Worthy for Thirty: Where stories of leaders doing good while doing well are told!

Hello Everyone -

The unofficial, official start of summer has come and gone, but conversations with interesting business leaders hasn’t!

I’m elated to share the conversation I had with Carlos Del Valle aka Los Antonio the Host and Creator of ‘No Sleeping In The Trophy Room’ a show on Revolt. Over the past three seasons of the show, Carlos has sat down and spoken with musicians, artists, and other culture makers where they’ve discussed their unconventional path to success.

I met Carlos 10+ years ago when I was working at Buddy Media and Carlos was at Blue Flame, an agency owned by Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs. Blue Flame was in charge of the marketing and advertising for Combs Brands, specifically Ciroc Vodka. Carlos and his team, at the time, were working with Buddy Media to scale Ciroc’s social media presence.

It’s through Carlos’ time working at Blue Flame then moving on to working directly with Mr. Combs (‘Diddy’); leading his personal brand’s social media strategy where he further developed his digital skillset along with relationships across the media, technology and music industries. This culminated into his founding of ‘No Sleeping In The Trophy Room’ and soon thereafter ‘No Sleeping Running Club.’

Season 4 of No Sleeping In The Trophy Room drops in July - subscribe and follow Revolt’s YouTube channel to be alerted about future episodes. Carlos gave us a sneak peak of some of the guests appearing and you won’t want to miss it!

The show’s tagline: ‘the conversation series fueled by motivation, experience and truth’

* Carlos’ guests provide a ‘behind the scenes’ look to where they got to today. Some of Carlos’ past guests include hip hop artist, Ace Hood, the Co-Host of 105.1 FM’s ‘Breakfast Club’ Angela Yee, and movie director, Jessy Terrero among other interesting guests across the industry spectrum

* As Carlos mentioned during our conversation, the common denominator between his guests is that each of them possess an unconventional approach to their success and weren’t given all the ‘tools or keys’ when they started on their journey

* Carlos’ professional journey is infused with his intention to be of service to others, to mentor aspiring industry insiders, and to use his platform as a way to do good and give back by telling his guests’ stories

* 🎧Mentoring is important to Carlos because when he first interned then joined Blue Flame full-time his boss, Aubrey Flynn mentored him and provided invaluable guidance along the early stretch of his career.

Hello Everyone -

Another week, another great conversation with a notable business leader who’s doing good while pursuing success. And to top it off, a fellow Hoosier (when I cut my arm I bleed cream and crimson).

Without further ado — I sat down with OKCupid’s Global CMO, Melissa Hobley to discuss how she and her team have positioned its dating app and community to differentiate itself within the sea of online dating options.

A quick factoid, OKCupid is one of the original (‘OG’ in Melissa parlance) dating apps. It’s been around for 20 years (and counting). And thanks to Melissa’s leadership, it’s been revitalized through its insight-driven, community-led creative marketing and messaging.

Remember its’ ‘DTF’ campaign in 2018? Not surprisingly, it won a slew of awards.

And most recently, Melissa was recognized by Forbes with her inclusion on its 2022 Entrepreneurial CMO List

* OKCupid is for the 100% of folks looking for a match, not a particular segment

* Melissa and her team have leaned into the insight that OKCupid’s community members want to delve deeper into a potential match — appearance, demographics aren’t enough. The app allows members to include the social and political issues important to them (this criteria is completely optional)

* In order to fully understand the topics and issues important to community members, Melissa and her team are in constant communication mode. Help us understand what your world looks like from your shoes. A good piece of advice for any brand looking to take a stand on any issue

* She believes the reason why she and her team are recognized by publications & her peers - like Forbes and AdAge - is through OKCupid’s taking a stance on issues important to their members

* Melissa is aware brands need to navigate both external issues — pandemic, supply chain issues, inflation — with internal topics — like gender and race equality. More Americans, especially the younger generations, are demanding transparency in the brands they patronize

* For listeners with executive role ambitions, Melissa is effusive about mentorship and relationship building. Who are the people in your orbit who can provide unvarnished guidance and feedback to help you along your career path? Melissa’s inbox is open: [email protected] to help the folks who are questioning their path, want to work for a company or brand that is taking a stand on issue(s) important to them, or need a little bit of clarity in their journey

Hello Everyone -

I hope everyone’s week is going well. I’m excited to talk about a few overlapping passion points of mine: food, tech and doing good.

I recently sat down with Bo Peabody, the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Seated. Seated is a marketplace, which connects restaurants to diners - incentivizing members to dine out, pick up or order delivery at participating restaurants by offering rewards, which can be redeemed at some of your favorite retailers, airlines, and experiences.

Seated’s value proposition is providing restaurant operators a platform to use dynamic pricing as a way to maintain consistent occupancy. Similar to hotels or airlines, a restaurant may offer a larger incentive through the Seated platform to dine on a Monday vs. a Saturday night knowing the former is a slower time of day.

75% of a restaurants’ daily costs are fixed - how can a restaurant work with its variable costs in order to maximize its profitability? That’s where Seated comes in.

Consistent occupancy rate = sustained profitability.

* Seated has over 1,000 restaurants on its platform across 6 US cities - NYC, Dallas, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and Atlanta

* Its mobile app (available on iOS and Android OS) makes restaurant discovery super intuitive! You can search restaurants by area, cuisine, member rating and incentive

* Restaurants provide a % of the check to members for patronizing their establishment — you need to upload a receipt through the app to verify the outing — which can be redeemed at leading retailers, airlines and other experiences all listed on the Seated app

* Seated is transparent with their model - 75% of the dining incentive goes to the member and 25% goes to Seated

* During the pandemic, Seated lowered their commission for dining-in while eliminating their take rate completely on delivery and pick up orders at participating restaurants therefore maximizing the member incentive in order to sustain occupancy rates.

About Bo — in addition to his role at Seated — brings a wealth of restaurant operating experience to the table (pun not intended):

* Venture partner at Greycroft, an early seed venture capital firm, investing in food and culinary tech

* Sits on the board at Boqueria - a Spanish and tapas restaurant group that has locations in NYC, DC, Nashville & Chicago

* Co-owner of Mezze Restaurant Group which is based in Western Massachusetts

Restaurants can act as our ‘3rd place,’ behind our house and office, where we spend quality time while creating memorable experiences. Bo and I talked about a few restaurants that fall into this category for him.

Which restaurants fall in this category for you? Tell us on Twitter by tagging @FastTash & @bopeabody.

Welcome to Worthy for Thirty, a newsletter & podcast where I speak with notable business leaders about how they’re doing good and giving back while pursuing success knowing these concepts aren’t mutually exclusive. If you aren’t subscribed, come and subscribe below

🎧 You can also listen to this episode on Spotify and Apple podcasts

Hello Everyone -

How was your weekend?

I’m excited to publish my latest conversation with my friend Craig Dubitsky, the Founder of Hello Products. Hello Product is a ‘friendly’ oral care company that prides itself on creating natural oral products for the 100% not the 1% of American households.

Craig began his journey with Hello 11+ years ago. His previous entrepreneurial stops were co-founding EoS (Evolution of Smooth lip balm) and being on the ground floor with Method Products.

In 2020 he and Hello joined the Colgate-Palmolive family (the most penetrated FMCG brand in the world). Craig doesn’t refer to Hello’s acquisition as an ‘exit’ but rather an ‘entrance.’ The company still operates independently within Colgate while having access to its resources.

Some key points Craig stressed during our discussion:

* Everything starts and ends with people

* People don’t want to buy things, they want to join things

* Customer service shouldn’t be considered a ‘cost center’ rather it should be used to empower everyone from the people who work with you to the people who buy your product or service

* FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) doesn’t exist rather he ascribes to FONT (Fear of Not Trying) — he impresses this concept with the college students he encounters at Babson, Univ. of Rochester, NYU, TCU, and more.

Craig practices what he preaches. There’s a Skype button on the Hello Products website whose calls go directly to him — he’s answered calls from all around the world. He unabashedly gives out his cell phone number too because he loves people.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Worthy for Thirty. Feel free to share it by hitting the button 👇

I sit down with venture capitalist and philanthropist Bradley Tusk to discuss two important initiatives: mobile voting and combating food insecurity in the US.  Both initiatives Tusk Philanthropies is actively engaged in.

Bradley spent a good portion of his career working in government, more recently and before he founded his businesses, Tusk Strategies and Tusk Ventures, he was Mayor Mike Bloomberg's campaign manager in 2009.  

In 2010 Bradley founded Tusk Strategies where he and his team are able to apply their experience working in government to helping businesses traverse the regulatory frameworks at the federal, state and local levels.  In 2016 he founded Tusk Ventures, which invests in early stage startups that may encounter regulatory scrutiny -- like Uber, Ro Health, Sunday Lawn Care, FanDuel, Lemonade and many others. 

I sat down with Marni Gordon of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Educational Foundation to understand her ethos of giving back and doing good within the marketer community.  I've known Marni for close to 10 years ever since I become an ANA member while I was at Prestige Brands. 

Marni dispenses a lot of great advice during this episode for both new and experienced marketers to incorporate in their daily lives + she recently launched a weekly newsletter touches upon topics impacting marketers.

Marni has been with the ANA for 13+ years and was most recently tapped to lead the ANA Educational Foundation whose objective is to bridge the gap between rising marketing talent from US colleges and universities and the organizations that are members of the ANA.  

A quick piece of trivia: the ANA is THE LARGEST client-side marketer organization in the US.