Can traditional B2B marketing experience benefit an ABM campaign? In this episode, Bob Cormack draws on years of mountain-climbing experience to descend from the tallest peak on Earth. He emphasizes the need for all of us to build on our experience, be open to new opportunities, and be willing to extend ourselves beyond our comfort zone. Most importantly, he inspires us to have the humility to be adaptable in work, in play, and in life.
[00:00:00] Hiromi: Do you ever wonder if you've hit the ceiling of your career? Are there more slopes to climb or is the only way down? Is there a way to utilize our experience for new opportunities?
[00:00:13] In this episode, we continue to story of Bob Cormack as he attempts to return to base camp from the summit of the tallest peak on Earth. We want to know what qualities contributed to his success and how we as marketers can apply these principles to overcome our mountain-like obstacles. This is a podcast about summiting B2B marketing and the account based mindset. This is Reach.
[00:00:43] Thanks for coming with us today. My name is Hiromi Matsumoto, and I am here with agency founder and CEO Jaycen Thorgeirson.
[00:00:49] Jaycen: Hey.
[00:00:50] Hiromi: And Chief Creative Officer Garret Krynski.
[00:00:53] Garret: Hey everyone.
[00:00:56] Hiromi: So in the last episode, Bob told us how he was chosen to summit despite his lack of personal ambition and being in a group of very driven and professional climbers. And we walked away with some inspiration as marketers to focus more on our accounts, not on our own personal ambitions. The need to be versatile when we feel stuck, and the reminder that when we focus on the task at hand, the summit can often come as a surprise.
[00:01:18] Jaycen: Yeah.
[00:01:18] Hiromi: And it's good advice because Bob actually made it. He and his partner Chris Chandler were very early summiteers of Mount Everest.
[00:01:26] Bob Cormack:
[00:01:26] I thought I was the 57th and Chris was the 58th, but I might have been the 59th and him the 60th. When I got down from Everest, Jerry says, "You did touch the absolute top, didn't you?" It's a ritual for him. He's gotta touch the top, you know, with his... you know, take his glove off and touch it sort of things. And well, no. I sat down about five feet away and I was worried about taking pictures and stuff and it's behind me. It wasn't more than a foot higher. I don't care. And he goes, "My God. You haven't really climbed Everest." And I said, "Well, you're the only person in the world who would think that Jerry." I mean, "Did you also try not to step on cracks in the sidewalk? I mean, come on." [laughing]
[00:02:10] We had to descend in the dark cause it took long to get to the summit and so, they lost sight of us at the South Summit when it got dark. And then we were in the tent the next morning and wind's howling. It's 30 below and it's blowing like crazy outside, and- and we just kept melting snow and making wilers as best we could. And, you know, every now and then you open it up and look out and God. You know, it's still bad out there. We were supposed to have walkie-talkies, but it was like, 30 below and the mercury batteries didn't work. So he's [inaudible 00:02:43], and they could see the tent from across the valley, but nobody, they didn't see anybody, right? Never occurred to us that they all thought we were dead.
[00:02:55] When something happens that you haven't expected, you fall back on your experience. That's the danger of inexperienced people up there. They're okay if they're following a rope that other people, experienced people in sherpas and snow have put up there for if something happens and the ropes not there, then you're likelihood of being able to think up the appropriate experience at that altitude is not high. I mean, all the people that died on the South Call that year, they wandered around and no one realized that if they just put their head down and chugged up wind for a quarter mile, they'd hit the camp. So they bayed there and laid down and froze to death.
[00:03:38] Rock climbing is all about basically, knowing what you can do and then staying inside that boundary. Right? But if you haven't had any experience, how do you know what you can do?
[00:03:50] Garret: I appreciate how he talks about experience and it's something to fall back on. The experience that we have as marketers, or the experience that we have even as humans counts for something. So even if it's just uh, a counter point or even if it's just a perspective to understand kind of what's happening, it's valuable. Surface it, think about it, and talk about it with the team.
[00:04:12] Hiromi: Yeah. Yeah, in- in a previous episode he was talking about how they practiced in the yard. Yeah, he wasn't advocating for like getting all of your experience on the top of Everest. You should probably have that before you go, but do you guys have any thoughts about how you do that in a marketing environment? What's the take away there?
[00:04:29] Garret: You know, even when you're doing, uh, your own marketing, you're trying to land your own clients. It's a remarkable experience at that point to learn from what you are doing for yourself. Right? To apply your own discipline. To apply your own principles in what you're doing. That is experience that's invaluable. Then when you start making larger decisions with larger budgets, the equivalent of marketing Everest is now informed by the things you've done previously at a smaller scale.
[00:05:02] Hiromi: It sounds to me like there's a direct connection between what you're doing as a marketer and interactions just talking to people and taking mental note. Being observant to what resonates with people, how people like to be communicated with, how people like to be approached and making that note and adding that to your experience. So that once someone's paying you to do this or your job is on the line, you have a reference point, you have that experience built up. Am I- am I digesting that right?
[00:05:33] Garret: 100%, and you also have this bank of other people's experience. Like he talked about before, there's no place on the mountain that doesn't get avalanches, but they put the camps in places where they get avalanched less. Use that experience at least to inform what you may do next.
[00:05:51] Bob Cormack:
[00:05:51] My wife had hiked out several days earlier. And uh, so she got on the radio and she said, "Look, uh, don't worry about it. They're just too lazy to go out into the wind. As long as there's anything left to eat in the tent." She's always known what I'm doing no matter where I am, so you know, that can be both a good and bad. [laughing]
[00:06:10] But that was true. It was absolutely true, you know? Finally, we know, God, the wind's not gonna go down. We're out of food. We gotta get out there in the damn wind and struggle back down to the South Call.
[00:06:23] I never want to do anything that exhausting again, really.
[00:06:26] Hiromi: It's funny that Bob makes light of it, but obviously, this is serious stuff. In fact, I was reading that his climbing partner, Dr. Chris Chandler, died just a few years later during his descent from another Himalayan climb.
[00:06:38] Jaycen: Yeah, obviously as we're thinking about Bob's experience. His is real life and death stuff. And falling outside of the boundaries could mean their life, but as we think about our endeavors to communicate with others, sometimes we can limit ourself by being a little too cautious in our approach and especially when we're trying to engage someone that's a high value audience and a decision maker in another enterprise level organization. We're gonna have to step out of our comfort zone many times to be able to actually get their attention.
[00:07:15] There's so much that's competing for that attention. I think we try to do always the safe thing, and it may not be doing really much of anything.
[00:07:23] Right, this isn't life or death for us. Are we willing to take risks? Probably think a little less like, oh yeah we gotta stay in the boundaries here.
[00:07:33] Hiromi: Yeah,
[00:07:33] Garret: I- I think too the- the idea of just stretching a little creatively, also. You know, use a little bit more humor. Don't automate everything. Inject the human element in it. Be willing to speak the language [laughing] of the person you're talking to.
[00:07:53] Jaycen: I think very often you see in especially B2B type communication, it just seems very boring. And maybe this is from taking a- a less risky approach and kind of doing what everybody else is doing, but it's gonna take us going outside of those boundaries in order to- to show up.
[00:08:12] Hiromi: Qualifying leads you to-
[00:08:13] I think too that-
[00:08:13] You got at a trade show is boring? Blasphemy.
[00:08:16] Jaycen: Oh man.
[00:08:17] Garret: [laughing]
[00:08:18] Jaycen: That's the worst stuff.
[00:08:20] Garret: [laughing]
[00:08:20] Jaycen: Right?
[00:08:21] Bob Cormack:
[00:08:21] Well, we got people on top and nobody died. You know, so we actually were fairly successful. I mean, by the- the standards of time. A lot of expeditions had people die. Several years later, it might have been in '82, uh, some other guys from Boulder climbed Mount Everest. And they had a slide show, and I'm sitting there watching the slide show. And they got to where they um, had a picture from the South Summit looking up to Summit Ridge, which is from where Chris and I realized that we couldn't make it to the top and back before dark. But we went on because of the financial situation, and I felt that I'd been kind of coerced really in a way.
[00:09:05] But that picture showed up, the hair stood up on the back of my neck. I started shaking violently. I started sweating profusely. And I'm like, what the hell is going on? Stop it. Stop. I looked again. Stop. And uh, by the time they got toward the end of the slide show, my shirt was soaked, my hair was soaked. I'm like, I don't really know how I'm gonna explain this to anybody. So I slipped out in the dark before the slideshow ended, you know?
[00:09:34] I think I just had a fear reaction, physically, that I suppressed on Everest.
[00:09:38] Speaker 5: Are we going down there?
[00:09:45] Speaker 6: Are you guys going back?
[00:09:45] Speaker 5: Oh yeah.
[00:09:45] Bob Cormack: They're holding a reunion in December. I'm the only one still alive who made the top. So I, maybe I should go. I don't know.
[00:09:55] Hiromi: In 1976, Bob Cormack became the 56th person to summit Mount Everest. And just to give perspective on how noteworthy that is since then, well over 10,000 people have followed in his foot steps.
[00:10:14] Jaycen: Wow.
[00:10:15] Hiromi: So as unassuming as he is, he really is a trail blazer and there's a lot to take away from his experience.
[00:10:21] Jaycen: I think Everest is the ultimate metaphor for achievement. And when we think about account based marketing, efforts of B2B organizations, trying to land their most valuable accounts, that's the ultimate achievement. And so, starting with the story of those that have summited, especially in a time in which it was almost unheard of and Bob's story is approachable because he was just someone that enjoyed the journey. He wasn't the person that was vying to necessarily reach the summit, but he was the ultimate team member. He was the ultimate professional, the ultimate problem solver, and there's tons of things that we can learn from his story as marketers or sales professionals that are seeking to lead similar efforts.
[00:11:10] There's something to aspire to. You know? And that's what it's about. Thinking about the potential, where we could go. Where we could possibly reach, and uncovering the truths and the mindsets behind it.
[00:11:24] Garret: I think from the lens of marketing in general, the idea of journey is so prevalent. The customer, our prospect is always going on a journey. We guide them through a journey. We get them through the funnel and so that idea of a journey, not only applies personally, but applies to every client we interact with and every customer they want to reach. And it's so applicable, because you think about the mountain climbing process. There's prep. You arrive at a base camp. There's camps along the way. There's an ultimate goal. There's subsequent goal, a smaller incremental goal to get there. There's a team. There's all these things where the analogy just becomes so relatable on so many levels.
[00:12:09] And so, from a conceptual standpoint, it really makes sense. Then when you layer in the personally experience of Bob, you layer in the actual destination of Everest. Where it occupies the psyche of humankind. Jayson's right. It's the ultimate achievement. And so, when you combine that with the marketing journey, the ultimate achievement, it becomes so easy to start talking about for you, for me, for our company, for our clients, for their customers. Where they fit in to that analogy.
[00:12:44] Hiromi: Yeah, Bob's story illustrates the value of building on our experience, being open to new opportunities, being willing to extend ourselves outside our comfort zone. But ultimately, he inspires us to have the humility to be adaptable in work, in play, and in life.
[00:13:03] Well, we'd like to thank Bob Cormack for being part of our main series of episodes. And if you've enjoyed what you've heard so far, you're going to love what we have in store for you next. From Olympic medalist, to chefs, and musicians, we're gonna extend the boundaries of B2B marketing and the account based mindset. Coming up next on Reach.
[00:13:25] Do you have a question for Bob or a suggestion for future episodes? Join the conversation on our LinkedIn group and please consider a review on Apple podcasts. We would love to know what we can do to make this your next favorite podcast.
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