Catalyst

If predicting the future were as easy as looking into a crystal ball, we'd all be billionaires. So as we round out Season 3 of the Catalyst Podcast, we do the next best thing: invite Carilu Dietrich [https://www.linkedin.com/in/carilu-dietrich-01241b/] to the podcast. Carilu is a strategic advisor to high growth tech companies, with experience across the board as a marketing executive at a Fortune 100, a pre-IPO unicorn and a Series C startup. Before her most recent role as CMO of Classy, a startup providing online fundraising software to nonprofits, Carilu was the Head of Corporate Marketing at Atlassian, where she helped reposition the company for its successful IPO. In this episode, LeadMD CEO Justin Gray chats with Carilu about the questions on all our minds: will things return to normal? How are organizations gaining exposure to buyers? What are the top takeaways from the last year? Carilu also addresses how marketers can make themselves indispensable and shares why she's optimistic about 2021 and beyond.

Jeff Miller spent the last 10 years of his career at the intersection of technology and transportation, once as a founding CEO, once as an executive at Uber and more recently as an investor and advisor to venture and private equity backed companies. But like everyone else, he found himself at a crossroads in the spring of 2020 when COVID-19 began to spread across the United States and the world. In this episode, LeadMD CEO Justin Gray welcomes Jeff to the podcast to share the catalyst moment that drove him to found Helping Hands Community [https://helpinghands.community/], a non-profit organization created to slow the spread of COVID-19 through tech-enabled, community volunteerism. Jeff shares how the organization went from idea to launch in 10 days, why the organization is completely volunteer-run, and leadership practices that have helped him along the way.

Michael Balyasny is the founder and chief visionary behind Attendify, a software that bridges the gap between digital marketing and event marketing. As a product and design-driven entrepreneur, Michael is recognized as an expert in event technology, an industry that's grown to well over $30 billion dollars. In this episode, Michael joined LeadMD CEO Justin Gray to discuss how the B2B industry was impacted by COVID_19. They break down the rise of hybrid events, opportunities for innovation and why event success will always hinge on engagement. They also explore ways attendees can make the most of events, whether they're attending in person or remotely.

A noted industry expert in all disciplines of branding, Allen Adamson [https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenadamson/] has worked with consumer and corporate businesses in industries spanning technology, healthcare, financial services, and packaged goods, to name a few. He's the co-founder of Metaforce [https://www.metaforce.com/] - a marketing and product consultancy - and is the author of Shift Ahead, a book on how organizations stay relevant. In this episode, Justin quizzes Allen on how the best organizations recognize when to change directions and how they can pull it off. Allen shares common struggles organizations face when attempting to pivot and how they can get on the same page as their customers. Allen also identifies which companies made smart moves navigating COVID-19 and breaks down his expectations for "the new normal".

In the spring of 2020, when the world shifted to remote working, organizations from every vertical turned to video as a means to connect and share messages in lieu of in-person meetings. And for the B2B sector, video became a lifeline to prospective buyers and customers. So it should come as no surprise that Vidyard, a leading video platform for marketing and sales video hosting, saw a 400% increase in the number of weekly signups for its free product with the first two weeks of quarantine. In this episode, host Justin Gray chats with Tyler Lessard, VP of Marketing at Vidyard, about the surge in personalized videos, how marketing and sales teams are leveraging it, and how video is shaping the future of B2B sales. They also discuss how Vidyard managed the sudden, enormous spike in business, the ways the team adjusted its focus and why video is at the center of a cultural shift in communication.