Mastering Media Evolution: Strategies for Navigating Innovation, Leadership in Business

Hey, hi everyone. Now. Welcome to another episode of E-Coffe with Experts. This is your host, Ranmay, and today we have Lisa Barhost, who is the president and CEO at wilderness agency, with us. Hey, Lisa.

Hey, Ranmay Ranmay, right,

that’s correct. No worries, Lisa, having spent 25 years in the broadcasting industry, you have witnessed significant changes, right? How have you navigated the evolution of media, and what key strategies have you employed to stay ahead in the industry, to stay ahead of the curve? You know that is constantly transforming. We know how the industry is, right? So quick, yeah,

And that is a great question, you know, if I think back to when I started in media, yeah, you know, it was pretty much you knew these were the avenues, right? This is what people depending on the type of business. This is the way content was distributed. There were a few ways content was distributed. I’m gonna really date myself here, but the internet was not there, so all of the digital aspect wasn’t there. And as that transformed, I think that the number one thing is you have to stay educated. You have to continue to educate yourself, educate your people, follow the trends and be part of the transformation, but where you can be innovated. But the other big part of it that I saw through, especially at the onset of digital and then all of the other avenues that people have to market or distribute content is to educate your clients, help them navigate the water so that I’d say the number one thing is, stay up, stay educated,

lovely and as a leader, please recognized for a weapons grade organizational Mind. How do you foster a culture when creativity seamlessly integrates with operational efficiency within your agency, ensuring that innovative ideas translate into tangible and streamlined workflows so that the productivity is not being hit as well.

It’s funny, yeah, I had a friend that kind of coined that phrase for me with eyewebins, great organizational minor. So I love that you call Yeah, yeah. He introduced me once to somebody else, and he’s like, you’ve got to meet Lisa Luther, weapons grade, organizational my and I thought that was such a compliment, because that’s really what on my own person. I feel like I have that organization, and that’s really helped me be successful, but it’s fostering a collaborative environment. You had asked about those workflows. You It’s fostering a collaborative environment while having process and workflows that are not over complicated, so you’re able to scale, and I think as you scale, it does become more difficult, and to make sure that things are streamlined and not lost, but also you don’t want to lose your collaboration like so I’ve got so there’s really two two things. One is to knowing when you need to find somebody else to do it right to outsource certain things. That’s a big part of knowing when the right thing to take on versus the right thing to not take on. But for me, the way I organize is, and I’ve been known to use too many American football analogies in the way I work, because we’re a big football family. My husband’s a football coach. My son’s a college football coach here in the United States. So I use too many analogies. But the team approach to organization like a football team organizes, is you have your head coach, you have your coordinators, you have your position coaches, you have your assistant position coaches, you have your players. But and it takes great process, great strategy, great planning to get to the next level, but you also have your analytics people that help you guide your decisions, right? So I feel to organize all of that is to really pay attention. Let’s say we’re talking even just a sales process. If you don’t know where your process is successful and not successful, you can’t grow from there, right? Because you’ve got to know what needs the work. So I say you have to. Organize it and streamline it, not over complicate it, keep it collaborative, but not to the point that it’s going to interrupt or disrupt your process. Does that make sense?

Absolutely, absolutely it does. Lisa and your reputation as a big thinker with an organizational mind like we spoke about, that you have a knack for creative problems solving, yeah? So if you can share a couple of incidents or a systematic approach or framework you use when faced with a complex executive management challenges that requires innovative solutions,

okay? So the first thing I do is I can see it from start to finish. If it’s a project I’m attacking, or creative solution, or even as simple as how to clean out a terrible closet and organize its own functions, or something like how to set up somebody’s kitchen so it functions perfectly, like I can see the end. So I always start with the end and work backwards. So if we’ve got to solve a problem, here’s the problem, what do we want the result to be? Then break it up into the segments of from start to finish, right? So go backwards. What needs to happen? Who needs to be involved? Who is the expert? Who do we have to call upon? Where do we could do the research? What data guides that plan to solve that problem? If that’s something that’s available, and then we do have a solution. How do you make sure that it is the right solution? Who do you talk to? And it’s knowing that any individual is not going to have all the answers. So I can see it, but then I build the framework around who are the right people to help. So

basically, you reverse engineer the entire process and then build it brick by brick, right? That makes a lot of sense. Lisa, you have like you were speaking about it in the green room. You have been into sales for quite some time during your career, right? Whether you have no sales and business development, how do you infuse creativity into your strategy, wherein not to only ensure that it meet target but also open up avenues for revenue generation? Are there any specific techniques that has worked for you in the past? If we can throw some light on new skills or anything that have worked for you, it will be great.

My success instead, sales comes back to developing relationships at all levels, right? Is developing the relationship at every level and really having authentic conversations with people we and what? How together can we partner to be successful for both of us, right? What makes sense on all ends, and knowing not everybody you talk to is going to be a client, but I have many people that are not clients, and I’m not clients of theirs, that we still grow our businesses together through the people that we know where we encounter by by offering solutions to problems that maybe I can’t solve, but they can solve. So that’s one thing, is building that network. The other thing is case studies and success stories. Actually, you say, how do you infuse the creativity? It’s already the creativity that’s already been done with the solutions that we’ve already done for somebody else, we’ve created for somebody else. We’ve solved their problem, we’ve helped them grow. So it’s a great way to showcase that creativity, to be creative for somebody else.

Absolutely great, Lisa, but before I let you go, I need to ask you this, what is your take on artificial intelligence and machine learning? I would love to understand, while it has been more than a year that chat, GPT and everything came to our lives, right? But how have you and your agency have adopted it and heading with the eye.

You know what I it’s here. It, it can do some amazing things. We have embraced it. We have embraced it. We we are conscious of the security there. And with me having a big news and media background, you see the stories of people that have been duped by deep fakes and things like that, but we’re conscious of the security. We have eyes on everything. But there are ways to use AI to speed up your processes, help your workflow. We are able to do things faster, which actually saves our clients money. Yeah. We have embraced it. Of course, we’re all fascinated with technology, or we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing in this marketing world with technology, but, but in a former position, I have, I we, I we were working with Microsoft and using AI in a different way, just for the machine learning part of it, barring the bad things that people talk about that could happen. I see a lot of a lot of really interesting positives, and it’s not going away. So you might as well get on board and embrace what you can and use the use it for the good that you can. That’s just my take.

Lovely, lovely, great to hear that great Elisa. It has been a fantastic conversation last year. I would like to play a quick rapid fire with you. I hope you’re game for it.

Okay, let’s try it. All right,

Texting or Talking,

Talking both, though I do both. I text a lot.

Day of the week.

Oh, good Tuesday.

Your last search. Okay. Oh, okay, go ahead. Go ahead.

Tuesday? I tracked all my productivity through my career. Tuesday’s my most productive day. They’re all productive, but Tuesday’s on fire.

That’s a good one to hear for your clients. Now they’ve know when to ping you.

Yes, exactly.

All right, our favorite city in the US, besides the one that you live in,

favorite city in the New York City. I’ve always loved New York.

All right, your last video search, Lisa,

oh, I searched so much stuff yesterday.

Okay, give us what I mean. This is open book. Yeah, you can check your system if you wish to. Oh, okay,

let me see I can tell you.

Oh, I searched something last night that I was at an event and she taught was talking about a thing called quiet like Business Brokers is where people when they’re selling their online businesses. I searched out last night to check it out because somebody had told me about it at an event.

alright, scale of one to 10. How good a driver are you?

I think I’m a great driver. I think I’m a 10.

Oh, lovely.

I love my husband would say the same thing, but I think I’m a 10.

Okay, your celebrity crush.

My celebrity crush, George Clooney. I worked with his dad years ago in news when he was at a television station. So Nick Clooney, lovely, yeah. So, of course,

agreed, I will not really further. Lisa spot, thank you so much for taking your time. Thank

you. Okay, wonderful. Have a great day.