Alina Timofeeva-Showcasing the power of perseverance and adaptability

Overview:

In this episode, Kerry Guard sits down with Alina Timofeeva, a multi-award-winning strategic advisor in data and technology, to explore the intersection of personal branding and corporate growth. Alina opens up about her unique path—from overcoming cultural and personal barriers as a first-generation immigrant to standing on global stages as a speaker. She shares tactical advice on how organizations can support diverse employee voices, especially introverts, and how individuals can build influence without waiting for permission. Together, they unpack why personal storytelling, public speaking, and creative expression are no longer optional—they're essential to modern brand and business success.

Transcript:

Kerry Guard 0:02

Hello. I'm Kerry Guard, and Welcome to Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders. Welcome back to the show today. I have with me Alina Timofeeva. She is a multi award winning strategic advisor to the C suite of major organizations, helping them think differently about data and technology and realized their business ambitions in a safe, cost effective way. She was recognized expert in data and technology with multiple accolades, with a passion for transformation, change within the financial services sector. Kerry, as of expertise include data and technology, modernization, technology, risk and operational resilience. Alina, welcome to the show.

Alina Timofeeva 0:55

Thank you so much, Kerry, for having me here today.

Kerry Guard 0:59

I'm so excited to have you and for our conversation, which I think is going to be key aspect of 2025 as people think about how they need to pivot a bit in the new world order of how marketing is evolving and how our buyers are buying. So I'm excited for that. Before we get there, though, I want to know your story. Our listeners want to know your story of what do you do now, and how did you get there.

Alina Timofeeva 1:27

Okay, sure, so I came to the UK 10 years ago. I'm a first-generation immigrant from the working class, from Russia, and I also have a disability, and I'm an introvert. So I started working in the technology industry. Back in Accenture, I was doing more like, you know, the general analyst roles in terms of implementation, working with large banks. But I, despite being an immigrant and kind of very new to the UK culture, I managed to progress very, very, fast. So I became an associate partner after six and a half seven years, and I worked with Accenture Kitchen and Oliver, one which are very recognized brands in the consulting industry. But something which I was always passionate about was media, and when I was perhaps a little bit younger, when I came I was doing modeling, and I was doing it not necessarily because of the modeling experience, but more because of the design, how you can design, how you can market it, how you can fit together. And when I was working in technology, it was less creative than perhaps some of the other industries, so I was very keen to establish the external brand in terms of the marketing, in terms of the media, the press, the television. And I started doing a lot of speaking, a lot of mentoring around public speaking, a lot of mentoring around building an external profile. And for me, this is a bit of a passion, not because of purely selling the business or bringing the customer, but also because it's something a little bit more creative than the day to day life, in terms of, you know, doing the advice, doing the PowerPoints, doing the presentation, and it allows me to dream. It allows me to, you know, do the end-to-end, the research, the pitching, the speaking, the marketing after, the marketing before. And this is something I've been doing more as part of my hobby, but I've been quite successful in it, and now I am doing some courses around it, and I was just speaking yesterday in a large conference. I think people want to people in the tech industry to learn more.

Kerry Guard 3:54

Very cool. I went to school for photography, so I was on the flip side of the model, so to speak, but for the same reasons of just loving the creative aspect of the design and the frame and how you sort of bring those aspects together. So I totally appreciate why modeling would have been interesting to you as a marketer, and how you sort of took that and left to where you are. Now that is really cool, and that's what I love about the story, because how we found marketing or marketing found us, is always a wonderful and interesting journey, and different for everybody. So thank you for sharing before we get into the heart of our conversation, which really stems from what you're doing now, I'd love to know what's hard for you, what's a challenge, what's sort of in your way and making you feel like your job is harder maybe than it needs to be well.

Alina Timofeeva 4:45

So originally, when I started with my endeavors in terms of building the external profile, I think the challenge was getting the various approvals from the companies where I used to work, and its essentially the all the external profile at the time was not very straightforward for me in terms of how you can do it. So I think I used to think, you know, you need PR if you want to go to the media using PR for television. But what I have identified is that as long as you are tenacious and perseverant, it's possible to kind of create your story, create your branding, create your own pitching, and do this without investing substantial amounts of money into PR, or perhaps without waiting for the employer to come and to ask you to do it. I think one of the things I noticed with the corporate is in many of the cases, it's to senior people who perhaps get access to the opportunity. And what I advocate for now is to make the marketing more diverse, but also to make sure that the audience, which is more diverse, connects to the business. Right? I'm advocating that opportunities are given not just to the very same people, like CEOs, managing directive, managing partners, but also to kind of middle management and perhaps even junior people. And to do this not only in social media, in terms of Instagram and marketing, but perhaps the broader opportunities, which are a little bit harder together.

Kerry Guard 6:27

Yes, which leads us perfectly into our conversation today, which is very much around how to as an employer, embrace the employees who want to build a personal brand and elevate them in a way to be able to do that that both helps them as individuals and their careers, as well as your organization as a delicate balancing act. And we're going to get into it. I do want to say that I think this conversation is poignant, especially as we look to 2025 because the way that the the way that marketing is moving in terms of how buyers buy, especially from a B to B perspective, I think we're all coming to the realization and the acceptance that outbound and lead generation is getting increasingly more difficult to a point where it's not feasible or necessarily worth it. And so one of the things we are moving towards as an agency and supporting our clients is really thinking about how to build brand and to measure it through your branded search volume and your branded search terms. And what we're coming to understand too, is that PR is going to be increasingly more important as chat engines like chat, GPT, perplexity, other search engines like cogi pop up, because it's going to be less about how you create content and and more about how you show up where the content already exists, which is the power of PR. And so I love this because it's a way, when you're building your personal brand on the on the platforms that are exist, and media audience where they are, is a wonderful way of helping creating that momentum around that notion. So thisis right on time, perfect timing, Carolina. We're here for it. So let's start off with why? How did you you mentioned Modeling, and I'm working, you know, for different organizations of wanting to be sort of a in terms of building your own personal brand. So how did you get started from a corporation standpoint? How did you start thinking about how your brand fit in with the companies, regardless of how they didn't quite support you the way that they needed to? We'll get there. But how are you thinking about that strategy of bringing these two things together?

Alina Timofeeva 8:57

Yeah, so I think to give you an example, we need to understand where I was in the starting point, because where I am today is very, very different. So for example, whilst today I enjoy doing speeches and talks and podcasts and pictures and write ups and LinkedIn, I'm a very introverted person. So I think that the original challenge was more in the mindset, whether indeed I would like or would not like to do this in particular with the modeling. To give you an example, I haven't had pictures between the age of six and 21 and when I did have them, they were a little bit criticized by my family, so I was very, very afraid of taking pictures. So for me, doing modeling with the creativity, but also the way to be more confident in terms of kind of more the public exposure, a way of public exposure. So we was the same process with the external profile and with the public speaking. So originally, I did not really speak. I was part of a very technical engineering team, advanced analytics. I was perhaps on the more business and risk side. I was more outgoing compared to my colleagues, but at the same time, speaking wasn't my natural thing. I started speaking more because I wanted to get promoted. And did I mentioned, I grew very fast. So it was important to tell the story. I wasn't always successful in getting implemented at this piece of which I wanted, but I think I understood that it's important to kind of build a business case and some more with our clients and consulting, we also build a business case and we go to market. So that's how I started understanding it. One of the things in one of my jobs, I was working with marketing globally in terms of helping shape the stories about technology. And technology is not the most sassy topic. This is not really a personal story. So one of my experiences was trying to find something unique, something which the customer will, you know, look through and connect, which is not, you know, just here are the systems, and here are the operational systems, and here is the transformation. So I think that was kind of the start of my journey. I think with the personal brand in particular, I won an award which was not for personal brand, it was for my work in technology, and I was asked to speak in the first forum in Russia, because I'm from Russia, around how to be a leader, a woman leader. It was like a very new topic for them, because in most of the cases, women don't pursue a corporate career, and I don't think many people come to UK, and not many people win awards. So what they told me is, you need to speak in front of 130,000 people. And there was a lot of people, and that was the first ever talk I've done. It was on Zoom. So I didn't see all those people, but I think I was continuously thinking about how horrible it's going to be. And the funny thing, I had a lady who was helping me out. So she was Miss Russia of 2016 and she was also her story was she had to start speaking once she became Miss Russia, because you have to go to the conferences and to PR and to all the press releases, and you have to say stuff. And she also helped me just dress up a little bit. But I think that whole experience, because I think that was a miscommunication. I thought that the Russian colleagues, they invited, like the ministers of Economy and Finance and all the senior people, I think they had an assumption that I know how to speak, which wasn't the case. So they said you need to do like a TED talk and be very inspirational and wonderful, and you have like five days to prepare. So I didn't really know how to do it. I think what I said was very inspirational, but I think I wasn't very confident. And I think from that point in time, I took a challenge in terms of learning public speaking in my free time, and then I separate challenge once I learned the public speaking, how to pitch to various podcasts and subsequently the media, the conferences, the large conferences, the television. And in a way, there are certain similarities with how we work in consulting, when we pitch to clients, versus how we work with media, how we pitch to the media. So, in a way, my experience in consulting has helped me, but I think the key for me was obviously the perseverance, but also getting the excitement. In terms of, you know, I need to sort what the story is. What do I pitch and make it more exciting for the audience? Because it is about the audience.

Kerry Guard 13:50

I love this context around how you didn't feel very confident in speaking. You were definitely thrown from the frying pan directly into the fire, and you had five days to do it. And so that's certainly one way of going about it. But the morefor those who are listening, who are who are taking this in, the thing that's hitting home for me, and podcasting for me has really helped with this, is the confidence in speaking, and how that is a very tough skill to learn and get very comfortable with. And I can go back to my early days, early marketing days, where I had to present to big rooms as well. And I can remember how scary that was and how I wasn't sure the things that I was saying or Eve were I knew that they were correct, but, to your point, weren't confident. So how is anybody supposed to trust what I'm saying when I myself am not sounding like I trust what I'm saying? So I absolutely love if everybody you know, for the younger folks who are.They were in their careers and thinking about just wanting to get promoted and what it means to step up through into leadership over time, being able to speak thoughtfully and withintention is a really hard muscle. I still struggle with it. I'm you can tell right now I'm still rambling. It is definitely something to work on and that we all need to work on, but getting up and in public more often and doing it more frequently certainly helps. So hats off to you, Alina, for realizing that that was a really important skill you needed, and figuring out how to get after it and to give yourself the practice and on very big stages, that's in a language that's not your first language, that is hats off to you on so many ways in terms of where you are now and how you're thinking about how this fits in with a corporate strategy you mentioned, you sort of touched on it a little bit of,you know, the confidence piece and building a strategy. Let's unpack that strategy for folks you talked about creating the strategy and built and bringing in corporation and executing on it. But what does that mean? Can you give us some of the nuts and bolts behind what a personal branding, speaker, engagement, PR strategy might look like?

Alina Timofeeva 16:32

Yeah, of course. So I think what is important to mention is I really advocate, as I mentioned earlier, that to make the brand more diverse to the public, it's important that you give the opportunities to the various diverse groups to be seen, heard, and recognized. So I think it's not just diversity in terms of the race and I guess the gender and perhaps the disability, but also the diversity across the ranks of their employee. And I would probably say that somebody who's a managing director is probably more confident in speaking than somebody who's a junior manager. My experience has been in the technology industry. So technology industry is generally known for the fact that people are a little bit more introverted. I think they find it a bit difficult to sell themselves and to sell the business. They are very much into the delivery purpose. They're extremely good at it, but when it comes to pitching and kind of speaking to the clients, not everybody has the skill set.So I think whether it's a personal brand or whether it's developing the opportunity to kind of go to clients, win the work, tell about the product, tell the story. You know, all of the skills we'll be talking about are beneficial, not just to the employee, but also to the company, to make sure that the business grows and that there are opportunities for the new revenues and the new sales, I would probably say soon in terms of the strategy, there are two ways, because in my case, my journey was a little bit complicated, because I didn't exactly have a strategy, right? I was very tenacious in terms of the fact that I wanted to put every single logo of the magazine and my poster, and I made a poster with all the different logos which I wanted to hit. And I'm so far ahead, but I think I wasn't quite sure how to get there, right? So at the time, which was two, three years ago, I think in the technology industry in particular, I haven't seen many people who do this. I think perhaps now it's evolving, but I haven't seen a comparable at the time I was when I started, I was a manager, senior manager. I haven't seen a comparable person in consulting and technology who's doing something similar. So that's why I didn't quite know how to do it. So my strategy at the time was trying to understand the number of things, number one, how to do public speaking. So I could not afford to pay for the purchase in the UK, and I think that we didn't have a budget in the company to do this, so I was self-funding myself to study in Russia on Zoom. And that was very, very much cheaper and cost-effective for me, because I didn't need somebody in Moscow, which is big, but somewhere in a small town, so it was much more effective and brought me good results. I think the main thing for me was building the confidence. And the reality is that the confidence is built not so much by the public speaking exercises, but more because I spoke more and more and more to smaller audiences, larger audiences, etc, the second part of the strategy was being heard So fundamentally, is having access to the opportunities where I can speak again. This wasn't very straightforward at the time. So I.Wasn't invited to speak, and I have applied to every single TED Talk in UK and Europe and also in Russia, but nobody wanted to listen to me. So I kept getting the clients, and finally I got to do the TEDx talk, which I did do, and it became one of the most top watched TED Talks that month. So was number nine watched, I think that month globally. And I think after it, everybody who declined me, they were like, oh, we should have asked to come.It was too late. And I think what happened then is, in many of the cases, I was just trying to reach to my network and to ask the people who I saw that they're speaking, how do they speak? Where do they speak? Can they introduce me to podcasts? Can I kind of apply myself to podcasts or TED talks or events? And I think the third part which I was doing was marketing of this. So I would put it on LinkedIn. And I think when I did put it on one thing, more opportunities started arising, but not not straight away, right? And then I was expanding. So I think I started with the podcasts that nobody listened to, like those which are not rated, and then I went to top 10, top five. I think the latest one I reached was top 0.1%most listened in the world.But again, it's like a CV which I had to build. And similarly, with the media, I had to build a CV of, like, small events, larger events, smaller media, larger media. And just in a way, like adding logos. So I think, I think what is important see, if I had to do it again, I would probably like my colleagues to help me out, right? So that's why I'm really keen that organizations have perhaps this strategy for their employees, so that it's more straightforward. Because in my case, I spent an enormous amount of time, which was my personal time, in terms of exploring how to do it, where to do it, building the confidence, in terms of the speaking, building the practice, and then how to market it, and everything else, and it took a lot of time, and I'm also very tenacious and resilient, but I would have preferred given that I have quite ahourly, demanding job of seven to eight hours a week, I would have preferred that it was kind of more straightforward in terms of the new where to go, what to do, how to pitch, what to pitch, right, which channels to go to, and I know that there are opportunities where you can self pitch yourself, so for example, quoted and Harrow, and I'm sure there are other platforms. So I kind of started researching into that myself. But again, it wasn't very straightforward to me in the beginning, I think in the beginning, I used to think it's only the senior people who can do this, and they have the professional support of PR managers in terms of helping them be heard and seen. In fact, I was told off by marketing for trying to go and do something myself,but I persevered. And then, I think when I got featured, then my kids were coming and kind of showing me the success of the year. So I think, yeah, so just to summarize, I would encourage, if it's possible, you know, the steps that I have gone through in terms of how to learn to speak, how to learn to page, where to page and perhaps how to market it, I would encourage it to be a collaborative strategy between the employee and the employer, so that it's less on the rest, on the employee in terms of time, and hopefully more aligned with the corporate strategy in terms of the messages. Because not always what I know is an employee, which are the messages I should be amplifying. I'm clear on my personal knowledge, but I think if the business wants to amplify certain things, it will be helpful if there are, you know, like, here are the top five things, or whatever it is, right? And on every conference we go to, we try to message around Kerry, yes, that's such a clear system.

Kerry Guard 24:25

I remember when I was working at Verizon Wireless. My very first job, I was on your Verizon Wireless account at Universal McCann, and one of the things they did for us as assistants was they had a speaker coach come in and give us a session for half a day, and it was awful. I remember hating every minute of it, because it was just so nerve wracking and it was just not something I was used to doing. But I'm really grateful, in hindsight, that I was given you know the opportunity to go through that, I will say what you're saying, and I want to double down on Alina, is that it's more than that, like it was really kind of universal. I can to do that for me back in the day. But to your point, and to everything we've been saying, it's the consistency aspect of being able to do it a lot and often and getting that practice in to get better at it. So,yes, I think what it comes down to, and really, what I love about this is that as much as it's an opportunity to get out there as an individual and get some individual visibility for your own career path. The payoff to the corporation, to the company, who's exciting their hand to you and elevating you to do this, the payoff to them is that you're so much more polished in your ability to represent the company on a regular day to day basis, and there's so much power in being able to communicate well. And so I love this as a path for people who are interested in it. And it sounds like you just handed the handbook to the companies to basically say, you know, here's you know how to give them training. Then here's how to help them go pitch themselves out in the world and get used to pitching it's so hard to pitch yourself, and so if you could pitch yourself, you could definitely pitch a company. So get out there and do that. And then from a marketing standpoint, you learn the marketing side of that, whether you're in marketing or not, and how that works for companies, and what great tools to have, both for the organization as well as for yourself. So I think this is a great playbook that we all can pick up and run with, and that we should do for our team and our employees. So thank you for this gift in terms of how we can support our employees who are more on the, you know, introverted aspect of maybe not wanting to do it or not feeling comfortable doing it. I do, you know it sounds like you're more of the coming from the place of inspiring those who are already out there and raising their hand and say they want this. Do you think that if there was an existing playbook and it was more talked about within the organization, more people would raise their hand and be open to it because they had the framework and the support system to be able to lean into it a little bit more and further their careers? Or do you think this is really just for a subset of people who this just comes naturally to, and they're just interested in it?

Alina Timofeeva 27:44

So I was recently speaking in something which is called the first conference for introverted people, and we have identified the following challenges for the introvert so number one was marketing. Number two was networking. Number three was public speaking, right? So I think generally, what the colleagues were saying is, forget about the fact that it's not very clear how to do it, right, which I think is what we were trying to address with the playbook. I think it's also having the confidence in terms of doing it. So I think what is important there is to tell the stories as a minimum. So ideally finding those introverted colleagues, encouraging them to speak, but then also using them, going forward in terms of supporting the other colleagues. So the way I see this mechanism working, imagine you have a business, and then you want to build the raving fans of the business, and then the raving fans are going to build the raving fans, of the raving fans, and then we're going to kind of have this whole pyramid. So sometimes I think of somebody like Tony Robbins, because, in a way, he's a product, and then he has all these people that believe in his product, and then they, you know, they're his coaches, the people that buy from him. And I think that he managed to do it through the powerful message with the fact that he's clear on the message, but then every single worker or coach kind of amplifies the message, right? Because the message is clear, and then he has them in trading time. So ideally, that's how it should work. I think the challenges, specifically with introverted colleagues, is number one, it's extremely not clear how to go and do it, right. So even I haven't seen the playbooks exist. I think you know, it's very important to explain to the colleagues, to the employees, why perhaps it would be relevant to them, and why perhaps they should be doing it. Because some people want to do it, but some people, you know, they are like doing 730 hours at work, and then the question is, you also want to be inspirational on top of it, and then you want to go home and be like a good wife. It's also very difficult to keep doing this, so I think it's important to as.Show the benefits of this, which is, you know, both to the organization and to the individual, maybe some encouragement, right? So sometimes I find that you know you really want to do it, you really want to do it, but you don't get the buying from the team. So then, in a way, you are very teenager and doing it, but nobody wants it. So I think ideally needs to be the balance of the recognition of their efforts, which is why I was suggesting that it needs to be clear to the employee. You know, there is the support which is provided. There are perhaps the example people, both introverts and extroverts, who have done this or are trying to do this, and then also having some appreciation and encouragement, because all the speaking doesn't come easily to people, and, you know, going out there, pushing, knocking on the new door is also very difficult. So I think recognizing the successes, whether it's the team meetings or the global team meetings or something like this, or even, you know, liking posts on LinkedIn from your colleagues, I think that's that's something powerful, because it's not something which everybody wants to do. It's not something everybody likes doing. And it's also very discouraging when you go and do it and then nobody likes it, and then also, I don't know, you get the criticism for it as well. So I think it's very important for the introverts in particular, because of the confidence aspect, is that once you start doing it, so that it is a bit more encouraged and appreciated, because if everybody starts saying, Oh, it's so horrible, I don't think people will kind of carry on doing it. So I think it's important. And I see, I mean, in that conference where I spoke, we had other introverts, or to both, you know, and they were sharing the stories that it has been difficult for them to learn, you know, to publicly speak, to sit on stages and speak, and so, you know, they're doing it more because of the motivation to impress, not impressed, but to increase the broader situation and to have a voice. But again, this wasn't a natural thing.

Kerry Guard 32:10

Yeah, it's, um, I do think there needs to be some level of, you know, as we're sort of writing the playbook as we're speaking here, Alina, I I think there does need to see be some tiered options. So to speak from the people who are super ambitious and want to speak to big rooms, to the people who just want the practice and don't need a huge audience to do it, they just need the repetition. So, you know, you know, much more niche meetups and of much smaller, you know, rooms and conferences, just to speak about topics that you're very knowledgeable about is a great way to just get your feet wet, I feel like, especially for introverts, have, you know, we tend to have maybe his history or, you know, anything that's a hobby that you just feel really comfortable talking about and being able to show up in smaller rooms and get up and just speak to a room is just great practice. And so I love what you're saying around not needing to sort of be this big thing to everybody all the time, but just getting started. And I think as an organization, we can create different spaces for people to just have the practice to talk about things they love and care about, to a room of multiple people to get there. Yeah, I I do think there's going to have to be some tiered options to to pull those, those shyer people, out and give them space to ease in, ease in. It's hard. It's hard. I remember doing a conference. I did one a few years ago. It was called the what if conference in Philadelphia, and I, you know, when something really scares me, I have a really hard time prepping. And so I did it in the nth hour, like the day before, I created the presentation and and didn't even write a script. I just knew that on each side, this was the basic thing that I wanted to say. And I got up and I did it, and it was exhilarating and terrifying. And I, you know, hope for another opportunity now that I'm a bit older and wiser, but it's, uh, yeah, everybody's approach is going to be different. So let's talk about the preparation aspect of it. So I just sort of talked about my haphazard experience. You had five days to prepare this presentation to to a room of over 130,000 people. Um, and maybe, I'm sure you've learned a lot since then. So how do you prep now, when you have a big presentation that you have to give, what's your process?

Alina Timofeeva 35:09

Yeah, so I think that there are a few things see. Let's again, compare the experience. So at the time, I used to, like, write down everything and then kind of learn it by heart, and then practice it and read it, and then I would record it and then listen to it so that I remember it. And my first case is I had to do a pitch for my own promotion. So it was two pages, and this was kind of a bit like a turtle sort of thing. But I really tried to, like, practice it and start interesting and keep speaking, right? So with my TED Talk, which was very, very popular, I again, had to script it, because it has to be approved, but also because you need to learn, you know, how where you walk, how you talk, etc. Now I was just speaking yesterday in a conference, and it was, I don't think it was 1000s of people, but it was about 300 people, right? And I did not prepare for it, so I just came and I started talking, and that was surprisingly well, not surprisingly, but it was very well received, and I got a lot of followers, and they all wanted to do the personal brand now, and the public speaking and everything else. But I think I'm doing a keynote in the next couple of weeks to very senior people, like 150 people, so I'll be scripting it, and I think in terms of the preparation, I mean, it's been very clear in terms of the key messages. But I think what is more important in particular in my industry, which is technology. It's very difficult to kind of talk about technology in an exciting way. So I know that there are two types of people. There are those who are more like they don't really know technology, but they talk about it, and there are the technologists who know it, but they can't necessarily tell the story. So I think I'm trying to unite this into something sensible, and I'm trying as much as possible to do a number of things. Number one is to stand out in the audience. So typically, I do stand out because I'm one of the few women. I'm much younger than anyone else in my position, but I also have a future. So for example, when I did a TED talk, I had a very bright pink dress, and I went to a conference in another country, and somebody came to me and said, Oh, I remember you at that girl with a pink dress to do the TED talk. And I was very impressed. And she was like, I've been following you and you are because I was wearing the same pink dress, so the same kind of pink dress, which is on my LinkedIn. So I think that there are certain features, right? I've seen the CEO of Citibank, for example, she has colorful jackets of a particular model. Like, in my case, I used to have this pink dress, but now I'm more like colorful blazers. I've seen another lady who's very successful in cooking. She dresses more like a rock, rock, rock star, but she puts a lot of beads, and it's really, I think she kind of creates it, or she gets somebody to serve it for her. So I think that there is the imagery style, then there is a thing in terms of the memorabilities, there's a joke, right, or something. In my case, I'm not necessarily the best in English humor, so I experiment with it. I think it's easier for me to come up with an interesting fact with the jokes, I think it depends, right? So I can do it, if I can script it, I'll script it. But sometimes it's difficult to do a joke around technology. So one of the things which I try doing is, for example, I had a fraud in the gym, and it was a real fraud, and I lost a lot of money, but it had to do with technological failures of how the bank deals and why that was possible. So the story was that I went to Sona to lose a couple of pounds, and I came out 20,000 pounds lighter. So that is kind of funny. And then you kind of go into the technology element, but it's kind of trying to find these things, you can't always find them. If you're talking about something like systems and integration, it's a little bit less exciting. But if you can find something done, that's very important. And I guess the last thing, because I've done the TED talk, and the TED talk was probably one of my first talks. It was very important for me to understand the memory span or the attention span of a human being. So I do think that the talks which are in the lecture halls right now are extremely unpopular because people are just doing videos.

Alina Timofeeva 44:23

In terms of all the taxes going up and stuff. So the reason I think this is important is because, in a way, there is a lot of politics discussions, you know that people may be becoming poorer, in a way, because of all the taxes and the economy situation and kind of all the wars and everything else. But I think what? I think that it's more than ever an opportunity in terms of helping stand out in the industry, whether you are a business or whether you are a person within the business. I think it's more and more important for this brand, personal brand, business brand, to be seen because I think even though you have chat, TPT and all these tools that you mentioned, Kerry in the start, it's important to kind of still be personable and visible and have this uniqueness to which people will connect. Whether it's a crisis, another crisis, and whether it's, you know, there is innovation. There is no innovation. Because I think people, in a way, the market is becoming a little bit saturated now that everybody is saying the same thing. So it's kind of how you stand out, both in terms of what you say, how you say, how you position it, how you PR it. I think it's becoming more and more important. And I'm looking forward to maybe the next year to having more like creative pool thinkers in the industry, like in my case, in tech industry, and having it also on kind of elements, and not just the same professional as I mentioned that across the tiers. And I do feel, in particular the younger generation, because they have so much untouched fantasy in terms of how to do it. They always have this opportunity in terms of, you know, giving the ideas to kind of more, see people how they could do it which haven't yet been explored.

Kerry Guard 46:52

I love that. I love that. I do think that in difficult times, really wonderful things. You know? It's they talk about this in diamonds, right when you're in the The beautiful thing about diamonds is that they're formed under and huge amounts of pressure, and this generation coming up is definitely going to be feeling all of that pressure, and from it, I'm sure we are going to have some wonderful, wonderful diamonds, and I look forward to that, to that vision and that hope for them, and for for how we get to support them in all of that. So thank you, Alina, thank you to our listeners. Trevor Van Warden, I see you. Thank you for joining us as always. If you like this episode, please like, subscribe and share. This episode is brought to you by MKG Marketing, the digital marketing agency that helps complex brands like cybersecurity companies get found via SEO and digital ads. We help you build your brand and build that trust with your customers, is what we're here for. If you'd like to be a guest, please DM me. I'd love to have you on the show and Music Mix mastering done by Snappy, and as always, I'll catch you all next time. Thank you so much.