Danielle Brown, CMO at Points | Nontraditional Career Paths & Managing Through Covid

All right. Well, thanks again for joining me today. I am sitting down with Danielle Brown, who is the CMO of points Danielle is at the helm of the global loyalty commerce provider. She is heading up their entire marketing strategy. She's responsible for driving growth through data science and analytics. She also leads business operation functions, including product delivery, support services, while ensuring overall customer and partner satisfaction and making sure that that remains a top priority. She has 20 years of experience on loyalty platforms, entertainment, wireless retail and tech at the huge range of industries. She's navigated and built marketing teams from growth stage startups to international markets with incredible growth, incredible revenue. Now, that's obviously the formal description of your career, but I want to hear it from you. Talk to me about your career, how you came to become CMO of points. It's looking at your LinkedIn. A lot of really, really impressive wins. So yeah, let's break it down. Thank you, Scott. I'm really happy to be here. Yeah. It is kind of funny when I hear that back, A, the 20 years kind of made me breathe a little bit heavy because I'm like shit, that's a really long time and that made me feel old. But yeah, it was, it was, I guess a circuit with a route, right? I think I've always been a bit of a, I don't know, I guess a bit of a hustler. I've always been working like babysitting. I think I had my first real job at McDonald's at like 11 or 12 and I lied about my age to get my job. And I was always one of those like super busy kids and I managed like my friends rock bands when I was 15 and at like 19, I left Montreal. I moved to Toronto. I'm like, I'm going to go to theater school. I lasted a year and I felt like it was a waste of time. And then I continued acting. But then I was like, I'm going to get a degree in criminology. And then I got bored of that and I actually didn't finish that degree. I've actually never finished school. I do not have a degree. And one of the ways that I kind of managed to get to where I am is that I worked a whole bunch of jobs. And one of those jobs was working at HMV while I was at school for those of you who aren't familiar, record store. And when I had the opportunity to go full-time as when I quit school and I was like, no, no, I think I can weirdly turn this into something. And so I learned how the cash office worked. I was the shipper receiver. And then that's where I got my first marketing job. And I remember just that was my first salary job. And I was marketing for like the flagship store. And it was like, I made no money, but it was like a salary. And I was so proud, right? And that was the beginning of marketing. And I kind of worked at HMV for a while. And then I had this like opportunity, someone at Universal Music, Canada called and said, hey, there's a sick leave. And we can bring you on. You might be here for two weeks. You might be here for two months. And I was like, I will quit my job. I will take it. And I will make sure they do not get rid of me. And I stayed there for six years, right? And so what I did there was I started off in sales. And then I moved to artist marketing. And I was the artist marketer for inner scope records for Canada for the last three years there. But like at a certain point, I was just like, okay, I don't know if I can do this forever. Like this is, I'm not going to be cool forever. I'm going to get old and I'm going to age out. Like high praise, I really thought I was cool at the time. But then I was like, okay, let me start exploring my options. And it was the time of Napster. And then business was changing. And I was just like, okay, I need to start seeing what else is up there. And every recruiter that I went to was like, you don't know how to do anything about music. I can't hire you. I can't place you. No one will hire you. And I was like, shit, I am stuck, right? What do I do? What is my next move? And so I thought, okay, the next move has got to be, I know music. People will trust me with that. And I found a job running music content for a telco startup called AMP Mobile. And we lasted for about eight to nine months in Canada. And then we went under. And it was an awesome first startup experience. And it was a necessary step for me to get further away from music. But then I was like, what on earth am I going to do now? And then one of my colleagues at the time was running a conversion for XM Canada. So before the series XM merger. And he was one of the smartest people, one of the smartest people I knew. He was one of my colleagues at AMP Mobile and he had gone there. And I was just like, if I could learn everything that is in this guy's head. I've got the art of marketing. He's got the science. Then I will be in a great spot. And so I took this job as an account manager for General Motors and was just like, I will learn everything that you can teach me. And I learned about analytics. I learned about forecasting. I learned the whole financial aspect of the business. And that was really foundational to me was to have someone who believed in me and believed I was smart and be able to and could adapt and learn new things so that when my time at series XM was up six years later, I was recruited as a VP of marketing at points. And it was my job to build their analytics team. And to look at their marketing team that was a cost center and say, I think I can turn this into a profit center. And we did some awesome work for three years. And then I was like, okay, you know what, I need to start a experience again. And then I went and I left there. And I thought at this point, I was like, I need to get to the C level table. And I'm not stuck at VP at points. And I need to get out and try to find that next opportunity for myself. And so I went to a B2B retail marketplace called Haba, where I was there for CMO. And then left there and went to a director consumer business called Nix, where I was there CMO. And then got recruited back at points. And I've been there as CMO and I've been there for about a year and a bit. So it's been this really long meandering journey. But purposeful in the way that I knew what skills I needed to acquire to get to the next level. And that was what was guided my decision making, I think. That's a very interesting story. And there's a lot of different points that I'd actually want to touch on. But I think the one that I just, the one thing that stood out to me was you were, you almost accidentally got into marketing, but then you were purposefully successful at it. I don't know if you agree with that statement or not, but it seems like that sort of like the group progression from HMV and then you saw the opportunities, you just sort of like tackled them, tackled them, tackled them. At what point did you know that you wanted to double down on marketing? And the reason why I asked that is because a lot of people listen to this are also in sales. And I think that actually funny enough, your career progression where you accidentally get into something and then your purposefully successful at it is actually very, very much in line with what a lot of sales individuals do. Because a lot, I think there's more, there probably was more infrastructure to support a marketer than sales on anchor still is. So for people that sort of are trying to figure out what they're doing and they're at that point and like my background is very similar to yours, but I was done as sales route where I just got into sales as I kept going, kept going, kept going, kept going. How did you know at the point when you, this is something that you wanted to do for your career and that you started to double down on it and this is something that you wanted to sort of continue to learn and find mentors and continue to advance in your career? What was that point? You know, I, I think it was while I was working at HMV not in marketing previously. And then, and to be honest, the thing that attracted me to it was I was like, well, this sounds cool, right? These people do cool things. Let me just try. I'm going to try to write a marketing plan and see what happens. And that first job, I, I, I was like, look, I'm going to, I'm going to be really open about what I know and what I don't know and what I know how to do. And I just discovered that I was good at it. I think I was fearless in the opportunities that I brought forward and I've always approached my career knowing that it would be okay to fail because I could pick myself up again and try something new or try the same thing differently. And I think operating with that mindset of saying, I'm going to say yes to every opportunity and just see where it gets me allowed me to find the thing I was good at because I didn't have that traditional schooling where I could explore and figure that out. And so it really was a recognition of, I have the aptitude for this. So now I'm going to double down and I'm going to try to chart a path that's just going to be make me smarter at this thing that I think I can be good at. Do you think, do you think not having the formal education that actually gave you an advantage? I do. I do. And I don't know if it's just personal because of the way I learned. It's funny that you ask it that way because at the time while I was trying to build my career after a few jobs in like at some point at Universal, I was like idiot. Why didn't you finish school? Right? Like why did you not finish school because every time you go for a job someone is asking you if you had your degree. But the thing that it freed me to do is to not take a textbook approach and it allowed me to say, I don't know if I'm supposed to do it this way, but let me explore and let me innovate and let me see if it works this way. I filled in a lot of the knowledge after. But yeah, I think for the way I operate, it was a hugely freeing experience to not have a map. I'm starting to, as you tell your story, I'm starting to understand why you're successful and why you've been successful in so many different industries. Like when we first introduced you, it was loyalty, entertainment, wireless, retail, tech. You're right. That's a lot of different industries and just to be able to be successful at all of those, it sort of speaks to you as a professional as a person. I'm just wondering if that's, I think you had the benefit of not having the formal education which forced you as like a high performing individual to take those things on to be successful. I'm just wondering if that's something that can be, I guess, learned if somebody was in a formal education setting and they were spoon fed stuff and it did come easy to start, how do you become that adaptable and how do you shift your thinking so that failure is okay because it's going to go to another point. How did you deal with and navigate the pandemic? Environment with points and travel, but I'm sure all of your success and the way that you've had to navigate has led to you being extremely effective at navigating just another significantly large event, but still something that a lot of people that have done things a certain way for so long may be a little bit less capable of figuring out. Look, I think the first part of your question is interesting and I think it all has to do with approach, right? I'm going to go back to my early acting days and one of the most valuable lessons that I ever, ever learned was in improv class. I don't know if you've ever taken an improv class. I took grade 12 drama. Wasn't that good at it, but yeah, that was nervous. That's always nervous. The principle, you learn this thing in improv, right? And the thing you learn is the phrase yes and so I'll give you an example. I'm doing a little improv scene and I'm like cooking dinner in the kitchen and you're always going to have the next person comes into the improv scene who decides they're going to be clever and just throw a wrench in everything and say, hey, I'm an alien from outer space or whatever and you're like, what could be doing in my kitchen? But whatever, what you can't do in improv is say them what the hell are you doing in my kitchen? What you have to do in improv is accept the suggestion and go, how am I going to build on it? And bizarrely, that's been foundational in how I built my career. That whole rule of the yes and is I can always build on anything. So if I don't know something, I can figure it out. If something comes in to change my direction or shift my focus, that's great. I'll accept it and figure out how to adapt it and integrate it into the path that I have to take. So I think that that part is foundational, right? And I think if you do have a more formal education, I think that's great. I think that's I think having a really a team with diverse backgrounds and diverse ways of learning builds a really great team. If you're looking to be adaptable, the main thing though is adding that adaptability. So if you can with that formal training, then say, and I also know that things are going to happen that are unexpected and I can apply that rule of the yes and it allows you to be flexible as well. So I think it's an attitude and an approach thing. I love that. I think that's a very valuable tool that people can if they can just keep a top of mind, I think that would be very useful. And I think especially, you know, we're talking about career, but I'll bring it again back to COVID. Like your circumstance and how you've sort of, and we're speaking about this before, like if you're healthy, if you know, if you are in a relatively okay financial position, you're not having the worst goal of it compared to some people that don't have those luxuries, unfortunately. So you know, if you can say yes and and you know, we're right now, we're both in Toronto, we're stuck inside, but there's a lot of things that are still progressing in our careers. You know, people are still, you know, advancing. So there's ways to grow. There's always ways to grow and there's always, you know, roll with the punches, so to speak. I really, really like that attitude. That's a really, really, really smart attitude to sort of internalize. I want to, I want to understand more about, you know, now, this is sort of your career progression to points. You really summed it up very nicely and succinctly. I want to understand, I guess, with points in particular, some leadership lessons that you're working with now. So some, some things that you, you bring to the team, bring to the company. And I'm really just curious because you're working in a, and a point is loyalty, loyalty for travel, if I'm not mistaken. So obviously, there's been some disruption in the company. Do you want to, do you want to walk through? Because I, you know, how, how have you navigated COVID so far? And how, how has that impacted your role, CMO? Yeah, so it's a few different ways. It has obviously been a challenge to be in a travel related business. And what we particularly do is we work with 60 of the world's largest travel loyalty rewards programs. So we don't run the loyalty programs themselves. But what we do is we build and power a network of ways that loyalty program members can get and use their favorite loyalty currency. Right? So basically, and we've been around since the year 2000, and we're headquartered in Toronto, and we operate around the globe. And so what we've been dealt with is, what we've been dealing with is our partners who are going, who airlines and hotels who are going through the most significant downturn in travel history. And we've kind of seen it as our jobs to be able to say, okay, people can't fly. They are not staying at hotels as much, and hotels as much obviously. And so what can we do to help you generate ancillary revenue? So it's been, it's been a humbling experience to see how much their, their business has suffered and how much we can help our partners say, okay, we can still bring in revenue for you by retailing that loyalty currency. And we're seeing some encouraging things, right? We're seeing that that loyalty program members are still purchasing currency, which to me is this hopeful view of travel returning, because they are going to want to spend their loyalty currency, and they're saving up for trips right now that they can take when things reopen. And so our approach has had to be very different, because we all need space buyers are all gone. It's, people are really buying just for future travel. And that, so, so we've been dealing on one side with our partners who have a staff getting furloughed and have to do so much more with less, and we're trying to support them through that. But then you think about our team internally, and, you know, I'm looking at my team, we're, we're about 275 people in points in total, and my team is about 90, 90 of those people. And, you know, in thinking through how everyone was dealing with the pandemic at the beginning, it just, everyone has different living circumstances, right? People have a whole bunch of different salaries, what I might be dealing with is very different than what my customer service representative might be dealing with, and the space that they're dealing with. And, and, and as leaders, we have to be really, really cognizant of the stress that this time and this period is putting on our teams. So one of the early decisions that I made is looking at my team's happiness. And, and I know that that sounds squishy, but I'm a very firm believer in saying, if my team is happy, they will work harder for me. That sounds really cold and calculated. But if I take care of them, they will take care of the business. And so early on, what I decided to do was say, hey, as a team, let's build a happiness model. Because if I can keep you happy, I'm going to hold on to you. I'm going to make sure that you are comfortable and cared for. And I know I'm going to get good work for you, from you. So I surveyed the team and I said, look in point form and pros, however you want to do it, describe your perfect data me. Just tell me what that looks like. I took all of that data and then said, where are the common themes that I'm, that I'm seeing. And basically, everything fell into six common buckets. And so I used that to, as a team, kind of crowdsource what we're calling the ABCs of happiness. And what we said is, if you could feel a sense of accomplishment, if you could feel balanced so that you have work time and you have sink time and you have home time and work time, if you could feel a sense of challenge. So you had these realistic goals, but you, but they were goals and a little bit hard to achieve. If you had clarity in what was expected of you, if you had a connection with your peers that went beyond work, and if you felt like you were contributing to the greater good of the company, then you would be a happy employee and you would be a happy team member. And so all of my people managers have this and are armed with this information, and when they do their one-on-ones with their, with people on their team, they check the happiness index and they're like, how does your happiness score going? Where are we falling short and how can I help you with that? And the powerful thing about that is that it's a model that was built by the team. They told us what was important. And now we have this language and this conversation to be able to follow up on people who might be worried because we're in travel and what's happening to my job and who are seeing the people that they work with day to day, getting furloughed or laid off. And so it gave them a sense of security and power to be able to say, my leaders care about me, my company cares about me, and I have a language to be able to talk to them with if I am not happy in a certain way. That's a very good framework. And you know, we were prepping for this. I didn't even know you were going to bring that up and happy you did, though, because regardless of the pandemic, I think that's actually extremely important. And I think that I think that that's actually something that I think the the happiness of a team, you're right, it does sound like I don't know, you squish it, whatever. It's a good word for it. But it's very true. And I think that if you just assume like, oh, you know, my team's a full of, they're growing off their adults, like they can manage and they can take care of themselves. Like they're going to, it's not going to be a good situation. So I don't know about you, but I'm struggling. I'm having a hell of a time. Like I'm having a hell of a time. Like seriously, like half the reason why I like doing these podcasts now is because this is the only time I can talk to somebody else besides like, I like, I love the people that I'm living with. Don't get me wrong. But you know, you don't you don't have you don't have the coffee. You don't have the conferences. You don't have that anymore. Yeah, you really don't. And you know, people can put on this face and they can say like, you know, I'm okay. Like I'm, I'm doing fine. And for some people, like it's tough to let that, let that guard down and be human, especially if they're professionals and they're, you know, maybe they're executives and they think they're supposed to be perceived a certain way or whatever, or they're people that report to them that are not doing okay and they want to be there for those people. But if you normalize it, across the organization, all of a sudden, you realize the people that everybody thought was okay, it may have not been okay. And then you're starting to, to really help people in ways that, yeah, you're going to keep them with the company. But in terms of like mental health and well-being, you're probably doing a lot more for them than just keeping them with the company, especially if they're on their own. Right. I think that's it. And I think it's, I think that's so important, right? That's squishy stuff. As squishy it as it is is so important. These are people, these are human beings. If I'm having a tough time, they are having a tough time. And it really does translate into, if someone is happy, they will say. If someone is happy, they will be freer, they will feel more safe, they will experiment more, they will innovate more. It builds a more productive team member. Now there's a component of that that I wanted to, I wanted to ask you about. So, there's also a component of trust that I think is sort of layered on when somebody's working from home because there has to be an extra layer or level of trust. So you're a leader, you're dealing with a relatively large marketing team. You said 90, 90 individuals. How do you, how do you trust them to get their work done? What's your process for feeling comfortable and making sure that they know that you trust them? You know, to me, I love that question because I do think the job of a leader is to leave space for people to do their work, to do their best work, right? And you're only going to do that if you trust them. What's interesting is we, here's the second squishy topic we're talking about, right? Which is trust and we're happiness in their trust. And we actually built a trust model on our team as well. And that was again another crowdsource model. I'm really big on if I'm going to ask the team to do something. Get them to build it themselves. Right? Exactly. And so, and so we did build a trust model, right? Where we said, okay, and this was, this goes back, sometime this goes back to my first stint of points. And it's actually, it's actually survived and survived while I was gone where where it was actually a recipe for solving a problem where the team was a bit broken. And when I went in to try to figure it out, it was because they didn't trust each other. And you had people double checking other people's work, people like going into areas that weren't their own because they weren't trusting the people on their team. And when we finally got down to it and said, okay, what would it take for you to to trust the people that you worked with? Again, crowdsource, we got four things. We got, if you could create transparency, sorry, create transparency, practice accountability, deliver results, and have honest talks with people. So if you're pissed off at me, don't go tell your body, come and tell me. And if we could all exhibit those four behaviors, then we would all be able to trust each other. And what we actually did in order to reinforce that is, oh my god, my team hated me when we put this together, but it's actually survived was we would actually on a monthly basis, the team was a lot smaller, so it was easier to do, is we would give each other awards. So we would have our update meetings. And then I would say, hey, this month, I'm going to give Scott the award for honest talk, because I screwed up and he actually confronted me on it. And I totally didn't see it from his perspective. And that took balls. And so here you go, I'm giving you the award for honest talk. And I also forced the team to give themselves an award. So then I could say, and I created transparency because something broke here, and I let everybody know, and this is what I did. And so it was this, it was this exhibiting that trusting behavior too, where you could have an open honest forum and people could have those conversations to say, hey, this is broken. I didn't get this from you. And building that trust, I think having that foundational language again made it easier for us to be working from home and say, okay, I'm not, I don't actually understand what's going on over here. I don't feel like I'm having transparency in your part of the business. We need to figure out how to communicate better. Or I'm, you're late on this for two days, and I don't know where it is. So let's just talk about the accountability here, right? I like it a lot. And I have a question because I'm sure you dealt with this. What do you do when you bring in these models? And you're, you are getting team buying, you're getting like everybody's buying because they're literally building the things that they think will work best for them. And then you're, you're, you know, that's what you're going to go with for both like happiness and trust. But there's going to be people that are going to say, this is stupid. This is retarded. I don't understand why I have to give somebody an award. Like, this doesn't make any sense to me. I don't, why am I giving myself an award? How do you get those people to buy in? Or is that something that every organization struggles with? You can't, you can't do anything about that? Now, look, I think, I think, I think people are wired differently, right? And I am, I do realize that I defaults to this, like, right? I'm a very like, let's start with our feelings. Let's figure out what's going on, which makes people, makes, makes certain people uncomfortable, right? So, so I always say to my team, can you just try it? Can you, I know you hate it and I know how painful this is for you. I just need you to try it. And I think understanding that I, they, they have to do it. Look, you don't get to opt out of this thing. I, I'm actually going to make you do it. And then if it's not working, I think it's having check-ins, right? Give me three months. Then let's talk again in three months and tell me why it's not working for you. You don't just get to say, hey, I hate this. Tell me something that would work better. Or if it's not, like, you, you, I think there is we as leaders have to give people responsibility for their own careers and their own career development. And it is not just let me give you the map, right? It is, I'm going to teach you how to work through this if the map isn't working for you. So, if you want more transparency, if you want more responsibility, then you have to show me what you're going to do about it. It's not just up to me to build that map, to draw that map for you. I like that a lot. I see. So the people that do have an opinion about it, okay, that's fine. But you have to, you have to come up with something because there's a, there's a, there's a clear gap here that it's causing the business to suffer in this area or the other. So if, if you don't think this way is going to solve that problem, you think it's stupid. Think of something that will solve this problem. And let's talk about it. Yeah, find me something that will work better. Get together with some of your colleagues and build something else. I would love that, right? Yeah, I would take a lot of stress off you. Exactly. That's very okay. So this, you know, what I'm seeing here, what we're getting is a master class and building a culture in probably one of the industries, you know, your travel adjacent that is probably one of the hardest hit. And there's one more point that I want to, I want to ask you about. I want to ask you about process and process, you know, especially in a work from home environment and how that's important. But I want to also get some data points from you on when you build out this, this squishy happiness model, this trust model. And then we can go into process as well. What does that, what does that look like in terms of actual results? How has your, how has points performed? How has, you know, how it could be, I don't know what metric you want to, you want to relay over. If you have any off top, your head and I'm sort of coming at you, you know, I didn't ask you to prep for this, but I think it would be interesting to take this away and like actually see what it, what the, what the end result is like in some way or another. Yeah, look, it's, it results are interesting, right? I think, I think, if I look at last year, where we went into laughter with a plan that obviously we didn't achieve, right? We've got people would be flying. We thought people would be, we said it in the November, the year before. But when we recast our plan, we achieved our recasted plan, right? Which to me is huge. But we're, what that, what that meant for us was things came from different places, right? So I'm talking, so from my marketing team, I won't share the breakdown, but my marketing team was previously in the work that we had to do, responsible for way less of a percentage of the overall revenue of the company. By the time the end of the year came, I would say the absolute lion's share of the company's revenue was directly related to marketing promotions. And so what you have is a situation whereby you have a team that is now disproportionately responsible for the whole company's revenue. And imagine the stress and the pressure on that to, to, not be able to fail, right? In a culture that I'm building that says, you can fail, you can try things, it's okay. And then you're just like, oh shit, but if we don't hit this, we don't hit the number, like terrifying, right? So then if I then go back to say, how did we handle the pressure? How did we not crack? How did we hit our reforecast? That's how we did it. Because we were taking care of the squishy stuff and we were making sure that people understood their direction so that they felt heard and they felt taken care of and they could power forward and get their jobs done. That's very impressive. Very impressive what you've done. And just the added curiosity was the, sort of doubling down on the trust and building up this happiness model. Was that done purposefully to combat the shifting of percentage of total revenue targets towards a marketing team, or was that just something that was a happy coincidence? The trust model I would say it was older. I think that was just that's just a way we work. The happiness model was something that we did develop during COVID and something that something that I knew I had to have in place as the responsibilities of the team would be shifting and we needed to have a way to have conversations about where things weren't working. It's a difficult business to learn and so I would say that the ramp up of someone being effective because it's such an odd business is six to eight months and so I could not afford to lose anybody. And we actually last year had the lowest turnover in our history. That's the KPI right there. That's pretty impressive. Very good. Yes, seriously, very, very impressive. Okay, last point, process. So how does process fit into all of this? So, you know, at points, I think we I think we do a pretty good job on process. I think we we might err on over process in some cases, right? Because we're at that like small to mid-sized company size and sometimes I think the the the traps that you can fall in when you're that size and and you have people spread all over the world is that you you can sometimes tend to overcomplicate things. The previous experience tells me, look, having gone in and built marketing teams from scratch is that the scariest thing that you can say to someone that has a startup is, okay, great, now we're going to put all this process in place and it's going to make things better. I swear and you get people looking at you going, you're going to slow me down. This is nuts. I don't know why you're doing this. You're just trying to turn me bureaucratic and then I don't have freedom and that's the reason that I went to a startup in the first place and I wanted to play an experiment and build fun things and you're going to make it impossible for me to do that. And I remember one of the ways in kind of having to think through this is in my story in past one of the things I did as a as a kid was I I was a ballet dancer and and the interesting thing for those of you who might not know about ballet is basically the fundamentals that you've got you haven't taken a few classes in previous ballet now. And so if there are basically five positions of your feet and five positions of your arms and all of the beautiful movements that you see are based on these five feet positions and these five arm positions and when you if you've seen a beautiful ballet dancer it is it is beautiful what they do and they look free and they look like they can fly but my process time here is their processes there are five things their feet can do and there are five things their arms can do and it's that having that form allows you to have freedom because you have this box and this framework that you can work in. So if I take that back to process if you look at an environment that is just like hey I have this idea why don't we do this if we built it this way for this for this one thing and in this way for this one thing it turns in the chaos and you actually get paralyzed and you get paralyzed because you don't know what you're prioritizing you don't know what's important and that so so when you think through process and and process is actually a freeing thing right and I think having process but not over process becomes important now when I build process I would say build to over process and then peel back but but it is just so important or you get lost because you don't understand the rules and I guess my question would be so that makes a lot of sense I like that analogy a lot now when everybody shifts into a work from home environment how do you in an agile way when you already have a process in place how do you update that so that it accommodates for a work from home environment so you're not people aren't lost confused but you're not sort of halting the progress of the business while still migrating people to work from home quickly and efficiently yeah I think that's a great question your process has to change right and I think one of the one of the biggest struggles that we have in business pandemic or not is we often have blind spots in well this is the way we've been doing it before right this is this is the way we've always done it and the wonderful thing about this pandemic if I can say anything wonderful about it from transfer from looking at transformational opportunities for business has been we have been forced to look at process and say this isn't going to work anymore we can't have the same meetings we can't all be in the same place let's just let's be free about being able to change those things and this is speaking to that transformation it's I'll give you a little bit of an example so pre pandemic on my delivery team we had been we just got approved to add 15 bodies under that team and then the week later it was like lockdown and we're also freezing all hiring and but go ahead and do the work you were supposed to do anyway and we're like sure we're a few people sure like not actually possible and would not make anyone happy right so what we did what it allowed what it allowed me to do is there is no way in a normal circumstance that I would have looked at my marketing team and my operations team and said okay where do we need the work done who is working on lower value work and how am I then going to reshuffle these people I need 15 people on this team I and I was doing things like I had marketers who were like yeah maybe I could be a project manager okay I'm going to move them over the delivery team I had I had customer support people who were like I can code a little bit okay let's get them a little bit of training let's move them over and be webbed of like with this kind of stuff that would that would happen where previously it would just be like let's have an HR conversation are we allowed to talk to this person about this blah blah blah blah and what we were able to do is say no this is where the work needs to happen and it allowed us to prioritize that high value work in a way that if it wasn't a pandemic I never would have asked people to do this I would have just gone in and asked for 15 more bodies right um so there's something really freeing about the fact that everything is different and so I was able to say our approach can now be different right and and and how we prioritize can be different and that's one of those things that I've been talking to my leadership team about to say how do we preserve that as things get back to normal how was that how was that received by the by the people on your team when you started making shifts like that you know what it was again it's not anything that I'm just going to be like sorry you've been traded pack your back right but but um but it was like there we had uh I'm so lucky I such a great team um it was here's the need here's the need for the business we think you'd be good at this do you have any interest at the very least it's a learning opportunity and every single person was like whatever I need to do just just tell me what I need to do and interestingly right and interestingly some people have actually stuck in those jobs like they're like I don't want to go back I like to spend okay awesome like it opened up this whole new opportunity for them that's really good and I think that the testament to everything else you've been doing because um when people are are willing to do that for you know the circumstances are circumstances stuff happens you know should happen and if somebody's willing to do that that shows you like what kind of team you have and and how bought in they are to the company which is really what you want anyways you want everybody to win and if they feel like they're winning they feel like they're aligned they feel like you know they understand that where the company is going they want to back that in any way possible I think that's a win for them and for you and for the company for everybody it's very very impressive um I so to close these uh these interviews out I like to do like some rapid fire stuff just about you and your career um for people to learn quickly just some quick questions but before I go into that was there anything else on on points on things that you've learned over the pandemic things that you're doing uh with your team now or or in the past that you want to touch on no I mean I feel like it gave you an earful right there no in a good way in a really really really good way there's some really good lessons this seriously some very good lessons on on leadership on pandemic leadership on like I said this is a class in how to how to best practices for managing a team for leading a team for navigating pandemic um for just really just best practices in doing business and it's from you know your CMO at an organization that's again travel adjacent so if you can make this work there's literally no reason like I don't mean to be rude or to be insensitive but there's no reason why other leaders in other organizations that weren't as heavily impacted as travel cannot do better and make their organization work as well similar to what you're doing that's really that's my takeaway in all seriousness that's really my takeaway I think that you're doing an incredible job seriously thank you it's been very very impressive it's been it's been it's actually it's been it's been an awesome challenge so yeah I've been uh yeah it's been fun yeah yeah no for for sure okay um a couple or after fire questions to close out um what was the biggest challenge that you've had in your career and how did you overcome it uh we touched on it a little bit before it was um it was a personal challenge it was not having a degree and uh feeling stuck right and just feeling like how on earth am I gonna move forward and did I paint myself into a corner because I just didn't want to be in school and that overcoming was just uh was just persevering and it was really just about building relationships and trying things um but yeah I'll never forget that crushing feeling of oh my god I did this wrong do I do I have to start over in some way um what makes you feel inspired or makes you feel like you're best self oh you know um I'm gonna go back to my team it is uh it is such uh an honor and a pleasure to get to work with the people that I work with every day and just seeing them take chances and innovate and just try stuff and be fearless just makes me go like I am cheering and I'm like yes just do it and it is it is just awesome to just look around and just be inspired by the people who I get to work with every day very good if you could tell your 20 year old self one thing what would it be oh god stop worrying so much if you're on the right track like there are a thousand different ways to get to where you're going um be purposeful about your steps um and don't feel like you have to fit a mold right and um oh and never think what's my next move always think what's the move after the next move and plan how you're going to get there okay I like that say that one more time never never think what's my next move always think what's the move after that move and plan so your two steps ahead yeah that's very good um what's your favorite it could be a person uh it could be a book a podcast some resource that you love that you would recommend other people go and check out um uh maybe unconventional I would say read as much fiction as humanly possible um I don't read business books I barely read nonfiction but there is something so powerful about fiction uh helping you understand the human condition and helping you understand how people process things it puts you in a different world and I think don't get me wrong I binge tv and like everybody else but it's just the immersive experience of fiction and having to process how someone else is processing a story um is one of the most powerful things that you can do for yourself that's a good answer the very good answer um and then the most important question where do people first of all go check out points and then go connect with you um and go you know if they want to reach out to you how can they do that uh they can just find me on LinkedIn Danielle Brown is pretty uh is a pretty common name but Danielle Brown points is easy to find