TINT Podcast Recording-Dana Iskoldski_021420 [00:00:00] Cecelia Taylor: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the TinT Podcast--that is to say the thriving in technology podcast. Your hosts are Sam Moulton and Cecelia Taylor, both members of the influence marketing team at NetApp. We're excited to have. Dana is, Oh, , that's adding yesterday called ski. Dana is the corporate communications manager at BlueCat, and as such, wears a number of hats. What intrigued us most about Dana is how she describes what she does and how she does it. We're going to let her tell us about that. Now, welcome to the TinT Podcast, Dana. Dana Iskoldski: [00:00:34] Hi. . Thanks for having me. Sam Moulton: [00:00:37] So, Dana, you and I, became Twitter buddies. And then you reached out to me and we decided we would get together and have a little chat. So that's how you and I got to know each other. And then lo and behold, it turns out you're also a member of the influence marketing council. so that was, that's kind of the connection that the three of us share. [00:01:00] And you know, what intrigued me when I was, was talking to you was how you managed at your, you know, essentially. you're just starting with your career, but you managed to convince some high level people within BlueCat to give you a lot of responsibility. We'd love to hear exactly how you did that. Dana Iskoldski: [00:01:20] So it's about a two year story actually. I mean, going back to Dory, I'll go and dance. No, I remember you were able to tell a little quicker than that yet. Oh yeah, definitely. the, the main theme is relationships matter and relationships will take you far. And what I mean by that is I started at BlueCat and a completely different role. I was an intern, I was on the marketing automation side. We sent out emails and we made sure that, people's names got passed on to our sales team when they indicated they were interested in hearing about what BlueCat does. And Demand Gen then very much, yeah. I try not to use demand gen as a word, cause I, I have to remind myself that people not in marketing [00:02:00] don't necessarily know what the, like what the different. Names that we give at art. but yes, exactly. Demand gen smart. She is Cecilia, I tell you. Oh, I see. She's wise beyond her ears. Yes, that's, that's exactly, that's exactly right. Sorry, I won't interrupt you again, I promise. No, it's okay. So long as my wrinkles don't catch up to the wisdom. It's fine. What was I going to say? Oh, right. And then part way through, we fired our PR agency at BlueCat. And yeah, and I've always had like a, an inclination towards networking and meeting new people slash content creator like storytelling basically, and, but never expected to do any sort of like PR influencer relations work. And something hit me over the head and I kind of raised my hand and said, Hey. Can I give this PR thing a try? Can I reach out to some journalists? See what happens. As we know, our industry is like kind of tough in the, the PR just generally like finding interesting spins on things. I'm tougher [00:03:00] than most if you're in beauty or sports or whatever. Like there's a lot to talk about there. That's, anyway, that's different here. And so my, my management was great and they basically said, look, it was hard for our agency, but knock yourself out. Go for it. And so I did. And somehow that ended up going. So all that I out, I outperformed the agency. And the way that I did it was I just started reading what people wrote. Reaching out to them and seeing what it was that they were interested in talking about with , et cetera. No, sir. Dana, you did not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't that amazing how well that works versus pitches that they have zero interest in? So I think that the reason that I came to that conclusion as opposed to like sending pitches out was because I never studied PR. Like I studied environmental sciences. so it was never part of my training. I think you didn't learn that habits, basically it with your eyes open, knowing [00:04:00] how people like to communicate or your, I guess your idea of how that should work and, Ooh, guess what? Yeah. Yeah. That people are still people regardless what their actual job is, whether they are a journalist or podcast or whoever it is. and so that, turn into sort of more and more of what I did and people leaned on me, like when we had a research report, it would be on me to sort of pitch that out and make sure the right people knew about it. I had to go back to school though because I was on an internship. My boss eventually brought it up and, and we're a fairly small team. So, my now boss is the VP of marketing. He basically brought up the fact that, so you go back to school and all this just stops. And I said, well, no, actually I can consult and I can work part time if you want. which worked out well for me too, cause it's the best part time gig you can ever have as a student. so I did that and then came back full time at BlueCat with basically the role built out. More concretely, and that specifically being the full time focus. [00:05:00] so now I just get to spend more time learning about people who have influence in our industry. Does that very impressive. Very impressive. Sam Moulton: [00:05:07] How, you know, we can dig into that if you want. Well, it's interesting. It says that you have a unusual job description. as listed in your LinkedIn profile. So I think this kind of dovetails into that question. can you share what that is and since our listeners aren't looking on LinkedIn right now, can you share what that is and how that. You know how from, when you decided to come on full time, all that, you know, a bar and how that's evolving. How's that working? The way that I look at what I do like, call it PR, call it influencer relations. What it is at its core is making friends. And so what I write on LinkedIn is that I help essentially make friends on behalf of organizations and those friends happen to have influence. So that's the way to say it. Better on there though. Actually, I'm going to read it because I like it [00:06:00] so much. I help tech companies make influential friends in their community. I think that is just priceless. I, I just, it's, it says everything you need to say in one relatively short sentence. And, really that's it. , again, I don't want to come back, keep coming back to the fact that you are young and just starting in your career, but you're very insightful and you know, your ability to kind of hone in on what matters. Frankly, you know, it can take other people, many, many years to learn or, you know, they may never learn it at all. So, I want to dive more into that because, as I mentioned earlier, we're all members of the influence marketing council. So we know about influence, we know about influence marketing, how it works, but, we want the details of what, how do you approach this or what are some of the things that you do. To solidify these, these relationships, these, building [00:07:00] both, building out that community. Dana Iskoldski: [00:07:03] I think, and I'll, I'll start with sort of the end in mind and the, the successes that I see are, what I consider to be a success is something like, there's a person who is really well connected in the industry, for example, well, that I feel comfortable reaching out to and just asking them a question or getting their opinion on something plain and simple. I think those are sort of the relationships that you're probably going for regardless whether that. results in any specific, like I know the typical PR metrics are like coverage or web traffic, whatever it is. but the way to build those relationships is very much like you build any other professional relationship or like the way that I think about it is like career friends. And who can you make friends with along the way in the context of your career, their career, what they do, where you're mutually supportive. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. so a lot of what I do is just like. I spent a lot of time on Twitter actually. And it's more so to figure out like who knows who [00:08:00] and who's doing cool stuff in the industry. And also, it's a really good way to, get connected with people. And then I hear exactly. cause you found me on Twitter, followed me, and then I realized you and I do something really somewhere, so I have to talk to you. and so it's like going down those rabbit holes and chasing who you think you might get along with. And also just taking the leap and doing that. And then. I'd say I don't necessarily pitch people things like I don't, I try not to ask people for anything. I try to figure out what it is that is up their alley and is interesting to them and just have a conversation, which I thought might, when I started this, I wasn't sure if that was the right way to go about it or not. but actually one of the calls, where Tom was a guest on the IMC. That was very validating because he does something very similar. hi Tom, and thank you John and Kat for organizing that. they love you by the way. I love them. And again, that was such a, like happenstance meeting. The way that I met them was, I'm on Twitter. I know who Becky is. [00:09:00] you've had back you on the show. Yeah. She and I happened to be sitting next to each other at the bloggers booth in at VM world. I turned around to her and I'm like, are you a Becky from Twitter? And she goes. Yes. Are you the Dana from Twitter? And, and then cat walks by and Becky's like, Oh, Dana, this. And again, I'd seen cat around the internet and it sounds so weird finding people on the internet. but anyway, she introduced us, so thank you Becky. the point is just like that, by the way. 18 yes. Becky Elliot, I, I try, in every podcast we do, every episode we do to make some reference to the ATM. So help me, thank you for helping me do that. There we go. so yeah, tips are, spend the time to figure out who's who, spend the time to get to know people. Don't start offering them stuff that is only good for you, or, asking them for stuff, see what they're interested in. That's a conversation. And sometimes they don't have time to have that conversation, but offer it. and then [00:10:00] keep them in mind when there's an opportunity for you to also be able to help them out. Those would be my three tips, I think. Cecelia Taylor: [00:10:07] I guess my question was initially, what are the strategies and techniques, but I think you've kind of already answered that, but I, I kind of want to ask, what do you think is a way to, to make a connection with some of this, not as the traditional method? Dana Iskoldski: [00:10:22] What do you consider traditional? I'm curious why a Cecelia Taylor: [00:10:24] traditional is where we're like, you know, hi, my name is so-and- so, and I'm in, you know, and I'm, I'm, I'm reaching out on a tweet, but you know, what are there, what are other ways, I guess, that you think of doing that? You can do that rather than. Being super obvious Sam Moulton: [00:10:40] and you let me give you a hint. Dana, you have a blog post about this. I was literally, I was thinking about, yeah, and there's some cool things in there. Dana Iskoldski: [00:10:49] The best thing that I found that works and makes people excited on both sides is you have to be doing something already. Like you have to be running a blog or you have to bring a podcast or [00:11:00] something where you can reach out, show that you've done your research and invite them to be a guest on your podcast or your blog or in some way, shape or form. A, let them talk about themselves in a way where you get to know them a little bit better, but be where you give them some value in, whether that's exposure or, maybe, you know, if you don't run a blog or you don't run a podcast, try seeing who it is that you could offer to connect them with that, you know, pretty well they'd find value in. just reach out with an offer. Don't reach out with an ask. Sam Moulton: [00:11:32] Ooh, I love that. Ooh, I want to, I want to borrow that one too. You borrow it, steal it, you know, but absolutely. Pocket. Yeah, I'll repeat that again. It's reach out with an offer instead of an ask. Cecelia Taylor: [00:11:45] Sam and I, are members of the women in technology organization at NetApp, otherwise known as, WIT. we're passionate about equality, diversity and inclusion. helping younger women advance their careers and helping [00:12:00] mid level and senior career level women as well. really just supporting women in general. And we're big fans of Barbara Williams Hardy, who, we had on our show a while back. she's a champion for all of these things. one of the things that she maintains is a list that we shared with you before the podcast, called the Barb list. and it outlines about nine tips or fearlessly achieving your personal and professional goals. we did, send it over to you and wanted to finding out which of these tips resonated with you the most, and, and really why that particular tip resonated with you. Sam Moulton: [00:12:41] Well, I, we should say though, you can't pick the first one. Which is relationships matter because you already covered that. Darn it. No, that, that's, we know that you're number one. So number two. Dana Iskoldski: [00:12:53] So yeah, I was going to ask like, can I pick more than one? And the reason I say is because looking at the list, there's, there's different things that [00:13:00] resonate in different ways and that are valuable in different ways or support one another. so the relationships matter obviously, like that's what I'm betting my career on. Yeah. To ask for help. I think is a beautiful, because it almost, it ties back into relationships matter where, eventually you do need to lean on people and people do actually like to feel like they've helped you out as well, like reciprocal relationships. And there's a book called I think never eat alone or leaders never eat alone, something like that. that basically talks about the best relationships over time, happen to be give and take. So giving people an opportunity to actually support you as well. Is hard to do because you feel like you, you don't want to ask for help or you're, I know embarrassed or you feel like it's a lazy thing of you to do. But when people lean on each other, it's beautiful. so that definitely do it. Afraid. I think I realized at some point that, everyone's afraid and everyone just keeps doing it. And so don't let that stop you, cause then you're just never going to do anything. be curious [00:14:00] as just, I think a natural. personal characteristic, and then lift as you climb is also beautiful. I think. there was an, I can't remember where the, Oh, this, I was reading an article on, interviewing people and, there was a note there by the author, and I'll have to pull up the article again, but it basically says how, one of the great questions to ask, especially if you're hire hiring someone for a managerial role, is, Who do you feel like you've positively impacted in the last year or so and watch what the person says? Because a lot of people, if they're specifically like status seeking, we'll, we'll mention someone higher up in status than them. So either drop a name or something and then people who, who really care will also remember the time that they felt proud that they pulled, they lifted somebody up. And I think that that's just really important. And I wouldn't be here today if I didn't have people who had believed in me or taken, you know, a gamble on me. Like [00:15:00] my, my boss today basically had to pitch to our CEO. And again, we're a smaller company. We're not at up size, so it, it's not the same thing. I think like we're a very connected company in that sense. because we have to be in, we're small, but, like he had to go to the CEO and get it approved sort of thing. and again, I'm 23 years old. So, that one's really important that that is, you know, Sam Moulton: [00:15:22] I don't think we, we, gave your specific age, earlier, but then I'm fine with that. Yeah. Oh, a little good. I, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to push on that, but that is what kind of blew my socks off the first time we talked. When you, you told me you were 23. And I'm like, what? Amazing. Dana Iskoldski: [00:15:37] I think you were cluing it together, like as we have the conversation and it's something that I, for a long time have. Not necessarily been willing to share because I feel like it, it almost, like doesn't help credibility sometimes, especially if the professional you're talking to just naturally has a predisposition to thinking that, you know, 23 year olds, what do they know? And I recognize that, you know, experience is [00:16:00] valuable and can only build to be built over time. But, yeah, that's why I used to be really nervous about sharing that. Sam Moulton: [00:16:05] Well, anyone who speaks with you for more than five minutes. You know, comes away. Very impressed with your, what, what am I trying to say? The wisdom you have. You're like an old lady and a younger daughter. There must be a better way to say this. Live your years. How about that? That's good. All right. Thank you. Gotta throw a little humor in here every now and then. So. Switching gears a little. you are also a podcaster and we would love to hear how you got started doing that, why you started doing that, and, you know, tell us any tips or tricks that you've learned that, you know, can benefit us. We're, we're happy to take your, you know, get some advice from you. Ooh, I think your, what you do is probably really similar to, to what I do, which is, when you're prepping. And so to clarify in the [00:17:00] podcasting sort of experience, when I was in school, started a blog that then turned into a podcast. Both of them don't exist anymore cause it takes way too much time. You guys know how long it takes to, to keep this all up. But I did podcasting there for sort of myself. And then now I produce a podcast. I don't host it, with, the chief strategy officer here at BlueCat. So he hosts that. I kind of arranged the rest of it. And what I've learned is that people love to talk about themselves. And I don't mean that in sort of like any sort of negative way, but it just. Because we're all so busy, it's hard to just take the time and have a chitchat meeting, right? And so a podcast is this really nice opportunity to do that. That that feels like it's got a little bit of added value where you get to share some experience with other people and you hope that somebody is going to listen to it and learn something from you. Yeah, someone's more likely to spend some more time with you, spend time getting to [00:18:00] know you. so many great things come out of it. And also people, will share a lot of things that they otherwise wouldn't get a chance to in terms of like advice and things that they've learned. also what I found is no matter how much prep you do, things always go off the rails. But you need to do the prep to, to let it get to that. That beautiful sort of conversation goes, you know, wherever you didn't expect it to and it's because you've done your research. So, I, I don't know if this is giving it away or not, but Sam, you put together a, like really thorough outline. You clearly went through, the blog posts that I've written, for example, and sort of made talking notes on, like, let's make sure we reference this and this and this. And that's great. Yeah, I definitely, Oh yeah. Yeah. That's what I do. What do you think is the great, that's awesome. Where do you find the biggest challenge as a, as a producer of a podcast, where do you find the greatest challenge? Right now it's actually finding guests. And the reason I say that is because the type of podcast [00:19:00] that I'm trying to produce is, for senior it leaders. By senior it leaders and senior it leaders are prone to having emergencies come up whenever. And this is so not part of their day job. So why, you know what I mean? Like it falls to the bottom of their priorities list on top of the fact that, if you're talking about the things that you know, you professionally are doing, that means you're talking about the things that your organization is doing and the decisions strategically that they're making with their technology, which some legal teams are nervous about. Right, right. Yeah. So you have to be careful what, what, what you do cover during those conversations. Yeah, I think exactly when you're talking about trends or basic, Challenges in the industry. I think you can kind of keep that conversation at a higher level without being too specific. which should hopefully make the legal team's happier. Dana Iskoldski: [00:19:49] Yes, our legal team. Absolutely. I agree. But I also, in my mind, like the . Best kind of podcast would be the one that, you know, if you were [00:20:00] overhearing two people in a coffee shop, talking or you know, over drinks, whatever, it's the thing that you would want to eavesdrop on because it's people talking about the nitty gritty and like the how they actually did it. so those are a really rare but special podcast episodes, but hard to get. Sam Moulton: [00:20:17] So before we get to our surprise question. , which is something we treat all of our guests with. I want to ask you if there's something we should have asked you that we neglected to. Is there something that you'd like to share that we haven't covered today? Dana Iskoldski: [00:20:38] I can't think of anything on the spot, beyond. I think that in the it industry specifically, there's just like, there's almost two camps of people and there's this like stereotype that people aren't people. People . Ah, okay. But I've met some really introvert thing. Is that where you're going [00:21:00] with that? Yeah. I guess what I'm trying to say is, even though it's uncomfortable and it's uncomfortable for everyone, including myself, sometimes you're nervous, sometimes you feel like, you know, rejection is hard. reach out to people and just explore what others do around you. Sam Moulton: [00:21:15] So before we get to our secret question, which is something that we treat all of our guests too, I wanted to just ask you if maybe there's something that we didn't talk about that we should have. Because you've got some really unique ideas. So what do you think? Is there something we might've not covered yet? Dana Iskoldski: [00:21:37] There's something I've been thinking a lot about, and it's the concept of social engineering and that has this terrible connotation to it really. I think it sounds interesting. Well, good, because that's where I'm going with this is, You when you go to a conference or even in the workplace or when you're working with a client. And, I've sort of collected more tips since I wrote a blog post on this, but, [00:22:00] there's ways to creates situations in which you get to connect with someone on a slightly deeper level. if you're at a conference, for example, instead of waiting for people to come up to you and decide that you're cool enough to talk to, whichever, if everyone's waiting for that to happen, then no one's going to talk to anyone. try to create situations where you bump into people or you have to talk to people. Someone who, I'm a YouTuber who I really like, who talks about this is Vanessa van Edwards. But in terms of sort of like the points that, that I've come up for myself are things like when you walk into a conference and you're going to go to a presentation, don't sit on the corner, actually walk by someone, put them in the position where they have to shuffle a little bit so that. You have space to walk by. They feel like there's a little bit of an icebreaker there. They feel like they've just done something for you. You've clearly interacted, even though you didn't have to say words. and then say, start a conversation. Just say, Hey, like, [00:23:00] what are you in this talk? Yeah, exactly. there's stuff like that. There's stuff like, I heard this from my VP of customer success. Whenever you're kind of in situations with customers, always keep a piece of information in your back pocket so that you have another opportunity to reach out and keep in constant contact. Like, so if you've got three updates, for example, that you got from your team about, you know, whatever the situation is, and the third one isn't all that important necessarily. Don't mention it in the meeting that you're having with them right now. Bring it up two hours from now, as just an FYI for them. But now all of a sudden you've created an opportunity where you're communicating again. And so anything that, you know, they happen to have come up within the past hour or two, has an opportunity to make its way back to you. Okay. So that you're continuing that momentum in terms of, you know, that's whether you're at the, I mean, this sounds like it applies more to when you're first trying to connect with somebody. [00:24:00] Basically any like find excuses or create excuses to be able to start conversations up or start them back up. Sam Moulton: [00:24:08] Okay. All right. That's very good. Good. Well, Cecelia. I guess that you can do the honors. Well, we always ask our guests, a question that we haven't prepared for them that we never include in the outline because we probably don't even think about it until we start to report. Just like that last question that I asked. Cecelia Taylor: [00:24:24] I was, I was really thinking this morning, I don't know why this encouraged me, but if you were forced to eat only one food. Oh, rest of your entire life. And I mean, there is nothing else you can eat. Don't care how long that is, how many decades that maybe Sam Moulton: [00:24:44] do we have to be concerned about nutritional value? Cecelia Taylor: [00:24:47] Yeah, that's a good question. I'll raise, do not count. Okay. And you can get diabetes and you cannot get diabetes. Okay. All right. So what would it be? Now, remember, you're going to be eating this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the rest of your [00:25:00] life. Okay. Sam, let's ask you, Oh, I get to go first. I thought you were smoking. No, no, no. All right Sam Moulton: [00:25:11] .There are a lot of thoughts came through my head, but if I think about breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I think the most perfect thing to eat is a baked potato with tons of butter and sour cream and salt and pepper, and maybe some chives. Ooh, right. I mean, that can work. For all three meals and I could eat one of those any. Time of the day or night. So there's my answer. I'm hungry. You're looking, Cecilia is giving me kind of that face where she's like, Cecelia Taylor: [00:25:41] I was going to go with a really more, a simpler answer because I do, what I didn't tell you is the fact that you can prepare this food or have this food any kind of way. It just has to be the same food. So. I was going to say potato, potato, because [00:26:00] I can create potato in a breakfast way, in a lunch way, and in a dinner. Well, it's different. It's still the same. Sam Moulton: [00:26:08] Yeah. I'm thinking roasted red now. Roasted red potatoes, but I took, it's too bad that you asked me to answer at first because I got it. They have a meat and potatoes girl. All right, so you've heard our potato problems. Dana Iskoldski: [00:26:24] I'm going to be super impractical and say mangoes. And the reason that I say that is because when you hear me out, we don't get great mangoes in Toronto. And when you ask this question, my mind jumped back to when, this June I was in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia, the fruits are just, they're different and they're 20 times better, if not more. And I remember. One of my meals was literally just like different kinds of mangoes cut up. And I was, I was the happiest person alive cause I knew that I would not get the same thing back home. And so that's what I've, I am now craving. [00:27:00] And that will be my answer. But if you wanted practical, it would be rice. Sam Moulton: [00:27:03] Rice. Okay. That's sustaining. Yeah. Okay. Mangoes, mangoes. Oof. Yeah, that does sound good. Hmm. Okay. Well, now that we're all starving. Yeah. And it's hours until dinner. So apparently we will be snacking, after we wrap up this podcast. That doesn't sound like a bad idea. Cecelia Taylor: [00:27:30] That's a wrap for this episode of the TinT Podcast. We want to thank Dana for joining us today. and to our listeners out there, we know you have a bunch of podcasts you could be listening to, so we appreciate the time you took to spend with us. We hope you'll add us back since we've been on break to your list of must listen to queue of podcasts. We want to hear your feedback though. What works, what doesn't, what would you like to hear about? In our next episode, we encourage you to email us at [00:28:00] ng- tintpodcast@netapp.com with your questions and your comments. Thanks again for listening. Until next time.