323 Collaborative Entrepreneurship: Leading Advertising's Adaptation to Disruption with Tim Ringel, Global CEO & Co-Founder of Meet The People | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Tim Ringo, welcome to partnering leadership. I'm thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. 

[00:00:04] Tim Ringel: Nice to be here. Thank you for 

[00:00:05] Mahan Tavakoli: having me. Can't wait to get some of your insights on both Meet the People and also what the creative industry is facing and will face as a result of digital technologies and AI.

But before we get to that, Tim, we'd love to know whereabouts you grew up and how your upbringing impacted the kind of person you've become. 

 So I'm right now here in New York City. I sit in Manhattan while we are recording this. But that's not where I'm from. My accent gives me away. So I'm originally from Germany, after roughly 32 years in Germany, I was blessed to move around a little bit for work.

[00:00:43] Tim Ringel: I spent time in Paris, I lived in London, and then eventually, eight years ago life brought me to New York City. So I've been enduring, And enjoying New York at the same time for the last eight years. 

[00:00:54] Mahan Tavakoli: If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, Tim. They keep saying. 

[00:00:58] Tim Ringel: You 

[00:01:02] Mahan Tavakoli: started your first digital agency at 21.

What got you in this business? 

[00:01:09] Tim Ringel: Today I would say random luck, but at the time it didn't feel like luck because it had nothing to do with what I wanted to do. I grew up in a pretty industrial town, I would say, in Germany. Maybe 200, 000 people live there. So it's not a big city and high unemployment.

It was all coal or steel industrial. And somehow I got interested in computers when I was 10 and my parents had the foresight to not listen to their son who wanted a Commodore 64 at the time. They gifted me a PC. At my 11th birthday that I was allowed to use two hours a day.

It wasn't a separate room because they were scared, like what we are scared about with our kids today was the iPhones and iPads. They were scared about the PC. What they didn't know is there was nothing to do on a PC. Because there was no games not when I grew up, at least. And on the schoolyard, nobody had any games to trade either, because they were all on their Amigas and their Commodores, right?

So I ended up teaching myself coding, because I had nothing else to do in the two hours a day. And that got me into the circle of today, nerds, we would call them nerds, of PC enthusiasts. I started Playing with network infrastructure, ended up administrating service systems for banks when I was an old teenager and during college.

Being really bored in a specific text lesson, I think it was. One of my friends came up to me and said, I this is so boring. Why don't we just start an internet company? And this is really how it started. So we wanted to build platforms because we both were coding. But we ended up realizing that we have no idea what we were doing.

Like no idea how to write a business plan because I didn't pay attention in college to how to do that. No idea how to raise capital because there was no capital to be raised when I started in 2001 because that was after the bubble. So really started with 800 bucks in our pocket and put two computers together and started to build platform stuff and ended up building websites to make money on the site.

And that got me into digital marketing because the people we build websites for eventually asked, how do I get traffic? And then if you're a coder, you start dabbling with where's the most intent traffic in the world? It's on search engines. So we started with SEO, search engine optimization that nobody at the time really knew what it was.

So we were very early, 2000, 2001, started with SEO. And then when a very well known company called Google came to Europe. With an advertising program called sponsored listings. We were one of the first to adopt that as well with our company. And at the time we didn't really know the value of what we were doing because, we were young and 500 bucks a month.

Retainer we got from Citibank felt like a lot of money. And then eventually when the advertising platforms came over to Europe, Google and others prices adjusted anyways, long story short I built a company with my buddy at the time with offices in Germany, Switzerland, London, San Francisco, Hong Kong, that was a digital agency.

And we sold it after 12 years in 2011. 

And then eventually after selling my first business I had the chance to take over the business that acquired us as CEO within the first year of earn out. Because we were very profitable when we sold and they weren't that much. So there was a chance, it was a listed company in Paris.

The board asked me if I want to step in and become CEO of that business. And I told them you shouldn't hear me speak French because then you don't want to hire me for the role. But I ended up running this company for four and a half years out of Paris. And in between, I moved to London. Really liked London a lot.

So that was the first time where I guess I got exposure to living outside of Germany, working outside of Germany, even though I had offices somewhere else, but it wasn't the same living in a different culture, exposed to different language and more diverse culture as well. London is definitely more diverse than where I grew up in Germany.

And that inspired me to, think bigger. So the business I took over was roughly 450 people I would say when I took it over. And we scaled it to my management team and I, we scaled it to 1000 people with 25 offices in Europe, Middle East, and Asia. But it was very clear that the next level would have been the United States, obviously, because that's where the marketing innovation came from, where all the large platforms came from.

So I was like, we need to go to America. I had a tiny office in San Fran because we had a large client out of Silicon Valley, but it was like four people. So it wasn't really serious. So I went to my board and said, guys, I have a plan. I want to raise capital, delist the company in Paris, merge with an American shop.

That's the same size. And then when we are really big and powerful, we list it in America, right? So that was the plan and everybody loved it. Big applause. Lo and behold, a year later, after I found the target. Danced with the target, raised the capital started buying our shareholders.

My shareholder base said we have a better idea. Why don't you just sell the thing? And I'm like, Oh, I don't know if I want to be in another earn out situation. So I decided to sell all my stock in a second company to the other shareholders because I wasn't up for, like a five year earn out with a large holding company.

It was just not the game I wanted to play. And I really had the ambition, to go to the U S for some odd reason. And I ended up doing exactly that after I sold the second time I went to my wife and my kids who were small and said I know we're very happy where we are, what do you think about moving to New York?

And what's the plan? I have no plan. Let's do it. We decided to move. And then interpublic group of companies called me. They were a potential acquirer of my business at the time. And they said we heard you left. Why are you doing that? We wanted to buy your company. I said it wasn't really for me.

I want to come to New York. I said let's talk. You should work for us. Yeah, that sounds like a cheap deal for you instead of buying my company, hiring me. But I ended up actually getting hired by them and signing up for three years. And inherited a business there in the digital marketing realm as well.

It's search, social and so on. And worked there for three years. I inherited 800 people. And when I left, it was 3000 people. 

So it was, a massive success. Was a great success for IPG. I learned a lot of stuff I really didn't know anything about. I learned a lot about traditional media. I learned a lot about creative and that kind of inspired me to think IPG and, My ambition was anyways to build something in the U. S. Why don't I just do that now, and the main vision was to, or is, to bring the different traits together.

Because in the large holding companies, they're very separate. They're in silos. Like creative doesn't really talk to media. Media doesn't really talk to a platform. Creative isn't really data informed. It's still very subjective by the client, by the creatives. I felt there was, an opportunity to build something that operates more integrated in how the value chain in marketing and advertising actually works.

And coming out of media or digital media specifically, where everything is highly measurable clients would hire my agencies because we would squeeze out another half a percent of conversion rate on a 20, 30 million dollar search budget. So it was so intense, how measurable against tangible KPIs the world was in where I grew up in.

And then you go to the creative side. We're like, Oh yeah, sure. We spend a million dollars on the logo. What's the data? Why is it yellow? I don't know. We like it. So the complete opposite. I respect the process, but I couldn't understand it. I couldn't understand how on one side, every penny is turned around a million times before it's been on the other side, money really didn't matter.

So I figured if you just go halfway on both sides, we're a little less stringent on where the money is made last touch point cookie base and a little more stringent on where the money is not made and where the awareness is created. We're going to create a pretty awesome company, right?

So that's how I called my former management team, some of them and said let's set this thing up. So we started in mid of 21 and it's become meet the people. And that's what I'm building right now. 

[00:08:48] Mahan Tavakoli:  So you started meet the people and explained. the attempts to bring together these two parts of advertising, the measurable and the creative side.

Now, I've heard lots of other people, Tim, whether it's with respect to advertising or other functions and organizations, talk about those intentions, but the reality of bringing those two together, Is a very different thing than the desire to do it. How are you approaching it differently to be able to actually make it work?

[00:09:25] Tim Ringel:  Number one, The idea does not necessarily come from there's an inefficiency in the industry or agencies work. That doesn't matter. In the end, agencies answer to what clients want, yes. Sometimes clients don't know what they want. That's a different story, but the way how consumers interact with products today has fundamentally changed.

Over the last 15, 20 years because of the full transparency of the internet it doesn't work anymore to throw spaghetti on the wall with a Super Bowl ad, but have nothing online that kind of mirrors that, so you have to think that way. You have to have amazing creative out there that inspires, especially in, a world where all of us get 3000. Advertising interactions, brand messages a day, and probably it's 10, 000 if you even spend an hour on Instagram or TikTok, so you get so many signals and you need creative to stand out. But you need this entire product engagement funnel, product engagement journey to a product from a consumer.

You need to tie it together. You can't have 15 people involved, each of them handing over a piece of the pie, and that makes a beautiful cake. It doesn't work that way anymore. So you have to string it together somewhere. And then everybody says the data is going to string it together. Yeah but who's actually used the data to string it together?

So there is a need that lots of brands, especially large brands don't want to understand because that's not how their companies are structured. Large companies are often structured in departments. Each department has a VP. Each VP fights for their life and their job, and these departments mirror how the advertising industry is built.

So that's why. I'm not going to change the way how the world works. I'm not going to turn the clock back or turn the clock forward, but you have to accept where the opportunity is and when you can't change it. So what we do today is meet the people. We really have two sets of clients. It's the very large companies that everybody knows, the IBMs, the Googles, the LVMHs, Walmarts, and whatever. They often operate in these silos. And we are a specialized service provider who can beat the large holding companies because we are simply. Better in what we're doing because we are more entrepreneurial, so we service some of these large brands with one or two different parts of that 15 piece journey.

And then there's the clients who want to listen. Why? Because they're intrinsically set up differently. And that has to do with who you talk to. If you talk to a VP of brand and listen, no disrespect, it's just the job. You're going to talk about brand. If you talk to the CEO of a business, you're going to talk about a P& L.

And you're going to talk about market share and about vision. So we have a right to talk to a CEO, CMO, CFO, CRO of a midsize business. They want integration because they don't have time or money to lose. by fragmentation. So what we do as MTP, Meet the People, is we work as specialists for very large brands, ideally across one, two, or three different capabilities, but we work as fully integrated generalists for midsize companies.

And this is where the U. S. comes in, when the U. S. is different to Europe. A midsize brand in America is roughly eight times the size in terms of how much money they spend on advertising as a midsize brand in Germany, France, or the UK would be. So the model works here better because the midsize budget is six to eight times bigger.

And that's where most of our growth comes from. It comes from surgical specialized services at a superpower level for large brands and generalistic integrated thinking and services for medium sized brands. 

[00:13:00] Mahan Tavakoli: That integrated thinking makes a lot of sense to me.

And eventually, I believe, even the larger brands will gravitate towards that. What I wonder, though, is internally within your organization, how are you able to get information? your people to collaborate and to effectively think about it in a way they can produce those outcomes that are more integrated for the clients.

[00:13:25] Tim Ringel: It sounds super simple. It is not that simple, but it sounds simple when I describe it. So when I was in IPG, I ran a 3, 000 people organization with 60 offices around the globe. I was one of a hundred companies within the group, and I was responsible for digital media in search, social and mobile. If I would have helped a creative agency to win a client, I would get a warm handshake for it.

Thank you, million dollars for McCann, for RGA, for huge, but not for me, right? So I'm not saying people are intrinsically only motivated by money, but they are created in a way where it's a financial logic. If I have a hundred companies that all have a P and L target and they operate against that target, the likelihood of achieving my overall budget is higher because 80 percent of them are going to achieve it.

But if I operate differently, if I say I have an overall target and I incentivize people against the overall target, but I keep certain control mechanisms within the different companies, but that's not the ultimate goal, all of a sudden, you create more collaboration because people are not only held accountable against the individual.

In my case at IPG, 3000 people P& L target, but in meet the people I'm partially responsible for Oh, okay. We want to achieve this with the company overall and this for the client overall. 

So that's probably the easiest description on how you unify within an incentive structure that brings people organically together. The second thing is we work with entrepreneurs who run the companies. And they understand that because an entrepreneur doesn't only build a successful company by looking after himself. And this is how we try to create it here. We have six companies right now, operating companies.

We're going to have probably four more in a few weeks. And 10 companies, you need to be able to trust the people who run the companies to actually wanting to collaborate with each other. Another trick, not trick, let's call it hack is when I was in IPG, I had no clue who was working for IPG. I knew the people that would report to me and then the people that would report to them, but I would probably not know more than two layers down, 

the first thing we did in Meet the People is create an HR tool that operates like a social network. Where no matter where you are within the organization, everybody is transparent. You log in, you have your W 2 there, your tax return, your benefits, all in the same platform. But it's also a social network across all companies where I can say, Oh, I want to know who are all the creative people in the organization, no matter where they sit, no matter which company they're,

and what's your experience in, I don't know, automotive? Who do we have who's experienced in automotive? So that's really powerful because all of a sudden people reach out to you that probably would have never been exposed to, and we post a lot of information there from talent celebration to client wins, and that gets shared across the group, no matter if you're like basically a wireless specialist and it's an automotive client or something like that.

So the technology allows us to have the platforms where you could collaborate. I'm not talking about zoom and the digital whiteboard but being able to publish internally successes and celebrate these people in a forum where everybody sees it. Everybody can reach out to me, to anyone in the company.

That's not how hierarchy works usually. And people like large corporate love hierarchy. Imagine you are VP of something and you have two rock stars under you, somewhere three layers down. You don't want your boss to know because you're going to look much better if you take their work and take it as yours.

So changing that, switching that upside down is how entrepreneurs build businesses. They usually hire smarter people than themselves. And that's what I always say. I don't know anything about the stuff my people do. Ideally. Because there's so much better in it, that I just have to trust them that this is going to be amazing.

It doesn't always work. Of course not. But you have to break it a little bit to make it a lot better. 

[00:17:09] Mahan Tavakoli: That requires a very different much more collaborative mindset. 

[00:17:14] Tim Ringel: I always say this to my clients. How do you get from an mediocre product? With no brand and a bunch of ambitious people to a 10 billion valuation, listing in the stock exchange, disrupting the banking industry. How does that happen in five years? Not by siloed thinking it happens with the consumer in mind.

It happens with the solution in mind. I remember when I invested in Spotify, and that was way pre IPO.

Everybody said it's just another Napster. Why would he make it better than Napster? Napster failed. What they didn't know is they had a different go to market strategy, and that they had the labels already in the pocket because the labels were shareholders. So they had no interest in breaking it apart because they understood it's going to happen no matter what.

And then they had some really cool marketing strategies, collaborations that cost nothing. Learning from those. They are the life examples. We use them every day on our phones. So I think we need to investigate how these companies did it and then take 10, 20 percent of that. And probably you're going to see way more efficient marketing spend way more integrated thinking because it starts with consumer and product centric thinking.

Everything else should follow, but it doesn't work in a company that's a hundred years old, has 20, 000 layers of decision makers, because then it's about protecting your seat within that structure rather than creating a great product. But it's part of the economy and capitalism as well, because if there's nothing to disrupt, then there's no motivation for entrepreneurs to build.

And if there's no motivation for entrepreneurs to build, there's nothing for large companies to buy. Not bad and good. it's part of how the economy works, they're always going to be disruption with less traditional thinking and more creative thinking, how to approach a business model, a marketing strategy.

And I'm doing exactly the same that probably somebody else had 60 years ago when TV advertising was introduced. No. I like print. I like radio. It's amazing. I can control it. Who knows this TV stuff, right? And it's the same now. We've seen it in the digital industry. We saw it with search. We saw it with social.

Now we've seen it with other things. So It's rinse and repeat because human behavior hasn't really changed, but how we apply human behavior, how we can react to human behavior has changed. 

[00:19:31] Mahan Tavakoli: I totally agree with you that human behavior hasn't changed and I love the perspective you shared with respect to that rinse and repeat of the life cycle of organizations, of the disruptors, innovators coming in and breaking things up. As we think through that, though, you mentioned your start in digital came at a time when a lot of organizations weren't as familiar with marketing on the web, you built the websites and we're like, aha, this is a very trackable, measurable, effective way to market.

That's where you added value. We are going through another one of those shifts now, Tim, with artificial intelligence, which I believe will also impact the Internet as we know it. So we'd love to get your thoughts with respect to how you see this transformation impacting advertising and marketing. 

[00:20:27] Tim Ringel: I don't think we can really predict yet. I completely agree with you that it is a massive step change that's going to change a lot.

 How we use the web and what we do on the web. It still doesn't change the fact that I, Tim, have certain preferences and I would like to solve a problem against my preferences. We were trained by Google to put it into Google, find the problem, research the problem ourselves, find the solution and hope for the best that this product that's going to ship actually is in the package.

So what AI is going to do is going to change that fundamentally. Why? Because you're not going to do the research anymore. You're not going to type anymore. There's this movie, and I'm sure you have seen it her. Where the guy falls in love with the virtual assistant,

on his phone. That's going to be the reality from my perspective. Not necessarily falling in love with the virtual assistant. Your phone already knows all your preferences. Search history, Who the people are you talk to the people who you text with the topics you're interested in, probably even the products you purchase, thanks to wallet.

So all this nonsense of research is going to be completely unnecessary, so at some point there's going to be exposure there for Google. And this is one of the reasons from my perspective why Google and Facebook and many others have lobbied so heavily against cookies because people say cookies are bad and people track me, blah, blah, blah.

It doesn't matter. You have a single login with Google. They track you everywhere. So the website where you bought your one umbrella, dropping your cookie to track you, if you ever going to come back in the next 30 days is no harm, but what really happens is with a cookie list environment means that.

The websites all need to buy your data from Google and Facebook and others. So that's how they secure. Because what happens to the brand that wants to break through with you? Let's presume, I'm just making this up, right? I only shop one particular brand of ramen noodles. And my phone knows this and AI knows this.

My assistant knows it. It's always going to order the same freaking ramen noodles. How do you break through? I'm not going to get the message anymore because I don't watch this. Now I watch the Superbowl, but before I would have never watched Superbowl. So not going to see the ad and my assistant knows, right?

So how do you break through? You're going to have to pay ransom to the platforms to get in front of me through my assistant that is on my phone, either created by Google, created by Facebook, created by Apple. So they're going to be a fundamental shift in a brand wanting to break through a new audience.

And that's going to be what agency is going to focus on. Because the existing audiences, if you're a very smart brand you figure out a way how to create a loyalty platform where you harvest with full consent, first party data from your existing ambassadors, consumers, fans who purchase your product.

If you don't do it, you're always going to pay ransom to the platforms who are going to do it for you. You want through my WhatsApp, you're going to have to pay Facebook for it, especially when you're a brand who doesn't know me yet. The beauty of the digital ecosystem is they're always going to be innovation.

They're always going to be another platform. So the job of, the agencies in the advertising industry is going to be to navigate that.  

[00:23:50] Mahan Tavakoli: I love the perspective that you shared. First of all, HER is a great vision of what that future would be like.

An AI call it HER, Jarvis, is making recommendations to us, Based on our preferences. Now, building on that, you mentioned there will be platforms. There are some now there might be new ones in the future that can support you reaching an audience, but those are the ones that you're paying ransom to, to access their audience.

You also mentioned that therefore it's critical for brands to develop their own loyalty networks. How do you guide and coach your clients to effectively think about that and do that? Because that becomes a lot more important over the next few years, as you mentioned. 

[00:24:45] Tim Ringel: That's exactly what I mentioned when I said we have two sets of clients.

If I don't talk to an owner or a C suite executive about that potential challenge, you're not going to get very far, if you talk to a VP of brand about their job being irrelevant in 10 years, they don't want to hear it. So that's why we have to do two things. We have to Acknowledge that certain companies need specific, very surgical help on things and that's never going to change.

 What we deliver is going to change slightly. And then there is the ones who are ready to think bigger and 10 years, 20 years from here. And it's usually companies that are still owner run or longevity C suite run. And that's where I come in with my team and we develop these ideas. It's still going to take two, three years to develop a consumer engagement platform for them, because you can't just say, Oh, now I'm going to force my retail salespeople who stand in Best Buy to collect data on the consumers who are interested in my product that works, but it doesn't really get you there.

[00:25:47] Tim Ringel: You actually need to start with a D2C strategy. And that opens all kinds of because it opens the cans of worms of I'm operating in a three layer distribution model with warehouses and distributors. Like they're going to hate me for creating my own e com solution. And then you have to take, create an e com team and an e com solution.

So you see that this is just the beginning of it. And there's enough steps to go through over the next five to 10 years to get these brands there. And there's obviously enough work for us to do to make money on it. That's just the reality. It's difficult when we always take the best companies in the world and say like, how can they innovate with AI?

I'm not worried about Apple and Google and the really large companies. I'm worried about the creamy middle of the cake. Like what happens to all this midsize businesses that are half a billion to 5 billion of revenue? What are they going to do? And that's where I get excited because that's the audience I talk to is C suite owners to think about you have operated this business 150 years selling through a three layer distribution model.

It's time to think D2C. And that's where the journey starts because once you do that, you have a right to collect consensual data, fully consensual, not Oh, this is a raffle and put in five data fields. No. If somebody purchased a product, I have the absolute right. And most people want to share information after they purchased product but you need to add a benefit.

Like it's not Oh, then you're going to participate in that raffle and you can win some shoelaces. That's not how it works. Like you have to add real benefit In terms of we're going to invite you to, a product launch or something specific, people are happy to share data if they love the product.

So if the product is authentic, the brand is authentic, you have a right to build D2C and with the right to build D2C, you have a right to collect data and build your own brand. Dataset so you at least protect your existing customer audiences and don't have to rebuy it 

[00:27:37] Mahan Tavakoli: Your example of the ramen noodles was a great one in that it's a product or a brand that you love and you don't mind having a relationship with it 

and I couldn't agree with you more that those mid tier organizations that have the potential to take advantage of it, but are the ones that are the furthest behind and lack that understanding.

[00:27:59] Tim Ringel: Absolutely. They're masters of their product and craft, but they're not masters of understanding what they have to do to change how they resonate with consumers always.

And again, I'm not worried about the large companies because if you produce ramen noodles and you're the world leader and you make 30 billion of revenue with it, you buy your way into your consumers. But if you're the 500 million company and you're making toilet seats, you don't have the massive advertising budget to get there,

so you have to be smarter than the big ones. And that's often not happening. And it doesn't cost a lot of money. Building a D2C strategy, especially selling products online isn't expensive because these channels are so professionalized,

a good example is, You create a product that you sell through Best Buy and Walmart and Kroger. Let's presume you're one of the many products on the shelf in these massive stores. It's very likely they sell your product online already by just buying your brand keyword. So that should be yours because these consumers look for you.

They don't look for Walmart, right? So that's really the very first step. You start an e commerce platform for your own products and you just buy your own brand keywords. You're going to get probably 20 percent of these people who are buying at Walmart and Kroger right now to your own website. And it costs you nearly nothing because it's probably the cheapest clicks you can buy, 

same as SEO strategy. So that really goes back to where I started in 98, 99, that logic hasn't changed. 

[00:29:27] Mahan Tavakoli: The fact that people have been saying, and it is so true of data being the new oil, you are getting data that people voluntarily will want to share with you as champions of your brand or supporters of your brand, that is of tremendous value in deepening that relationship.

 Now,  a lot of people, have been shocked at the. creativity of some of the LLMs and the output that they can produce when prompted well. So we'd love to know how internally you're adjusting to collaborating and using the technology and serving your customers.

[00:30:05] Tim Ringel: So I have two takes on this. And one is the very non exciting German way of looking at things. And the other one is my new American way of looking at things. So you can look at it two ways. One is an incredible opportunity. The other one is an incredible risk.

That's what I'm trying to get to. When we work for a very large brand, and my creatives deliver only AI created creatives, I have no ownership to sell. Why would you hire a creative? You hire a creative because you don't think your own brain can produce something that is unique and you buy it from the agency.

You pay money for that IP, for that intellectual property. We as an agency hand over that intellectual property to the client. Can't use it with anyone else. Correct. Who owns the large AIs that people can build creative with or text with, not the client, not the agency. So you never actually own it.

So you can't really sell it. So if I would go to, LVMH and tell them, oh, I came up with five new back styles and I created them through AI, they can never use them legally because they weren't created by me. I had no right to sell it. And that's where the American POV comes in probably as long as nobody sues, it doesn't matter, right?

Why am I making this example? I'm making this example because it's very easy to use these tools. And for a one man shop or a five man agency, woman agency, people agency it's very easy to set up shop now. But the risk is that you actually don't get anything you really own as a client.

So we're a little more thoughtful here. So when we use AI, number one, we make it fully transparent to the client. We use it for ideation processes, but we always refine the idea, no matter if it's copywriting, no matter if it's graphic design, we have to refine it. It has to be our brain. That we sell to the client.

Otherwise, they can't use it on an ad legally speaking and you can't work for serious businesses where you lie to them that you own the IP. It just doesn't work. it's not a longevity kind of business model, that's a big aspect how I look at it. There is obviously the fact that If you're a smart agency, you create your own so the open AI model is not that they're going to give away chat GPT for free forever, right?

That's not how it works. If you have to have an 80 billion valuation, you're going to have to show some revenues at some point. Even venture capitalists learned that no revenue is not a solution. Seeing in many cases that failed. So what's going to happen is you're going to be allowed to purchase.

an empty brain from the large AI companies. Think about it like you have a completely formatted defragmented human brain and you put it into your organization and it's completely firewalled. It doesn't listen to the internet. That brain is just in front of your TV, no other TVs. And you feed it with information. I think companies going to isolate their version of an AI they license from open AI and from others. It's completely formatted.

You feed it with your thinking, your way of working, and then it's your IP. So that's probably going to be how it works. And I see large companies working this in their heads, insurance companies, banks, where we can't have this in the open world. Like our algorithms, how we trade the way, how we risk manage the way, how we calculate what insurances we can sell.

They can't have that on an open AI. It doesn't work. You have to have your own brain in your own house. They can't develop. A large language model themselves, but they can feed it firewall, right? And that's probably what an agency is going to do in the future. 

[00:33:51] Mahan Tavakoli: That's part of what helps in. Listening to conversations with people like you, Tim, we can start asking the questions and visualizing the directions where this is going to head. Therefore, the leaders and executives can try to stay a step ahead. So to that point, Would love to get your thoughts on resources or practices for the audience listening. How would you guide them to think about their Advertising and marketing and stay ahead of the curve with this transformation.

[00:34:31] Tim Ringel: I think a lot of marketeers fall into the trap of operating in their own echo chamber, the problem is when your day to day job is like your 10 hours of work, and then you go home and you have whatever your family obligation and responsibilities, you in your echo chamber, I think consciously deciding to pick an industry that has nothing to do with your industry, or pick a business that have nothing to do with your business and get into that echo chamber. Reaching outside of your day to day echo chamber is probably going to be my advice.

And the beauty of the internet is there's endless podcasts, endless things you can read and this people you can listen to. The easiest, probably different industry, not even adjacent. Completely different industry. And one of my favorites is, if you're in a traditional company and tradition in a sense of either large and traditional products, just read up about how these unicorns were created, because that's a great place to start. How to just think differently on a day to day basis, no matter if it's how you manage your workflow, how you manage your teams, how you manage your products, how you innovate, how you market, like it touches so many things.

It doesn't mean you can apply all of it, but it opens your mind. It's getting out of your industry, company size, and echo chamber.

[00:35:47] Mahan Tavakoli: I love that perspective, Tim, because first of all, there are is a lot of great content out there. If we are willing to get out of our echo chambers, as you mentioned, and rather than listening from the perspective that could never happen in my industry, my organization is drastically different.

Listening for applicability and ways of seeing things from very different So I appreciate that because I think that's what it's going to take for us to be able to maneuver and lead our teams and organizations forward. Now, where would you send the audience to find out more about you, meet the people and follow your work, 

[00:36:32] Tim Ringel: Tim?

 Obviously I'm a victim of digital, right? So actually, that's an interesting one. I got off all social apps on 31st of December was my New Year resolution that I don't use any social apps for recreational purposes anymore. So I'm really only on LinkedIn. And it's so freeing I recently told a friend I would probably have around 400 pickups of my iPhone a day, pre deleting social apps.

[00:37:01] Tim Ringel: Now I'm down to 200. And the most used apps are email and WhatsApp. It's insane how that changes. And it took roughly three weeks for that habit to grab. Check, oh, app's not there anymore, put it back down, right? So I don't even think about it anymore. Try it. It's a lot of people do the one month detox.

I suggest do a three month detox. It's very interesting. But you can find me on LinkedIn because that's still, the most important resource of course, algorithms give you echo chambers and TikTok is amazing at it, 

but I think LinkedIn is still good because people are using LinkedIn. Number one, it's all different industries. I get content from all kinds of different industry, all kinds of different leaders and people now share more personal content as well. I actually like it. But it's a broader mix. It doesn't feel that echo chamber ish. So I like that a lot. So you can find me on LinkedIn and then obviously on our website meetthepeople. com. And on the many different conferences I speak at or my team speaks at and again, you're going to find that on LinkedIn.

 I appreciate that. I also focus primarily on LinkedIn at this point. There is a more diverse experience and more voices that you get to get exposed to. But beyond and besides that, Tim, I think we live in a world with lots of brilliance that we can access, but also lots of noise and being part of a lot of these different apps and a lot of these different channels, all it does, it increases the noise in our lives, not necessarily the signal.

[00:38:31] Mahan Tavakoli: So I would rather. Pick a few people to follow, a few podcasts to listen to, a few books to read that have a higher level of signal to noise than be everywhere, listen to everyone, try to do everything which drives you nuts. 

[00:38:50] Tim Ringel: That doesn't work. I think focus is really everything. And I shouldn't say that because I do a lot of things in my life running this company and doing other things as well.

But I try to find moments where I can focus like sport is a great way to your body, your mind, your soul, especially repetitive sports, right? It's like meditation, even though you actually do something great and you feel amazing about it and you're very hungry afterwards. So it's great.

I think it hits all the buttons., absolutely. 

[00:39:16] Mahan Tavakoli: I really appreciate you, Tim, the insights you shared, both with respect to where advertising and marketing is headed, but also what it takes for organizations and leaders to think differently as we go through this transformation, which I do believe will more significantly impact more organizations than the ones we've experienced. Thank you so much for joining me in the Partnering Leadership Conversation.

[00:39:46] Tim Ringel: Thank you for having me. It was fun.