November 1, 2021 • 42 mins
In episode 103, host Eric Dickmann interviews Terry Jones. Terry is a travel and IT veteran, serial entrepreneur, speaker, and author of "On Innovation" and "Disruption Off." He is also known as the Digital Disruptor who founded five startups with two billion-dollar IPOs -Kayak and Travelocity.
He has served on 17 corporate boards and his reputation has established him as a thought leader on innovation and disruption. As a speaker, author, venture capitalist, and board member, Terry has been helping companies use the tools and techniques he has developed to keep succeeding in our fast-changing world. He has presented in over 25 countries to more than 300 companies, helping companies keep up with the changing trends.
In addition to writing and speaking, Terry currently serves as a Director for SonicWall and is Chairman of the Board for the Camping and Education Foundation.
For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/digital-disruption-business-models-s7ep3/
A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.
The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric Dickmann (00:02):
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
In this podcast, we haveconversations with marketing
professionals who share thestrategies, tactics, and mindset
you can use to improve theeffectiveness of your marketing
activities and grow yourbusiness.
Hey, Terry, welcome to TheVirtual CMO podcast.
I'm so glad you could join ustoday.
(00:24):
I'm excited about thisinterview.
I've been thinking about it forawhile because we're going to
get a chance to talk about awide variety of topics,
everything from startups andmarketing to digital disruption
and rethinking business modelsand, you know, kind of, as we
get started today, I just loveit.
If you could give the audience areal brief history of where you
come from and your real claim tofame.
Terry Jones (00:47):
Well, you know I was a history major in college
and I thought I was going toVietnam.
And luckily I got rejected fromthe draft.
I would've gone if I had to, andso I didn't know what I was
going to do.
I had no job and nobody's hiringhistory majors, and my college
roommate, his dad was a pilotfor TWA airlines.
(01:09):
He said, I got a free pass.
And if I go to grad school, I'mgoing to lose that pass.
So he said, I'm going around theworld for a year.
And so three of us spent a yeargoing around.
Which is a great postgraduateeducation learn a lot, came
back.
And I told my dad, I wanted toget in the travel business.
He wasn't thrilled.
He just paid for collegeeducation and I became a travel
(01:30):
agent.
And six months in, my managersaid, let's go do a startup.
That was my first startup.
We started a travel agencyfocused on Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union.
And in five years we built thatinto the 50th largest travel
agency in the United States.
Eric Dickmann (01:45):
Okay.
Oh.
Terry Jones (01:45):
And then I got interested in computing, and I
jumped to a company that sold usour back office computer that
was doing ticketing anditineraries, and reports, and
that kind of stuff.
And that company got sold toAmerican Airlines.
So suddenly I was in AmericanAirlines, it's been 18 years,
they're moving up in marketing,and IT, eventually became CIO.
(02:08):
So I was CIO at AmericanAirlines and I lost my hair
doing that, managing all thosecomputers.
We had a little online productcalled Easy Sabre.
Then we've been on AOL andCompuServe and Prodigy, and you
could make a booking, but youcouldn't get a ticket.
You had to go to a travel agentto get a ticket, cause travel
agents were our distribution.
(02:29):
And the travel agents finallywoke up after about six years
and said, you know, you'reselling bullets to the enemy.
You really should shut thatdown.
You don't want to do that.
And Bob Crandall, our CEO said,No, we're going to keep it, but
give it to Jones.
He's over in IT, he used to be atravel agent.
We'll hide it over there.
Eric Dickmann (02:46):
Okay.
Terry Jones (02:47):
Well, I got it and it was 1996.
The first thing I did was put iton the internet.
And it took off like a weed inthe spring.
It was just those tremendousdemand.
So I did that for, I eventuallysaid, I don't want to be CIO
anymore, I want to runTravelocity.
And they said, oh, it's only 12people, you know, it's kind of
stiff.
I said, no, I think it'll bebig.
So eventually I ran that fulltime.
(03:12):
We spun it out of Saber, we tookit public, and I ran it for six
years.
And then Saber eventuallydecided to buy it back because
they thought it was critical totheir future.
I left because I was pretty surethey would screw it up, which
they did.
We took it public for 1.2billion.
They eventually sold it toExpedia for 280 million.
Eric Dickmann (03:34):
Oh, wow.
Terry Jones (03:34):
So they screwed it up because they that's a story
in itself.
And then I went on and I was aspeaker and an author, and I was
working at a VC firm and we hadthe idea of vertical search and
travel.
Why isn't there just a searchfirm?
And the VC, a great guy, JoelCutler said I'll fund it.
(03:55):
And we went out and find a greatCEO and CTO, and that became
kayak.com.
And I was a chairman there foreight years.
And we took that company public,and then we sold it to Priceline
for 1,000,000,008.
So that was another fun run.
Eric Dickmann (04:11):
Oh, I bet.
Terry Jones (04:12):
I've done another startup in AI.
That one ran for about fouryears and failed, didn't work.
So you know, I've had fivestartups now and two unicorns.
And today, I'm an investor and aspeaker.
I speak on innovation anddigital disruption.
I've got two books, one isDisruption Off here.
(04:35):
It doesn't look too good with agreen screen, and it dissolves.
I help startups, I was just onthe phone with a travel startup
a little while ago last hourworking with them, they're just
about to launch.
So I've had a lot of differentcareers and it's been a ball,
and I'm still learning and doingnew things.
Eric Dickmann (04:58):
It sounds like it you've had a chance to be part
of some companies that arereally household names.
And what's interesting to me isyou know, working with startups
today, and I know in mybusiness, I work with a lot of
young companies too.
Not everybody realizes that theyhave something that is going to
end up being disruptive.
When you first kind of took yourproduct to the internet, took
(05:20):
Travelocity out there.
Did you really see thedisruptive potential of that
product, or was it later on thatreally it kind of came to be?
Terry Jones (05:31):
Well, we didn't think it would be as big as it
became.
Eric Dickmann (05:35):
Yeah.
Terry Jones (05:35):
We knew that people liked to book online and we have
proof of that because we'd hadEasy Saber around for years and
we had maybe 300,000, 400,000customers.
But you know, pretty soon withTravelocity had 40 million
people using it.
Um, We didn't have that idea andWall Street did not believe it
at all.
We played to empty rooms.
(05:56):
So when we went public, I meanthe stock held up, but they
didn't think it would be big.
Everybody saw, oh, it's going tobe E-toys, it's going to be
E-bay.
It's going to be shopping, it'sgoing to be something else, or
the delivery companies that werevery big.
I'm trying to remember the nameof the ones that went bust.
Travel is the largest part ofe-commerce.
(06:17):
It's harder than the next threecategories combined.
It's so big that they don't evenput it in the list anymore.
It's just separate from retail,which is retail.
So no, we didn't know it'd bethat big, but we knew it would
be.
And it just took off like a weedin the spring because what had
happened, remember people usedto book their own travel, pretty
(06:38):
much airline travel becauseprices were fixed, every airline
charged the same price.
Then with deregulation,traveling has doubled the number
of them because you needed to goto a place to get priced.
And that's why we put computersin travel agents, but those
agents were adding a lot ofvalue.
They're just listening andtyping, and giving you a price.
(06:59):
They weren't the people whoexplained what it's like to go
to the Riviera and those peopleare still around, but the people
who just typed they're all gonebecause customer said, well,
we'd rather do it ourselves,it's easier.
And that's why it took off.
It's a business where the priceis very volatile.
You only do it a couple times ayear.
(07:20):
It's pretty easy to get onlineand you know, you could see a
picture of a hotel.
Which a consumer could never do.
They didn't have the hotel book,they couldn't see the pictures,
they didn't know what it wasgoing to look like.
They relied on the agent toexplain it to them.
And sometimes the agent justmight've distorted it.
Eric Dickmann (07:40):
Well, I also find it interesting that you talk
about the fact that it got spunoff into a separate company and
then later on was reacquired.
And I see so often thatsometimes larger companies don't
seem to know what they have.
That sometimes innovation insidea larger company, just can't
come to fruition because they'retoo hooked on their established
(08:04):
business models.
so was that the fact that theybought it back
Terry Jones (08:06):
They're addicted to it.
Eric Dickmann (08:08):
Yeah.
Terry Jones (08:08):
You know my first book, which is still out and
it's available on Amazon inpaperback and in the audio book
in Kindle, it's called OnInnovation, and iit's a 72, 3
page chapters.
It's a very fast read, it's verysnackable.
And it talks about culture andteam, and funding, you know, the
(08:29):
typical topics.
But there's a whole section inthere about how Travelocity
managed to survive insideAmerica.
And it was having our ownculture, moving out of the
building, having a separatebudget, really, they allowed me
to treat it as a separatebusiness.
And a lot of people tried tokill it and we were losing money
(08:51):
and they were making money.
And they wanted the money, ourmoney, so they could make more
money, and the chairmanprotected us.
So it's very hard for largecompanies and I've been
lecturing about this for yearsand I go to companies to try to
teach them how to do it.
Cause it's hard.
It's like a new plant that youplan in the spring.
(09:14):
You gotta put it in thegreenhouse, you got to protect
them from the snow and once itgrows up, then you can decide
where you're going to plant it.
Am I going to spin it off?
Am I going to make a division?
At REI, the head of e-commercetold me, when e-commerce grew
up, we disbanded the internetdivision and poured it into the
(09:34):
organization and everybody wasresponsible for it.
And that's the way it should bein retail today.
But in the beginning they had tokeep it separate because people
wanted to kill it.
Walmart does a famous story thatWalmart for a while, put
walmart.com and all the plasticshopping bags and the retail
stores threw those bags awaybecause they didn't want the.com
(09:55):
to succeed.
Eric Dickmann (09:56):
Really?
Terry Jones (09:57):
Yeah, because it competed with them.
They thought, instead of saying,Hey, we're all in one company
here.
So it is very hard to do and oninnovation can help you learn
how to do it.
Eric Dickmann (10:08):
Well, and I also see and read stories where a
situation like what youdescribed happens, you build up
a company, you end up exitingthe company, something happens
to it.
And then founders oftentimes goout and recreate that company
all over again.
And did something similar withKAYAK, but it wasn't the same.
When you decided to go into thatnext business.
(10:30):
What did you see that hadchanged that made you sort of
pivot your thinking in a way tofind that open market space?
Well, that was kind of what wewere talking about before we
went on the air is you know, howdo you penetrate it in a
saturated market?
Yeah.
We had a dinner one night and itwas the former number two at
Orbit, the former number two toExpedia, and me to the CEO of
(10:53):
Travelocity and VC.
And we talked about the factthat you know, most e-commerce
companies only converted at 5%of arrivals into sales.
Now, if Walmart had a big backdoor that was 95%, the size of
the front door, and 95% of thepeople walked out without
nothing, their stock wouldcrash.
But in e-commerce is like, oh,that's okay, which is crazy.
(11:16):
But that's the way it is.
And we say, well, where the helldo those people go?
Most of them were using us as asearch engine, but we're more
comfortable buying directly fromthe airline or hotel.
So we said, well, why don't wejust create a site that does
that?
A site that searches everything,but when you click, you buy
direct.
And consumers loved it becausethey saw all the comparative
(11:40):
prices, but they got what theybelieve was safety and security
that you weren't dealing with anagent if their flight got
screwed.
You know they weren't that theairline wasn't saying, well,
you'll have to call Expedia.
They liked the idea.
And we also differentiated thatithe product can have a very
high virality because it wasscreamingly fast.
(12:04):
It was way faster than thecompetition.
And you know, microseconds makesales on the internet.
And we also had all the filters,you know?
You want first-class, you wantcoach?
What time do you want to go?
What time do you want to getback?
I'll see all that stuff could benobody else had.
So we were differentiated, wewere fast, and we looked at what
(12:26):
the customer wanted and that'sexactly what they wanted.
Well, it's interesting to meabout what you said there is a
lot of times people go into acertain segment of a business.
You were in travel, but theylook at it so holistically as
opposed to looking at.
what you have just describedwhich was a very specific niche,
you know?
We could provide a product thatdoes searching, but lets people
(12:46):
hook it through the platformsthat they're most comfortable
with.
When you advise startups andyounger companies today, do you
see that as a problem thatthey're looking at things too
holistically, they're not sortof looking at where they can
find that niche?
Terry Jones (13:00):
You don't have to change the world.
Look, Apple did not invent theMP3 player, the cellphone or the
watch.
They're the leading seller ofall those now.
They just made it better
Eric Dickmann (13:13):
Yes.
Terry Jones (13:14):
Way better to use.
So you know, you can win bydisrupting experience, Apple
disrupted Nokia, Spotifydisrupted Apple, Uber disrupted
Yellow Cab, you know?
How did they do that?
By changing either the qualityof the product or the way we use
the product.
So kind of to change the worldand most inventions are built on
(13:38):
the backs of other inventors.
So Travelocity was built on thesaber system, which was in
travel agents.
We just put a consumer coat ofpaint on it and made it
consumer-friendly.
KAYAK was built on those sameengines.
You know, but said, Hey, we'regoing to do it a different way.
And we're going to connectdirectly to the airlines to make
(14:00):
a booking.
Airbnb said, well, there arealways hotels out there, you'd
call them vacation rentals.
Let's make it easy for people tobook those, they already exist.
Uber did not change theexperience of sitting in a limo.
I went once and spoke to theAmerican limo company in the
early days of Hulu, and thefirst question was, how do we
(14:23):
compete with Uber?
I said get some bloody software.
Yeah, of course you have thedrivers, you have the brand, you
don't have any software.
got to call you, you send methis paper confirmation I, can't
find your guy at the airport,he's holding up this piece of
his daughter's homework with myname on it.
Come on! It's the experience allyou have to do.
Eric Dickmann (14:44):
And people want to know what they were going to
be charged, right?
You know, they didn't want that
Terry Jones (14:47):
Yeah.
they wanted to know the priceupfront and when you're going to
be here.
And where I can find you, andwhat your rating is, right.
Are you a good driver, baddriver, I mean look, I was
working with a startup earliertoday and they have a product.
I won't tell you what it is, butit can be inserted in someone
else's website in one line ofcode.
(15:09):
And it really changed theexperience.
And I'll tell you my laststartup changed the user
experience, but we made thehotel really change their
website, and nobody wanted tochange it even though they could
get more smell.
We got a list of things to do.
We said, Hey, it's one line ofcode, try it out.
They might have done it.
So you gotta make it drop deadeasy.
(15:31):
I mean think about howSalesforce was successful
because their product was socheap that I could sit in the
sales department and buy it, andput it on my expense account.
I didn't have to argue with IT.
I just paid$25 a month and Icould use Salesforce.
It was super cheap on theindividual license basis that
allowed them to sell from aboiler room, right?
(15:54):
And get people directly.
And then it became a behemothcause they snuck in without
having to go through thegatekeeper.
Sometimes, that's reallyimportant because if you're
going to sell through thegatekeeper, he's gonna not let
you in.
His purchasing job is to not letyou buy stock.
Eric Dickmann (16:14):
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to
the podcast.
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Services.
Now back to the podcast.
Well and you know, when we talkabout things like disruption,
you know we're talking aboutdisruptive technologies, new
ideas that create some reallyinnovative things in the
marketplace, but we also haveall these external disruptions,
right?
We're living through a 2020,which was COVID locks down,
(17:18):
changes in the economy, and thisyear it's been even more
disruption in different ways,chip shortages, whatnot.
So when
Terry Jones (17:25):
I just got off the phone with a board of the CEO of
a company I'm on the board of,and we were talking about chip
shorts.
you know, he made his numbersfor the quarter, but he said, I
don't know what I'm going to doin the fourth quarter.
And think about it, one of theissues is everything today wants
to be cloud connected.
Everybody looks at Tesla andsays, look at how they delight
(17:47):
their customer.
Tesla is not the best, mostreliable car out there, but
everybody loves it because likeI have one, I get new a new car
every month.
So you're seeing connectedtrackers, connected
thermometers, connectedeverything, which means
everything has to have a chip init that didn't have a chip in
it, and we're running out ofchips.
So, you know, it's beeninteresting to watch the
(18:11):
reaction to COVID because I, foryears lecture on disruption and
I get people to try to see thedisruption is coming and they
don't believe it.
Well now they all believe itbecause it was a burning
platform is a do or die moment.
There was a major retailer at a10 month program to get to a
(18:33):
curbside delivery.
They did it in two days.
Eric Dickmann (18:36):
Hmmm.
Terry Jones (18:37):
So you know, the boss won't forget that.
Eric Dickmann (18:40):
Yes.
Terry Jones (18:41):
You know people are making decisions, breaking the
glass, getting it done becausethey had to.
Well, that's an attitude youshould try to have all the time.
Eric Dickmann (18:50):
Do you think that's the key to really being
effective when disruptionshappen?
You know, because business iscyclical, right?
It has ups and downs, peaks andvalleys, and you have to sort of
understand whether this valleyis really just that and it's
gonna pick back up, or if it's atrough and you've got to make
some real changes, otherwise youare never going to come back up
again.
Terry Jones (19:10):
Well, look, innovation and disruption are
two sides of the same coin.
The only reason you call it adisruption is because you didn't
do it.
If you did it, it would havebeen an innovation, wouldn't
that be nice, but you did.
And you know, I talk about thatin Disruption Off, so you can't
wait for the train to run youover.
(19:31):
You have to be experimenting andthat's what's so hard for big
companies is to do what we didwith Travelocity, and lose a
bunch of money before we made aton of money, it's hard because
you've got quarterly earningsand you want to squeeze that
lance out of productivity, outof the factory, instead of
saying, I'm going to take$20million over here and I can blow
(19:52):
it.
And you have to kill projects,not people because you put a
bunch of people on a new projectand it failed, you don't demote
them.
It was probably a bad idea orwhat's the number one reason
startups fail?
Market fit.
The market didn't want it.
Well, that's not my fault.
We thought the market wanted itand we didn't.
(20:13):
So go take those people andpromote them, and then you'll
get more experimentation becauselook, VCs know now that's 7 out
of 10 startups fail, and only afew were huge hits.
But corporations don't thinkthat way, you know every product
has to be a success.
It won't be.
And when you're in the midst ofa disruption, you've got AI and
(20:36):
3D printing and drones, and allthe new technology that's
coming, this the fourthgeneration of industry.
You got to change andexperiment, or you're going to
die.
Eric Dickmann (20:49):
You're kind of preaching to the choir here.
We've talked about on this show,how the CMO is one of the
shortest lived executives withinmost corporations, because
they're
Terry Jones (20:58):
close to CIO
Eric Dickmann (21:00):
close to CIO, especially in this day with
ransomware threats and whatnot.
But it's often because they'renot given enough runway to
experiment, to try differentthings, to see what works.
Terry Jones (21:11):
Well, that's right.
Although CMOs probablyexperiment more than anybody
else in the corporation.
My last startup, we were usingnatural language search in
travel.
So instead of saying, having tosay, where are you going and
when?
I want to go to Aruba, June 6th,you could say, you know, I want
(21:31):
to go into the Caribbean thisfall and I want to have great
golf in a good spot.
And boy did that changeconversion, I mean it really
works, but we were selling toCIOs, and they had a list of
milestones.
So we finally dumped that andinstead we built conversational
commerce into ads.
So you could have an, uh, an adouble-click size ad frame next
(21:54):
to an article about Aruba, andit would say, Hey, want to talk
about Aruba?
And you can say, yeah, I want togo to river the fall.
We'll give the answer, you canbook it right there.
That started to take off,unfortunately, we're already out
of money in the company becauseCMOs do experiment.
They're always trying to figureout which half of their
advertising dollar works andwhat I can do better.
(22:16):
So I think they're more risktakers than others, maybe that's
why their term is short.
Eric Dickmann (22:21):
Yep, I think so.
Terry Jones (22:22):
But you do have to experiment and I think.
But you also have to reallyfocus on the value of the
product.
A lot of people, when we startedTravelocity, we were doing brand
advertising on radio, TV,billboard cause that's the way
the world was in 1996.
We could buy banner ads online,but there was no search.
(22:46):
And people would come to me andsay, oh, let's go to France and
have a great ad.
And we'll show people why theyshould go to France.
I said, I can't afford to getpeople to travel.
My aunt has to be about whyTravelocity is a better way to
book your travel.
And of course they didn't wantto do that because the crew
wanted to go to France, right?
Well, have wonderful hazypictures and all that.
(23:09):
And I came out of an ad family.
My dad was an Executive VP atLeo Burnett.
And you think of their ads, Imean he had the Maytag account,
the loneliest man in town is theMaytag repairman.
We're reliable.
We had an Allstate account.
You're in good hands withAllstate, you're safe here.
It's about what the product doesand you know, even in beer, they
(23:33):
focus on taste, right?
And sometimes you lose that, Iwant to be so creative within
the Clio that you don't have asolid ad.
I mean we talked withTravelocity about what it did,
and then you're the first outwith seat maps.
(23:54):
You can click and pick yourseat.
Eric Dickmann (23:56):
Something so simple, right?
Terry Jones (23:58):
You can see a picture of a hotel.
You could even see a live, I hadthe first web cam at a hotel
ever.
You can see it live.
Yeah.
that stuff is very important.
Eric Dickmann (24:09):
You can't underestimate the power of the
user experience.
Terry Jones (24:12):
Well, the experience are what it does for
me.
You know, why is it better?
You know, you think of thoseflex seal ads, a guy builds a
boat for God's sake, but it getsthe point across.
Eric Dickmann (24:24):
Absolutely.
Terry Jones (24:25):
And Travelocity, last year we did a lot of PR.
And startups, you know, a PRgrill marketing is a great way
to go.
I mean, we build a map forTravelocity that was deepest
snow fall with the lowestairfare.
Where can I go to ski?
Loved it, got all this press.
(24:45):
Not many people used it, but manthey get impressed.
You know, we did a lot tons ofBeatles.
Like we invented flight paging.
We're the first people to pageyou when your flight was late.
And it was pagers in those days.
Eric Dickmann (25:01):
Right.
Terry Jones (25:01):
Um, Or we did one, what is a fare war?
You know, what does it mean?
I showed people fighting overdresses at Macy's and said,
yeah, it's sort of the samething, but you don't hear it in
travel.
So we'll send you an email whenthere's a fare war going on.
And we released that info andcable news is so hungry to run
(25:24):
anything.
They would run it.
9-11, I realized that peoplewouldn't know how long the
security lines would be becausesecurity profile have changed
totally.
So I put guys in 20 airportswith stopwatches and they were
timing the lines and we had amoving graph on the homepage of
Travelocity.
(25:45):
Well, I got picked up by CNN andthey called me and said, would
you come on TV every hour andtell us about what's going on at
the airports for two days or so?
Oh, let me think about that.
Yeah, I'll do that.
Eric Dickmann (25:55):
That's incredible.
Terry Jones (25:58):
And you know, one of the things you think about,
and I've seen that Zebra isdoing this and the Zebra, the
insurance side is run by a guyfrom KAYAK.
We were the first site to havedata.
So we knew where everybody wasgoing.
Airlines knew it, but only ontheir routes, we knew it for the
whole country.
(26:19):
So we would release data all thetime.
Where's the lowest price thateverybody's going after today?
Where's the hottest destinationin the US?
All of that stuff.
We could turn that out and Ibuilt a TV studio in Travelocity
way before the easy way we'dbuilt ours during COVID.
This was like an ISDN.
Eric Dickmann (26:39):
Oh, yeah.
Terry Jones (26:41):
But I could go online in 60 seconds if somebody
called and say, what's the bestfare in the world today?
would be there on TV.
If you have unique data like theinsurance industry or somewhere
else where you're aconsolidator, use that in your
PR to get noticed.
Eric Dickmann (27:01):
So yeah.
Terry Jones (27:02):
lGo ahead.
Eric Dickmann (27:04):
No.
I was going to say, you know youmentioned AI before and that you
did a startup around theirnatural language, speech
recognition, things like that.
Big data, you know of all thesekinds of technologies that
you're talking about here, whatgets you most excited?
What do you really wish that youhad when you started Travelocity
or KAYAK that you think wouldhave even propelled those
(27:25):
products further?
Terry Jones (27:25):
Well, I think AI is the most powerful technology
coming, and it's like, BASF usedto have ads that say, we don't
make the carpet, we make itstronger.
We don't make repaint, we makeit brighter.
Well, AI is an additive to lotsof products.
So AI plus 3D printing isexceptionally powerful, right?
(27:46):
AI and drones makes them muchmore useful.
And AI in the consumer interfaceis extremely powerful.
I mean, voice is the new UI.
And you think of the questionswe ask Alexa.
Well, but you can't ask mostapps that question.
(28:06):
You can't speak to Travelocitythat way and ask a general
question, and get a good answer.
So I think that's reallyimportant.
We use natural language search,as I've said in my AI project,
but we would also, when youshowed up, we used AI in all
millions of pictures.
So we'd show you the picture ofthe golf course, not the front
(28:27):
of the hotel.
You want to go golfing.
And then reviews would be aboutthe spa without you having to
look through a thousand reviews.
It can make it so easy for theconsumer.
So I'm disappointed thatTravelocity is sort of dead last
in the adoption of AI in majorindustries, wish it was better.
But, it's a very, very powerful,new technology that is
(28:52):
disrupting business.
And what people forget is thesesystems, it's called machine
learning, they continuouslylearn.
So if your competitor has ML andyou don't, he's getting smarter
every day and you're justsitting right where you are, and
you'll never catch him.
Eric Dickmann (29:10):
It's amazing how many businesses you can talk to
that aren't really doinganything with the data that
they're collecting today.
Let alone putting it throughsome sort of an AI engine or
anything else that is going togive them meaningful insights.
There's so much that you mightknow about your customers or
your prospects.
Yeah, you've got to it.
Terry Jones (29:27):
Look at Financial coming out of China, they had a
big snafu with the government,but you know, they started as
sort of PayPal for Alibaba andthen they spun out and they
organized their company aroundtheir customers.
So then they started doingloans, they started doing all
kinds of financial instruments,they started doing credit cards,
(29:49):
they have like 18 businessesbecause they focused on the
customer and say, well, this isall we know about the customer.
What else can we sell them inthe financial area?
But so many people are organizedaround the product instead of
around the customer relationshipthat they built.
If you have a strong customerrelationship, you can sell them
lots more things.
(30:09):
You know, you look at John Deerewho has cloud connected
tractors.
Well they don't have to wait forthe annual meeting for the
dealer to tell them what theythink the farmer is doing, they
know every minute.
And now they can say, well,we've totally automated your
tracker.
So we're going to tell you whatthe corn future prices are and
we're going to help you buy theright fertilizer.
And we're going to build a wholeecosystem of products and the
(30:32):
tractor becomes a platform for aplatform business.
Eric Dickmann (30:37):
Yes.
Terry Jones (30:38):
So, it's all based on data.
So if you can convince yourcompany to really have a really
nice data ocean instead of thedata swamp, and you know, use AI
and machine learning to get atit and convince everybody to put
the data together instead ofkeeping it in their little
(30:58):
castle and marketing doesn'tshare it with sales and sales
doesn't share it with customerservice, and certainly not with
any other department.
That's a recipe for failuretoday.
Eric Dickmann (31:09):
Yeah, I agree a hundred percent.
And I know you like to get outand evangelize about this stuff.
What are you doing in the comingmonths over the rest of the
summer and into the fall whenyou can't necessarily get out
and speak like you want to?
Terry Jones (31:22):
Well, actually I'm going to New York for a speech.
I was sort of hoping they cancelbut it yeah.
But my wife is immune deficientso I have to be really careful,
but I've been speaking a lotabout vaccine passports.
Eric Dickmann (31:35):
Oh, okay.
Terry Jones (31:35):
The controversial topic in the US but around the
world, they're just beingadopted, you know?
So we're thinking they're crazyand the world is using them.
And so I'm going to speak to 500meeting planners about okay, if
you want to have aninternational meeting, what do
you got to So ISo I, I justthought I wanted to involved in
it, I think it's a smart idea.
(31:56):
I think you know, knock off andfake credentials are all over
the place, but I turned itaround and said you know, that's
going to get me in front of 500people who booked me.
Eric Dickmann (32:07):
Yes.
Terry Jones (32:08):
And I convinced the people people who hired me
because I said, look, I want tohave a 60-second commercial in
the air for what I normally talkabout, which is digital
disruption, we're touring themiddle of.
So it's a way for me to gomarket my product, even while
people aren't having meetings.
And I've gotten a gig, aninteresting.
(32:29):
narration gig where I'mnarrating a couple of thousand
video clips, predictions fromCIOs, they're two minute clips
with a two minute intro.
That's been really fun.
have got my narration before,
Eric Dickmann (32:41):
Yeah.
Terry Jones (32:43):
And I'm still doing virtual meetings as I build a
studio here in my house lastyear.
But it's high qualityproduction, so I'm at the little
guy in the corner.
And we talked about this offair, it's a hybrid world today.
And I had a client who's hiredme to do webinars.
Well, I'm not gonna know I cando this next webinar because
(33:04):
people are tired of him.
I said, I'll be blunt, they'retired of the way you produce
them.
They're terrible.
You have terrible PowerPointwith little people up on the
corner.
We're competing with TV.
You need a lower third, you needa crawl, you need to do
interviews, you need to havesurveys, you need to make it
interactive.
Come on!
Eric Dickmann (33:25):
You need to step up your game.
Terry Jones (33:27):
Look at TikTok, look at what people watch all
day long.
Up your game.
know you can't do it the way youlike.
It's not like being in ameeting.
TV is different.
Eric Dickmann (33:40):
A white PowerPoint with bullet points is
not going to cut the musteranymore.
Terry Jones (33:46):
No, it won't, it's boring.
The nice thing about zoom is youcan see when people tab away
from it to go do their email.
Eric Dickmann (33:56):
That's true.
Terry Jones (33:56):
Sort of an instant Nielsen.
If that happens when Larry comesout, well, Larry's out and you
know, I've worked with companiesto say, let's work with your CEO
if he's going to speak cause hecould be a great speaker in an
auditorium and he will suck onTV.
It's very different.
And they don't want to rehearse,but we've convinced them to.
(34:19):
So I'm off doing that andworking a lot with startups and
you know, maybe I've got anotherbook in me, we'll see.
But I probably have to updatedisruption office two years old.
So disruption is changing atsuch a speed.
Eric Dickmann (34:34):
Oh, my gosh.
Yes.
Terry Jones (34:35):
You have to update, update the examples, But you
think about it's not onlytechnology.
We have so many new businessmodels.
I mean, think about thesubscription model, it's taken
our software of course.
It's X as a software, as aservice.
But who would've thought we'dsubscribed to Razor's, right?
(34:58):
Billion dollar company, right?
So I think people are looking athow can I just change the world,
not through a new product, butby totally changing the business
model, whether it's a platformor a subscription.
There are a dozen new businessmodels that people are using to
(35:18):
change old industries.
Eric Dickmann (35:20):
I'm a fractional CMO.
So I'm a subscription-basedemployee, you know?
Terry Jones (35:24):
Well, that's right,
Eric Dickmann (35:25):
And who would have thought about that.
Terry Jones (35:26):
Yeah.
You're a gig economy as a CMO,right?
And you look at how thingschange.
I mean, I travel last year whenI left, we had 3000, as in
people, big customer serviceorganization.
And KAYAK, we went public with200.
Eric Dickmann (35:42):
Yeah.
Terry Jones (35:43):
My son started a video and he's been in the video
game business since he was 16.
And he left electronic arts, youknow where they spend hundreds
of millions on games and fourguys produced a highly
competitive game.
How do you do that with fourguys?
You outsource everything, right?
And you can do that today.
And you can start a company witha credit card and outsource
(36:05):
everything.
You've just got the idea, thepassion to get it going.
And you know, his companyfailed.
Now, did Ben fail?
No, he's now a Senior Executiveof Microsoft in their gaming
division.
He's done great.
And you know, I looked at himand said, well, you build a game
with four people.
I want to hire you.
So you know, failure, isn't theend.
(36:26):
And that's what I preach tocorporations all the time is
that, you've got to experiment,you've got to fail.
That's okay.
And don't kill the people, killthe product, move on, learn from
it, listen, prototype.
You know and keep iteratingbecause, you know I went through
a pitch deck this morning for acompany I'm an advisor to, and I
(36:48):
ripped it all apart.
And if you look at those decks,you realize, they have to
realize that investors invest inthe product, in the market, but
they also invest in the people.
They didn't have a people skill.
I said, look, the product youhave in your pitch deck is not
what you're going to build.
(37:10):
It's going to be different.
You remember that old saw thatno battle plan survives contact
with the enemy?
Well, no product plan survivescontact with a customer, that's
going to change.
So you have to convince theinvestor that it's about you,
when you guys can understand,listen, change, and today, you
(37:33):
can prototype anything.
You can use a 3D printer, youcan use a web prototype, there
are so many ways to test.
You don't have to build thefactory first.
Eric Dickmann (37:42):
That's right.
No, I think that's soinsightful.
And you know this whole topic ofdisruption I think is huge,
especially given everythingthat's going on out there in the
world.
And I know our time is limitedtoday, but I would love it.
If you could just share withpeople where they can keep track
of you, where they can find yourbooks, what's your home on the
internet so that people canfollow along as you hopefully
(38:06):
update that book for version twoor version three.
Terry Jones (38:09):
Well, bad marketing.
My website is tbjones.com,tbjones.com.
It's very hard to buy a JonesURL.
So that's the one I could get.
Like Terry Jones is taken by theguy from Monte Python.
And you can see lots of videosthere of my speeches and
hopefully if they inspire you,you'll hire me to do them in
(38:30):
person.
I highly customize my talks andlove to learn about industries.
My books are available onAmazon.
This one is Disruption Off, myother one is called, ON
innovation.
And they're quick, easy reads,just you know, 73, 74, 2 page
chapters.
The Disruption book, the firsthalf is about all the
(38:53):
technologies that's coming toeat your company, that's to
scare the hell out of you.
And the second part is what doyou do about it?
How do I keep up withdisruption?
And the same thing is true inthe innovation book.
So you can reach out to me onthe website if you want to
connect, I'm always interestedin learning about new ideas.
I do mentor our companies, I'mpretty selective, cause you
(39:16):
know, time is the only thing Ihave to sell right now.
But if people are interested inhaving me speak, I'm a virtual
speaker or in-person speaker,depending on where you live.
I don't think I want to go toFlorida this week.
Eric Dickmann (39:31):
No, no.
We got a storm coming.
Terry Jones (39:33):
Yeah, you got Fred.
Eric Dickmann (39:35):
Fred?
Yeah.
What a name.
Terry Jones (39:36):
They really should have called it Freddy.
Freddy would have beenterrifying.
But Fred sounds like a friendlyhurricane
Eric Dickmann (39:41):
It does sound like a friendly hurricane.
At least so far, it's just adepression.
So hopefully it'll stay thatway.
Hey Terry, this has beenfascinating.
You've got so many interestingstories, you know, what a great
career, what an exciting thingto be part of those successes.
And I'm sure that the wisdomthat you're able to help some of
these new startups with is justpriceless because there's a lot
(40:03):
to learn as you're starting acompany.
Terry Jones (40:05):
Well, there certainly is Eric.
And thanks for having me on andyou know, remember you don't
have to boil the ocean, youdon't have to change the world,
sometimes just one thing.
KAYAK was just search and wesold it for a billion eight.
Eric Dickmann (40:19):
That's a great piece of advice.
Terry, thank you so much.
Terry Jones (40:22):
All right.
Thank you.
Eric Dickmann (40:26):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of
The Virtual CMO podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
In this podcast, we haveconversations with marketing
professionals who share thestrategies, tactics, and mindset
you can use to improve theeffectiveness of your marketing
activities and grow yourbusiness.
Hey, Terry, welcome to TheVirtual CMO podcast.
I'm so glad you could join ustoday.
(00:24):
I'm excited about thisinterview.
I've been thinking about it forawhile because we're going to
get a chance to talk about awide variety of topics,
everything from startups andmarketing to digital disruption
and rethinking business modelsand, you know, kind of, as we
get started today, I just loveit.
If you could give the audience areal brief history of where you
come from and your real claim tofame.
Terry Jones (00:47):
Well, you know I was a history major in college
and I thought I was going toVietnam.
And luckily I got rejected fromthe draft.
I would've gone if I had to, andso I didn't know what I was
going to do.
I had no job and nobody's hiringhistory majors, and my college
roommate, his dad was a pilotfor TWA airlines.
(01:09):
He said, I got a free pass.
And if I go to grad school, I'mgoing to lose that pass.
So he said, I'm going around theworld for a year.
And so three of us spent a yeargoing around.
Which is a great postgraduateeducation learn a lot, came
back.
And I told my dad, I wanted toget in the travel business.
He wasn't thrilled.
He just paid for collegeeducation and I became a travel
(01:30):
agent.
And six months in, my managersaid, let's go do a startup.
That was my first startup.
We started a travel agencyfocused on Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union.
And in five years we built thatinto the 50th largest travel
agency in the United States.
Eric Dickmann (01:45):
Okay.
Oh.
Terry Jones (01:45):
And then I got interested in computing, and I
jumped to a company that sold usour back office computer that
was doing ticketing anditineraries, and reports, and
that kind of stuff.
And that company got sold toAmerican Airlines.
So suddenly I was in AmericanAirlines, it's been 18 years,
they're moving up in marketing,and IT, eventually became CIO.
(02:08):
So I was CIO at AmericanAirlines and I lost my hair
doing that, managing all thosecomputers.
We had a little online productcalled Easy Sabre.
Then we've been on AOL andCompuServe and Prodigy, and you
could make a booking, but youcouldn't get a ticket.
You had to go to a travel agentto get a ticket, cause travel
agents were our distribution.
(02:29):
And the travel agents finallywoke up after about six years
and said, you know, you'reselling bullets to the enemy.
You really should shut thatdown.
You don't want to do that.
And Bob Crandall, our CEO said,No, we're going to keep it, but
give it to Jones.
He's over in IT, he used to be atravel agent.
We'll hide it over there.
Eric Dickmann (02:46):
Okay.
Terry Jones (02:47):
Well, I got it and it was 1996.
The first thing I did was put iton the internet.
And it took off like a weed inthe spring.
It was just those tremendousdemand.
So I did that for, I eventuallysaid, I don't want to be CIO
anymore, I want to runTravelocity.
And they said, oh, it's only 12people, you know, it's kind of
stiff.
I said, no, I think it'll bebig.
So eventually I ran that fulltime.
(03:12):
We spun it out of Saber, we tookit public, and I ran it for six
years.
And then Saber eventuallydecided to buy it back because
they thought it was critical totheir future.
I left because I was pretty surethey would screw it up, which
they did.
We took it public for 1.2billion.
They eventually sold it toExpedia for 280 million.
Eric Dickmann (03:34):
Oh, wow.
Terry Jones (03:34):
So they screwed it up because they that's a story
in itself.
And then I went on and I was aspeaker and an author, and I was
working at a VC firm and we hadthe idea of vertical search and
travel.
Why isn't there just a searchfirm?
And the VC, a great guy, JoelCutler said I'll fund it.
(03:55):
And we went out and find a greatCEO and CTO, and that became
kayak.com.
And I was a chairman there foreight years.
And we took that company public,and then we sold it to Priceline
for 1,000,000,008.
So that was another fun run.
Eric Dickmann (04:11):
Oh, I bet.
Terry Jones (04:12):
I've done another startup in AI.
That one ran for about fouryears and failed, didn't work.
So you know, I've had fivestartups now and two unicorns.
And today, I'm an investor and aspeaker.
I speak on innovation anddigital disruption.
I've got two books, one isDisruption Off here.
(04:35):
It doesn't look too good with agreen screen, and it dissolves.
I help startups, I was just onthe phone with a travel startup
a little while ago last hourworking with them, they're just
about to launch.
So I've had a lot of differentcareers and it's been a ball,
and I'm still learning and doingnew things.
Eric Dickmann (04:58):
It sounds like it you've had a chance to be part
of some companies that arereally household names.
And what's interesting to me isyou know, working with startups
today, and I know in mybusiness, I work with a lot of
young companies too.
Not everybody realizes that theyhave something that is going to
end up being disruptive.
When you first kind of took yourproduct to the internet, took
(05:20):
Travelocity out there.
Did you really see thedisruptive potential of that
product, or was it later on thatreally it kind of came to be?
Terry Jones (05:31):
Well, we didn't think it would be as big as it
became.
Eric Dickmann (05:35):
Yeah.
Terry Jones (05:35):
We knew that people liked to book online and we have
proof of that because we'd hadEasy Saber around for years and
we had maybe 300,000, 400,000customers.
But you know, pretty soon withTravelocity had 40 million
people using it.
Um, We didn't have that idea andWall Street did not believe it
at all.
We played to empty rooms.
(05:56):
So when we went public, I meanthe stock held up, but they
didn't think it would be big.
Everybody saw, oh, it's going tobe E-toys, it's going to be
E-bay.
It's going to be shopping, it'sgoing to be something else, or
the delivery companies that werevery big.
I'm trying to remember the nameof the ones that went bust.
Travel is the largest part ofe-commerce.
(06:17):
It's harder than the next threecategories combined.
It's so big that they don't evenput it in the list anymore.
It's just separate from retail,which is retail.
So no, we didn't know it'd bethat big, but we knew it would
be.
And it just took off like a weedin the spring because what had
happened, remember people usedto book their own travel, pretty
(06:38):
much airline travel becauseprices were fixed, every airline
charged the same price.
Then with deregulation,traveling has doubled the number
of them because you needed to goto a place to get priced.
And that's why we put computersin travel agents, but those
agents were adding a lot ofvalue.
They're just listening andtyping, and giving you a price.
(06:59):
They weren't the people whoexplained what it's like to go
to the Riviera and those peopleare still around, but the people
who just typed they're all gonebecause customer said, well,
we'd rather do it ourselves,it's easier.
And that's why it took off.
It's a business where the priceis very volatile.
You only do it a couple times ayear.
(07:20):
It's pretty easy to get onlineand you know, you could see a
picture of a hotel.
Which a consumer could never do.
They didn't have the hotel book,they couldn't see the pictures,
they didn't know what it wasgoing to look like.
They relied on the agent toexplain it to them.
And sometimes the agent justmight've distorted it.
Eric Dickmann (07:40):
Well, I also find it interesting that you talk
about the fact that it got spunoff into a separate company and
then later on was reacquired.
And I see so often thatsometimes larger companies don't
seem to know what they have.
That sometimes innovation insidea larger company, just can't
come to fruition because they'retoo hooked on their established
(08:04):
business models.
so was that the fact that theybought it back
Terry Jones (08:06):
They're addicted to it.
Eric Dickmann (08:08):
Yeah.
Terry Jones (08:08):
You know my first book, which is still out and
it's available on Amazon inpaperback and in the audio book
in Kindle, it's called OnInnovation, and iit's a 72, 3
page chapters.
It's a very fast read, it's verysnackable.
And it talks about culture andteam, and funding, you know, the
(08:29):
typical topics.
But there's a whole section inthere about how Travelocity
managed to survive insideAmerica.
And it was having our ownculture, moving out of the
building, having a separatebudget, really, they allowed me
to treat it as a separatebusiness.
And a lot of people tried tokill it and we were losing money
(08:51):
and they were making money.
And they wanted the money, ourmoney, so they could make more
money, and the chairmanprotected us.
So it's very hard for largecompanies and I've been
lecturing about this for yearsand I go to companies to try to
teach them how to do it.
Cause it's hard.
It's like a new plant that youplan in the spring.
(09:14):
You gotta put it in thegreenhouse, you got to protect
them from the snow and once itgrows up, then you can decide
where you're going to plant it.
Am I going to spin it off?
Am I going to make a division?
At REI, the head of e-commercetold me, when e-commerce grew
up, we disbanded the internetdivision and poured it into the
(09:34):
organization and everybody wasresponsible for it.
And that's the way it should bein retail today.
But in the beginning they had tokeep it separate because people
wanted to kill it.
Walmart does a famous story thatWalmart for a while, put
walmart.com and all the plasticshopping bags and the retail
stores threw those bags awaybecause they didn't want the.com
(09:55):
to succeed.
Eric Dickmann (09:56):
Really?
Terry Jones (09:57):
Yeah, because it competed with them.
They thought, instead of saying,Hey, we're all in one company
here.
So it is very hard to do and oninnovation can help you learn
how to do it.
Eric Dickmann (10:08):
Well, and I also see and read stories where a
situation like what youdescribed happens, you build up
a company, you end up exitingthe company, something happens
to it.
And then founders oftentimes goout and recreate that company
all over again.
And did something similar withKAYAK, but it wasn't the same.
When you decided to go into thatnext business.
(10:30):
What did you see that hadchanged that made you sort of
pivot your thinking in a way tofind that open market space?
Well, that was kind of what wewere talking about before we
went on the air is you know, howdo you penetrate it in a
saturated market?
Yeah.
We had a dinner one night and itwas the former number two at
Orbit, the former number two toExpedia, and me to the CEO of
(10:53):
Travelocity and VC.
And we talked about the factthat you know, most e-commerce
companies only converted at 5%of arrivals into sales.
Now, if Walmart had a big backdoor that was 95%, the size of
the front door, and 95% of thepeople walked out without
nothing, their stock wouldcrash.
But in e-commerce is like, oh,that's okay, which is crazy.
(11:16):
But that's the way it is.
And we say, well, where the helldo those people go?
Most of them were using us as asearch engine, but we're more
comfortable buying directly fromthe airline or hotel.
So we said, well, why don't wejust create a site that does
that?
A site that searches everything,but when you click, you buy
direct.
And consumers loved it becausethey saw all the comparative
(11:40):
prices, but they got what theybelieve was safety and security
that you weren't dealing with anagent if their flight got
screwed.
You know they weren't that theairline wasn't saying, well,
you'll have to call Expedia.
They liked the idea.
And we also differentiated thatithe product can have a very
high virality because it wasscreamingly fast.
(12:04):
It was way faster than thecompetition.
And you know, microseconds makesales on the internet.
And we also had all the filters,you know?
You want first-class, you wantcoach?
What time do you want to go?
What time do you want to getback?
I'll see all that stuff could benobody else had.
So we were differentiated, wewere fast, and we looked at what
(12:26):
the customer wanted and that'sexactly what they wanted.
Well, it's interesting to meabout what you said there is a
lot of times people go into acertain segment of a business.
You were in travel, but theylook at it so holistically as
opposed to looking at.
what you have just describedwhich was a very specific niche,
you know?
We could provide a product thatdoes searching, but lets people
(12:46):
hook it through the platformsthat they're most comfortable
with.
When you advise startups andyounger companies today, do you
see that as a problem thatthey're looking at things too
holistically, they're not sortof looking at where they can
find that niche?
Terry Jones (13:00):
You don't have to change the world.
Look, Apple did not invent theMP3 player, the cellphone or the
watch.
They're the leading seller ofall those now.
They just made it better
Eric Dickmann (13:13):
Yes.
Terry Jones (13:14):
Way better to use.
So you know, you can win bydisrupting experience, Apple
disrupted Nokia, Spotifydisrupted Apple, Uber disrupted
Yellow Cab, you know?
How did they do that?
By changing either the qualityof the product or the way we use
the product.
So kind of to change the worldand most inventions are built on
(13:38):
the backs of other inventors.
So Travelocity was built on thesaber system, which was in
travel agents.
We just put a consumer coat ofpaint on it and made it
consumer-friendly.
KAYAK was built on those sameengines.
You know, but said, Hey, we'regoing to do it a different way.
And we're going to connectdirectly to the airlines to make
(14:00):
a booking.
Airbnb said, well, there arealways hotels out there, you'd
call them vacation rentals.
Let's make it easy for people tobook those, they already exist.
Uber did not change theexperience of sitting in a limo.
I went once and spoke to theAmerican limo company in the
early days of Hulu, and thefirst question was, how do we
(14:23):
compete with Uber?
I said get some bloody software.
Yeah, of course you have thedrivers, you have the brand, you
don't have any software.
got to call you, you send methis paper confirmation I, can't
find your guy at the airport,he's holding up this piece of
his daughter's homework with myname on it.
Come on! It's the experience allyou have to do.
Eric Dickmann (14:44):
And people want to know what they were going to
be charged, right?
You know, they didn't want that
Terry Jones (14:47):
Yeah.
they wanted to know the priceupfront and when you're going to
be here.
And where I can find you, andwhat your rating is, right.
Are you a good driver, baddriver, I mean look, I was
working with a startup earliertoday and they have a product.
I won't tell you what it is, butit can be inserted in someone
else's website in one line ofcode.
(15:09):
And it really changed theexperience.
And I'll tell you my laststartup changed the user
experience, but we made thehotel really change their
website, and nobody wanted tochange it even though they could
get more smell.
We got a list of things to do.
We said, Hey, it's one line ofcode, try it out.
They might have done it.
So you gotta make it drop deadeasy.
(15:31):
I mean think about howSalesforce was successful
because their product was socheap that I could sit in the
sales department and buy it, andput it on my expense account.
I didn't have to argue with IT.
I just paid$25 a month and Icould use Salesforce.
It was super cheap on theindividual license basis that
allowed them to sell from aboiler room, right?
(15:54):
And get people directly.
And then it became a behemothcause they snuck in without
having to go through thegatekeeper.
Sometimes, that's reallyimportant because if you're
going to sell through thegatekeeper, he's gonna not let
you in.
His purchasing job is to not letyou buy stock.
Eric Dickmann (16:14):
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to
the podcast.
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Services.
Now back to the podcast.
Well and you know, when we talkabout things like disruption,
you know we're talking aboutdisruptive technologies, new
ideas that create some reallyinnovative things in the
marketplace, but we also haveall these external disruptions,
right?
We're living through a 2020,which was COVID locks down,
(17:18):
changes in the economy, and thisyear it's been even more
disruption in different ways,chip shortages, whatnot.
So when
Terry Jones (17:25):
I just got off the phone with a board of the CEO of
a company I'm on the board of,and we were talking about chip
shorts.
you know, he made his numbersfor the quarter, but he said, I
don't know what I'm going to doin the fourth quarter.
And think about it, one of theissues is everything today wants
to be cloud connected.
Everybody looks at Tesla andsays, look at how they delight
(17:47):
their customer.
Tesla is not the best, mostreliable car out there, but
everybody loves it because likeI have one, I get new a new car
every month.
So you're seeing connectedtrackers, connected
thermometers, connectedeverything, which means
everything has to have a chip init that didn't have a chip in
it, and we're running out ofchips.
So, you know, it's beeninteresting to watch the
(18:11):
reaction to COVID because I, foryears lecture on disruption and
I get people to try to see thedisruption is coming and they
don't believe it.
Well now they all believe itbecause it was a burning
platform is a do or die moment.
There was a major retailer at a10 month program to get to a
(18:33):
curbside delivery.
They did it in two days.
Eric Dickmann (18:36):
Hmmm.
Terry Jones (18:37):
So you know, the boss won't forget that.
Eric Dickmann (18:40):
Yes.
Terry Jones (18:41):
You know people are making decisions, breaking the
glass, getting it done becausethey had to.
Well, that's an attitude youshould try to have all the time.
Eric Dickmann (18:50):
Do you think that's the key to really being
effective when disruptionshappen?
You know, because business iscyclical, right?
It has ups and downs, peaks andvalleys, and you have to sort of
understand whether this valleyis really just that and it's
gonna pick back up, or if it's atrough and you've got to make
some real changes, otherwise youare never going to come back up
again.
Terry Jones (19:10):
Well, look, innovation and disruption are
two sides of the same coin.
The only reason you call it adisruption is because you didn't
do it.
If you did it, it would havebeen an innovation, wouldn't
that be nice, but you did.
And you know, I talk about thatin Disruption Off, so you can't
wait for the train to run youover.
(19:31):
You have to be experimenting andthat's what's so hard for big
companies is to do what we didwith Travelocity, and lose a
bunch of money before we made aton of money, it's hard because
you've got quarterly earningsand you want to squeeze that
lance out of productivity, outof the factory, instead of
saying, I'm going to take$20million over here and I can blow
(19:52):
it.
And you have to kill projects,not people because you put a
bunch of people on a new projectand it failed, you don't demote
them.
It was probably a bad idea orwhat's the number one reason
startups fail?
Market fit.
The market didn't want it.
Well, that's not my fault.
We thought the market wanted itand we didn't.
(20:13):
So go take those people andpromote them, and then you'll
get more experimentation becauselook, VCs know now that's 7 out
of 10 startups fail, and only afew were huge hits.
But corporations don't thinkthat way, you know every product
has to be a success.
It won't be.
And when you're in the midst ofa disruption, you've got AI and
(20:36):
3D printing and drones, and allthe new technology that's
coming, this the fourthgeneration of industry.
You got to change andexperiment, or you're going to
die.
Eric Dickmann (20:49):
You're kind of preaching to the choir here.
We've talked about on this show,how the CMO is one of the
shortest lived executives withinmost corporations, because
they're
Terry Jones (20:58):
close to CIO
Eric Dickmann (21:00):
close to CIO, especially in this day with
ransomware threats and whatnot.
But it's often because they'renot given enough runway to
experiment, to try differentthings, to see what works.
Terry Jones (21:11):
Well, that's right.
Although CMOs probablyexperiment more than anybody
else in the corporation.
My last startup, we were usingnatural language search in
travel.
So instead of saying, having tosay, where are you going and
when?
I want to go to Aruba, June 6th,you could say, you know, I want
(21:31):
to go into the Caribbean thisfall and I want to have great
golf in a good spot.
And boy did that changeconversion, I mean it really
works, but we were selling toCIOs, and they had a list of
milestones.
So we finally dumped that andinstead we built conversational
commerce into ads.
So you could have an, uh, an adouble-click size ad frame next
(21:54):
to an article about Aruba, andit would say, Hey, want to talk
about Aruba?
And you can say, yeah, I want togo to river the fall.
We'll give the answer, you canbook it right there.
That started to take off,unfortunately, we're already out
of money in the company becauseCMOs do experiment.
They're always trying to figureout which half of their
advertising dollar works andwhat I can do better.
(22:16):
So I think they're more risktakers than others, maybe that's
why their term is short.
Eric Dickmann (22:21):
Yep, I think so.
Terry Jones (22:22):
But you do have to experiment and I think.
But you also have to reallyfocus on the value of the
product.
A lot of people, when we startedTravelocity, we were doing brand
advertising on radio, TV,billboard cause that's the way
the world was in 1996.
We could buy banner ads online,but there was no search.
(22:46):
And people would come to me andsay, oh, let's go to France and
have a great ad.
And we'll show people why theyshould go to France.
I said, I can't afford to getpeople to travel.
My aunt has to be about whyTravelocity is a better way to
book your travel.
And of course they didn't wantto do that because the crew
wanted to go to France, right?
Well, have wonderful hazypictures and all that.
(23:09):
And I came out of an ad family.
My dad was an Executive VP atLeo Burnett.
And you think of their ads, Imean he had the Maytag account,
the loneliest man in town is theMaytag repairman.
We're reliable.
We had an Allstate account.
You're in good hands withAllstate, you're safe here.
It's about what the product doesand you know, even in beer, they
(23:33):
focus on taste, right?
And sometimes you lose that, Iwant to be so creative within
the Clio that you don't have asolid ad.
I mean we talked withTravelocity about what it did,
and then you're the first outwith seat maps.
(23:54):
You can click and pick yourseat.
Eric Dickmann (23:56):
Something so simple, right?
Terry Jones (23:58):
You can see a picture of a hotel.
You could even see a live, I hadthe first web cam at a hotel
ever.
You can see it live.
Yeah.
that stuff is very important.
Eric Dickmann (24:09):
You can't underestimate the power of the
user experience.
Terry Jones (24:12):
Well, the experience are what it does for
me.
You know, why is it better?
You know, you think of thoseflex seal ads, a guy builds a
boat for God's sake, but it getsthe point across.
Eric Dickmann (24:24):
Absolutely.
Terry Jones (24:25):
And Travelocity, last year we did a lot of PR.
And startups, you know, a PRgrill marketing is a great way
to go.
I mean, we build a map forTravelocity that was deepest
snow fall with the lowestairfare.
Where can I go to ski?
Loved it, got all this press.
(24:45):
Not many people used it, but manthey get impressed.
You know, we did a lot tons ofBeatles.
Like we invented flight paging.
We're the first people to pageyou when your flight was late.
And it was pagers in those days.
Eric Dickmann (25:01):
Right.
Terry Jones (25:01):
Um, Or we did one, what is a fare war?
You know, what does it mean?
I showed people fighting overdresses at Macy's and said,
yeah, it's sort of the samething, but you don't hear it in
travel.
So we'll send you an email whenthere's a fare war going on.
And we released that info andcable news is so hungry to run
(25:24):
anything.
They would run it.
9-11, I realized that peoplewouldn't know how long the
security lines would be becausesecurity profile have changed
totally.
So I put guys in 20 airportswith stopwatches and they were
timing the lines and we had amoving graph on the homepage of
Travelocity.
(25:45):
Well, I got picked up by CNN andthey called me and said, would
you come on TV every hour andtell us about what's going on at
the airports for two days or so?
Oh, let me think about that.
Yeah, I'll do that.
Eric Dickmann (25:55):
That's incredible.
Terry Jones (25:58):
And you know, one of the things you think about,
and I've seen that Zebra isdoing this and the Zebra, the
insurance side is run by a guyfrom KAYAK.
We were the first site to havedata.
So we knew where everybody wasgoing.
Airlines knew it, but only ontheir routes, we knew it for the
whole country.
(26:19):
So we would release data all thetime.
Where's the lowest price thateverybody's going after today?
Where's the hottest destinationin the US?
All of that stuff.
We could turn that out and Ibuilt a TV studio in Travelocity
way before the easy way we'dbuilt ours during COVID.
This was like an ISDN.
Eric Dickmann (26:39):
Oh, yeah.
Terry Jones (26:41):
But I could go online in 60 seconds if somebody
called and say, what's the bestfare in the world today?
would be there on TV.
If you have unique data like theinsurance industry or somewhere
else where you're aconsolidator, use that in your
PR to get noticed.
Eric Dickmann (27:01):
So yeah.
Terry Jones (27:02):
lGo ahead.
Eric Dickmann (27:04):
No.
I was going to say, you know youmentioned AI before and that you
did a startup around theirnatural language, speech
recognition, things like that.
Big data, you know of all thesekinds of technologies that
you're talking about here, whatgets you most excited?
What do you really wish that youhad when you started Travelocity
or KAYAK that you think wouldhave even propelled those
(27:25):
products further?
Terry Jones (27:25):
Well, I think AI is the most powerful technology
coming, and it's like, BASF usedto have ads that say, we don't
make the carpet, we make itstronger.
We don't make repaint, we makeit brighter.
Well, AI is an additive to lotsof products.
So AI plus 3D printing isexceptionally powerful, right?
(27:46):
AI and drones makes them muchmore useful.
And AI in the consumer interfaceis extremely powerful.
I mean, voice is the new UI.
And you think of the questionswe ask Alexa.
Well, but you can't ask mostapps that question.
(28:06):
You can't speak to Travelocitythat way and ask a general
question, and get a good answer.
So I think that's reallyimportant.
We use natural language search,as I've said in my AI project,
but we would also, when youshowed up, we used AI in all
millions of pictures.
So we'd show you the picture ofthe golf course, not the front
(28:27):
of the hotel.
You want to go golfing.
And then reviews would be aboutthe spa without you having to
look through a thousand reviews.
It can make it so easy for theconsumer.
So I'm disappointed thatTravelocity is sort of dead last
in the adoption of AI in majorindustries, wish it was better.
But, it's a very, very powerful,new technology that is
(28:52):
disrupting business.
And what people forget is thesesystems, it's called machine
learning, they continuouslylearn.
So if your competitor has ML andyou don't, he's getting smarter
every day and you're justsitting right where you are, and
you'll never catch him.
Eric Dickmann (29:10):
It's amazing how many businesses you can talk to
that aren't really doinganything with the data that
they're collecting today.
Let alone putting it throughsome sort of an AI engine or
anything else that is going togive them meaningful insights.
There's so much that you mightknow about your customers or
your prospects.
Yeah, you've got to it.
Terry Jones (29:27):
Look at Financial coming out of China, they had a
big snafu with the government,but you know, they started as
sort of PayPal for Alibaba andthen they spun out and they
organized their company aroundtheir customers.
So then they started doingloans, they started doing all
kinds of financial instruments,they started doing credit cards,
(29:49):
they have like 18 businessesbecause they focused on the
customer and say, well, this isall we know about the customer.
What else can we sell them inthe financial area?
But so many people are organizedaround the product instead of
around the customer relationshipthat they built.
If you have a strong customerrelationship, you can sell them
lots more things.
(30:09):
You know, you look at John Deerewho has cloud connected
tractors.
Well they don't have to wait forthe annual meeting for the
dealer to tell them what theythink the farmer is doing, they
know every minute.
And now they can say, well,we've totally automated your
tracker.
So we're going to tell you whatthe corn future prices are and
we're going to help you buy theright fertilizer.
And we're going to build a wholeecosystem of products and the
(30:32):
tractor becomes a platform for aplatform business.
Eric Dickmann (30:37):
Yes.
Terry Jones (30:38):
So, it's all based on data.
So if you can convince yourcompany to really have a really
nice data ocean instead of thedata swamp, and you know, use AI
and machine learning to get atit and convince everybody to put
the data together instead ofkeeping it in their little
(30:58):
castle and marketing doesn'tshare it with sales and sales
doesn't share it with customerservice, and certainly not with
any other department.
That's a recipe for failuretoday.
Eric Dickmann (31:09):
Yeah, I agree a hundred percent.
And I know you like to get outand evangelize about this stuff.
What are you doing in the comingmonths over the rest of the
summer and into the fall whenyou can't necessarily get out
and speak like you want to?
Terry Jones (31:22):
Well, actually I'm going to New York for a speech.
I was sort of hoping they cancelbut it yeah.
But my wife is immune deficientso I have to be really careful,
but I've been speaking a lotabout vaccine passports.
Eric Dickmann (31:35):
Oh, okay.
Terry Jones (31:35):
The controversial topic in the US but around the
world, they're just beingadopted, you know?
So we're thinking they're crazyand the world is using them.
And so I'm going to speak to 500meeting planners about okay, if
you want to have aninternational meeting, what do
you got to So ISo I, I justthought I wanted to involved in
it, I think it's a smart idea.
(31:56):
I think you know, knock off andfake credentials are all over
the place, but I turned itaround and said you know, that's
going to get me in front of 500people who booked me.
Eric Dickmann (32:07):
Yes.
Terry Jones (32:08):
And I convinced the people people who hired me
because I said, look, I want tohave a 60-second commercial in
the air for what I normally talkabout, which is digital
disruption, we're touring themiddle of.
So it's a way for me to gomarket my product, even while
people aren't having meetings.
And I've gotten a gig, aninteresting.
(32:29):
narration gig where I'mnarrating a couple of thousand
video clips, predictions fromCIOs, they're two minute clips
with a two minute intro.
That's been really fun.
have got my narration before,
Eric Dickmann (32:41):
Yeah.
Terry Jones (32:43):
And I'm still doing virtual meetings as I build a
studio here in my house lastyear.
But it's high qualityproduction, so I'm at the little
guy in the corner.
And we talked about this offair, it's a hybrid world today.
And I had a client who's hiredme to do webinars.
Well, I'm not gonna know I cando this next webinar because
(33:04):
people are tired of him.
I said, I'll be blunt, they'retired of the way you produce
them.
They're terrible.
You have terrible PowerPointwith little people up on the
corner.
We're competing with TV.
You need a lower third, you needa crawl, you need to do
interviews, you need to havesurveys, you need to make it
interactive.
Come on!
Eric Dickmann (33:25):
You need to step up your game.
Terry Jones (33:27):
Look at TikTok, look at what people watch all
day long.
Up your game.
know you can't do it the way youlike.
It's not like being in ameeting.
TV is different.
Eric Dickmann (33:40):
A white PowerPoint with bullet points is
not going to cut the musteranymore.
Terry Jones (33:46):
No, it won't, it's boring.
The nice thing about zoom is youcan see when people tab away
from it to go do their email.
Eric Dickmann (33:56):
That's true.
Terry Jones (33:56):
Sort of an instant Nielsen.
If that happens when Larry comesout, well, Larry's out and you
know, I've worked with companiesto say, let's work with your CEO
if he's going to speak cause hecould be a great speaker in an
auditorium and he will suck onTV.
It's very different.
And they don't want to rehearse,but we've convinced them to.
(34:19):
So I'm off doing that andworking a lot with startups and
you know, maybe I've got anotherbook in me, we'll see.
But I probably have to updatedisruption office two years old.
So disruption is changing atsuch a speed.
Eric Dickmann (34:34):
Oh, my gosh.
Yes.
Terry Jones (34:35):
You have to update, update the examples, But you
think about it's not onlytechnology.
We have so many new businessmodels.
I mean, think about thesubscription model, it's taken
our software of course.
It's X as a software, as aservice.
But who would've thought we'dsubscribed to Razor's, right?
(34:58):
Billion dollar company, right?
So I think people are looking athow can I just change the world,
not through a new product, butby totally changing the business
model, whether it's a platformor a subscription.
There are a dozen new businessmodels that people are using to
(35:18):
change old industries.
Eric Dickmann (35:20):
I'm a fractional CMO.
So I'm a subscription-basedemployee, you know?
Terry Jones (35:24):
Well, that's right,
Eric Dickmann (35:25):
And who would have thought about that.
Terry Jones (35:26):
Yeah.
You're a gig economy as a CMO,right?
And you look at how thingschange.
I mean, I travel last year whenI left, we had 3000, as in
people, big customer serviceorganization.
And KAYAK, we went public with200.
Eric Dickmann (35:42):
Yeah.
Terry Jones (35:43):
My son started a video and he's been in the video
game business since he was 16.
And he left electronic arts, youknow where they spend hundreds
of millions on games and fourguys produced a highly
competitive game.
How do you do that with fourguys?
You outsource everything, right?
And you can do that today.
And you can start a company witha credit card and outsource
(36:05):
everything.
You've just got the idea, thepassion to get it going.
And you know, his companyfailed.
Now, did Ben fail?
No, he's now a Senior Executiveof Microsoft in their gaming
division.
He's done great.
And you know, I looked at himand said, well, you build a game
with four people.
I want to hire you.
So you know, failure, isn't theend.
(36:26):
And that's what I preach tocorporations all the time is
that, you've got to experiment,you've got to fail.
That's okay.
And don't kill the people, killthe product, move on, learn from
it, listen, prototype.
You know and keep iteratingbecause, you know I went through
a pitch deck this morning for acompany I'm an advisor to, and I
(36:48):
ripped it all apart.
And if you look at those decks,you realize, they have to
realize that investors invest inthe product, in the market, but
they also invest in the people.
They didn't have a people skill.
I said, look, the product youhave in your pitch deck is not
what you're going to build.
(37:10):
It's going to be different.
You remember that old saw thatno battle plan survives contact
with the enemy?
Well, no product plan survivescontact with a customer, that's
going to change.
So you have to convince theinvestor that it's about you,
when you guys can understand,listen, change, and today, you
(37:33):
can prototype anything.
You can use a 3D printer, youcan use a web prototype, there
are so many ways to test.
You don't have to build thefactory first.
Eric Dickmann (37:42):
That's right.
No, I think that's soinsightful.
And you know this whole topic ofdisruption I think is huge,
especially given everythingthat's going on out there in the
world.
And I know our time is limitedtoday, but I would love it.
If you could just share withpeople where they can keep track
of you, where they can find yourbooks, what's your home on the
internet so that people canfollow along as you hopefully
(38:06):
update that book for version twoor version three.
Terry Jones (38:09):
Well, bad marketing.
My website is tbjones.com,tbjones.com.
It's very hard to buy a JonesURL.
So that's the one I could get.
Like Terry Jones is taken by theguy from Monte Python.
And you can see lots of videosthere of my speeches and
hopefully if they inspire you,you'll hire me to do them in
(38:30):
person.
I highly customize my talks andlove to learn about industries.
My books are available onAmazon.
This one is Disruption Off, myother one is called, ON
innovation.
And they're quick, easy reads,just you know, 73, 74, 2 page
chapters.
The Disruption book, the firsthalf is about all the
(38:53):
technologies that's coming toeat your company, that's to
scare the hell out of you.
And the second part is what doyou do about it?
How do I keep up withdisruption?
And the same thing is true inthe innovation book.
So you can reach out to me onthe website if you want to
connect, I'm always interestedin learning about new ideas.
I do mentor our companies, I'mpretty selective, cause you
(39:16):
know, time is the only thing Ihave to sell right now.
But if people are interested inhaving me speak, I'm a virtual
speaker or in-person speaker,depending on where you live.
I don't think I want to go toFlorida this week.
Eric Dickmann (39:31):
No, no.
We got a storm coming.
Terry Jones (39:33):
Yeah, you got Fred.
Eric Dickmann (39:35):
Fred?
Yeah.
What a name.
Terry Jones (39:36):
They really should have called it Freddy.
Freddy would have beenterrifying.
But Fred sounds like a friendlyhurricane
Eric Dickmann (39:41):
It does sound like a friendly hurricane.
At least so far, it's just adepression.
So hopefully it'll stay thatway.
Hey Terry, this has beenfascinating.
You've got so many interestingstories, you know, what a great
career, what an exciting thingto be part of those successes.
And I'm sure that the wisdomthat you're able to help some of
these new startups with is justpriceless because there's a lot
(40:03):
to learn as you're starting acompany.
Terry Jones (40:05):
Well, there certainly is Eric.
And thanks for having me on andyou know, remember you don't
have to boil the ocean, youdon't have to change the world,
sometimes just one thing.
KAYAK was just search and wesold it for a billion eight.
Eric Dickmann (40:19):
That's a great piece of advice.
Terry, thank you so much.
Terry Jones (40:22):
All right.
Thank you.
Eric Dickmann (40:26):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of
The Virtual CMO podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
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