Some marketers can feel frustrated by how long it takes for their ABM campaign to yield results. In this episode, we continue the story of Bob Cormack as he’s unexpectedly selected to summit Everest for the team. He shows us how to focus on the account instead of self. He emphasizes the value of imagination in unexpected circumstances and teaches us that when we focus on the task at hand, there’s a good chance the summit will come as a surprise.
[00:00:00] Hiromi: Have you ever felt like your greatest achievement was just outside your grasp? Do you ever feel limited by your resources? Are you frustrated by how long it takes to see results?
[00:00:12] In this episode we continue the story of Bob Cormack as he and his team make their way up the south call of Everest in one of the most treacherous seasons of the year. We want to know what qualities contributed to their success? And how can we, as marketers, apply these principles to overcome our own 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'm here with agency founder and CEO Jaycen Thorgeirson.
[00:00:50] Jaycen: Hey.
[00:00:51] 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 about some of the serious dangers of an Everest expedition. And we'd gleaned a number of takeaways like the value of considering the timing of our efforts and mentally and emotionally preparing for change, how not to be overwhelmed by large projects, and I guess as far as large projects go, climbing Mr. Everest is probably up there, right? This is a place that draws some of the most ambitious personalities in the world.
[00:01:23] And, at this point in the story, Bob is surrounded by filmmakers with a monetary mandate, and several other climbers each vying for their coveted opportunity to make it to the top. So, at this point, Bob has resigned himself to a support role. This is what he had to say:
[00:01:43] Bob Cormack:
[00:01:43] I pretty much did what anybody and asked me to and what I thought needed to be done. And, uh, you need people like that. I was perfectly happy doing it. So I kinda see myself as trying to grease the wheels a little bit and make sure everything gets along. It was easy to adapt to the other climbers because I kinda understood and was used to them. But the film crew was hard to adapt to. Basically the film crew, they were trying to make a dramatic show, right? It was going to be shown on CBS Sports Spectacular, be an hour-long show, they didn't want people to tune away, so it had to be dramatic.
[00:02:17] Speaker 5: Mt. Everest, tallest and most dangerous peak on Earth. Altitude 29,028 feet. Temperatures sink to 40 below zero. Winds rage over 100 miles per hour and over 30 have died on these slopes. The American climbers have the confidence for the attempt, but do they have the skill? One member of the team has his doubts.
[00:02:39] Jaycen: What happened to CBS Sports? [laughs]
[00:02:43] Hiromi: [laughs] I know. That sound is so-
[00:02:46] Jaycen: Bring it back.
[00:02:46] Hiromi: ...is so nostalgic, isn't it?
[00:02:47] Jaycen: Yeah, bring it back.
[00:02:50] Hiromi: [
[00:02:50] laughs]
[00:02:50] Bob Cormack: So they were always looking for drama, right? I mean, the first time I saw their movie, I wasn't sure I was gonna make it down alive, you know? We're getting $90,000 from them if we get to the summit and took movie film from the summit. That was nice but the whole expedition cost a quarter of a million, so they acted like they were funding the whole thing, and they weren't.
[00:03:08] Well you really have to try to get along, especially when there's people that are not trying. I think it was harder for Rick and Chris than it was for me, because I didn't really have any expectations. I figured I wouldn't make it to the summit and I didn't care because, frankly, I don't know. I'd been on a lot of mountains and this was just another, bigger mountain. I knew that there had to be some people who were making things work. Who made things mesh smoothly. And so I tried to be one of those people.
[00:03:40] Jaycen: I thought that was interesting that he grew up in the mountains, you know, he's climbed tons of peaks. He was experienced in doing it, and this was just a bigger mountain. And as a marketer who may be shifting to an account-based marketing program, we've been doing marketing, we've been getting other people interested in whatever we're offering. ABM may be just a bigger mountain, but there's a lot of principles that we can apply in this discipline that we already know, a lot of it is just fundamental human behavior.
[00:04:11] Hiromi: Yeah, well, let me probe you guys on this for just a moment because I think our marketing take is the account-based mindset can get you to our metaphoric summit in the same way that Bob's mindset got him to his literal summit, but listening to Bob it just feels like summiting wasn't all that important to him personally. What's the takeaway there?
[00:04:33] Garret: Well, the idea of the result is always there. You know, he recognized he had a role to play in achieving the result. I'm not sure that he completely erased result from his mind and that it was all process for him, but whether personally he was the one to have lead on achieving the result was not his worry. Was he worried about the team achieving the result? Always.
[00:05:01] Hiromi: Mm-hmm. [affirmative]
[00:05:01] Garret: You know, that... He was willing to do whatever, so the result was achieved, it just wasn't his personal dream to be that guy to stand on the top, necessarily. But man, he never lost sight of it for the team.
[00:05:14] Jaycen: And then, going back to the book, it seems that there was many on the expedition that wanted to be the individual to summit. And the things that came along with, right? Like the notoriety and the fame that comes from it, etc. Those things, again, weren't of interest to Bob, but he had his own goal, helping the team to reach the summit and so, I, I... It's a... Everyone has a goal in mind, you know, personally, professionally, maybe in a marketing team. We all play a role in landing an account. How much notoriety you want in the process? That's different for everyone, and I-
[00:05:53] Hiromi: Mm-hmm. [affirmative]
[00:05:53] Jaycen: There's something there for everyone, but we also need the common vision, the common goal as marketing sales executive team, to lead an expedition-like effort to reaching the ultimate goal.
[00:06:07] Garret: I think recognition, you know, for some people is truly important. I remember for years attending awards shows, advertising award shows, marketing award shows, you know, and it's like, someone winds an award because a jury of creatives decided that this was the most creative campaign, effort, communication, commercial whatever that thing is-
[00:06:29] Hiromi: Webby?
[00:06:29] Garret: Eh, Webby. But I remember sitting with my colleagues and thinking, "But did the campaign achieve the result?", you know, and I think that's the difference here is Bob was focused on the campaign, achieving the result, getting to the destination. The personal reward, or award for him, and the notoriety as Jaycen's talking about wasn't a concern on the back end, but the result was definitely foremost in his mind. And so then, you go back to, why was he willing to be so flexible? So the result could be achieved, you know. But, it wasn't a personal ego motivation that moved him along.
[00:07:18] Hiromi: Yeah.
[00:07:20] Bob Cormack: I think it was 45 days from when we reached base camp, we were moving stuff up the mountain and setting up camps. I got asked again by accident to go to the summit. I had just gotten over strep throat, and uh, it was up to advanced base and the other people were sick, basically. It was hard to stay healthy when you're camping out for 48 days, you know.
[00:07:42] I knew the camera was really important because we needed the $90,000 those guys had, right? The film crew had these nice lightweight battery-powered 16mm cameras, but they didn't let me have one because they weren't sure it would work up there in the cold. So I got what cameramen in World War II used, a great big thing. Yeah, you know, wind-up and everything. Weighed ten pounds. [laughs]
[00:08:04] So I had that thing hanging on my chest in a harness, I'm like thinking of the Ancient Mariner, you know, an albatross around my neck [inaudible 00:08:12] on the way up. But they figured the IMO camera would work since it worked all the way through World War II, right? So I figured I was carrying 50 pounds, I was carrying two tanks of oxygen that weighed 17 pounds each, that's 34 pounds. I was carrying a 10-pound camera, I had my pack, my clothing, my boots, my ice ax, so it wasn't exactly a lightweight sprint.
[00:08:32] Garret: The point here that he illustrates is that sometimes you don't have access to the equipment you would like, the tools you would like, or maybe even the technology you would like, but the result doesn't fade just because you don't have access to that thing. And so, he illustrates it very well, you know. He takes what he had available, what he could get, and gets the result out of it, in order for the team to be successful. And so, that, that takes a little bit of flexibility, a little bit of humility, he's in a very limited capacity, he's carrying weight, and he needs to do something. So right there, "How do I get it done?" And that's what he did.
[00:09:13] Hiromi: Yeah, you, I mean, there's no doubt that that lighter camera would have made the trek easier, but you can't always control what your circumstance is gonna be. The repeatable pattern there is your determination to use what you have.
[00:09:27] Jaycen: What about the trust factor here? I mean, [laughs] they weren't willing to give him an expensive camera.
[00:09:32] Hiromi: Oh, yeah. That's a good point.
[00:09:34] Jaycen: That's kind of interesting.
[00:09:36] Hiromi: Yeah, because we talked about in previous episodes there were all kinds of social dynamics here that played in, plus they're not being very trusting of him, and he's the guy that has to do all the work, and carry this heavy camera up, and he's still willing to do it for the team.
[00:09:51] Bob Cormack:
[00:09:51] There was enough for three people to go to the summit, but the who's supposed to go with us, the Sherpa, his oxygen equipment cratered the morning we got out of the tent, it had quit working. I worked on that for almost an hour, trying to get the damn thing working again, but never got it working. And he decided he couldn't do it in the soft snow without oxygen. I don't think anybody really has done it in the fall without oxygen. It's just significantly more effort climbing up a 30-degree slope in knee-deep snow than it is just walking up on crampons and ice.
[00:10:25] Jaycen: What is a crampon? Hiromi-
[00:10:25] Hiromi: Yeah.
[00:10:26] Jaycen: I'm searching that. Let's-
[00:10:27] Hiromi: Let's-
[00:10:27] Jaycen: Let's just get the technical definition from Google.
[00:10:30] Hiromi: Let's do it.
[00:10:30] Jaycen: Google, what is a crampon?
[00:10:32] Hiromi: Oh, it looks like one of those... It's like... You see those, the climbers have these... It's like those little-
[00:10:37] Jaycen: It, it looks like a bear trap.
[00:10:39] Hiromi: Yeah, like a bear trap that you strap to your feet? [laughs] It says, "A crampon is traction device is that is attached to footwear to improve mobility on snow and ice during climbing."
[00:10:51] Jaycen: Useful tool. Useful tool. So, anyone out there who wants to climb a mountain-
[00:10:55] Hiromi: Get yourselves-
[00:10:56] Jaycen: ...get yourself a pair of crampons. [laughs]
[00:10:57] Hiromi: [laughs] It ain't [inaudible 00:11:01]
[00:11:00] Garret: Or, for that matter, if you wanna come to a pitch meeting, or be involved in a marketing campaign, they would also help.
[00:11:05] Jaycen: [laughs] Yeah, get your, get your crampons.
[00:11:07] Hiromi: Get your crampons. [laughs]
[00:11:12] Another tag line.
[00:11:13] Bob Cormack: I think we spent about six hours getting to the south summit. We were protected from the wind up to that point. But when we got to the south summit, all the sudden, there's this hundred-mile an hour wind, and it's colder than hell. You hear all the time the south ridge of Everest is a walkup, right? You couldn't see anything downwind, because the wind hits the mountain, and immediately turns into a cloud, so you only can see halfway. It didn't look anything like the lower part of the mountain.
[00:11:41] Chris and I got up there, and all the sudden, there's this gnarly-looking ridge and this huge porticoes and the wind is howling and it's 30 below, and I'm thinking to myself, "What happened to the walkup? This ain't no stinking walkup." And we just stood there for about five minutes watching it, looking at it like, "Shit, we're not gonna get up and back before dark." Finally Chris turns around to me and he says,
[00:12:12] Speaker 6: I think we have the wrong mountain.
[00:12:15] Jaycen: [laughs] Ah, no stinking walkup?
[00:12:15] Garret: "This ain't no stinking walkup." What does that remind me of? "Ain't no stinking walkup"? Is that like a-
[00:12:18] Jaycen: Life? [laughs]
[00:12:23] Hiromi: Oh you cut deep there, Jay. [laughs]
[00:12:25] Jaycen: Ooh. Ouch.
[00:12:28] Garret: I think uh, I think this illustrates reality is not always living up to our expectation, and something's gotta give in that moment, and he's on the side of a mountain, he has to keep going, he thought would be a lot easier, or a lot less dangerous than, than it actually is. So what do you do in that moment?
[00:12:48] Jaycen: I'm changing our tagline officially, "This ain't no stinking walkup." [laughs]
[00:13:26] Bob Cormack: Because
[00:13:34] I never doubted I had the willpower, if I had enough motivation. Uh, if it was just myself, I would have turned around at the south summit. But, since everybody else was depending on me, I pushed on. So we did it in a series of spurts, and then we got to the, Hilary's Step which was solidly covered with snow. You know, it's about 70 feet high, it's about 60 degrees, and uh, the snow wasn't packed hard enough to climb it with crampons. It wouldn't hold you.
[00:14:00] So I just started digging into it, hoping I'd run into rock. So when I got back about four feet, I never ran into rock, but the snow got firm enough to hold my crampons, so I just tunneling upwards like a mole.
[00:14:13] Garret: I think there's something here too, about how sometimes we feel stuck. Sometimes we feel like the result is impossible, but you know, blind, he just starts tunneling and hits something solid, feels something so gets some sort of traction and then keeps moving and it's not stupid if it works, right? Just be willing, be flexible, be adaptable to try something in this moment, in the direction that you want to go, in order to spark a reaction or start a conversation, or move closer to the decision.
[00:14:49] Hiromi: Yeah.
[00:14:51] Bob Cormack:
[00:14:51] I mean, it took 45 minutes maybe to climb that 75 feet. We just tunneled upward, basically like miners. [laughs] Very steep ridge but it was packed hard. And uh, the summit almost came as a surprise. I was so focused on this, doing this thing over and over. You walk up on the summit and you went, "Damn, this is the summit of Everest. Who would of thought I'd ever be here. I never thought I'd ever be here." No one else did either. And then you go, "Jesus, I gotta take some pictures and get the hell out of here." [laughs]
[00:15:38] I told Chris to wait, you know, down about 30 feet, and I got the camera ready, and said, "Okay, I'm rolling, come on up." So he went errrm, and comes chugging up, right? Well, you don't, you don't do sprints up there without paying for it, so he gets up there and he goes, "Shut off the camera!" [laughs] Collaspes, right? "This is funny, I gotta take pictures up here, look."
[00:16:04] I couldn't operate the camera with my mittens on. I'd sewed cord into my mittens and, and so I had a cord around my wrist so I couldn't lose the mittens, right? So I could take them off and let them dangle. And I'd turn my back to the wind, get the camera set up and then I could shoot for about 20 seconds. Then I'd drop the camera, put my mittens on, get feeling back in my hands. I did it about two, three times, got some panoramic shots and stuff like that, that proves we'd made the summit, you know.
[00:16:41] Garret: I love his humility.
[00:16:43] Yeah, I, I think we could all learn from this. And it fuels adaptability, because if you're not so focused on you, and your way of doing things, it's a freedom. That humility is a freedom to pursue any technique, any process, listen to other people, be open to ideas, just to get to the result.
[00:17:02] Jaycen: What an awesome reminder to just stick with it, right? That determination, the endurance, perseverance, and then he's able to recognize the summit, and I love that it came as a surprise in that case.
[00:17:16] Hiromi: Yeah, I like that. It's almost like being immersed in the present invites life to impress you.
[00:17:21] Great. I like that. So, I think what I'm taking away from this segment is that our focus needs to be on the account, not on ourself. Our ego is only gonna slow us down, and I'm also getting the sense that when we feel stuck, our most valuable and versatile asset is going to be our imagination. It's gonna help us to adapt the tools we already have to suit our needs. And finally, if we focus on the task at hand, there's a good chance the summit will come as a surprise.
[00:17:49] Well, it was good to have you with us on this leg of the journey, but we hope you'll consider subscribing and joining us again next time, because at this point, Bob is still a long ways from home.
[00:17:58] Bob Cormack: They lost sight of us at the south summit when it got dark, never occurred to us that they all thought we were dead.
[00:18:04] Hiromi: Where do you go from the highest point on Earth, and how does an experience like that impact your decisions in the future? We've got all that waiting for you, next time, on Reach.
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