Episode 126 / HSBC / Paul Szumilewicz / Head of Agile, Global Marketing
Podcast: Embracing Diversity to Become Better People and Better Marketers
As the Global Head of Agile within Global Marketing at HSBC, Paul Szumilewicz considers himself a true “Jack of all trades, master of none” and enjoys this. In his 20-year marketing career, he has stayed away from specialising, embracing breadth and range instead. His Shiny New Object is diversity, from understanding what life is like for people different from him to including as diverse a team as possible around the decision-making table.
Paul has worked in senior roles in marketing across the world, having been based in 7 different countries during his career with Lloyds Banking Group and HSBC. This has offered him incredibly diverse opportunities and fuelled his conviction that breadth and range are great skills to go after in marketing. When I asked him what his worst marketing advice was, in fact, Paul said that specialising is the one suggestion he considers to not work at all.
For him, being able to immerse himself in completely new environments upon undertaking every new role has given him an edge and a continuous ability to learn new things. “Just because someone is more senior doesn’t mean they know more” – is something he’s learnt in the process, developing an ability to identify the right people to ask things when embarking on a new project.
Always in search of self-improvement, Paul’s Shiny New Object is diversity. He describes his experience as “still uncomfortable” and continually learning, as he tries to open up his own experience with a more diverse group of people and the make-up of his teams and decision-making groups. Looking specifically in the banking sector, Paul acknowledges that his first step was one of self-assessment, which led him to realise that he was mentoring a group of almost identical types of people: white, straight men in their late 20s who liked sports. Essentially, a mirror of himself 10 years prior!
From this step, Paul has been looking into mentoring more female colleagues, expanding his horizons by getting involved with the organisation Outstanding and meeting members of the LGBTQ+ community, and reaching out to colleagues from different racial backgrounds to understand their own experience at HSBC.
It’s all part of an ongoing effort and there is no silver bullet to enhance diversity and inclusion. However, ensuring a diverse group of people is around the table when making decisions is a good first step. Becoming an active listener is another. “You need to spend more time with people who don’t look like you” to get over the unconscious bias.
To find out more about Paul’s top marketing tips, his favourite ways to create space to think in his daily routine, and his experience with diversity, listen to the podcast here.
Subscribe to the ‘Shiny New Object’ Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and Soundcloud.
Transcription
The following automatically generated transcription gives you a good idea of what was said, but please remember it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative and this is a podcast about the future of marketing. Every week or so I have the pleasure and the privilege of interviewing our industry's leaders. And this week is no different. I'm on a call with Paul Szumilewicz, who is Global Head of Agile, Global Marketing at HSBC. Paul, for anyone listening to this podcast, who doesn't know you and what you do. Can you give us an overview of your career and what you're up to today?
Paul Szumilewicz 1:40
Yeah, of course, Tom, and my pleasure and privilege to be on on your show. So thank you for the invite. So I have been in banking for about 20 years. But as as slightly dour as that may sound my 20 years has been actually quite a quite a unique, I suppose. And fortunate 20 years , I spent half almost half of my career at Lloyds TSB or Lloyds Banking Group, as many will know it now. And then the last 10-11 years has been at HSBC. I suppose the interesting piece, Tom, hopefully, is the fact that over that period, I've worked in seven different countries across four or five different continents. So I've moved around the world and have always done roles in different parts of banking. So certainly have always continued to consider myself a jack of all trades, master of none. And throughout that period, I've clearly touched or worked directly in some of our marketing departments, which which has been an interesting period as well.
Tom Ollerton 2:52
So across all those country moves, and all those interesting positions, what new belief or behaviour has changed your career for the better.
Paul Szumilewicz 3:04
Great question. I suppose the first thing that comes to mind is over the last six or seven years, I have been on a personal journey. And I suppose it's a personal development, leadership development, self development type journey, that I would crudely put in the box of mindfulness. I'm not actually the biggest fan of the term mindfulness because it's, it's, it's clearly arguably overused, currently, and there's so many different facets to it. But for me, it was very much around five or six years ago, in my professional environment, realising that I had days when I probably had 15, or 16 meetings back to back, I was late for most of them, underprepared for many of them, and had lived. And my character definitely, you know, lends itself towards that kind of intense, doing lots of staff juggling lots of balls, and I realised it was self inflicted, I realised that wasn't making me particularly as effective as I could be, and certainly on a bad day, that made me look, feel and act out of control. And so I've done loads of work over the last five, six years very happy to kind of share some of the details but actually, you know, how I would maybe as a headline badge it is how do I how do I slow down to go faster, and create more space professionally, but what's been really interesting is it's been a kind of self development journey just as much personally, around how do I just press pause at times and create some space to think, reflect. And to be blunt be a better better leader, not one that's just rushing around from one meeting to the next.
Tom Ollerton 5:12
I definitely want to hear the detail on that I'm yet to correct myself. So yeah, please, please tell me how you do.
Paul Szumilewicz 5:18
Well, well. So first disclaimer, Tom, I definitely don't profess to have cracked it. So apologies to those listening, ready to ready to note down the secret. I don't think there is a secret. But look, I mean, I'm in a much better place than I was five, six years ago. How did I give it look? A few practical things that I love to share the practical because I you know, I listen to podcasts, I read lots of things. And I I quickly try and jump to so you know, what, what's the hell right? How did you do it? I'm definitely quite practical. So one of the big things for me, first of all, was saying no. So being better at saying no to things. I read, Tom, I read a fantastic book. And for the for those listening who may be particularly interested in this called Essentialism, which talks a lot about, you know, how you find your monk state. And, you know, a big part is actually what do you say no to, I was very good at work of, you know, saying yes to lots of different things. And I, I think what that led me to, as I became more senior as well, Tom is creating some boundaries. An example of that would be, you know, looking at my diary, when I had those 1516 meetings a week and actually saying, and agreeing, you know, fortunate to have a secretary and an EA at the time agreeing to do for example, four, a maximum of four personal development coffees per week. So I'm, you know, I'm one of these individuals who I don't profess to be a same because I have lots of personal development conversations with, you know, some of my junior colleagues by enjoy them. That's why I do it, I love helping people, I do enjoy it. So it's just as much for me as it hopefully adds value to someone else. But you know, some weeks I did too many of those. So I created some rules around how many of those would I do per week, and I created some rules around saying no to certain meetings, and just becoming stronger, stronger that I think that that in itself, Tom, created some buffers, which actually meant that I could, you know, go for a walk, or go and get a sandwich and actually reflect on a few things.
And the other one I would throw in, when I look at the last five to six years, and I I've been fortunate to, to work and I still work with a fantastic executive coach, who is brilliant in this field. And, you know, I have regular time with her where we go walking in the woods. And, you know, yes, I'm lucky to have her but if I did it, I'd probably find a friend, or do it with my other half do it with my wife and, and we do that actually go walking in the woods, and just have some time in nature. But the one I wanted to share Tom practical that I think is a great one for people to reflect on. And I certainly use with all of my teams is what are your personal rocks. So for me, my personal rocks in the week, probably twofold. One is exercise. And the second one is my two boys. And you know, I suppose as part of that, Caroline, my wife, so I, I in my work diary. And again, look, I appreciate I don't preach, I don't always get it right. And I know different jobs allow people to do different things. So I'm fortunate to do this way I can say, two or three times a week, I will drop my kids off to school. And you know, now the intention, I'm sure most people say yeah, that's my intention to the way I kind of make that work more often than not, is by looking at my diary for five, six weeks in advance and putting it in the diary blocking it out. And when meeting comes in, and lets a super urgent, I say, I'm really sorry, I have a clash. I can't do that eight o'clock or 8.30 meeting. And you know, I'm very open while say I'm dropping the kids off. But sometimes you don't need to say that you can just say I have a clash. I have a clash with something else that's in my diary. And similar with exercise, look exercises, he says I'm an early bird. So I get up and you know, we'll go for a run at six, 6.30, and be at my desk by eight o'clock, obviously easier when you're working from home. The big thing for me was exercising, you know, different people have different things. It could be work, it could be meditation, it could be church, right? If you if I get it done early in the morning, that day are much more likely to be an eight nine out of 10 [...] than I am on the days where I've skipped my run or skipped my exercise. So I've kind of learned what's important to me and how to better organise, prioritise and manage my diary personally and professionally to fit those things in. Does that make sense?
Tom Ollerton 9:43
Absolutely. So that's good advice. But let's talk about bad advice. What are those tips or recommendations that you hear in the industry that you think are BS?
Paul Szumilewicz 9:58
Great one. So Do you know that this one is slightly personal and there will be some people and it'd be interesting to get your view? Tom, you know, you've spoken to some amazing people over your 100 plus episodes that I saw online last week, actually, I was very intrigued looking at the people you've spoken to. I'm, I'm very much in the camp that is anti specialise. Let me explain that. Throughout my career, and over the last 20 years, on numerous occasions, people have said to me, "You need to think about what you specialise in, that is the way to progress. That is the way to get bigger jobs, earn more money, if money is your thing, whatever it may be, climb the ladder." I have to say, and I'm bound to, I suppose, but you know, you can only you can only talk to what you know what you've experienced. But my experience over the last 20 years has absolutely been about range. So I'm a big, big believer of range of, you know, I have loved every role I've pretty much gone into has been a new role. Where Yes, I've been able to leverage previous experience. But I spent that first three to six months, absolutely out of my comfort zone, and have become comfortable to be able to be vulnerable, where, you know, early on in most to be able to say, I don't know about that I left to go and ask someone. I've never done that before. What do you think? What ideas do you have? And you know that there is this? It's, I suppose a broader leadership, discussion time around, you know, you have the leaders who have the answers for everything, have an opinion on everything. And then you have certainly something I believe in more that, you know, just because someone's more senior gets paid more, doesn't usually mean that they're more intelligent and know more. Right. I, I'm a big fan of the most impressive leaders I've worked for the ones who surround themselves with people who know more than them, ask lots of questions of brilliant active listening.
And actually, I think that lends itself to having range in your career not specialising in one thing. Now look, I completely appreciate to people listening, there will be amazing specialists out there who are brilliant at what they do, they found the one thing they love, and they become hugely successful, really happy, potentially earn lots of money. Brilliant, right? I get it. I'm just a big, big fan of keeping yourself outside your comfort zone. And that feeling you get and that feeling I've had in every every bloody job. On every job I've been in, I swear the last 20 years, I've gone into a job where because I've had that kind of generalist career, it's been something completely new, right? I am just about to move. Let me give you an example. I'm just about to move into a new role, which will be based out of Paris. I did some French earlier my career. But over the last three months, I'm doing French lessons again. And I feel like you know, I feel like I'm back at school by love that feeling of that learning something new, improving yourself, and never stopping to do that. And you know, I just have a very big belief that if you if you continue to throw yourself into new things, you keep your edge, you have broader thinking and you know, I do believe gives you different aspects to call on in solving problems and whatever role you're in where you've done different things throughout your career. So I think the bad advice, it's a bit harsh, but the bad advice for me, certainly for me personally, was you need to specialise. I don't think you do. So.
Tom Ollerton 13:41
Counter to that what has been the Golden Nugget? What's been a marketing tip that you heard, either at the start of your career or the end? What's that top marketing tip that you share with your team most often?
Yeah, great, great question. And it's broader than marketing, but I definitely learnt it and brought it to life and experienced a lot in marketing is, is the end the tip I got actually was from and I got to again, not not too long ago, funnily enough. From the Chief Marketing Officer at HSBC, a fantastic lady called Leanne Cutts. One of my favourite bosses I've ever had, just superb, was around creative ways of staying close to the customer. And I did I just loved that and absolutely. What I love about that tip, Tom is it's relevant for any type of role you do it, arguably Beyond Marketing, but let's just take in marketing, whatever type of role in marketing you're in, what are you doing to creatively stay close to your customer? And I I remember actually taken over a digital marketing team in a previous role, where we have very quickly recruited a lot of digital experts, digital marketing experts into HSBC and they landed and very quickly got into doing what they did best, right? You know, creating digital campaigns optimization, testing marketing messages, digital messages. And when I came in, I talked to my executive team and my my leadership team. And I said, you know, when was the last time any of you were in a branch, no one put their hand up. So they had not been to actually see a customer hadn't met a customer. Actually, that was the question I asked. Also, Tom, have you met a, you know, someone who isn't a friend or family member who's a HSBC customer Put your hand up, and no one had put their hand up. So within the first couple of weeks, I arranged to take that whole digital marketing team into branches for two days, we just went into branches, talk to customers on the front line, sat in on interviews, and just interacted made cups of tea, right for the branch workers, and just sat in a customer environment, they came back flying with ideas, right, you could just imagine now I know, it sounds utopian, but it really works. It's as simple as that. It was prioritising the time to go out and meet customers.
Paul Szumilewicz 16:08
The other one, if I may just share. And again, I don't preach because I don't get it done every every week. But we do a great thing in HSBC called customer in the room, which anyone can sign up to, you sign up to it. And every week, you will get details of three different customers with, you know, a loose script to pick up the phone to them, and just say, Hey, my name is Paul Szumilewicz. I'm the Global Head of Agile deployment for marketing. And just giving you a call, just want to see how your experience of HSBC is. And and, and, you know, it's probably one of the hardest things I do in the week. So, you know, for all the important meetings, and I'm doing air quotes, right, important meetings that we all have, and claim to have all those meetings during the week, the weeks when I find the time, and I should do every week, but I certainly don't, when I do find the time to call those free customers. It's probably the time where my stomach feels really because you just don't know where it's gonna go. Right? And they're gonna complain, or they're gonna, you know, they're gonna ask me questions about product, and I knew nothing about that product. But guess what, the more you do it, you have wonderful conversations, and a conversation with someone for 20 minutes that went into, you know, have you seen our latest marketing campaigns will do your thing, I got some interesting feedback. So, so powerful, you come off that phone and you feel alive, you kind of feel like, gosh, this is why we do I just remembered, all the stuff that we do is for those customers, right? It's cheesy, but it's true.
Tom Ollerton 17:37
Today's episode is brought to you by media for all, which was set up to help encourage more black, Asian and other ethnic talented to media, and to provide a support and mentoring network to ensure talent flourishes in the media industry that we all love. If you're looking for a mentor, or would like to mentor young ethnic talent, check them out at media for all.org.uk. And it is all 100% free.
So we are at the halfway stage now. And what we're gonna do is move on to your shiny new object, which is diversity. So why is diversity your shiny new object?
Paul Szumilewicz 18:22
So first reason time is I wanted to put myself out of comfort zone. That's one of the reasons I I chose it, because over the last two to three years, in particular, diversity and inclusion, and let me come back to that, because I've got a lovely little story that I would love to share around the kind of the, I don't know, the badging, I suppose of diversity, and diversity and inclusion. It's a, you know, to use that word again, it's a journey that I've been on and continue to be on, it still makes me feel uncomfortable, because I'm not always sure. What is the right thing to say. And clearly, it's such a hot topic, which actually made me reflect on whether it's, it's the right thing to talk about, but I didn't want to hide just because it's on LinkedIn everywhere. It's in the news for all the right reasons. I don't want to do it to jump on the bandwagon. I want to do it to be vulnerable, and to share as a white straight guy to share some of the things I've been trying to do over the last two, three years to to challenge myself in this space. Because again, going back to that comment I made for me, a lot of it has been around what practical things can I do and how do I make sure I'm not another white male senior leader in banking or any other industry who talks about the importance of we need more senior female bankers. We need more diversity across BAME and LGBT plus at senior levels within banking, it's really easy to say that I just said it right? Really easy to say it. What the hell are people like me actually doing? What can they do to actually bring that to life? Right. And again, again, please, this is a sensitive topic, it's huge. I do not profess to have, you know, done world changing things, I would love to share and talk a bit about some of the things I have done that really put me out of comfort zone. And I think it may be learned,
Tom Ollerton 20:28
Okay, so definitely tell me, tell me the most uncomfortable thing that you've done.
Paul Szumilewicz 20:35
So one of the, and I'll tell you, when, when I heard and I'd love to share, when I had a kind of moment of self reflection, which was probably three, four years ago, I, I've read a couple of articles around how we need to do more around increasing diversity within banking, especially at senior levels. And I just thought I'd do a bit of self reflection. And I looked at the profile of the individual [...]. So I mentioned before on the call, you know, when I was having those 16 hour, days, or certainly 16 hours of meetings in a day. I was I'm one of these people who loves to have a cup of coffee, where someone says, Oh, can I pick your brain, I want to have a career job love to do that. So I was mentoring anywhere between 15 to 20 people, and probably that number is still similar right now, I realised that the majority of that 15 to 20 were white guys, white straight guys, I might add in their late 20s, early 30s. So probably 10 years younger than me who loves sport, you're basically a mirror image of kind of what I was 10 years ago. And, you know, what can I say to that hadn't done it consciously. Absolutely, you know, unconscious bias, right? I think it's the right phrase of the kind of people I spend time with people like me, and you know, it's easy, it's comfortable, etc, it's easy to connect with those. So I, I realised that one thing I can do is change that quickly. So within a couple of months, I completely flipped around, I didn't necessarily reject anyone I had, but what I did, is proactively within three months, got myself to 50/50, male/ female, in terms who I was mentoring. And then I set myself the next challenge, which is actually how to go broader than that. So the real big one, Tom, that put me outside my comfort zone, where, you know, I probably I probably took more than I added in terms of value was I reached out to a company called Outstanding, who do some amazing work in the area of LGBT plus recruitment in particular, but they do broader things. One of the things they do is they do mentoring, so they do a mentoring programme. So what I did is I took on the role of mentor for to junior guys in different companies who are openly gay, in in their corporate environments, and we're having difficulties and struggling. And I can't tell you enough, how much I learned by actually spending time with openly gay, a couple of openly gay guys in a corporate environment, who talked to me about the challenges that they faced, and I, you know, did my very best to try and help them work through those and think about how they could deal with those. And, you know, in turn, that still for me, is probably the number one when it comes to you know, not to jump ahead. But when it comes to this topic that I get passionate about, that I'm learning about, and I'm trying to push the boundaries for myself around is you need to spend more time with people who don't look like you, who don't sound like you who don't act like you. And if you don't have the same experiences as you, I, for me, it's as it is. I say it's as simple as that it's clearly much more deep and complicated. But the first step people can take is just doing that look at who you're spending time with. And I bet you'll be surprised because I was three-four years ago.
Tom Ollerton 24:06
And so how would you suggest that people do that, because we all end up in our media bubbles. And especially with lockdown as well, there's, you just tend to meet exactly the same people that you work with. Unless you start a new project with a new company, then you you tend to just carry on speaking to the same people. So that's an interesting bit of advice to say, network and spend more time with people that don't look like you. But how do you practically do that? What's the fast track way of opening up your network?
Paul Szumilewicz 24:37
Yeah, good. Great question. The first word that comes to mind is, you know, I keep going back to Tom but be courageous. You there is no, there's no easy cheat, right? There isn't a cheat. You can do it quickly, but there's no cheat. Why mean by that? Be courageous and be brave. I'll give you an example of how I did and this wasn't easy to do so when when the Black Lives Matter. I suppose movement became, you know, became really, really big I want to say 12 months ago apologies if that slightly incorrect by bits there abouts where there was a lot of it on on the news on LinkedIn, etc, I reached out to a couple of colleagues who I didn't mentor didn't necessarily have a close relationship with that had a relationship, a couple of black colleagues, and I literally said to them, and one of them was through LinkedIn. Right? So I looked at my LinkedIn profile. And I reached out and I said, Look, I hope this isn't inappropriate. I really want to understand a bit better what it's like, for you to work at HSBC, as a black person, and how you're finding everything that's going on at the moment. Please, please take this into spirit it's intended. I want to learn I want to listen, if you're uncomfortable, or then fancy doing that completely understand, guess what, the two or three people I reached out to came back to miss and would love to. And I learned lots, I spoke to a colleague, I'm sure he won't mind me sharing this. I spoke to a colleague at HSBC, he told me about he doesn't live in the UK anymore. Actually, he's abroad. But when he lived in the UK, he's a senior black guy at HSBC, when he lived in the UK, in London, he would get stopped when he was asked for his ID and he would get his wallet out. And he would have a HSBC premier card in his wallet. The police would ask very often, whose card is that? I can't be your card, because it's a HSBC premier card. And you know, these these pockets of stories, Tom, that the reason I say you can't cheat is you have to be courageous and brave, in my opinion, of reaching out someone's and be open, if it is just about developing yourself and saying, I want to listen to what it's like to go on maternity leave and come back. Right? And the challenges of that, ask someone who's, who's done it offered to take them for coffee or lunch, or have a zoom call? And just say, Could you just tell me what, what was it? Like? What was hard? What was easy? What would have helped to make it better? Again, I know it sounds Look, I don't do this every day, I've did it two or three times in the space of 12 months. But I still, when I talk about it, I get the feeling right I had when I was doing it saying this is powerful stuff I'm learning. Right? I'm asking some basic questions, and just shutting up, which by the way, I'm not always great at. But I've learned to become a better active listener, actually listen to what the individuals are saying.
Tom Ollerton 27:26
And I'd like to get your sense of how this applies directly to marketing. Because a lot of what you're talking about is, is being a better person, but a more understanding of those people around you in society, so that you'll have greater empathy and greater understanding and in the future, make better decisions. But this is a marketing podcast. So I need to kind of bring it back. So what is what is the benefit of doing this purely at a marketing level? Even though I know its intention is far greater?
Paul Szumilewicz 28:00
Yeah, absolutely. It's, and it's an important question. Because I think, very often when we talk about this in the professional environment, I think people get the moral upside, right, and the ethical upside of doing this stuff, it's the right thing to do. I think what we're getting much better at is demonstrating the companies who do this well, and the marketing departments to do this, well have the disproportionately highest success rates. So the example is specific and how I've seen it worked on, certainly when I was in, when I was in marketing and the role and up until very recently as the Global Head of Agile deployment for those listeners. And, Tom, I don't know how much exposure you've had to agile, you know, one of one of the big things that are the core philosophies and ceremonies of Agile is actually much earlier in the process, you get more people around the table to shape campaigns. And the power of that has been that we've been much more active around saying, are we well represented around the table? In terms of diversity? Right? And you know, look, let's not forget some a big part of that has to be new rule diversity. I love that phrase neurodiversity, actually, people with different experiences, and different backgrounds sitting around the table helping to shape campaigns, right. Let me just bring that to life a bit more if we have the time to. So in a non agile way, right, you may have a couple of campaign managers who would come up with an idea and a brief, we would send that to an agency right from HSBC. I'm going to be a bit tongue in cheek and dramatic agency would send something back, which is not what we asked for. We then go back again, then the agency would come back, we'd play with it. Then we would get someone from compliance and legal involved. They would tell us all the things that we aren't allowed to do it would come back to us then back to the agency, all of that could probably take 60-70 days. In agile, what we did is overnight, we said all of those people are going to be in the room on day one, we will look around the table and say, are we well represented? tid? Are we well represented? Are we representative of our consumers and our customer base? And actually work together at the beginning with some of the core ideas of what would what wouldn't work? So that actually, you know, I suppose, Tom, the simple answer is you get something much more impactful and effective when you've got people around the table with different lenses, different backgrounds, different ideas, the different everything, right, having an opportunity to shape something.
Tom Ollerton 30:49
So unfortunately, we're going to have to leave it there for you are going to be talking at the future conference. For anyone who's interested in seeing more from Paul, the website is FUTR.today. Paul, can you just give us a quick overview of what you're going to be talking about at that event?
Paul Szumilewicz 31:10
Yeah, absolutely. Tom I, the focus of that session that I'm running is around digital transformation. There's a particular focus around agile and agile in, in marketing. And then the piece I get really passionate about, if you ever want to invite me back to it is around the power of digital spend the last four, five years in digital transformation, as part of my marketing role, as well is the power of digital and humans together. Right? Not, you know, this, this big focus on digital is taking our jobs taken over the world. I've lots of examples, and I've seen them practice, the most powerful is not humans on their own, or big smart computers, or algorithms on their own is the two together is where that is where the magic happens. So I'll be talking about that.
Tom Ollerton 32:01
A man of my own heart. So, Paul, if someone wants to get in touch with you, on LinkedIn or somewhere else, what makes a good outreach message to you?
Paul Szumilewicz 32:12
Good question. Something personal to me, right? I I'm always, you know, I have to say, I probably get 10 to 15 emails, most days in my HSBC account, which are generic, but try and I don't know, try and probably creatively grabbed my attention. I have to say, unfortunately, those those don't particularly work for me, I think someone who has, has seen something about me and know something about me and has done a bit of research and correlates that to their reach out and their connection definitely works better for me. You know, I think the other thing is warm leads are always much more powerful. Whenever I do the same for any reason. I try and look on LinkedIn and say Do I know anyone who knows someone in x industry? And I kind of tend to go that way. So if you can reach me via someone I know that's, I don't know if that's a great tip or not. But I think that just is much more likely to be successful. But yes, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Twitter. Very happy for people to connect with me.
Tom Ollerton 33:22
Paul, thank you so much for your time.
Paul Szumilewicz 33:24
Thank you, Tom.
Tom Ollerton 33:30
Hi, just before you go, I'd really appreciate it. If you could take the time to write a review of the shiny new object podcast on Apple podcasts or iTunes, whatever it's called these days, or whichever podcast provider you use, wherever any podcasts. So it would go a long way for us if you could just share the Word and give us a bit of support on those channels, such as be fantastic. If you haven't got time. That's also cool. And yeah, if you could tell your colleagues about the podcast and also, if possible, don't forget to subscribe. And I'd love to hear your feedback. If you'd like to speak on the podcast or be a guest or you think I'm asking the wrong questions, anything I'd be super interested to hear what you think so please email me at Tom at automated creative dotnet that to me at I'm not gonna bother spelling it. Anyway, you'll work it out. Thanks so much.