Cerebrations Podcast

Episode 21: Becoming a Marketing Leader... With Marina Krivonossova

In this episode, Emil is joined by a content marketing leader. Marina Krivonossova has experience with B2B content marketing within several different verticals, ranging from SaaS, to travel, and everything in between. Recently, she decided to start her own content marketing agency, Retold, to focus on making a genuine impact through her work.
Emil asks Marina to describe the challenges rising leaders are facing as they grow in their roles. The two discuss the skills that are essential for succeeding as a marketing leader. Marina also talks about her strong belief in a culture of continuous learning as a way for her and her team to grow. 

Episode 20: The B2B Side of Marketing... With Shirin Oreizy

Emil is hosting Shirin Oreizy for the special 20th installment of The Cerebrations Podcast. Shirin is the founder and CEO of Next Step, a Behavioral Design agency in San Francisco.
Shirin explains how Behavioral Science relates to Marketing. She demonstrates how Behavioral Science can help digital marketers optimize their campaigns by adding Prevention-style messaging when Promotion-style messaging may not resonate as well with their target ICPs.
Shirin also provides examples of the application of Behavioral Science approaches such as regret lottery, cognitive fluency, social proof, and endowment effect in improving tradeshow ROI and boosting customer retention.

Episode 19: Growth Through Customer Delight... With Sandy Yu

In this episode, Emil meets with Sandy Yu, an experienced growth executive and startup advisor. The two talk about the shifting focus toward existing customers as companies seek sustainable growth. 
Sandy defines Customer Success and explains how it relates to the "revenue bowtie" concept, which has been gaining traction in the past few years. She explains how delighting customers can lead to greater Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), which is a very important metric of corporate performance, especially in the SaaS world.
In addition, Emil and Sandy discuss why customers typically leave, and provide suggestions about how companies can truly understand what a customer values. Sandy introduces an interesting idea about "show me you know me" as a guiding point for everyone who wants to delight customers.

Episode 18: Finding Your Blue Ocean... With Zunaira Munir

In this episode, Emil hosts Dr. Zunaira (Zee) Munir, an experienced Blue Ocean strategist, to talk about the renowned strategic framework that emerged from the eponymous book by Prof. Chan Kim and Prof. Renée Mauborgne at INSEAD.
Zee explains how companies and executives should view and apply Blue Ocean Strategy in their everyday business dealings. Emil and Zee discuss the best times to rely on Blue Ocean Strategy as well as common pitfalls that even experienced executives fall into when approaching this framework. 
In the end, Zee provides several real-life examples of how BOS can be applied and offers final words of advice for aspiring Blue Ocean strategists.

Episode 17: From Last to Lasting Impression... With Andrea Beach

In this episode, Emil hosts serial entrepreneur, Andrea Beach. The host and guest discuss a topic that should be useful to all executives and business people in general -- i.e., how to leave a lasting impression.
Andrea describes the importance of impressions in personal as well as business life. She argues that while first impressions are important, the last impressions are the ones that matter the most.
The main idea is that to create a memorable experience for your business partner, which will impact the potential success of your business undertaking, you should strive to improve between your first and last impression. In other words, what really matters is showing a positive change between the first time someone sees you and the time you need to close the deal.
Emil also asks Andrea to provide a few personal examples where her first impression of a potential business partner changed over time.

Episode 16: Leveling Up Engagement Through Web3... With Bryan Georges

In this episode, Emil hosts an old friend from college, Bryan Georges, who is now the co-founder of iiNDYVERSE, a Web3 outfit focused on providing augmented customer engagement experiences for brands.
Bryan describes how Web3 has evolved from pure speculation to more defined and value-adding use cases, including the ability for brands to identify and engage with their most loyal customers. He and Emil agree that Web3 is undergoing a refreshing phase of maturing and may hopefully become more useful to marketing executives in the near future.
Emil also brings up several examples of Web3 and NFT activations from Art Basel 2023 in Miami Beach, and asks Bryan to help unpack those experiences to the podcast's audience.
The two also discuss the psychology behind gamification, and how that helps with leveling up customer engagement.

Episode 15: Creating Value Through Negotiation... With Prof. Horacio Falcão

In this podcast episode, Emil hosts one of his favorite teachers from his MBA program at INSEAD, Prof. Horacio Falcão. Emil and Horacio discuss Value Negotiation, a strategic and flexible approach to negotiation designed to maximize rewards at minimum risk in an international and complex world.
Prof. Falcão goes over the common myths and pitfalls of negotiation. He explains the differences between Win-Lose and Win-Win, and elaborates on how Win-Win ties into Value Negotiation. He also advises on how we can be nice but not naive in negotiations -- meaning how we can apply Value Negotiation without getting taken advantage by negotiators pursuing a Win-Lose outcome.
At the end of the episode, Emil and Horacio discuss the skills that executives should hone to become successful negotiators.

Episode 14: Building Trust in Business Partnerships... With Jenny Santi

In this podcast episode, Emil hosts Jenny Santi, a Filipino artist, book author, and a psychotherapist based in New York City. Emil and Jenny got to know each other during their MBA studies at INSEAD. Jenny has had a very diverse professional career, ranging from banking to philanthropy, and from painting to book writing, and relationship counseling.
Emil has experienced first-hand the difficult area of forming business partnerships, especially in situations where those prospect partners could easily turn into competitors. Knowing this might be an issue facing many other sales and marketing executives, Emil decided to invite an expert's opinion on how to build trust in business partners' relationships. Jenny contributes to this episode with very useful advice on what makes a business partnership healthy, what common issues we should be aware of, and how to assess potential partners for fit.

Episode 13: Overcoming the HIPPO Syndrome... With Moni Oloyede

In this episode, Emil hosts fellow marketer, Moni Oloyede, who has recently been focusing a lot on the phenomenon of HIPPO situations in corporate settings. HIPPO stands for Highest Paid Person's Opinion and describes a situation where a CEO, a founder, or another person who has an extrovert personality and is approaching from a position of power or authority, tends to suck the air out of the conversation. 
Many of us have experienced such situations and know that oftentimes those lead to lower productivity and subpar outcomes. Emil and Moni define several different personas who are most likely to act like HIPPOs and discuss mitigation strategies. They also provide advice about self-diagnosing and monitoring to ensure you, yourself, do not become a HIPPO. 

Episode 12: Sales & Marketing in the Metaverse... With Kristian Bouw

In this episode, Emil hosts Kristian Bouw, a VR/AR entrepreneur whose agency, NotionTheory, has worked on innovative projects applying new interactive media for municipal governments, non-profit organizations, and corporates.
The goal of the discussion is to separate the hype from the substance since so much has been said and written about metaverse in the past couple of years. To an extent, this subject has almost become stigmatized due to the ill-placed buzz driven by several well-publicized business failures in that area. 
Emil and Kristian aim to inform the podcast's audience about the true business value in using VR/AR/Mixed Reality and leveraging the metaverse to accomplish various sales & marketing goals.