Ali: Welcome to the Passle CMO series podcast, where we talk all things marketing and business development in the world of professional services. Today's topic is one that I actually find personally very interesting, and that's the whole idea of bringing outside experience into the role of the CMO within the world of legal. And as marketing has been rising in importance, as law firms come to realize the value of a high-performing marketing and business development function, many firms are starting to look outside the world of legal and professional services and see what they can do to bring in the best.

You know, naturally, with outside experience can some clear benefits, but they also can pose important challenges for incoming CMOs from other industries.Today, though, we're going to talk about successfully bringing outside experience into a CMA role within a law firm. And we're lucky enough to be joined by Brendan Delaney, who is Chief Brand Experience Officer at BAL. 

Charlie: The CMO Series podcast is brought to you by Passle. Passle makes thought leadership simple, scalable, and effective, so professional services firms can stay front of mind with their clients and prospects when it matters most. Find out more and request a demo at passle.net. Now back to the podcast.

Ali: Welcome, Brendan. 

Brendan: Thanks, Ali. Appreciate you having me. 

Ali: We're absolutely thrilled to have you on. From all the conversations we've had building into this, I know that it's going to be a good one. So looking forward to getting into it. And I say, in terms of starting off, would you mind just sharing with us, you know, starting, I suppose, really with your background and how you came to be in the role that you are at BAL?

Brendan: Yeah, sure. So I'll give you a kind of a medium length version. So I grew up in New York. My mom is an attorney. So I joked in my interview to join BAL that I did attend law school, but it was during her third trimester. So that joke didn't exactly land, but I tried it anyway. So I grew up in New York, went to undergrad and then right out of undergrad, I went and worked at General Mills in a rotational leadership program, which was great. I lived in Arkansaw, Iowa, and Minnesota, which was quite the change for somebody from Long Island. I really enjoyed General Mills, especially the people, but was just curious to see what else was out there. So I went to grad school. And then after grad school, I joined General Electric, and I specifically worked in their corporate venture capital program. So lived out in California for a couple of years, which was a lot of fun and really exciting and kind of had the opportunity to work directly with many of the portfolio companies that we invested in. And then from there, I moved on over to Booz Allen, and I joined their commercial business, leading marketing for that group. So what we did was we worked with some of the Fortune 500, Global 1000 in terms of helping make sure that their programs were in a spot where they could defend and protect themselves against the most sophisticated cybersecurity attackers in the world. And then from there, I joined BAL. I've been here since… September of 2022, I've been the Chief Brand Experience Officer. So that includes marketing, communications, business development, brand, sales enablement, more, a few other things. And this has been my best job to date. It's 100% because of the people and the company. It's just the level of collaboration, the level of trust, the level of commitment from everyone is just, honestly, it's just inspiring. It's really great to be here. So I feel really fortunate. 

Ali: Well, that's quite something to say. Your entire background was outside of professional services and now to be leading the show at a law firm and find that that's been your best role is interesting to hear and obviously huge accolade to the firm. With that, it helps us to really start to get into this topic that we're discussing today. So what has it been like bringing your experience from other roles into a law firm?

Brendan: I mean, honestly, it's been fun and it's just been helpful to have those other experiences. I've always worked in B2B, even starting back in General Mills, we didn't, the roles that I had, we weren't selling to individual consumers. We were selling to retail chains and grocery, grocery store chains and leadership. And then in the past couple of years, I've worked in marketing for service industries.  And so to me, having those experiences has been really key of just kind of going back to that core of knowing your audience. And so across the last couple of companies, you know, the audience has changed a lot. Not only just the individuals in terms of who's consuming cybersecurity services or who we're trying to work with from an investment perspective, but in terms of the preferences for how they consume information, where they consume information, what are the buying cycles look like, who do they trust? But that kind of core of knowing your audience is something that I think is completely relevant regardless of where you are. And that's really, really, really been true here at BAL as I've tried to get up to speed and learn this brand new industry.

Ali: How interesting. I think the part that for me is the biggest takeaway there is just know your audience, that actually what you're doing, whether that's from the marketing side, business development, sales enablement, it's really understanding who ultimately is buying those services, whatever it is that you're doing. And with that in mind, have there been any specific things that you've done that you found to be particularly valuable in either bringing new ideas into the firm or maybe helping to understand legal marketing landscape a little bit better?

Brendan: Well, some of it is just trying to read everything I could when I first joined and being really fortunate to be able to work with some incredible people who had a lot more experience than I did. So kind of just realizing what did I know, but almost more importantly, what did I not know? And having the ability to say, all right, well, let me learn, let me understand here. And I think honestly, Ali, one thing that I've really taken to heart here is just, as it relates to anywhere I've worked, is just trying to figure out how decisions are made. Because I think to your question about trying to bring a new idea in, to me, part of that is, how do you craft your argument or how do you ultimately become more persuasive and how do you translate what you've done in the past to figure out how to make it effective in what and where you are now, and to me that a lot of that comes down to how are decisions made in an organization. Is it hierarchical or consensus-based is it highly data-driven or is it more intuitive is it kind of there's a few select individuals, or there's actually a few select groups, because I look at it from that perspective of if you know how decisions are made, then you can kind of compile your evidence to make your argument more persuasive. So that to me has been something that I definitely learned that lesson the hard way in terms of earlier in my career, having come in and, you know, hey, at General Mills, hey, here's what the data is telling us. So let's do that. Well, did you consider that there are, you know, downstream implications of that? And those downstream implications might to have people invocations and what that looks like. And so kind of just, oh, how are decisions made? Who's making decisions? How did they like to receive information? To me, you got to put all those together because without that, you could have, quote-unquote, the greatest, most compelling points or thoughts in the world. But if they're going to land flat, who cares?

Ali: Yeah, it's a funny one. I mean, traditionally, from obviously being in this space for a while now, you understand that law firms are sort of complex matrix organizations and made up of, you know, obviously a lot of partners and they obviously each have a decision and therefore it's a very different kind of organization to maybe where you've been before. I mean, when you talk about sort of learning how those decisions are made, were there any, I guess, really obvious moments when you're like, okay, that's a learning for me? Or was it purely, as you mentioned earlier, just like reading things, talking to people with more experience, just be interested to kind of understand that a bit more, I imagine a corporate is very different to a law firm, basically, when it comes to making those decisions at the top. 

Brendan: Certainly. And I would say, you know, part of it was, I feel like I came in at the exact right time, because I came into BAL at a time in the company whereby they were looking for a, marketing and business development to drive more growth for the firm. And so that was one element of timing. But then honestly, another element of timing was when I came in, it was right around the time when as a firm, we were working on our annual budgets. And so I think going through that type of exercise and just being honest and transparent with my boss and just asking directly like, hey, how did decisions get made? What does this look like? I see that there's all these, you know, we have all these opportunities to be sharing ideas, but you know, how did decisions get made and asking that to a lot of different people, and then just listening, and then observing. Across the organization, to me, it was the timing of understanding what was the role that the firm was looking for marketing to play. And then you go through that actual tactical exercise of where are we going to allocate our money going forward for growth you put those two together and honestly it was more of a crash course than anything else it was okay i know how decisions get made and based on that I need to make sure I'm adjusting how I deliver accordingly.

Ali: Yeah, that basically shows you say the right place right time that you came in and with the firm wanting to drive growth the fact that there was such a pivotal moment when you're deciding what the annual budgets look like, that therefore, as a C-suite individual, you've got huge involvement with, I guess just gave you so much exposure rather than maybe coming into a new world at a different time of the year where maybe you didn't have quite as much, I suppose, influence or chance to have that exposure to people. I mean, with that in mind, how, from your perspective, how different is marketing in the legal world compared to other industries you've worked in?

Brendan:  Well, if I could just go back to one thing real quick, Ali, I think being a part of the C-suite from a marketing and business development perspective. At BAL it’s an awesome opportunity because the entire firm works together. And so to your question about things that I've, things that I've done to help bring new ideas in, part of that is, is working with my peers who lead other departments to understand what are their initiatives and where are they going and what lessons have they learned? And I will tell you that just having, I feel really, really fortunate because a few of us joined relatively at the same time, myself, the chief people officer. The chief information officer, and recently we've had a new chief financial officer. And just having that open and honest dialogue about business. Where are we going as a firm? And as if I'm listening to this, and I'm someone on the marketing team, like being in real tight alignment with those other leaders to say, hey, your marketing fits with what we're trying to do from a finance perspective, which fits from a technology, which fits from a people and culture perspective. I think that's another thing in terms of that I've seen be particularly valuable in helping all of us succeed is that there's strong alignment across the board. And I've seen that not be the case at other organizations, particularly other professional services organizations, where it seems like the different departments are kind of working on their own items and initiatives in silo from one another. And I'll just tell you that that really, really doesn't fly for my leaders. So the owners of the firm, but it also just helps us individually as leaders of our own teams and departments get things done. So that would be something if I were joining a new firm, I would really try to understand writ large, what is the firm trying to accomplish? And then how do I help contribute to the success of that as opposed to what am I trying to accomplish as head of one division? 

Ali: Yeah, because it's amazing how often, and you touched upon it there, how often there isn't that tight alignment. Because ultimately, you are all moving in the same direction for further the growth and the success of the business that you're working in. But then when people, as you mentioned, working in silos, it's just not the right fit, which sort of blows my mind that any organization might work like that. Out of interest, did the new CIO, the CFO, and the chief people also, did they come from legal before? or have they also come from out of industry?

Brendan: They all came from outside of industry.

Ali: Well that says a lot about the mindset and where the firm's trying to go then.

Brendan: Yeah and the other thing I would say to you on that is I think part of… I think a firm needs to be honest if they're thinking about bringing someone in from outside which is to say you know kind of what are you looking to accomplish and how much of having a deep legal experience do you think is critical in order to for this individual to be successful? Because there's always that balance between bringing someone in who knows the industry incredibly well, and knows their subject matter expertise incredibly well. But then there's also that, okay, but if what we're trying to accomplish, let's say is pretty radically different than what some of the other firms in the industry are trying to accomplish, well, then how much either legal experience do I need or do I want that individual to have in order for them to be successful? And I think at BAL, what the firm has realized is that we're on this journey right now to really totally revolutionize how corporate immigration services are delivered. And so the leadership of the firm said, we really want individuals who are going to come in and who are going to bring their perspective and who are going to say. Hey, I've seen this challenge or I've seen this opportunity at other places, other locations outside of industry, outside of the legal industry. And this is how I think we might address it. So it does become the old adage of we're not going to suggest faster horses. We're going to suggest automobiles rather than faster horses. But that said, it goes back to you have to know how decisions are made because if you're going to come in with all sorts of ideas and visions, and you have no way to actually get them done inside the organization, that's honestly a waste of everybody's time. 

Ali: Yeah, I remember when we were talking beforehand, you were saying that, and it's interesting because obviously BAL have got the mindset that they want to be open to hearing different viewpoints. But I think you touched upon that it's all well and good trying to hire somebody from outside of the industry. But if as a firm, you're not necessarily willing to listen to what those different viewpoints are, then it just becomes very difficult for everybody involved. But quite clearly, your firm are very forward-thinking and wanting to achieve that. And evidently, as well as you touched on, it's just very nuanced. And I'd like to delve into that a bit deeper because the reality is there will be people who are listening to this and are thinking about bringing in someone from outside the legal industry into those senior marketing roles. Is there anything that you think firms need to consider when they're thinking about bringing someone into the firm that's from that side of the industry?

Brendan: I think the number one item I would say is do you have the right infrastructure slash culture to do it. I mean are you are you looking for someone who's going to come in and who's going to have a different perspective and you have the culture that says we want to hear that different perspective which is I'm not saying one way is right or wrong just so I can sure or you could or are you the type of firm that says hey, you know, we really know exactly what it is that we're looking for. And what we really need is we need someone to execute on a vision that we already have. But that's our biggest challenge. Like our biggest challenge is execution. And I think that really becomes an opportunity for the firm to take a breath and to take a second and say, okay, we know what it is exactly that we're looking for. And we really want to be able, we need a flawless executor to come in and to make this happen and to do it fast and to do it whereby they're building the right team and coalition to make it happen. But ultimately, we're really, really, really set in terms of where we know we want to go. I think if you're the type of firm that says, we have a very clear vision for where we want to go and we're mandating strong execution to make it happen, But we also think that there's additional value by bringing in individuals who say, let me help you with the how. I'm really looking for an opportunity where we know the North Star, we know where we're trying to go, but I have some different ways of how we might get there, which are probably different than a lot of the competitors in the industry. That again comes back to the, if you're a firm and you're thinking about it, I'd ask yourself that kind of, do you have the right infrastructure slash do you have the right culture for the type of individual that you're bringing in?

Ali: In your experience, do you think there's anything that kind of comes through particularly strongly that allows for that culture? Has there been anything that since you landed at BAL, you're like, oh, it's so evident that this is why it's working in the way that it is coming in from outside the industry? 

Brendan: I just think there's an openness to ideas. I think there's this very, very, very strong North Star in terms of what we're trying to do, which is we really want to help our clients. And we really want to, if I kind of go back to our overarching mission, which is to create an experience that makes a positive difference in people's lives. That idea of saying, we're trying to create this experience, but we're open because the experiences of the last 10, 15, 20 years, heck, even 18 months, we want to be at the leading edge of what those experiences are over the next 6, 12, 18, 24 months. So I think that because there's this different way that the firm is looking at what is their mission, what's their purpose in being around as a firm, that allows for this openness of this is an opportunity. And how we address that opportunity doesn't necessarily have to be the way we've addressed it in the past. And frankly, we have a really, really significant chance, shall we say, to figure out a new way for the entire industry to do it.

Ali: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And to that point, I mean, we spoke a lot of the positives there. Have you found any challenges since coming from out of the industry where you've been like, oh, that's quite a difficult, that's been a difficult learning curve, for instance?

Brendan: Well, I guess I would just say it's the first place I've ever worked where there are actual legal rules involved for kind of your marketing and your business development. Which is different from where I've come before. But I think in terms of as a structure, that doesn't really become a challenge, honestly, more than anything else. It's just, you have to know that they exist and you have to know what they are, which is different and new. But I would say that that's really kind of just more of a bit of a different nuance or a shade in terms of where we go and how we try to accomplish what we're trying to accomplish. I think, again, it just comes down to the structure and the culture of the firm set it up to be successful, and that's different.

Ali: Yeah. No, it's amazing to hear. Well, it might be that if you had been elsewhere that there would be, and it wasn't so open and happy to move forward in this way, that it might be the other challenges present itself, which would be an interesting conversation in itself. But it sounds like you've obviously just had such a positive experience that it's all going really well, which is brilliant. To pick up on what we're talking about there in terms of outside of the industry and bringing people in, why do you think firms should consider hiring someone from outside of the industry? You started to touch upon it in terms of execution and the likes, but maybe it's someone who's coming in as a bit of a disruptor. I mean, what for you do you think would be some of the key points as to why someone should consider hiring outside?

Brendan: Yeah, I think that's a great question. And for me, I was reading this book the other day that I think is really relevant. It's called Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. And he has this line in there that says, knowing less is an opportunity to do more. And that really resonated with me. I mean, in the book, he talks about it as it relates to serving soufflés. But for us at BAL, in marketing, I think it's this position where that just because something's always been done one way, whether it be in the industry or whether it be at the firm. Asking the question of, do we have to keep doing it that way? And I think that informs our approach on big things like business development and relationship building, which I'm not going to go into the details here, but also in other areas like how we as a marketing and business development team collaborate with our legal teams on RFPs and on pricing and thinking about different value adds that we would offer that's And then even other things, like I'll bring up this idea of how we show up at events. I want to highlight recently we had one of our biggest events of the year, and I would say it's our most successful event of the year because what we did was we took a ton of information early on, insights about who is the buyer and what did they care about. And then we went with an entirely integrated theme, which just happened to be Taylor Swift because we knew that Taylor Swift was in the public zeitgeist, It was something that our buyers cared about. And we got incredible reviews. We got outrageous engagement, and we totally stood out compared to everyone else at this conference, not only with our colors, but with the thought and the cohesive nature of this entire theme that we went in with. And I think if we stopped and just said, hey, showing up at an event means having a couple printed materials on a tablecloth, we would have just done the same thing. But because we have this idea of challenging how it's been done before, and that's an expectation, I think it ultimately led to a significantly better, not only event for everyone who attended and everyone we got a chance to interact with, but also my team, because they were so excited to be able to take something that they were passionate about, and they knew would actually lead to better results. So that ultimately, I think, is really that value is knowing less is an opportunity to do more. 

Ali: Yeah, I think that's a fascinating answer. And you've unpacked it really well. But the part for me there is the Taylor Swift element. I mean, it's kind of so out there, so different. I'm not surprised that you managed to stand out. And I'm sure there's many people listening who are wondering… How did you even get signed off to go with a Taylor Swift theme to a legal conference?

Brendan: Yeah, I mean, it's a fair question. And I would say some of it is through the trust that's been built up in terms of executing and delivering. And then a lot of it is having the data and the information to say, this is who we're trying to reach. We're not going to a conference, just for the sake of going to a conference. We're going because there's a select group of individuals - in immigration the world is relatively small - there is a select group of individuals that we know we want to reach. Let's build an entire profile for each of these individuals. Let's understand what it is that they're interested in. And then let's create this cohesive theme that is relevant to them. If it's not relevant to them, then there's no point in us spending the time, effort, and money to make it happen. So because we had that buy-in of past performance, And because we had that buy-in from having data about who we were actually looking to work with, it honestly became a very, very, very quick and seamless decision. And then also, it just led to a lot of really good engagement internally and creatively. You know, we had a drink cart where we served martinis that were lavender haze. We had different areas where people voted on what were some of their immigration challenges that included Taylor Swift lyrics. We sent out social in advance we gave out bracelets that were mirrored off the bracelets that are shared at Taylor's concerts so it was just very overall comprehensive and it didn't feel like it was a law firm if that was maybe a little bit more traditional it felt like you were going to have a conversation with someone who was interested in the same thing that you were interested in so I mean you must have been you've been to many many conferences most of the time it's just kind of like show up and put up a dark blue banner and that's all it is. 

Ali: Yeah yeah yeah not wrong I mean it would be blowing our own trombone if i said that we did a very good job at these conferences but I agree with you, you kind of look around the room and you see the same thing and I think if you can buck the trend in whatever you're doing and you're going to stand out from the crowd as you've been able to do there it's it's brilliant I find that absolutely fascinating and at the end of the day you know people are buying from people and you know whether it doesn't matter what you're essentially selling and in this example it's it's you know for you as lawyers. You're tapping into what people are interested in in that very moment and what they want to engage with. And I just think that's very much reaching people on the human level, which I love. But yeah, I'm not necessarily going to bring it back around to our own personal marketing, but yeah, I think we managed to do quite a good job of standing out. And if you look at those orange cuddly octopuses that we have there, I mean, they are sort of a favorite of everybody's when we turn up to some of these conferences. So it's a really nice way to be able to stand out ourselves. And the other thing I love from that original quote you used in all of this is that it's touching upon food. And being the big foodie I am, I'd love to know how it related to soufflés in a little bit more detail, but that's definitely a conversation for offline in another day. But thank you very much for that answer, Brendan. Relating it back to a question I was going to ask earlier, do you think that actually one of the biggest differences of marketing within the world of legal versus that of other industries is technology? Do you think that that's one of the biggest differences you've seen? Or am I sort of going down the wrong track on that one?

Brendan: I'm not sure if that's it. But I guess what I would say is some of it probably is informed by my own particular experiences, having worked at different companies of different sizes in essentially the different disciplines within marketing. What I would say is that looking, I think, because I can only speak to my own personal experiences at BAO, but. Looking across my experiences, I feel very fortunate that I have all of these different experiences and almost like marketing tools in my toolkit. And I've had the chance to use all of them over the course of my time at BAL. And I'm very fortunate for my previous roles because I got to hone and sharpen those skills and abilities. So I think answering your question in a slightly different way is to say, if you're a firm and you're looking around and you're saying, we feel like we have somebody who's really skilled at one or two particular areas, I would say you're probably missing out if you're not hiring someone who has skills across the marketing disciplines, because that's essential to be able to say, you know, not everything is going to get solved by brand. Not everything is going to get solved by technology. Not everything is going to get solved by comms and PR. You have to have someone who's able to say, oh, okay, I have all these different skills and abilities and experiences. And how do you pull the right lever at the right time? So I guess what I would say is not having worked with any other law firms besides BAL is if you're not getting that full set and suite of tools, then I think you're missing out because I play golf. It's like, if I only take a seven iron and a driver and a putter. I'm missing out on the opportunity to say, there's a different way that I might approach this problem because I've seen this fundamental opportunity in the past and I have these skills to be able to go and tackle this problem. But if I'm only looking at the world through the lens of just business development and not considering the other parts of the marketing discipline, then I feel like you're not really you're not taking a comprehensive or like holistic approach to to address some opportunities that you might have.

Ali: That's a really that's a really informative answer because the two things that really come through on that for me just having the exposure to multiple different things is being beneficial but almost to your point on the whole toolkit element is the diversity of thought it's being able to go okay maybe it's been done this way previously, but we could do it another way and actually oh it's not just that I'm going to use… to your golf reference - it's not that I'm just going to use the driver for this actually I'm going to take out a nine iron because it's going to be more accurate or whatever it is and that's that's pretty cool I like that.

Brendan: Because I think building on what you just said coming into BAL and being able to say, I don't really have necessarily a ton of preconceived notions how to solve any of these problems or how to frame that a positive, how to address any of these opportunities. It becomes more of need to understand where is the firm at? What are their goals? What are their objectives? Okay, put the strategy together for how we might solve that. But it becomes this opportunity to say, but it's not, I'm coming in and I'm only going to do these three things. These are the only three things I know how to do. These three things solve every single problem that's out there. I mean, that I think is a challenge that exists when you are just kind of continuing to see the same individuals in the same places because you're not necessarily forced out to say, but what if there's a different way that we might solve it? And I think when you bring someone in who's outside of industry, you do lose the benefit of they understand the industry, but you get the upside of, hey, what if there's a different way that we might address this opportunity? Or I know that what, I'll give you an example, we had conversations early on when I joined and one of the items was around like thinking about our brand. And my comment back to the firm was, your brand is incredibly strong and let's figure out a way to amplify and let's figure out a way how to drive that. Whereas I think coming in, if I was a person who was only focused on one area, or I only had one set of tools in my toolkit, if brand was in an awesome spot, which it was at BAL, I'd kind of look around and I'd go, okay, well, let's work on another brand within BAL. It's like, no, no, no, that can't be it. That can't be our only set of answers. We got to figure out right marketing tool set at the right time. 

Ali: Yeah. There's so many different tangents of this conversation that I would love to pick up on and delve deeper into. And actually there's part of me that just based on what you were showing there, I think it'd be really cool to almost do like a live workshop of having a scenario and see how you might think about it versus somebody else who's had 20 years experience within the legal industry and see where your thoughts are similar and where they may be different. I just think it'd absolutely fascinating to see how that comes out, but that's just me hypothesizing around all of that so far. Crazily though, we're actually through to the final question of the day, which time seems to have absolutely flown by. Let's say there's multiple different elements of this that I'd love to pick up on with you. But Brendan, as a final, question, and it sort of relates to something that we always do, which is getting one single piece of advice out of the individual. I'd love you to share that one piece of advice that you have to someone coming into a senior marketing role from outside of legal.

Brendan:  I think two parts. One, besides, you got to know how decisions are made. But then number two is be yourself. You were brought in for a reason. And use your experiences, use your expertise, use everything that you're bringing to the table all do it smart be smart in a way that understanding how decisions are made so you don't feel like, you're banging your head against the wall but ultimately you know just be yourself because you you were brought in for a reason the firm looked at where they were and where they wanted to go and they thought that your experiences and your perspective was the one that they wanted to hear from. So be yourself.

Ali: I absolutely love that as an answer. I think be yourself, but your true authentic self is so important. I was funnily enough, only talking about this last week with David Kaufman, the gentleman that I was doing the swimming in San Francisco Bay that we're talking about earlier. We're talking about that together, just saying how important it is to turn up to work as your true self. And as you touched upon there, Brendan, you're hired because of you, not because of anything, other reasons. So what a wonderful answer. Thank you very much for that. Before wrapping it all up, we do have one final tradition here at Passle, which is a bit of a quickfire round, just getting to know you a little bit better as a person. I could continue talking about the worky stuff for much longer and would love to. And I feel like there's certainly another conversation between the two of us to come in some form. But quickfire wise, have you got a couple of minutes for us to go through that? Yes, absolutely. Brilliant. So what are you listening to or reading at the moment?

Brendan: Number one thing I'm currently in the middle of is Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Gadiro, who has kind of a very interesting background and spent some time at some of the best restaurants in the world and talks about building a culture and building expectations and then exceeding those expectations. So this idea of Unreasonable Hospitality is, it's been really good. I got it from a friend of mine who's a surgeon whose family was in the restaurant business for years, and he handed it to me. And I thought, oh, yeah, I'll give this a shot. And so far, it's been awesome. 

Ali: That's awesome. Being a man who is a huge foodie and loves trying new restaurants and the likes and the culinary industry, I feel like that would be amazing. Very interesting to read. So thank you very much for that. What was your first job?

Brendan: I rode in the cart at a golf driving range and picked up the balls. 

Ali: Sounds good fun.

Brendan: I'm not making that up. I mean, I worked for family, but that doesn't count. I legitimately drove the cart around and picked up golf balls in a driving range in New York.

Ali:  Sounds epic. I love that. What fun. Where is your favorite place to visit and why?

Brendan: My favorite place to visit is Whitefish, Montana. My wife and I are fortunate that we've lived in a bunch of different states together, and we ended up at one point in time, we lived in Whitefish, and so just has a special place in our heart.

Ali: Yeah, that's fair. You're very lucky. I love that. Personally or professionally, what is the one piece of technology you can't live without?

Brendan: So I'm going to honestly, I'm going to turn this around to you. I am not that particularly technologically savvy I will say when I was when you first asked it the first thing that popped into my mind is is we have a digital thermometer on which is like welcome to 2002 but you know it gets hot here down in texas so it's nice to be able to to know where we're at from a temp perspective but I'm also totally open to I'd love to hear I'd love to hear from you because I think you're way more tech savvy than I am I don't know how i i would say that I'm not particularly tech savvy when I look at the likes of my brother and other people around me. But I know it's almost the obvious answer and a sad answer. And I kind of cringing at myself for saying it, but probably my phone. You realize the dependence of it as a piece of technology that we all rely on it pretty heavily in various different ways. So maybe that's it. Because outside of that, I don't think I use many other pieces of technology that I'm like, oh, I'm sort of relying on it. But yeah, maybe not the finest of answers there. Finally, do you have a small habit you can think of that you believe will help others?

Brendan: Yeah. So I'm not sure if it's a small habit, but I am a big believer in setting goals and then tracking my progress. And I guess my small habit is that at the beginning of the year, I buy an extra calendar and then I literally cross things off on a calendar towards whatever goal it is that I'm working on. It's incredible i mean so again that shows you my level of technological sophistication but yeah so they so for this year we hadn't I had a goal in terms of just kind of being up and active and moving and more and so every single day that I can kind of cross that off it's just it's incredibly rewarding I always remember that story, I believe it's in Atomic Habits, where they give the example of the person who wants to get better at sales, and so they have the two jars that have the, you know, one has red paperclips, and then the other jar is empty, and they literally move the paperclips from one jar to another every time they have a phone call, and that kind of just forcing, you got to do what you say you're going to do. And then also you can visibly see the progress in terms of that. I mean, I looked at the calendar this morning. It's the 30th day of October. And I've got 20-something crosses, 20-something days that are crossed out. So I know I'm not 30 for 30, but I can look back and go, yeah, that's definitively progress I've made. So that small habit for me is just kind of whatever my goal is. I need something physical that I can see on a daily basis to say, am I ahead of schedule, am I behind schedule? What's going on?

Ali: It's nice to be able to visibly see what you're working towards. It reminds me, I used to do something similar when I was at school. I'd have a big calendar and I would do a lovely, neat highlight across through every day, a day pass because you can just see as you're working towards a half term or Christmas break, whatever it was. So no, I like it. I like that a lot. Well, Brendan, look, we could talk for hours about multiple different topics. I mean, you mentioning Whitefish there, you know, my fascination with the great outdoors here in the US, we'd love to talk about that. But also just from a work standpoint, that conversation was super enlightening. As I say, there's so much that I would love to have covered off with you and gone into different angles of the conversation with, but I'm sure we will find another chance to either do that as in a podcast or even have you on to some sort of live event. But thank you ever so much for your time. It's really been brilliant.

Brendan: I appreciate it. Thank you so much.