In this episode, Emil is joined by a young and aspiring content marketing leader. Marina Krivonossova has experience with B2B content marketing within several different verticals, ranging from SaaS, to travel, and everything in between. Recently, she decided to start her own content marketing agency, Retold, to focus on making a genuine impact through her work.

Emil asks Marina to describe the challenges rising leaders are facing as they grow in their roles. The two discuss the skills that are essential for succeeding as a marketing leader.

Marina also talks about her strong belief in a culture of continuous learning as a way for her and her team to grow.

Emil is hosting Shirin Oreizy for the special 20th installment of The Cerebrations Podcast. Shirin is the founder and CEO of Next Step, a Behavioral Design agency in San Francisco.

Shirin explains how Behavioral Science relates to Marketing. She demonstrates how Behavioral Science can help digital marketers optimize their campaigns by adding Prevention-style messaging when Promotion-style messaging may not resonate as well with their target ICPs.

Shirin also provides examples of the application of Behavioral Science approaches such as regret lottery, cognitive fluency, social proof, and endowment effect in improving tradeshow ROI and boosting customer retention.

In Episode 19, Emil meets with Sandy Yu, an experienced growth executive and startup advisor.

The two talk about the shifting focus toward existing customers as companies seek sustainable growth. Sandy defines Customer Success and explains how it relates to the "revenue bowtie" concept, which has been gaining traction in the past few years. She explains how delighting customers can lead to greater Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), which is a very important metric of corporate performance, especially in the SaaS world.

In addition, Emil and Sandy discuss why customers typically leave, and provide suggestions about how companies can truly understand what a customer values. Sandy introduces an interesting idea about "show me you know me" as a guiding point for everyone who wants to delight customers.

In Episode 18, Emil hosts Dr. Zee Munir, an experienced Blue Ocean strategist, to talk about the renowned strategic framework that emerged from the eponymous book by Prof. Chan Kim and Prof. Renée Mauborgne at INSEAD.

Zee explains how companies and executives should view and apply Blue Ocean Strategy in their everyday business dealings. Emil and Zee discuss the best times to rely on Blue Ocean Strategy as well as common pitfalls that even experienced executives fall into when approaching this framework.

In the end, Zee provides several real-life examples of how BOS can be applied and offers final words of advice for aspiring Blue Ocean strategists.

In Episode 17, Emil hosts serial entrepreneur, Andrea Beach. The host and guest discuss a topic that should be useful to all executives and business people in general -- i.e., how to leave a lasting impression.

Andrea describes the importance of impressions in personal as well as business life. She argues that while first impressions are important, the last impressions are the ones that matter the most.

The main idea is that to create a memorable experience for your business partner, which will impact the potential success of your business undertaking, you should strive to improve between your first and last impression. In other words, what really matters is showing a positive change between the first time someone sees you and the time you need to close the deal.

Emil also asks Andrea to provide a few personal examples where her first impression of a potential business partner changed over time.

In Episode 16, Emil hosts an old friend from college, Bryan Georges, who is now the co-founder of iiNDYVERSE, a Web3 outfit focused on providing augmented customer engagement experiences for brands.

Bryan describes how Web3 has evolved from pure speculation to more defined and value-adding use cases, including the ability for brands to identify and engage with their most loyal customers. He and Emil agree that Web3 is undergoing a refreshing phase of maturing and may hopefully become more useful to marketing executives in the near future.

Emil also brings up several examples of Web3 and NFT activations from Art Basel 2023 in Miami Beach, and asks Bryan to help unpack those experiences to the podcast's audience.

The two also discuss the psychology behind gamification, and how that helps with leveling up customer engagement.

In Episode 15, Emil hosts one of his favorite teachers from his MBA program at INSEAD, Prof. Horacio Falcão. Emil and Horacio discuss Value Negotiation, a strategic and flexible approach to negotiation designed to maximize rewards at minimum risk in an international and complex world.

Prof. Falcão goes over the common myths and pitfalls of negotiation. He explains the differences between Win-Lose and Win-Win, and elaborates on how Win-Win ties into Value Negotiation.

He also advises on how we can be nice but not naive in negotiations -- meaning how we can apply Value Negotiation without getting taken advantage by negotiators pursuing a Win-Lose outcome.

At the end of the episode, Emil and Horacio discuss the skills that executives should hone to become successful negotiators.

In Episode 14, Emil hosts Jenny Santi, a Filipino artist, book author, and psychotherapist based in New York City. Emil and Jenny got to know each other during their MBA studies at INSEAD. Jenny has had a very diverse professional career, ranging from banking to philanthropy, and from painting to book writing, and relationship counseling.

Emil has experienced first-hand the difficult area of forming business partnerships, especially in situations where those prospect partners could easily turn into competitors. Knowing this might be an issue facing many other sales and marketing executives, Emil decided to invite an expert's opinion on how to build trust in business partners' relationships.

Jenny contributes to this episode with very useful advice on what makes a business partnership healthy, what common issues we should be aware of, and how to assess potential partners for fit.

In Episode 13, Emil hosts fellow marketer, Moni Oloyede, who has recently been focusing a lot on the phenomenon of HIPPO situations in corporate settings. HIPPO stands for Highest Paid Person's Opinion and describes a situation where a CEO, a founder, or another person who has an extrovert personality and is approaching from a position of power or authority, tends to suck the air out of the conversation.

Many of us have experienced such situations and know that oftentimes those lead to lower productivity and subpar outcomes. Emil and Moni define several different personas who are most likely to act like HIPPOs and discuss mitigation strategies.

Moni also provides advice about self-diagnosing and monitoring to ensure you, yourself, do not become a HIPPO.

In Episode 12, Emil hosts Kristian Bouw, a Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) entrepreneur whose agency, NotionTheory, has worked on innovative projects applying interactive 3D media for municipal governments, non-profit organizations, and corporates.

The goal of the discussion is to separate the hype from the substance since so much has been said and written about metaverse in the past couple of years. To an extent, this subject has almost become stigmatized due to the ill-placed buzz driven by several well-publicized business failures in that area.

Emil and Kristian aim to inform the podcast's audience about the true business value in using VR/AR/Mixed Reality and leveraging the metaverse to accomplish various sales & marketing goals.

In Episode 11, Emil is hosting a guest from Singapore and a fellow MBA alumnus. Balazs Fogoly was an internet entrepreneur in his early years, while still living in his native Hungary. He then worked in other fast-paced environments where he honed his ability to make business decisions with limited access to information.

Balazs shares his experiences from teaching a course on decision making at INSEAD's Singapore campus. The conversation also focuses on Balazs's signature poker night events, dubbed "Professor B's School for Gifted Decision Makers", where he mixes strategy with fun, in order to provide a safe and educational environment for folks to hone their decision-making skills.

In Episode 10, Emil is hosting a world-renowned expert in making effective presentation. Tim Pollard and his company, Oratium, have been advising C-level executives and Board members at some of the largest organizations in the world. He focuses his training mostly on investor relations, public relations, and sales communication.

Emil and Tim discuss the three distractions -- or "sirens" as Tim calls them -- of making a presentation. The focus on the pitfalls that often lure even very experienced executives into disastrous communications.

Tim also provides an opinion on why effective communication is even more important in the current highly polarized environment, especially when so much of what we say is done in virtual settings where physical cues are often missing.

In Episode 9, Emil is hosting Caroline Lane, a partner at a boutique growth agency called ProperExpression.

The key topic is when a marketing leader should rely on in-house resources vs. situations where an agency could or should be brought in.

Caroline also shares traits marketing executives should look for when selecting the right agency with which to work.

In Episode 8, Emil hosts Shilpa Sharma and Chhavi Singh, the co-founders of FlyteAI, a Conversational NLP startup that provides an intuitive platform for sales managers to track and analyze their reps' performance on sales calls and coach them on effectively speaking with prospects.

Emil, Shilpa and Chhavi discuss the importance of how you speak with your prospects and customers.

The episode goes into detail about the main metrics sales managers should use in evaluating their reps' effectiveness on calls. 

In Episode 7, Emil interviews Matt Dixon on his latest sales book, The Jolt Effect. The two discuss how the new book builds on Matt's well-known past work on The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer.

Matt goes off-script in relation to the book and provides his unique perspective on how Marketing can help with overcoming customer indecision by reducing the complexity of choosing product options.

Jolt-driven marketers should build "happy meals" that most optimally map to the needs of the key ICP groups.

In Episode 6, Emil interviews Jen Allen from Challenger, Inc. She is the Chief Evangelist and host of the Challenger podcast.

Emil and Jen discuss on the evolution of the Challenger methodology over the past decade and speculate what direction it would take in a post-pandemic world.

Jen also highlights pitfalls that Sales Executives often fall into when trying to implement Challenger across their organizations.

In Episode 5, Emil interviews Judy Gordon, VP of Marketing at WireWheel and an expert on customer privacy.

Emil and Judy discuss the latest developments in customer privacy regulation and the steps even small companies can take to become good guardians of privacy.

In Episode 4, Emil interviews Steph Newton, co-founder of the Ambr stress-management startup.

The main topics are spotting personal and team stress and preventing burnout. Steph defines the differences between a creative block and burnout. She also lists 6 factors that most often create burnout in the team.

Emil and Steph also discuss how data-driven startups, such as Ambr, can provide machine learning-based tools to spot and manage stress at the workplace.

In Episode 3, Emil interviews executive coach Olivia Lockwood about frameworks to lead behavioral change.

Olivia first introduces the COM-B / Skill-Will-Hill frameworks for driving effective organizational change. She also stresses the importance of being empathetic and aligned with individuals' preferences and desires.

Olivia then offers advice on how to build trust with your direct reports as a key to effective leadership. She also describes 3 types of tension and identifies constructive tension as the "sweet spot" where people are actively engaged and open to exploring different perspectives and ideas.

In Episode 2, Emil speaks with his former manager Nino Ninov, a seasoned business executive with decades-long experience in market research and customer insights.

They discuss why Market Research is necessary even for organizations who know their customers and markets well. Nino explains the main types of research and how to decide which one to use.

Emil and Nino also discuss the key attributes that define a good customer for market research -- i.e., the provide advice on how a company looking to commission market research can behave in order to get the most out of that project.

Additionally, the two identify the key traits that define a good market researcher.

In the podcast's inaugural episode, Emil has chosen for his first guest Anna Ong, an INSEAD alumna and improv celebrity based in Singapore.

Emil and Anna discuss how improv can hone sales executives' active listening skills, while storytelling can naturally help marketers.

Anna provides examples of how active listening can be applied to real-world business situations. She also describes a simple exercise that can be used by sales folks to become better at listening.