John Farkas – Collaborative Leadership

John Farkas, founder of Golden Spiral Marketing, tells how his first job working in a hardware store prepared him for a career in marketing. According to John, marketing is largely about helping people find the right tools to get a job done. John talks about how his first career in theater led to the founding of his digital agency. From theater John learned there are many different ways to get an idea across, and how important audience interactions are to communication. John followed his love of theater into production and directing. Theater production led to corporate events which led to building websites for businesses. John is a student of pragmatic marketing and believes "our opinions, while interesting, are irrelevant." The customer has the one opinion that matters. Technologists have to imagine the world in the way it ought to be while building a bridge to where users and customers are today. Marketing tells the story of how and why people should "cross the bridge" to the new way. John tells Tom to create value with his marketing. "If we're going to put a blog out, we better learn something when we write it," says John. “Do research that adds to your own knowledge and then share that new knowledge with your audience,” is John’s advice for content creators. Tom asks John if activity is more important that content quality. John says social media allows us to have fun with marketing, but the end goal of marketing is serious: value creation. Tom asks John what to look for to know that a marketing spend is worth the price. John says product information takes a long time to show any return while valuable information can attract an audience. “You have to have valuable information to give away if you want to succeed in digital marketing,” says John. Tom asks John about running a family business – John’s son is the leader of creative at Golden Spiral. John tells how working with family makes you smarter but requires a lot of discipline around respecting boundaries. Candor is essential for making the relationship work. Finally John talks about differentiation for software products and the importance of how value is delivered when features between products are similar. “If you understand who you are and what you bring, and you understand it extraordinarily well, you’re going to see results.”