Hey, friends. Thank you for joining us here on the Crafted Journeys podcast series where we invite on people who have had pretty cool careers. They share why they did what they did. They get to highlight some of the coolest stuff that they did, talk about some of their favorite people they worked with, and just share insights about what work can be. So today is a little new for me. The previous podcast episodes have been a lot of my friends that I've reached out to. But sometimes you reach out to somebody, and our very first podcast guest, Sherry Prescott Willis, said, you know, if you haven't met Joe Bresler, you should talk to him. I'm like, great. I will, you know, reach out to Joe and you know? And having somebody in your podcast is a great way to get to know somebody a little bit better. Yeah. So welcome, Joe. We're really happy to have you here. And, with that, why don't you, introduce yourself? What you know, what you're up to now and then sort of take us straight into your origin story. Alright. Well, first of all, thanks so much. It's definitely good to have the the recommendation from others. You know, and Susie, I've enjoyed our, you know, our prep calls and so forth, so very much appreciated. So for everybody out there, I'm Joe Bressler. I consider myself a full stack marketer since I have led marketing across the full stack, several different areas. One of the things that I did was build my career on getting a depth of knowledge and building up that knowledge by actually getting hands on in many, many areas of marketing. But I would say in particular the last ten, twelve years, I've been going very much more deep on the data, the analytics, and the digital side of things. Some may say web fits in digital, which it does, and I would say that's the one thread that's carried through for over two decades. But really that's where my passion these days lies, you know, in addition to like helping companies across the board with marketing, really focusing on how do I help them drive growth? How do I help them have efficient operations? And how do I help them learn, know, and understand what's gonna help them take things to that next level through through data analytics. Yep. And and you're here in the Bay Area where there is no shortage of companies in need of that sort of insight. In need, and there's also these days, the time that we live in, there's a lot of companies, a lot of people that are out there making a lot of noise. Hey, Matt. You know, to your point, I was just at a, a marketing operations, conference yesterday and it was the, know, I was kinda feeling like, oh god. With all the new things with AI and everything else, everybody's talking about all these different things. New tools everywhere coming out of our ears, I must be way behind. And Okay. What I was that okay. A lot of the same players, still relevant, moving a bit into AI. Some of them, I've had conversations. Some of them were actually taking a little bit more of a cautious approach to driving into AI in the wrong way, so they actually haven't gone as deep into AI as some of the noise would indicate. Yeah. But the other thing is that just kind of fundamentals. There's still a lot of fundamental problems that companies still face that people are still trying to solve, and it brings it back down to a thought that I have, which is that, you know, having seen companies at all different stages from initial startup to growth, and then hyperscaling growth, and then in some cases consolidation, in other cases you know going through splits and sales and acquisitions and so forth. So Companies all go through these stages, but they still have fundamental problems they've gotta solve, and one of those big ones is with data. Yeah. Yep. Well, you for just off the bat, thank you for your insight that yeah. For pretty much all of us who feel like we're behind where it comes to AI, it's kinda nice to hear somebody admit that You have. That's not just us, and that it's good that some companies are being cautious and not throwing every last piece of AI spaghetti at the wall to see what it is. Yeah. Pujo? Yeah. Yeah. If you wouldn't mind, share a little bit about where you come from, where you grew up, went to college, and, what you studied and why. Alright. Well, I'm I'm told that I'm a rare case because I'm a Bay Area native. Wait a minute. So is Sherry, our mutual friend. There we go. And I are alums of the same school, although I went to Haas. I think she went to Haas, you know, if I double check. Yeah. But yeah. So Grew Born in the Bay Area, grew up in the Bay Area, have traveled around the world many times. But I always come back to the Bay Area for the vibrant culture, for the weather, the history and just, you know, enjoying this place, Which is unlike any other in the world. And I'm sure that's why so many people are so, so really, like, fixated on getting here at all cost. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, Aria welcomes them. So Quite quite right. It's good to see good to see the diversity. Alright. So born and born and raised here. You asked about where I went to school. I went to school at UC Berkeley. That was my undergrad. I also did my MBA over at a little known school called Holy Names University. Okay. That was kind of an extension of, first off, so what I studied was business in both undergrad and in my master's program focused on marketing and an international business in both cases. Also did some real estate and investment and finance type of work. Brad. But then Since Since those times, I've also completed a few different things. So one thing I haven't even talked about or announced anywhere else, so I really gotta get on the ball with this one. A few years ago, I completed a data science certificate when the market was sort of budding and, you know, it was coming it was coming along. Yeah. And then this year, I completed a second data science certificate, which is really more focused on data engineering. So Congratulations. Thanks. Yeah. And people can, people can argue and say, well, you're not an engineer. Well, yeah. Okay. But I'm a data engineer technically. Yeah. Quite right. Yeah. So that is gonna give you a whole lot of, how shall we say, invaluable insights as opposed to a lot of, you know, figuring it out as we go. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of work that I've had to do, you know, even in marketing and marketing operations, a lot of work I've had to do around data, around analyzing systems, analyzing processes, you need to connect data, needing to troubleshoot those things. Yeah. So I think that's the other thing that, you know, I think we'll probably talk a little bit more later on about, you know, kind of like what's next or what am I leaning into. Yeah. People are talking about AI engineering. Well, kind of already there. I'm still so maybe that'll be a next evolution in terms of what I what I need to talk about in terms of the title. I don't know. Quite right. Well, listen. If I could, after you graduated, so you said you studied business. What was your first job your first grown up job? And how did you how did it find you where you find it? Yeah. You know, I had a couple jobs in succession. So I know you're asking me about the first job. The first one you did you consider? Yeah. The first one technically was with a company that I converted from an internship to a full time role for some time, which was in public relations. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Speaking with another PR colleague last night as well, and, it was a lot of, like, heavy tech semiconductor, these sorts of things. So PR, and then I actually moved very quickly to a startup where I was number three of four, leading all of marketing, Rebootstrapped it. And then, the other then I would say the next one is I moved quickly, you know, within a few years, obviously, you know, I got got some time to gain my skills and so forth. Yeah. But I moved into an agency, and the reason why I'm bringing this up, because you're talking about, like, early career, you know, kind of what to do, how did that happen. I bring those three up because they have three elements that continuously run through my background. One is the marketing and then that exploration of all the different areas of marketing, starting in PR and then moving beyond that. The second one is working in and with startups or startup initiatives. As my work has been more transformative within very large organizations, including starting up brand new initiatives. And then the third one being working with an agency, was also working with startups again, helped me then work through some of the early kernels of, you know, client engagement, client management, managing budgets, managing timelines, managing the creative process, which is also we'll talk about in a few minutes, I'm sure. Yeah. So kind of inspires me for what I'm doing now and where embedded next as well. That's a that's a pretty cool start to a career, Joe. So I can't miss you didn't drop names on either of the any of those, which is cool. But I would like to know, if you don't mind, would love to talk to you about some of the things that really have stood out to you as being impactful, things that you learned lessons from and maybe there's any people you'd want to call out. So after after your starting phase, what do you agree? I try I try not to go diving directly into just dropping names, so that's why I didn't do that. Fair enough. But I think with my background, People, you would probably look me up from looking at the podcast so forth, and they'll see I've been at places like Adobe, Oracle sixteen years, HP, BlackRock, the massive financial institution, AWS, and then startups as well, so Lookout, a company called Gurobi, more recently with a company called Clumio. So my background ranges really from very small to very, very big. Yes, it does. Yeah, and I think that that's, it's given the opportunity to see businesses from lots of different angles at lots of different sizes. Again, see them through the different phases of, you know, starting, growing, expanding, and then, you know, going through additional iterations of consolidation and so forth. Some of the things that I have had the pleasure of doing as an example is, so for example, AWS starting up a brand new campaigns team, the campaigns initiative. When I was basically the fourth or fifth director of across the board. There were no other ones at that level. So I was able to come in at a level and and really start something from scratch and build that up. Same thing with Oracle. I was there sixteen years. I had many different things that I was able to do there, which really I would say with sixteen years, it really builds a really solid foundation for somebody's background, their skills, desire to be with certain cultures, and, you know, things from coming in to help to build out the ecommerce channel. Was an outgrowth of the work I was doing at that agency before that I told you about before. To working, with the team to lead product marketing and bring to market the first customer relationship management project products when the market didn't even know what that was. Right. You know? To helping them enter the mid market with brand new solutions based on standard enterprise applications. And then again, building and scaling a global campaigns function and handling all the operational sides of that as well, and helping that to scale globally so we had global consistency. You know, at the point we had around one hundred and twenty five messages in market. I came and analyzed that. Everybody was doing their own campaigns, We've had to then get the buy in to consolidate down the campaigns, the messages, and everything. Put together a menu of campaigns that we all took out globally in consistency, which helped us really get everybody globally across the board aligned, help it much bigger impact in the market Across all. Oh my god. Is it I just I feel lighter hearing of going from that. For that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Even more recently, I've done some work with, Starbucks. That's one thing that that I would say is a thread throughout my career as well, is being someone who comes in is not afraid to analyze and and, look at complex problems and work to solve them. I was just kinda thinking through a little bit before this call, working in conjunction with Adobe and Starbucks, situation there, very complex organization, needing to go through improving efficiencies, and working with them to help to define new processes, new tools, connected processes, this sort of thing, give them better visibility and speed up their time to market. Yeah, exactly. I spend a little time at Adobe myself, so I do I mean, everyone's so excited about their particular gift that they have to offer that they wanna recreate the marketing wheel, but but Yes. Yeah. It comes down to a lot of core things that if you've been around the block a few times, you can see it. And, you know, I think one thing I think about too is my skills at essentially like architecting. You know, building and architecting. So you got to kind of architect it first, and then you can go build it, so. Yeah. So anyway, so those are some of the fun things that I've been involved in. I can go through a cute list, but I don't want to. So Those are terrific highlights. So I guess this is where we get to the fun part about, you know, what's what's exciting you now? What, makes you keen to get to your keyboard every morning? Well, the AI thing, you know, is part of it and really just working I'm working right now in more of a portfolio fashion. So we didn't quite do shout outs, but we will do that, I'm sure. But I will Let's do it now. I did mean to now. Okay. Yes. Let us talk about cool people. I will. I'll talk first about a cool organization. Okay. And then I'm gonna talk about some of those cool people. So first off was I'm gonna just throw it out there for all my Clumio folks that I was working with last year. They really spoiled me because I I had, you know, I've experienced a lot of different cultures. About organizations of different sizes, But when I came in and worked with these guys at Clumio, they were all so open. And so curious and very welcoming and embracive ideas. And it was just an amazing culture, you know, so, you know, thinking about the CEO, the founder, the co founder, all the people that I worked with, everybody there, you know, so I would shout out to everybody. Yeah. But you asked about specific people. So there are a few people that are notable for me. Some of them I've stayed more in touch with than others. I'd say kinda going far back, you know, thinking about that agency time. There were two people there. One was a woman named Catherine Lewis, who was my immediate supervisor, and then Dave Karlik, who was the agency owner, and of course his wife, lovely wife at the time. And they were so Dave in particular, just to talk about him for a minute, he was right in touch with the startup community, very much worked very hard, like this guy worked twenty four hours a day to build out his business, you know, and he really mentored me while I was there around, you know, marketing and advertising, advertising principles and, know, differences between branding and demand, you know, this sort of thing. So I'm definitely very grateful for that. It's been a long time. The others there, of course, made a big impact on me as well. Somebody who I am still in touch with quite a bit is a woman named Kathy O'Leary. She was a former boss, and we went through traveling around the world and getting out that CRM system from Oracle. As of the bigger team, and, she's always had great support for me and for whatever whatever I was doing. She's been a great connector. And similarly, then another person is a person named Prakash Balabelle, who really took me under his wing later on in my time at Oracle. And under him, really flourished and built up a lot more of those technical skills, you know, helping to build out that the mid market, applications and so forth. And then more recently at Adobe, because I have done so much change management over the years, I would shout out Paul Johnson because he and I worked very closely together. Now technically I was working for him directly, but we were in professional services situation, so everybody's kind of like in this flat team, you know, for the most part. But what I really appreciated about Paul was the fact that we could have very rich discussions around organizations around mindsets, around process. The depth of his knowledge and the breadth of his knowledge, especially around change management, was seriously impressive to me. And beyond that, just, you know, a great guy, so good and fun to be around and so forth. So those are my shout outs. I love it. I love it. I bet they can I'm very grateful for everybody, but those are just a few. So as usual, you know, we can't name everybody. We really can't. We'll get played off the stage. Well, as we wrap up our time together today, I've got, two last things. We would obviously love to know what's exciting you now, what your plans are. Then we also like to end these podcasts with any fun facts, non work related facts you might be willing to share just because it's really surprising that when we bring out these things, lot of our coworkers will say, I did not know that, and it's delightful. So take it away. All right. Well, okay. So I mentioned earlier about how I'm working right now. Part of it's kind of in a fractional fashion as a CMO or a VP and advising startups and growth stage companies around how to build their business. I also take that into essentially leading an agency that I called Rockridge Digital. And you know, there was a couple things there. One of them was just the fact that I realized when I was working with other companies that I need to be backed out by additional people, that's one thing. The second thing was there have been people that I really like working with, and they want to work with me, and if I can help them and bring them in, and I know like we know how to work together. Yeah. So we get a synergy real quick. We get ramped up really quick. Those are all things that are super helpful for us. So that's that's kind of what I'm working on there. Last term I ran and built from scratch a digital advertising course for San Francisco State and delivered that. So I'm hoping to kind of continue working on that right now. I'm taking a little bit of a break from it, but continue working on that and build out kind of a next round for next year. Yeah. So fun fact. When I think about it and I count them all up, I've gone around the world three separate times. Cool. So three around the world, over seventy countries, not necessarily on those three tours. Yeah. And then I'm also learning Italian, which is I'm kind of adding it to my list of languages that I've learned. Because in college, I studied German. I studied French. I picked up and learned and studied Spanish, so now Italian is the latest one, and I like I like languages because it kind of keeps my brain elastic. It does. You And it also helps me when I'm traveling to be able to connect better with others who are at the local level and to to immerk myself more in the culture Yeah. Gave more of their their trust. And just have a richer experience overall. And a better time at the restaurants, right? Yeah. Actually, you know, last I was recently in Italy and, stumbled through my my rudimentary Italian for right now. And let me tell you, was able to experience in a very small town, able to experience hospitality like you would have not believed with amazing food in mind. Food and drink. Indeed. Well, I I'm very glad for that. I've I've only been to Tuscany once, and it I must go back. So memorable. There's But Yeah. Absolutely. I definitely recommend it. Definitely recommend travel. Indeed. Well, Joe, I could keep you here all day. I would love to hear many and more. And for anybody who, you know, wants to hear more from Joe, his contact information will be down down below in the show notes. But for myself, and on behalf of the listeners, I just wanna thank you for taking the time, sharing your story, helping people to envision what a crafted journey looks like. And anyhow, so we will we'll keep in touch. And for those of you watching and listening, thank you for taking the time, and we'll catch you next time. Bye.
