Sun, sand, and IoT

Nathan Anibaba:

Amy Garcia is the CMO at Pod Group. Pod Group aims to bring the Internet of Things, IoT connectivity to the world, enhancing industry and everyday life alike for years to come. Their philosophy is to support the people behind the Internet of Things that developers, distributors, innovators, helping to build the largest ever communications network. Amy Garcia, welcome to ClientSide.

Amy Garcia:

Thank you for inviting me, Nathan.

Nathan Anibaba:

Absolute. Pleasure having you on the show. You get your MA in Modern Languages from Exeter University 1997. What did you think you were going to do with your career at that time?

Amy Garcia:

Yeah, I honestly wasn’t sure. I’ve always enjoyed writing, and initially, I wanted to go into journalism. But then I found my way into tech PR as soon as I left the university, and I started working with a boutique agency just outside London. And I really liked the fast pace of the industry. It’s not something I’d really thought about too much before, but it was exciting. It was new. There was a lot going on. And I also found I could combine it with my love of writing, so it seemed like the perfect job for me. So I kind of fell into it is the answer to that.

Nathan Anibaba:

You became PR manager for Alcatel-Lucent in 2001, massive company at the time, and grew to be even bigger. What did you learn from your time with the firm?

Amy Garcia:

I think it was a really interesting opportunity because I was managing the PR for the whole of Northern Europe. So at that point, I started to learn a lot about how PR works in different countries and different cultures. And I also learned a lot about the technology because being in-house in such a massive company with so many different types of products from consumer phones to submarine networks. It was really really an eye-opener for me.

Amy Garcia:

And I also worked with a really good team in-house. So while I was managing the PR side of things, I worked very closely with other colleagues who were managing marketing and internal communications. So I got to learn a lot about those different functions and how they work within a large enterprise, which obviously I hadn’t had being on the agency side.

Amy Garcia:

So that was really interesting for me to see kind of how all of that fit together and not be kind of only looking at the PR side. And then, at the time, I was also managing agencies in all the different European countries who worked in. So that was really my first time as an in-house PR manager, and it was just the ability to see from the other side of the fence. And so I got a lot of experience about what’s needed from a client’s point of view. And I think it really helped me for when I kind of went agency side again later on in my career.

Nathan Anibaba:

Fast forward a few years, and you took voluntary redundancy and move to Spain, which is where you’re calling from now, which is where we’re having the conversation. What factors led to that decision?

Amy Garcia:

It was a combination of the personal and professional decision. Because whilst I really enjoyed working at Alcatel, I felt a bit restricted to one role. And when you’re working in such a massive corporate organization, you don’t really have a lot of say obviously, in the strategy of the business and how things are run. And I kind of realized at that point that I preferred working in a smaller company. So whether that was an agency or whether in-house, but I liked to have a lot more to do with kind of the wider business rather than just being kind of in a silo and just focused on the PR or the marketing.

Amy Garcia:

And then on the other hand, from personal point of view, I had also lived in Spain for a while and during my university course, and I’d always wanted to go back. So when the opportunity came up, I just thought, “Well, I’m just going to take this now.” So when I got to Spain, I set up my own agency. And I started working very closely with partner agencies in the UK, just through contacts I made there in my previous career. And I just got up and running, started designing strategies, running PR campaigns. And it was a really great way to sort of start to experience what it was like having your own business and how to run that as well as doing the PR.

Nathan Anibaba:

At some point in that journey, you became the managing director for Hotwire PR in Spain. What did you take away from your time with the agency? What factors led to that decision and tell us a little bit about that experience.

Amy Garcia:

I looked back and just think that that was a really fantastic job. It was a great opportunity because Hotwire as an agency is very well run. And it really… I suppose it allowed me to kind of experience the freedom of both sides. And have setting up and managing my own office and team in Madrid whilst also having the backing of the Hotwire head office. So it was kind of the best of both worlds, really. I’d already had my own business, and I’d already worked in-house. I’d already worked in agency because it was kind of a combination of everything.

Amy Garcia:

And it enabled me to work on some really great brands. So Blackberry, for example, Telefónica. So I learned a lot really from that experience about running a business and especially managing a team and just ensuring that they’re consistently delivering the best results to the customer and to keep people motivated and passionate, and that was challenging, but it was extremely interesting as well.

Nathan Anibaba:

If I can take you back to that time, what would you say were some of the biggest business challenges that you were dealing with then as an agency, and how did you help overcome them?

Amy Garcia:

Well, as I say, I think probably one of the biggest challenges was sort of setting up that business in Spain from scratch. And obviously, with the backing of the Hotwire head office, and the wider team. But it was hard because it was a very small team to start with. And a lot of my time was spent preparing proposals, designing campaigns, to go out and win new business, as well as trying to kind of grow the team and manage the team and also make sure that existing customers were serviced correctly, and they were happy.

Amy Garcia:

So I think that was challenging because it was a small business within a larger business. And I think probably one of the biggest challenges when you manage a team of people, especially when you’re abroad and you’re kind of the forerunner, is trying to find a way to kind of keep all these cultures together, keep everyone happy and motivated when people are from very different backgrounds. And I just really found it was a lesson to me in understanding other cultures being open about the differences, not seeing those differences as necessarily a better or worse thing, but just a different thing, and being able to take them on board and deal with them. And I think that that was a huge challenge, but it was also a very interesting experience.

Nathan Anibaba:

Really interesting. You answered another question that I was going to ask you a little bit later on about sort of the cultural differences between the UK and Spain from a working perspective. It was interesting that you mentioned that you were the forerunner in that environment and sort of how you bring those two cultures together.

Nathan Anibaba:

What are the perspectives did you develop, and have you taken away from your experience, both living and working abroad in a PR and marketing capacity?

Amy Garcia:

Yeah, I think, as I say, it helps you to open your eyes to how other countries and cultures do business. And particularly in a PR or marketing environment where it’s very fast-paced, and it’s very competitive, and you need to be kind of on the cutting edge, particularly in the technology sector. And I think when you see how people approach that in other countries and cultures, sometimes it’s very different. So start to question things that you’ve always taken for granted.

Amy Garcia:

So I mean, for example, in Spain, people take regional holidays as well as national holidays. So when I started working in Madrid, I just couldn’t understand why I kept calling this person in Barcelona, and they weren’t there-

Nathan Anibaba:

Interesting.

Amy Garcia:

And there was nobody in Barcelona on this one day-

Nathan Anibaba:

Amazing.

Amy Garcia:

And I couldn’t stand it. And then obviously, I realized that it was a regional holiday there. And it didn’t make sense to me to start with, but as you become accustomed way that other countries work and their particular traditions, you just learn to work around it. And I think it just helps you to understand the people and just to open your eyes really to other opinions.

Nathan Anibaba:

I like that idea. We need a regional holiday in the West Midlands. I’ll jump in that.

Amy Garcia:

It has its advantages and disadvantages.

Nathan Anibaba:

Right. Sure. So let’s talk a little bit about Pod Group. You joined Pod Group in 2011, as the director of marketing, the company aims to bring the Internet of Things connectivity to the world, as I mentioned, enhancing industry and everyday life alike for years to come. And you joined there when there were really just a handful of people. I think just three people at the time. Talk about how the business has grown over that period of time. And where are you now in your evolution?

Amy Garcia:

Yeah, so a Pod Group, as you said, we basically provide IoT SIM cards and software to the IoT market. So we’re in the connectivity business. And when I started, it was obviously a small company. It was a challenge because we were a very small team. And we were very hands-on, and as in any small company, everybody has to do a bit of everything. So what that meant was that I ended up doing anything but marketing. First, I was working. So I did technical support. I did sales. I did account management, you name it, basically.

Amy Garcia:

But it did teach me a lot about the business. And particularly kind of having that direct contact with the customers and understanding their needs and where their pain points were. That really helped me. So now the team’s grown to over 40 people. And I’m focused almost entirely on marketing, but I think looking back on that experience, it just helps you as a marketeer to kind of understand which messages resonate with your audience. And the business has grown very very quickly partly because that sector is booming and there’s a lot of growth happening in different parts. So the connectivity side, the software side, the platform side.

Amy Garcia:

But I think because we kind of have that understanding from the beginning of what the customer’s needs are and we need starting to build solutions to kind of specifically address those needs. I think that’s why the company has grown so quickly. And I think we’re still a very customer-centric business. I think in IoT what customers look for because there’re so many different sectors that you can serve it. See where our solutions are used in healthcare, retail, manufacturing, energy, and environment, tracking. Every sector you can think of.

Amy Garcia:

But what those customers want really in a connectivity provider is somebody that really understands their business. Their specific problems and each sector has its own problem. So I think it’s our experience that has put us in good stead really to help customers resolve those. And that’s what customers say. I mean, we do a regular customer survey, and they always say what they really appreciate is the understanding of their business and the kind of personalized support and consultancy that they get, but they wouldn’t get by going straight to an operator.

Nathan Anibaba:

Super interesting. So I’m going to ask you really tough question now based on sort of what you said, it might be hard to answer it quickly, but what are the main problems that you solve for your clients and that might be challenging considering that your clients are in every industry and the sector, how would you characterize what the main challenges are that your clients have and how do you help solve them?

Amy Garcia:

As you say, I mean, it’s very dependent on the sector. But I mean, the thing that I think helps us to understand their problems is that we work with them from the very early stages of when they’re developing their IoT application. So, even before they’ve designed it, we start to work with them and provide them with consultancy and testing services to identify any problems. And because there’s so many kinds of components to an IoT solution, there’s the connectivity. There’s the hardware. There’s the software. There’s the platform side. All of those have to come together and work together well in order for the solution to work.

Amy Garcia:

So at that stage, we can work with them to identify any problems and just make sure that they’re using the right combination of connectivity hardware and software, for example. And then as kind of, as they develop that solution, then we help them to scale. So we provide them with a platform to enable them to manage their connectivity. We provide them with the global coverage to enable them to kind of quickly move into new markets and get their product to market because it’s such a competitive environment for them that really that speed to market is very important.

Amy Garcia:

So I think, whilst it’s difficult to kind of list different problems because we work closely with them in their sector. We understand what their challenges are. And we also have an in-house research and development team who are there constantly researching new ways of resolving the challenges, so working on the SIM card to make sure that they incorporate the right technology to enable the customer to resolve challenges in the field. So I mean, I think that’s quite unique in the industry. And I think that’s why customers stay with us.

Nathan Anibaba:

Now that seems to be a lot of buzz about IoT a few years ago, and people got really very excited about the possibilities and the applications that it could bring. But somehow I’m just thinking about your friend talking to your vacuum cleaner that can talk to your lights, light switch.

Amy Garcia:

Perfect example.

Nathan Anibaba:

But somehow that sort of mass adoption of IoT hasn’t yet been realized. Is that a fair assessment and sort of what more can be done?

Amy Garcia:

Yes, I think, I mean, there are still barriers to adoption, and we even recognize that the market is still very fragmented. And so the solutions that we provide help to address that kind of fragmentation and those silos that exist. So, for example, one of the biggest issues with the uptake of IoT is that enterprises need to have the right strategy and resources internally to manage that whole process. And quite often they don’t have that. It means a massive change within the structure of the organization and the resources that organization has and experience they have to actually roll out an IoT project.

Amy Garcia:

So the other thing is that there were really big concerns around security still. And enterprises want to work with one provider that can help them to kind of navigate all these different areas. So that’s why we’ve really focused offering much more than just being an IoT SIM card provider. We’ve added a lot of additional value-added services to our offering that help the enterprise is to scale globally.

Amy Garcia:

So we’ve added security, for example. We provide a security solution that enables them to monitor their network constantly and see threats coming in. We’ve added billing to our offering, which is really important because everyone talks about the recurring revenue in the IoT sector, and how that’s kind of the ultimate aim. But it’s very difficult to capture that if you don’t have the right billing system in place. And because we naturally as a telecoms service provider have a billing system which is based on subscriptions. And that enables us to build recurring revenue. We’ve developed that for our customers as well. So that helps them to kind of adapt their organization and to bring in that recurring revenue that they’re looking for.

Amy Garcia:

Yeah, I was going to say, we also it was quite interesting responses to a search report with Beecham Research recently about why IoT projects fail. And I think what came out of that is that a lot of the reasons were around the lack of knowledge and experience inside the business. So I think what’s needed is for companies with that experience to come in and provide consultancy and actually help those enterprises to manage the whole process.

Nathan Anibaba:

Super interesting. How excited are you about the launch of 5G? Because we’ve been hearing a lot recently about 5G being really a game-changer as far as IoT is concerned, the number of devices being able to connect to the internet and sort of speak to each other seamlessly is really sort of exciting people about the possibilities, yet again. How excited are you about 5G, and what impact will it have on the industry?

Amy Garcia:

Yeah, I think we need to be careful because there is a lot of hype around 5G, and I think we’re quite a long way from seeing adoption of 5G across the industry because it’s not widely available at the moment. So particularly for kind of an IoT type application where it might be remote, it might be moving across borders and roaming, that the 5G infrastructure is not really there at the moment to take advantage of that.

Amy Garcia:

But I do think that when it does come it’s going to enable some really interesting applications, particularly, for example, healthcare. You think about remote patient monitoring, and particularly in the current situation, that’s really important. 5G with low latency that it’s going to have is going to enable those types of applications, and that’s going to be huge.

Amy Garcia:

And the other thing is, I mean, one area that we’re very involved in right now is private LTE networks, and how they can help enterprises kind of almost achieve those 5G latencies and the security on an LTE network. And I think that those types of technologies are going to see massive uptake over the next few years as we move towards 5G.

Nathan Anibaba:

Let’s talk a little bit about agencies and working with them. Talk a little bit about some of the biggest business challenges you have at the moment at Pod Group, what sort of agencies are you working with to help you over overcome them and talk about the mixture of agencies that you’re working with?

Amy Garcia:

Yeah, sure. I mean, we have an in-house team in Pod Group. So we do a fair amount of the marketing in-house. So we have graphic designers. We have events manager. We have marketing managers to manage the campaigns. But we tend to work with agencies more. Certainly, from a PR perspective, we’re working with an agency there. We work with agencies on the SEO side and on the web development side. And so, those are the areas where we see agencies as providing value because they have the specific expertise in those areas.

Amy Garcia:

And they also have the additional resources that perhaps we don’t have in-house to allow us to kind of be more creative and increase our impact in those different areas.

Nathan Anibaba:

Selecting an agency partner is probably one of the most important decisions that any CMO can make. And it’s very easy to pick up the phone on the spot and hire a new agency. It’s much more difficult to find an ideal partner to reshape your approach to marketing and the way that you think about the business, to propel the business forward. What’s the best way of finding, choosing, and appointing agencies?

Amy Garcia:

So I think the way that I’ve worked with agencies throughout my career is really through recommendations. So working with people I know in the industry, and a lot of my contact with agencies has been through ex-colleagues or clients, which I think just helps you to understand how that agency works and to know that they’re kind of aligned with what you want to achieve. So I think that the recommendations are really important, and I think it’s just important to understand the strategy of the agency and make sure that that’s aligned with your own marketing strategy.

Nathan Anibaba:

And from the point of view of, I hear what you’re saying around sort of working with agencies that you already have existing relationship with or that have been referred into you, that makes a huge amount of sense. If there was a really hot agency that knew that they could deliver a lot of great value for you, but they weren’t on your radar, what’s the best way for them to get on your radar, add some value to you, and start working with you potentially?

Amy Garcia:

Yeah, I think for us, I mean, because we are in quite a niche sector, and IoT is something that not everybody really understands or knows how it works and knows kind of what the pain points are for companies in our sector. I think the fact that the agency understands that and really knows a lot about the sector and is able to kind of make their campaigns and their strategy relevant to our sector. For me, that’s really important. So I think if an agency was looking to get on my radar, that knowledge of the industry would be something I would look for.

Amy Garcia:

And then it also kind of ability to know how to prove the return on investment because I think a lot of the time agencies need to understand that where the CMO is being measured is on the return on investment on the campaigns. And it’s very difficult to measure PR, which is why I think agencies who come up with creative and imaginative ways of showing how that ROI is being achieved and work that into the reporting, are the ones who are going to have the most success when they come to pitch it to clients.

Nathan Anibaba:

Really interesting. What are the most important factors or capabilities or even characteristics of ideal agencies that you look to work with and onboard? Yeah, talk a little bit about that.

Amy Garcia:

I think creativity is really important. Because when you’re working as a CMO, you don’t have a lot of time to sit and be creative. As much as you’d like to be, it’s difficult to find that time to really sit and brainstorm with the team and come up with creative ideas and things that are really going to make you stand out. So I think for me, that’s one of the main things I look for in an agency is to have a team that’s there ready to brainstorm, ready to come up with new and exciting ideas and take those out. And that’s why that kind of knowledge of the industry is also really important.

Nathan Anibaba:

So if it came down to, let’s say, two or three agencies that you’d shortlisted, you’d done your homework, you’ve gone through maybe a couple of rounds of interviews and pitches, and it’s come down to the last two or three, what tends to make the difference over the winning agency and the other two not successful ones in your mind?

Amy Garcia:

I think it’s the ability to understand what resonates with our target audience. So a lot of agencies, when you go through the selection process, they’re keen to show you what they can do for you as an in-house marketing director or CMO, but they don’t think beyond that to what you’re trying to achieve. And I think a lot of the time the campaigns, they need to be obviously creative, and they need to stand out, but they need to resonate with your target audience. And unless the agency really understands that, they’re not going to be successful. So that’s what I look for.

Nathan Anibaba:

Let’s talk a little bit about giving feedback because this is a big bear for a bugbear for a number of agencies that I speak to. Clients have very different communication styles if they’re unhappy with some things. Some clients tell the agency straight away, other clients stay silent, giving the agency a sneaking suspicion that something may be wrong, but they don’t really know what it is. And I think most agencies would like to know quite early on so they can do something about it. What’s your approach to communicating something you’re unhappy with?

Amy Garcia:

I think definitely the upfront front approach is the best. So if there’s something that’s not working, the agency needs to know it straight away. And I think where I would measure an agency is not so much on what they were doing, but their ability to adapt to the situation or their ability to respond to that type of feedback. So if an agency is going in the wrong direction, it might be due to the client brief and not necessarily because the agency doesn’t understand the sector.

Amy Garcia:

But I think if you give that feedback directly to an agency, I would then watch very carefully as to what the response was and how the agency dealt with that. And I think that to me is what makes the difference between a good agency and a bad agency.

Nathan Anibaba:

Really interesting. And then from the point of view, let’s say we’ve gone through the selection process and you’ve chosen the winning agency. How do you make sure that everyone’s expectations are aligned so that you can both get the result that you’re looking for?

Amy Garcia:

I think it’s really important to be clear about your goals from the outset. So I think that’s where a lot of companies fall down because they don’t really clearly express what they want to achieve at the end of the campaign or through the relationship. So I think it’s really really important to kind of put those goals out there very early on. So the agency understands what’s expected of them. And then I think measurement is another part of that’s just really important because as I say, it’s very difficult in-house to justify why you’re spending that budget unless you have those very clear goals from the outset and you were able to measure them and show how you’re achieving them.

Amy Garcia:

So I think that’s really the way that I would start, and then I would make sure that those measurements are happening on a regular basis. So you’re measuring against certain KPIs every so often. So that obviously from a client’s point of view, then you can go back and justify why you’re spending that budget. And from an agency point of view, again, you can justify the types of activities that you’re doing.

Nathan Anibaba:

And then just talking about performance reviews then, we know that it’s important to conduct effective performance reviews of both the client and agency can get feedback on how to improve the relationship. But how often should we do them? What’s the best way that you’ve seen them done? Yeah, if we can talk a little bit about that.

Amy Garcia:

Yeah, I mean, I think it very much depends on the agency and the client. I think it needs to be very clearly set out from the outset when you’re going to have those performance reviews and how you’re going to run them. I mean, from my point of view, I wouldn’t say kind of doing a formal review every quarter, or is necessarily a way to make sure that the agency is aligned and performs better. I think it’s better in a way to have continual communications throughout the campaign. And just make sure that your weekly calls are set up, with each campaign what your objectives are. You’ve got those measurements in place. You’re constantly measuring that campaign or that relationship as it goes forward, rather than having a time set in stone. So right now, we’re going to have a performance review.

Amy Garcia:

And I think it’s kind of a fluid relationship and you need to have that feedback from the agency, and then you need to give feedback in a clear way in order for everybody to be aligned.

Nathan Anibaba:

Let’s talk a little bit about communicating the value of marketing and PR in an organization that may not get it if they are techies, which I’m sure a lot of the people within a Pod Group are. You said in the pre-interview that one of your biggest challenges today has been trying to convince techies about the importance of PR and marketing. How do you do that?

Amy Garcia:

Yeah, I think because of the way that the technical teams work, they’re often very skeptical about PR and marketing. And what value that actually brings. And I think the best way is really just to get them very directly involved so that you can see the benefits, because, from the outside, people say, “Well, why are you spending all this budget going out there and doing this campaign when we need to invest in product development.” And you can see the reasoning behind that. But I think I mean, one of the things that we did in Pod Group was, we worked very closely with then CEO, now chairman, to build his profile within the media. And to start with, I mean, he hadn’t really worked with PR agencies before, or he was a bit skeptical about what we could achieve.

Amy Garcia:

But once he started to see how that profile building was having an impact, and how the credibility of the company was being improved drastically by that activity, he really got on board with it. And then part of that profile building was he wrote a book about… Well, originally it was meant to be a book about the IoT, but, in fact, he ended up writing a book about something he was extremely passionate about, which was more about how organizations can prepare themselves for AI and the effects of automation and what they need to do in order to change the way that they work.

Amy Garcia:

And that’s what the book ended up being about. And I think although it wasn’t what we originally planned, it actually worked a lot better because he’s so passionate about that topic that he came across in all the interviews that he did. Got a lot of interest in that then impacted the credibility of the company.

Nathan Anibaba:

It makes sense. Okay. Amy, let’s get into the final part of the interview now. These are our more fun, lighthearted questions. It’s a quickfire round or speed round if you like. So I’ll fire some questions at you, and if you can fire some short sharp answers back, that would be fantastic. We’re in the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic right now, and we’re seeing a lot of brands who are seen to be quite opportunistic and taking advantage of the situation. And there are some brands that are handling it really subtly unwell, what’s the best way, in your opinion the brand should be thinking about inserting themselves into the conversation at the moment?

Amy Garcia:

I think it is a very sensitive topic. And I think brand’s got to be quite careful about how they communicate around it. I think really the best way to communicate is to talk about the solutions and to talk about how in our case, for example, in IoT it’s quite easy to see the link because everybody’s working remotely, everybody realizes now the importance of remote working and the need for people to be able to carry on working even when a situation like this unprecedented that it can happen.

Amy Garcia:

So I think focusing on those solutions rather than directly going out and trying to sell off the back of the whole situation, which is kind of a bit in bad taste, is probably the best way to approach it. And I think we’ve seen among our customers. Obviously, I mentioned they span a lot of different sectors, but there are certain sectors that obviously, they are booming because of this situation like healthcare, for example, remote healthcare it’s really brought to the fore the importance of that type of technology. So as I say, I think you have to just be a little bit careful about how to promote it from a marketing point.

Nathan Anibaba:

I did say that these were going to be lighter-hearted, fun questions, and that was actually a quite tough question. So I’m sorry for that.

Amy Garcia:

Okay, I’m looking forward to the lighter-hearted.

Nathan Anibaba:

Here we go. Let’s try this one. What do you do to keep mentally and physically fit at the moment?

Amy Garcia:

Wow, that’s a difficult one.

Nathan Anibaba:

Oh, is it.

Amy Garcia:

I thought these are going to be. It’s difficult because actually I was talking to a colleague the other day and we were saying, “When you work from home, you expect that maybe you wouldn’t work as much because there’s a lot of distractions going on. And I have two children as well, and they’re doing schoolwork from home.” So you’d expect that’s quite distracting. But actually, you end up spending so much of your time in front of the computer and because there’s no kind of break there to say, “So right now I’ve got to go and pick the kids up from school, or I’ve got to go and do something else.” You just continue and continue and continue, and it can be quite damaging. I think you’d be sitting so long and in front of your computer.

Amy Garcia:

So what I have tried to do is just make sure that there are certain points in the day where I say, “Right, I really need to leave this now and just take five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it might be, and just detach myself from the computer,” because otherwise, I think you can get really saturated. And it’s difficult. I mean, I’m lucky enough that I do have a garden. I can go outside. But people who were in the city and maybe can’t get outside, it’s really difficult to get the exercise or just get that break that you need to enable you to work more effectively.

Nathan Anibaba:

Okay. Third time lucky. I’m going to try a fun question now. I’ll ask this one.

Amy Garcia:

Let’s see if it’s a fun one.

Nathan Anibaba:

If you weren’t doing your current job as CMO for Pod Group or in marketing, what would you be doing?

Amy Garcia:

Oh, that’s a very-

Nathan Anibaba:

Is that better?

Amy Garcia:

Difficult question.

Nathan Anibaba:

Damn it. I’m not doing very well here.

Amy Garcia:

I think, I mean, I really enjoy my job, believe it or not, it’s something that really motivates me and inspires me. And I think I would be doing something similar may be in the same sector, maybe in a different sector. But I think what really kind of motivates me is being involved in the running of a business, whatever that business might be. And I think that kind of throughout my career, because I’ve worked in different sizes of companies I’ve found my niche if you like, and that’s kind of working in a smaller to medium-sized business and helping that to grow. And that’s the thing that really kind of inspires me.

Amy Garcia:

So I think if I wasn’t with Pod Group, I’d probably be with a similar organization, helping to build the strategy and helping that company to grow.

Nathan Anibaba:

And my final question, Amy, what’s the single biggest thing that you have yet to achieve that you would like to achieve in your career?

Amy Garcia:

Wow.

Nathan Anibaba:

None of these have been fun or easy.

Amy Garcia:

Yeah, gosh.

Nathan Anibaba:

I’m going to have to work on these.

Amy Garcia:

There’s so many things, to be honest. As I say, I mean, I’d really love to be able to… I think what really interested me in my career, it was also having my own business. And I think that taught me a lot and although it was very challenging and it’s a little bit frightening at times because you feel you’re on your own and you’re responsible for absolutely everything, but at the same time it’s incredibly rewarding.

Amy Garcia:

So I mean, although I’ve done that for a period of my career, at some point I think I would like to go back to that, and build a business and take it forward, and that’s something that, maybe I will achieve at some point.

Nathan Anibaba:

A great place to end. Amy Garcia is the CMO of Pod Group. Amy, thank you so much for being on ClientSide.

Amy Garcia:

Thank you, Nathan. I enjoyed it.

Nathan Anibaba:

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