When we were at B2BMX in Scottsdale we had a chance to get together with Adam Mincham, VP of B2B for Merkle. We had so much fun getting to know him and hear his story that we filmed a PiAchiever video so you can hear it too. Starting with Adam’s glory days in his Ford Fiesta, and ending with family trips at Legoland, with some B2B stories in between, this video was a fun one – enjoy the show!
Jeff Coveney: We’re here today with Adam Mincham. He is the Vice president of B2B, for Merkle. And if you haven’t heard the news, Digital Pi and Merkle have joined forces and we’re going to go a little bit behind the scenes with Adam and feature him on today’s Pi Achiever.
Adam, you know the format, right?
Adam Mincham: I do.
Jeff Coveney: You’re going to pick the question and then we are going to find out what Adam has to say with a couple of these, ranging from business to personal.
Adam Mincham: Ready to go.
Jeff Coveney: All right.
Adam Mincham: Let’s do it.
Jeff Coveney: Let’s pick one. We’re going to start out with Adam’s first car.
Adam Mincham: All right, so it was a Ford Fiesta, a 1.25 SI, sort of like the sports edition with the four-spoke alloys.
Jeff Coveney: Four spoke alloys.
Adam Mincham: Yeah, man.
Jeff Coveney: All right. You were rocking that one, huh? All right.
Jeff Coveney: Dogs or cats?
Adam Mincham: I mean for me, hands down dogs. I’m an active guy. I like to get out. Dogs are a great excuse to get outside. Big dog, give them a bit of rough and tumble. A lot of fun.
Jeff Coveney: All right, all right. We’re going to go to the career now.
Adam Mincham: Okay.
Jeff Coveney: Favorite part of your job?
Adam Mincham: I think it’s just being part of a great company that is really booming right now. We’ve been on a growth trajectory for the last 10 years. I’ve worked with people that are like-minded. I work with clients that are like-minded. I get to just kind of do what I’ve always wanted to do, literally, what I’ve always wanted to do from when I did business studies in school. I wanted to work in marketing and now I do it. I mean it’s great. I love it.
Jeff Coveney: Yeah. We mentioned for you, you’re pretty instrumental in bringing Digital Pi into the Merkle family. Why Digital Pi?
Adam Mincham: Why? Why not Digital Pi? All right, so Merkle is a data-driven performance marketing agency and everything about us is about how do we get to really performances with our clients. So Digital Pi and the relationship with Marketo and Adobe and we’re super excited. Aside from that, great people, great talent. It’s everything. We love it. Match made in heaven.
Jeff Coveney: Match made in heaven. We can’t wait for what the future holds. All right, let’s keep going here.
Jeff Coveney: So we just went through this together. Digital Pi and Merkle come together. You’ve been through a couple of these now. What do you think is the hardest part of bringing a company into another company?
Adam Mincham: Yeah, I think it’s got to be the stall. When you’re looking at acquiring a company, you do it for a very strategic reason, right? And so you identify the business that you really want to work with. You go through that process, everyone’s excited, and there’s this kind of lag between starting that process and when it finally closes, gets into all the legal stuff, which is, you’ve said in the past…
Jeff Coveney: Oh, you got the lawyers involved. You have the longest paragraphs you could ever have. I don’t know how they learned to write those paragraphs.
Adam Mincham: It’s wonderful, right? It’s wonderful.
Jeff Coveney: All right. This one is for you guys. Adam’s had a tremendous career moving up the ranks within Merkle. He’s now vice president of the B2B division. What recommendations would you have to the audience on how they can achieve success in their own career?
Adam Mincham: I think there are two things I’ve had in my career, pieces of advice I had early on from a mentor. The first one is to have a five-year plan. And connected to that have a five-year plan is if you could be a C level if you could take a C level job, what would it be? Do you want to be a CMO? Start thinking about where do you need to work within an organization to learn how to be a CMO. A CRO, how do you learn about marketing and also sales. And if you want to be a CEO, how do you learn about doing everything in the organization? So kind of having that plan and orchestrating your career to fit that plan. I think that’s a critical one.
Jeff Coveney: All right. So Adam has two young children. How old are they?
Adam Mincham: Four and six. Yeah, that’s right.
Jeff Coveney: Wow. So how do you manage your day with work and family? What’s the work-life balance for you?
Adam Mincham: I mean, I’m pretty fortunate. I do travel a lot, which is an unfortunate part of my family. But when I’m home I get to work from my home office. So for me, it’s being close to the kids on the other side of the door. They usually sneak in during calls and they’ll usually sit on my lap and start looking at things and the minute I go off mute they’ll start saying stuff just to make me feel awkward. But I mean that’s the best thing for me, being able to go and play with my kids, come back in and do some work and be kind of millennial in that sense of mixing my career and my profession with my family. I just love that.
Jeff Coveney: Yeah. Have they ever come in on a call? Can you bring them in on our next call?
Adam Mincham: They’ve come in on a few calls. And I think I’ve been on every single call in the background on some level if anyone’s ever been on a call with me. Yeah, for sure.
Jeff Coveney: Where is your favorite place to go on vacation with your family?
Adam Mincham: Oh, I mean, that’s kind of an easy one actually. Every year now we go to San Diego. It’s a nice, easy trip from Austin. It’s a beautiful place. We take the kids to the beach, do a bit of Legoland, do a bit of the zoo. And second would be, again, close to us, is. Beautiful place.
Jeff Coveney: Yeah. That’s beautiful down there. Well, thanks so much, Adam, for joining us today on Pi Achievers. It’s going to be a great year. Looking forward to it.
Adam Mincham: I certainly am, too.
Jeff Coveney: Yeah. All right, well thanks, guys. Until next time on Pi Achievers.