real quick, let's be concise here, but let's talk about your entrepreneurial journey that brought you to digital media solutions.

2:26Melissa and I, who was in our corporate marketing department, we're talking about some stuff last week because we had done a piece for another publication. And she asked me where my entrepreneurial journey started. And we collectively tracked it back to my paper route that I had when I was 12 years old. So fast forward, you know, 35 years. And here I sit as the CEO of Digital Media Solutions, which is a New York Stock Exchange publicly traded company. It's been quite the journey from PaperRoute in Pearl River, New York, to global ad tech company that's publicly traded 700 employees. And next year, it'll probably be close to half a billion dollars of revenue.

3:11So there's a lot of dots to connect there. But what I will tell you is it's not been how I built this. It's been how we built this. And from the very beginning, when we started the company in 2012, it's been a team effort and everybody's been bought in. And when we set the strategic vision for whatever it was we were going to do in the direction that we were going to go, we were always able to rally the troops behind the vision, which we collectively agreed upon. And then everybody always played all in. It's very much been that way from the very, very beginning. And that's why we are where we are today.

3:45Otherwise, we wouldn't be here. Well, I do love how you can trace it back to a paper route. And I think it's important to have both sides of the equation because there's some people who are born entrepreneurs. They were always on that path. And then there's other people that wake up at 30, 50, 70 years old, and they say, you know what? Now it's time. And Fire Nation, there's success stories on both sides of that equation. Now, let's be frank. We want to live in the present moment, which is we're living in a new world now. And COVID-19 has impacted a lot of people's businesses over the past year or two.

4:14How did it impact your business plans specifically and just the overall leadership mindset that you brought to the equation? I track it all the way back to February of 2020. And, you know, I'd gone to a financial summit up in Sun Valley, Idaho, and they were talking about COVID and, you know, the potential impacts that it may have. And, you know, people, I don't think people had fully gotten their arms around it in February, but it was certainly something that people were talking about. And then as we moved into March, you know, we were thinking about the impact that this could potentially have.

4:57And obviously things significantly accelerated in March 2020. I mean, it's an understatement to say that they significantly accelerated, you know, the most significant health crisis that modern day has ever dealt with. And, you know, we boiled it down to what I was thinking about, you know, myself and how my family was going to handle it. You know, we realized this would be a very personal experience for everybody. And we came up with this mantra that we thought would carry us through. And then we would make decisions based upon that. And the mantra was really simple. It was protect yourself, protect your family, and then protect the business.

5:38Because it's like that old airline analogy where they talk to you about the mask and you put your mask on first. Because if you don't put your mask on first, you're useless to everybody else around you. So, you know, we of backed ourselves into, well, the employees got to take care of themselves because if they can't take care of themselves, what good are they to anybody else? And then if their situation on the home front deteriorates in any way, shape or form, they can't possibly show up for work. So we need to start prioritizing the people first, give them what they need so they can take care of themselves, take care of their families, and then they'll be able to show up for the business.

6:13And then from there, we were able to make very strategic decisions on what we were going to do. I would tell you that we were at the forefront of being a first mover with sending people home, putting them in a remote environment where they would have the greatest degree of safety. We pulled out of major trade shows so early, in fact, that the trade shows pushed back on us with our strategy to pull out, which looking back on that is absolutely shocking. But, you know, that's how quickly we made decisions to work around that mantra that we came up with, because how could we travel people if we were dealing with a global pandemic?

6:54It all came back to protect yourself, protect your family, protect the business. And the decisions we made were, you know, I would say circulating around that mantra. And it made things really simple because we had a great degree of clarity once we figured out that that was the best way to manage. So we put the people first. Now, I was an officer in the U.S. Army for eight years, and we were really big about leading from the front, which is something that you actually have brought to the equation as well, which you mentioned a couple times already here. But I want one specific example of one thing that you've done that you haven't discussed yet today that shows you leading from the front.

7:30First of all, I'd like to thank you for your service. I do have your book, and I have read some of it. Thanks, brother. It's an incredible story. If you want to lead from the front, you have to become a master of self-management because self-management leads to time management. And from there, if you can self-manage and you can time manage, that is what is going to allow you to help manage others. And depending on the situation you're in, you know, I can't even imagine some of the stress that you've been under. But, you know, for myself and for other leaders in my organization, I am a proponent of setting up routines that you can rely upon that help ground you.

8:14And that can also push slash pull you through various stress points, choke points that you're going to encounter in life. because stress is inevitable. And how you deal with that stress usually leads you to the decisions you make. And if you are ineffective at dealing with stress and you can't shed it in a way or manage it in a way that's healthy, it's going to put you in a place where you're going to be very reactive and it's going to lead to decisions that may not be the best possible decisions. So So in order to lead from the front, you've got to be a master of self-management so that you can manage your time.

8:56And that puts you in a place to manage others. And in order to do that, you need to develop powerful routines around yourself that help keep you grounded and manage your stress so that you have balance in your life. If you can do that, no matter what's going on around you, you're always going to have the clear mind you need to make the decisions that are best, not only for yourself, but for your family and for your business. Self-management leads to time management. I love that phrase, Fire Nation. I hope you're really absorbing how that starts this waterfall of Austin Mist. And we have so many more value bombs to get to when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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10:07Once you sign up, you'll get everything from formation paperwork to custom domains and trademark registration all in one easy to use account, ready to form your business backed by real business experts with decades of experience. Don't wait, protect your privacy, build your brand and set up your business in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit www.northwestregisteredagent.com slash fire and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at www.northwestregisteredagent.com slash fire. Joe, we're back and you have a mantra. We talked a little bit about it already. people, process, and technology.

10:43And this mantra is one of those things that helped you not just survive, but really thrive over the past year. Can you share something on the technology side of that mantra that you implemented that really was a reason why you were able to thrive over this timeframe? Connection is so important for human beings. We need it. We are social animals, Right. And we, like many other companies, I guess, like most companies had to send everybody home into this work remote environment. We were very concerned about connections and how we were going to maintain those connections. And, you know, when you think about communication strategies, if people are not in front of each other, the ability to communicate changes, the ability to connect as a result of that changes.

11:34So we were concerned about that. So when you think about people, process and technology, we were thinking about the people first, obviously, you know, the process around how we're going to manage the company and then what technology we could leverage to do that. So we have great proprietary internal technology that helps us, you know, be at the forefront of the ad tech, martech industry that we sit inside of. But, you know, our technology was not developed to manage a remote workforce. So for us, it was more a function of what do we need to do? What do we need to change in order to adapt the company to what is going to be remote work?

12:14How are we going to facilitate an environment where people can stay connected and will communicate? Because we can't have everybody just slacking each other, instant messaging each other, text messaging each other, and emailing each other. That does not create meaningful connections. You know, we're going to see deterioration of the connection of our people. This is problematic. So for us, it was what technology can we employ to keep our teams connected? And, you know, we basically migrated the whole. I mean, we were using video chat and we adopted the Zoom platform, which has a lot of feature set that worked for us.

12:49But we use third party technology, which have become, I'd say, relatively commoditized is the main connection point to facilitate, you know, all the communications in the company. I mean, we were, I would say, highly advocating for video calls almost 100 percent of the time so that people would see each other, would be able to see facial expressions, make eye contact with each other. And in an environment where it was going to be impossible for people to be in front of each other, recreate that environment as much as is possible. because, you know, if you can't maintain those connections, humans being social animals, you know, communications, you know, can digress, especially when you get into email and stuff like that, you lose a lot of the personal flair.

13:36And that could be problematic. And when connections break down, you know, that's where things can go awry. And we were very, very focused on people processing technology and keeping it together. People come first. What technology were we going to use to keep the people connected. So, you know, that it was, it was more of a third party play as opposed to the proprietary technology that we used to run the business because we needed something else. It wasn't about the proprietary technology to run the business. It was, what are we doing to keep the people connected? That was, that was critically important.

14:08Well, before we move on, we did have a pretty cool pre-interview chat that I had to stop you on because I was like, Joe, this is too good. Like we need to share this during the interview. So let's talk briefly about that because I do think that a lot of our leaders that are listening right now could take away just a couple things that you implemented that really do make a difference, really do make you stand out when it comes to background on your video call, when it comes to the outfit that you're wearing and rocking, just when it comes to the overall aura that you're presenting as a leader. So talk that through.

14:37When we talked about rolling out this communications, this new communications initiative, what we – one of the first decisions we made was to go to a – we called it a weekly town hall format, which meant that myself and my partner, Fernando, who's the chief operating officer of the company, we would get up in front of the company every week and do a town hall. It was on Tuesday. It still is. And in doing that, we had to think about, you know, now you're on a video conference with hundreds of people and everybody basically fades into their backgrounds. Right. You know, bookcases, bookshelves, plants, kids, dogs, you know, it's all there.

15:20Right. Right. And when Fernando and I were talking about it, you know, we had figured out that in order for people to lock in on us during a video conference, we needed to come up with some standardization during the call. And as nice as the backgrounds that we had were, you know, we were sort of fading into our own background. So we came up with the idea to go to a static background, which is actually an eight by eight trade show banner that sits behind us on a stand. And it's consistent. It's themed. It's logoed for the company, Digital Media Solutions. And Fernando and I adopted, you know, these white polo team shirts that have the company logo on them.

15:59And then any time that we would get on these Zoom town hall calls, which have since been renamed our weekly huddle, we would have the same shirt on and we would be in front of the same background. and our teams that would run these meetings would highlight us so that we stood out. And what that enabled us to do was further enhance the connection with the employees because it was very clear that Fernando and I were uniformed. We were together on this and we were presenting a message to the company. And I don't know what the lift on that was or how much that enhanced the connection with the employee.

16:40All I know is that we had to, you know, get angles and leverage where we could. And that was an angle and leverage point for us to make sure that we were staying connected with the company. And I think it also sent a message like, hey, these guys are prepared every week. This is meaningful to them. Look at how they show up to this meeting that we have every week. And oh, by the way, we're still doing them. We've done almost 90 of them now every single week. and they track linearly back to March of 2020. We've kept doing them. And I wanted the company to know like, hey, Fernando and I are going to prepare.

17:14We're going to show up and we're quote in uniform, ready to go here because this is an important meeting. We're going to get up in front of the company and we have an important message to share. You matter to us. That's why we show up the way we do. This is not just some random meeting that I roll into every week. There's a prep session for this. We've got important information and we want to share. We're here for you. The company is your leaders. and that sent a clear message to them that they mattered to us and that we were going to show up a certain way. So yeah, that's where I was going when we started this before we actually got into it.

17:45So Fire Nation, sometimes it's the little things that add up to really make a difference in everything that you're doing. And those may sound on some time, in some way, shape and form, like just a little bit of little things just kind of all over the place. But when you now add them all up and you now say, okay, listen, everything that we're doing here is to show you and to prove to you that this really matters, that makes a huge difference. So what tips can you share, Joe, with Fire Nation to be prepared for whatever may come next? What are your personal routines? How do you mentally prepare yourself for the day?

18:23What message are you telling yourself? And how are you showing up for yourself first, right? Protect yourself, protect the family, protect the business. Then you get into people, process and technology. This all comes back foundationally to the same thing. Like, where are you at? Because wherever it is you're at is kind of where you're going to be able to take others. So, you know, stay positive no matter what happens and control the narrative and storyline that you're telling yourself first. Don't allow negative storylines or narratives to get a hold of you in a way that takes you down the wrong path, right?

18:59You always have to be positive and ready to reframe and how I can best put that. And if you talk to any of my executive team that I've worked alongside and with for many years now, they would tell you that Joe doesn't see problems as problems. Joe sees problems as challenges. He doesn't like to use the word problem because if you reframe problem as challenge and then you take the challenge on, the challenge becomes an opportunity. And on the other side of dealing with that challenge, the opportunity is growth. And the bigger the challenge, the more growth there is. If you can just continually reframe your thought process around looking at problems, not as problems, but as challenges, and then you can get excited to go after them, you're going to find yourself in a completely different space than you otherwise would if you allow problems to truly be problems because then you're going to go down the negative path on that.

20:01and who knows where that goes. So you gotta be able to control that narrative and storyline in your own head first and be able to reframe it. And if you can do that and you can do it, you don't have to do it the way that I do it or the way that Fernando does it, but find a way to control that and flip it and take it on in a way where you can go at it with positive energy. And you're just gonna, you're gonna find yourself in a way better spot than if you don't do it that way. So Joe, you dropped a lot of value bombs from the very beginning throughout now to where we're wrapping things up. So take the microphone, share with Fire Nation the one thing that you really wanna make sure that we walk away with from this entire interview today.

20:43You don't know what life's gonna throw at you. Proof in point, we talked about the pandemic, right? If you can get yourself comfortable with being uncomfortable, and what that means is you have the mindset that no matter what comes your way, you can handle it. And even more importantly, where we just were, which is the bigger the challenge, the more significant the growth opportunity on the other side of that challenge. It kind of doesn't matter what happens, right? Because you're ready. And with that type of attitude, there's basically nothing you can't do. And yes, stuff is going to come at you that you're not going to be prepared for.

21:19But if you're ready for it and you're happy with being uncomfortable and the reframe that comes with throw the word problem out the door and replace it with challenge, you're going to be good no matter what. How can Fire Nation connect with you? Any call to action you have for us today? And then we'll say goodbye. If you go to digitalmediasolutions.com, we have a number of different ways people can connect. We have our intranet and I'm readily out there. It's jmaranucci at dmsgroup.com. If people want to email me directly, I respond to all the emails I get, assuming that I see them. I do get a lot of emails, but I have an open door policy for everybody that works for me and just generally in life.

21:58So I'm happy to engage with any of the followers that, you know, find any of this content meaningful. They can just reach out to me directly through the company website or through the email address. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with JM and JLD today. So keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com. If you just type Joe in the search bar, the show notes page will pop up with everything that we've talked about here today. and digitalmediasolutions.com is a great place to go to learn more. Joe, thank you, brother, for sharing your truth, knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today.

22:36For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. It was a pleasure, John. Have a great day and thank you, Fire Nation. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Joe and Fire Nation successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That's why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days, and we're talking step by step, visit thefreedomjournal.com, and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Fire Nation, this is your year to get unstuck and to grow a successful business. Attend the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and now featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire.

23:21Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire.