Note: This is an AI-generated transcript and may have transcription errors. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Robert Berkeley  0:02  

Thank you for joining us as we embark on our next episode of Inside Jobs, brought to you by IHAF - the leading professional association for in house agencies and Express KCS, the outsource provider that's out there ready to meet the creative production needs of your creative team. Today, we're going to hear from Gary Lancina from Mercury Marine. As you will hear Gary's a man who thinks very deeply about his work. His experiences over the years have given him some unique perspective, as he's worked for both startups as well as huge, long established firms. He's been in the eye of one of the greatest corporate crises ever seen. So, Gary Lancina, welcome to the Inside Jobs podcast, can you can you quickly tell us what you do?

 

Gary Lancina  0:47  

Currently, I'm a senior director in marketing for Mercury Marine in the states. My accountabilities span a variety of areas, including the creative development of all of our marketing content, social media, website, brand presence, advertising, and the relationship with the small group of about 1,800 influencers that we maintain on an annual basis.

 

Robert Berkeley  1:11  

Excellent. Well, welcome to the Inside Jobs podcast, Gary, great to have you with us. Tell us a little bit about Mercury Marine, because I for one, I'm not totally familiar with what they're about.

 

Gary Lancina  1:22  

Mercury is an interesting company founded here in Wisconsin about 80 years ago, and has evolved over time from a very engineering focused business providing engines and other propulsion solutions for recreational boats to a multi billion dollar franchise, that of all things is actually a bit of a lifestyle brand. There are a number of consumers who really appreciate going fast on the water or going fishing or going exploring. And unlike automotive, where the major brands are the end product. In boats, oftentimes, if somebody is inclined, they can actually start building boat holes in their garage. So brands like Mercury that provide the heavy duty power to move those boats and the controls and the rigging that actually are the touch points for a boater when they're out on the water. We tend to be the brands of power and influence. So we have a sizable social media following and a lot of enthusiasts who are advocates for Mercury, over even the boat brand that they happen to be using when they're when they're tooling around on the water.

 

Robert Berkeley  2:29  

Right, so the boat could be anybody. But if the engines Mercury, then you know it's a good one.

 

Gary Lancina  2:34  

Yeah, we have over 200 brands of boatbuilder in the United States alone, and many, many more around the world. But very, very few companies that actually provide the engines in the get up and go, we don't price compete. And we're constantly trying to innovate and improve the experience for our users. And I think the journey that we've been on over the last several years is to increase the emotional relevance for them and tap into that, that fan base for for a variety of reasons.

 

Robert Berkeley  3:01  

Wow. Interesting. So you're make engines but you're a lifestyle brand. That's kind of an interesting, interesting angle, I guess. So anyway, Gary, we want to find out how you got to be doing what you're doing. So let's start at beginning. Are you from Wisconsin originally?

 

Gary Lancina  3:16  

No, I'm, I identify as a left coaster. I grew up in California, the son of a surfer and spent my formative years there before bouncing around spending, 

 

Robert Berkeley  3:28  

You surfing as well? Or, is it just your father? 

 

Gary Lancina  3:30  

I am the world's worst surfer. Let's just put it that way. I think it left him some space for a bit of his own self esteem. I tend to be more athletic and quite a bit larger. I'm about a foot taller than my dad. 

 

Robert Berkeley  3:46  

Okay. And your mom was she was he? Did she like it out on a surfboard too?

 

Gary Lancina  3:51  

Not so much a surfer. She is the one who gave me a green thumb and an advocacy for getting out in the garden and growing things. So between the two of them a lot of time outdoors, though.

 

Robert Berkeley  4:02  

So tell me then you started out trying to or falling off surfboards, but being quite athletic, and what were you what was around you when you were growing up in terms of marketing and advertising and that kind of thing.

 

Gary Lancina  4:14  

Well, I think you know, growing up the the marketing and advertising that I saw I was a cross section of Americana, with with a dash of West Coast. Obviously, growing up in the States, you're very aware of things like McDonald's and Coca Cola, and the bigger sort of very prominent national and now global brands. I think for me in particular, though, I was I was aware of some products and brands that were a little bit off the beaten path for most consumers. So whether it was O'Neill wetsuits, or the hang 10 apparel brand, but some of those surfing lifestyle brands, actually were very common for me. And then I think the the third sort of tangent that that intersected me was Volkswagen. I grew up in a household with both a VW Beetle And the VW bus.

 

Robert Berkeley  5:01  

So it's a bit were you drawn towards kind of marketing advertising from from an early early age? Or were you did you have artistic ambitions, or?

 

Gary Lancina  5:09  

not at all, I actually, if you go back into my teen years, I probably would have told you, I'd end up as a marine biologist, actually tried to get myself on to a Greenpeace boat as a teenager, very much active in the conservation space. But once I hit once I hit college, I realized that marine biology, interfered with my athletics. And so I made a decision to explore some other options. Still, marketing was way off the radar, I thought, if anything, I might end up working in government or maybe going into the Foreign Service. 

 

Robert Berkeley  5:44  

Oh, okay, interesting. And where were you learn German, didn't you?

 

Gary Lancina  5:49  

At 17, I actually moved out of home and moved to Germany, where I went to school for a bit and played for a basketball club. And then that precipitated about an eight year period where I bounced back and forth between the US and Europe on almost an annual basis. And in the interim, I had gotten married, had a child. And, you know, I ended up getting into business, largely, because, in looking at my previously thought of career paths, none of them was very lucrative, and with a family to support, I actually pursued an MBA, got that. And my spouse at the time, wanted to go to graduate school here in Wisconsin. So I signed up for the the two or three year commitment, and I've been here ever since 1992.

 

Robert Berkeley  6:35  

So often happens. So you swapped no weather for weather, I suppose.

 

Gary Lancina  6:40  

Yes. moved here. And, you know, my first real marketing position was a line manager job with a company called Kohler, another company that runs an in house agency and a blended model where they have an external agency of record for some work, at the time, that was Grey Advertising, but cut my teeth and product management and marketing there which-

 

Robert Berkeley  7:04  

How come you plumped for that then you had these ambitions you have these languages in because I think you also speak French, is that right?

 

Gary Lancina  7:10  

I speak a little French, speak German fluently, speak some Italian, went to graduate school, partially in Italy, and even took some Chinese at one point.

 

Robert Berkeley  7:20  

So armed with all of that rather impressive array of languages, and armed with the you know, the aspiration to be in the Foreign Service, or whatever you want. What drew you to marketing then?

 

Gary Lancina  7:28  

Well, in in the course of business studies, that the marketing courses were the ones that seem to me the most intellectually stimulating, and required the most agility in terms of intellect, and energy. The thing that I have very much appreciated in my career, and it all really started during that MBA program, was the fact that to succeed in marketing requires an ability to shift and be deadly in the language and practices of other functions to a sufficient point to coordinate them, you know, my view of marketing really rests on the belief that it's all about establishing and nurturing relationships, which is a very simple, top level definition. But underneath that, is the coordination of everything from operational efficiency of the organization, and an appreciation of the financial returns, and then the emotional inclinations of those we serve, and trying to blend all of that and coordinate it.

 

Robert Berkeley  8:27  

So with all that in theory that you learned from, from grad school, how did that actually manifest itself early on in your career? Did you really see those things happening, but they were they for real?

 

Gary Lancina  8:37  

Well, you know, I think it was, it was great to go to a place like Kohler. I mean, it's a company that's a privately held firm been in existence for over 150 years. And, surprisingly, put a lot of emphasis on brand and on relationship, you know, as a young 20, something working as an assistant, you know, Product Manager, that was a good place to be and to kind of soak up the Gestalt of, of what was going on. And be able to observe how those with more seasoning in that environment actually blended the engineering and the industrial design and the image to create something that consumers really wanted.

 

Robert Berkeley  9:15  

It made you think that it was normal to have an in house agency as well?

 

Gary Lancina  9:19  

Absolutely. I actually, it wasn't, you know, at that time, I wasn't cognizant of the, the explicit choice. But I did recognize and I still talk to this day with a colleague, whom I met there who now works at an external agency in a senior role. We still talk about some of the thought process behind it and why Kohler did what it did. And you know what was what was interesting is here's a company that was built up in rural Wisconsin had to import skilled laborers from from Europe actually built a dormitory that's now a five diamond resort, but built a dormitory across from the factory for these workers. And even as the brand and the company evolved over time, by the middle of the 20th century, it became apparent that they had a sizable business, and a very difficult time accessing talent in places like Chicago or New York, so you know, for fans of Mad Men, right, it's, it's glamorous to sort of look back and and I think, you know, buff off the rough patches of how things were handled in the 1950s and 1960s in the US. For Kohler, a brand that really wanted to present itself as something that was working towards a higher ideal of what one's home environment could be and to get beyond just being viewed as a toilet company, they struggled to maintain the relationships because you know, people didn't want to travel to small town, Wisconsin. And what they were able to do over time was actually establish their own talent pool and offer some very attractive lifestyle options for for people who were in the space. And also then do two things, one, maintain control over their, their brand and their communications. Because if you go back with a really long view, there's always been a little bit of tug of war, on accountability for brand position and presentation to the market between the agency and the folks at a client. And having the in house agency, you establish a fairly strong alignment on what it is that we're trying to get across. And then the second part is, they really took down the level of churn within the the team. So you had people over time who cultivated a history and an awareness and appreciation of the evolution of the brand.

 

Robert Berkeley  11:41  

So when you go forward to say Rand McNally and Redbox, are you in environments there where they already have existing in house agencies?

 

Gary Lancina  11:47  

No, no, no, no. Rand, we did have a design department, we did have a creative department, but they spent the majority of their time on product design. And being a publishing house, they were focused on, you know, either atlases or academic books, and we utilize them to an extent for our advertising or other marketing communications. So I think the model there was a good one. But Rand was a very small company at that point. Redbox, on the other hand, when I started there, was a small startup. Our agency quote unquote, was two freelancers, a copywriter and a creative director on the outside, and, and then I kind of filled the role of everything else in the agency space from negotiating media buys to providing direction on the creative and strategy.

 

Robert Berkeley  12:43  

So then we move to your rather interesting time at BP, correct?

 

Gary Lancina  12:48  

Correct. I showed up there at a very lively time, about eight weeks before we blew something up in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Robert Berkeley  12:57  

I like the we, the collective we there, I'm not sure that you could really account for responsibility on that Gary could you?

 

Gary Lancina  13:02  

You know, it's, I will say this about BP from a cultural standpoint, the organization rallied in the face of that occurrence. A third of my team deployed down to the Gulf states here in the US, I had a fuels product manager who did community relations for an extended period in a parish in New Orleans, but BP was a step back into a larger, much more complex organizational environment and a different stage in maturity. And, you know, going in, I already thought it was going to be a learning experience to get into business at that scale. The particular business unit that we had the consumer fuels business in the US was probably a 25 to $30 billion a year revenue generator, which made it a fairly small part of BP, but a much more sizable business, then I'd worked on previously. And then obviously, we had the Macondo incident. And you know that that added a very steep curve.

 

Robert Berkeley  14:01  

And again, you were you were more sort of marketing related rather than sort of agency creative, that kind of thing, or or was it was it both?

 

Gary Lancina  14:09  

So my, my original role at BP included what we called consumer offers, which was fuels product management, your experience at BP, gas stations, etc., customer offers, so working with our distributors and dealers, consumer insights, customer insights, and I set up a data analytics team. And then during the course of my time there, I did take over marketing communications as well. So at that point, the presentation through advertising and other comms to the market, coordinated very closely with our loyalty card program and piloted, which was eventually scaled up a new field marketing effort to support retail execution.

 

Robert Berkeley  14:54  

So, so you were you were very much kind of entrenched in the marketing side of things. So you started out with the in house agency, and you move more and more into being a marketer, you know, with various disciplines along the way. And that took you to, well, it was around December 2014, when you left BP the end of 2014.

 

Gary Lancina  15:11  

 Correct. 

 

Robert Berkeley  15:13  

And then you would I think, doing some consulting before you joined Mercury, yeah? 

 

Gary Lancina  15:17  

Yes. 

 

Robert Berkeley  15:18  

So tell us about how that came about and what was on offer Mercury and what you found when you got there.

 

Gary Lancina  15:24  

A friend of mine had taken a role as the Chief Marketing Officer at Mercury Marine, and called me up for some referrals as she looked to restructure her team. And and on the personal-

 

Robert Berkeley  15:36  

she said "do you know anyone who might be really, really good to lead the in house agency" and you looked thoughtfully and wistful for a moment and said, "I may have just the person." Is that what happened?

 

Gary Lancina  15:46  

That's pretty close. I actually was looking to take myself off the road, I am a single dad, I have two--I have twins, and I found out that my son was keeping a journal to track me on my consulting travels. And that was a signal that maybe my lifestyle wasn't quite alive.

 

Robert Berkeley  16:06  

Did he have a company photograph so that you could be recognized when you appeared as well?

 

Gary Lancina  16:10  

He actually did keep a photo on his nightstand.

 

Robert Berkeley  16:13  

If you seen his man, let me know I'd like to see--

 

Gary Lancina  16:16  

Exactly. The elusive and seldom seen father like figure, so--

 

Robert Berkeley  16:22  

 How old are you twins, then?

 

Gary Lancina  16:23  

They are now 16. 

 

Robert Berkeley  16:25  

Okay, 

 

Gary Lancina  16:26  

So they were you know, he was probably 11 at the time. And, and I just decided, Okay, I have to make a change and the the serendipity of my friend calling. Through the course of a couple of quick chats, I just said, you know, what if I threw my name in the ring for for this role, and there was a little bit of surprised silence on the other end. And it it resulted in me sort of convincing her that yes, this would be a good thing. I'm not looking--

 

Robert Berkeley  16:52  

Was it the surprised silence because they felt they couldn't afford you or because they thought you couldn't do the job?

 

Gary Lancina  16:55  

her, her, her actual response was, you're more qualified for my job than for the role that you would be applying for. And I said, just, you know, let's, let's leave that debate to the side. And just understand that I think this would work for me. And it would solve some things on the personal side of things and create some some very good professional challenges, because at that time, Mercury's in house creative team was essentially two very dedicated individuals who were scrambling to provide support across all kinds of activities, and there was still agency of record, as well.

 

Robert Berkeley  17:32  

So there was a remit to to expand their own capability and to dispense with the external or or not? 

 

Gary Lancina  17:32  

Coming in, I think there was an open question about it. So for the first two years that I was at Mercury, I spent a lot of time working with the agency of record. And I think we had a very successful blended approach, leveraging in house creative and the sort of awareness and legacy capabilities of that team, with the fresh perspective, honestly, from from the outside agency, but but after a couple of years, what started to happen was an evolution in thinking, and also an evolution and of the activity set in such a way that similar to what Kohler had dealt with, we found ourselves dealing with churn on the agency side, whether on the account side or the creative side, we found ourselves managing a portfolio of agencies that was a little bit unwieldy. We had a digital agency of record, we had a media agency of record, we had a creative agency of record, and we had our in house crew. And stepping back from that, it became apparent that we could actually evolve our own capabilities and take on a few of those other accountabilities and do it both more, I think, efficiently, but also without any compromise in terms of the quality of work.

 

Robert Berkeley  18:52  

Okay. All right. So, the, was there a need, therefore, to kind of sketch something out, but make a strategic plan and then execute on that plan to build something? Or was it, was it an incremental? 

 

Gary Lancina  19:04  

No, we we actually tried to be we tried to be very thoughtful about it. And, and, you know, I would put a plug in here for the IHAF because I found I found the organization and, and signed us up for it. I think, you know, credibly we had an in house creative group. But I was able to make use of the resources and the connections within the forum to to actually inform our strategy going forward.

 

Robert Berkeley  19:34  

So so just just as a stare for listeners, what particularly did you did you find useful from IHAF's resources then?

 

Gary Lancina  19:42  

Obviously, they have a catalogue of studies and white papers, and a lot of templates that provide at least starter, grist for the mill so to speak on any organization's contemplations of how we might structure something, how do we think about the world roles and accountabilities? Are we actually ready to act as an agency internally? Or are we kind of in Fantasyland and, you know, I had the benefit of having worked in environments where I was already managing in house creative, and had had an appreciation for things like process, or the trafficking of work, or, you know, the less sexy stuff, because a lot of people, I think, look at agencies, and what they see is the creative output, but they don't think about the operation side of it, or the account management aspects of even having discussions cross functionally, internally, going to a product development group and, and getting the right information out of them to help with the creative process. And IHAF aided us with both the materials in that space, and then also the interpersonal activities, you know, going to a workshop at Wilson Sporting Goods headquarters in Chicago, meeting other-- 

 

Robert Berkeley  21:01  

Where we met, as I recall.

 

Gary Lancina  21:02  

Where we met, right, and then being able to follow up one on one or even use some of the the forums, people to broker a couple of conversations, it added credibility to the proposal that we eventually made, and I think, made a fundamental difference in the quality of our structure and our view forward.

 

Robert Berkeley  21:23  

Tell us you started when you got there about they told us that they were two people there and you worked with an external agency, what do they look like right now then?

 

Gary Lancina  21:31  

Well, I think right now, if you look at the the pure creatives, we've got five, five people who are dedicated to the content generation, we've got now programming project management professionals in place. So we've got a much more established and rigorous process. We've got--

 

Robert Berkeley  21:51  

Which the marketers understand, could they?

 

Gary Lancina  21:53  

Which the marketers understand and the product managers understand. You know, we we actually have been very good about outreach and communication. And, and have been able to, to now quantify and track deliverables and the effectiveness of our process and to show the timeliness of what we're delivering, and then match that up with the analytics group in terms of when we put this creative out there. How is that actually working? Are we improving things?

 

Robert Berkeley  22:22  

And does that all come under you as well, the, you're seeing the whole loop. So when you're reporting into marketing, you can tell them the whole story that we ran this campaign, and we found that by doing this, it had better results? And by doing that, that kind of thing?

 

Gary Lancina  22:34  

Yes, I, I would say, you know, my remit within Mercury is, is fairly broad. So, whether it's influencer relationships, brand strategy, the creative process--

 

Robert Berkeley  22:48  

product strategy as well?

 

Gary Lancina  22:48  

Not so much product strategy. So the the division of labor within Mercury, we have a product engineering group, with several 100 engineers on staff, we have a product management group called category what we do is work with them on the reasons underneath the the the product development, what what is it about this bit of software or this bit of hardware, that is beneficial to the to the consumer to the boater? What is it that distinguishes it? What kind of competitive claims might we have, etc. And those are all ingredients that then go into the the positioning of it and its articulation to the market. 

 

Robert Berkeley  23:26  

But, you mentioned earlier on communications, and recently we are we we we are midway possibly through the coronavirus pandemic, and that has changed our ways of working around the world, and that includes Wisconsin. When communications is so important internally in a company like yours. How has that changed? And how have you managed to maintain that if indeed you have?

 

Gary Lancina  23:51  

It's changed fundamentally, I mean, the the the informality that was so common in a common office environment. And and by the way, I think it's an under addressed or recognized aspect of in house agencies. The the difference between being able to just sort of stand up and walk down a hallway and talk to your client at any moment in time is is something of tremendous value, and, and facilitates the creative process and better quality of output.

 

Robert Berkeley  24:22  

Does that mean to say that the working from home actually means that an in house agency starts to become more like an agency? 

 

Gary Lancina  24:29  

I think, in in a couple of behaviors, yes. Because the the challenge with a dispersed workgroup is that we have to put effort into social interaction. It's you know, we're all physically isolated. So and you know, you could argue that getting out of your desk and walking some places effort as well, but the inadvertent bumping into someone in the cafe or while transitioning between meetings, those those little bits of hallway conversation or casual interaction turned into meaningful and productive chats, decisions, thought starters, etc. And when we're all physically isolated, we have to, we have to put a little effort into it and actually think I'd like to connect with John Doe. And so what we've tried to do is take the friction out of those interactions by establishing a a lot of frequent touches that may not have a specific business purpose to them, but still maintain the awareness of, you know, the know who they goes with the know how.

 

Robert Berkeley  25:38  

So have, so have you found this successful? And can you be a little more specific about what you've done there, then?

 

Gary Lancina  25:43  

Sure, sure, I think yes, yes we have found it successful, I was actually tracking the the number of deliverables out of our creative team in May of this year versus May of last year. And we've actually had a triple digit increase in the number of deliverables that we put out without an equality drop off. And I and i think that's partially because of the added activity set around a crisis response. But it's also testament to the fact that the team has found ways to use technology to create group chat opportunities to do online creative sharing, to utilize digital whiteboards. I think the other aspect that has been good is instead of doing a morning walk around to touch base with team members, I'm kind of noted for giving people high fives and checking in every morning. I, I can't do management by walking around now. So group chats and sharing of little bits of content and some conversation about current events or what's happening with the weather that all seem somewhat extraneous are proxies for that relationship building. And they again, facilitate a sense of familiarity and comfort history is rife with the flaming fireball email that shouldn't have been sent. What I have found is the stress and the tension that goes along with a crisis response added into remote work for some people causes them to have almost a shorter fuse on the unpleasant or rude or very direct kind of typed messages. And particularly when they those things fly across the border or the boundary into a culture that is high trust and very supportive.

 

Robert Berkeley  25:44  

I find that a very shrewd observation actually. Now you mentioned it this is this is actually what does go on even before lockdown and COVID and all that that the the the inappropriate reaction to an email statement, one liner that can result in, as you put it the fireball it may not have been dispatched as a fireball. But the the reading of it and interpreting it that way. You're right. It can't generally come some people who are outside their group of people to do it. If that that internally went, they'd all be standing behind it and saying, Well, I don't see a problem. But yeah, I i never looked at it that way. But you think the current situation has exacerbated that simply because there's a lot more of that nonverbal communication going on.

 

Gary Lancina  28:11  

And there's no there's often no way to check in or see the body language. Again, in an office environment, someone might pop up and say, Well, this is odd, and they walk down and talk to somebody and here, it it more often turns into a direct written reply. And it's easy to see how that those slight misinterpretations build on one another. There's a thing in engineering called tolerance stack up if you have 10 components. And they all are just slightly out of spec. By the 10th. One, you have a real problem.

 

Robert Berkeley  28:42  

Well, I i think, Gary, that we could talk about this for hours, because this is a very hot topic right now. But I think some of your observations, and we're going to have to stop right there, unfortunately. But those observations, I think, are very, very appropriate at the moment. And I think a lot of people are going through this, this kind of                   re-examination of management and and how to adapt to this new world. Do you see the future continuing to be working remotely a lot of the time? Or do you think that the Mercury Marine will be going back into the office as soon as they're able safely to do so when and go back in the old way?

 

Gary Lancina  29:18  

Well, I think that I think the key there is safely to do so. And that's a real unknown right now. So my team, we we are planning to be out of the office until at least September. And then I think what has what has occurred, broadly, and and I would suspect this applies across many industries is there's a newfound appreciation for how productive people can be in remote circumstances. And as soon as the account of the world realize that they're going to take a hard look at the amount of structure required physical space and the cost that sunk into maintaining and operating that, in my sense is that we'll see more flexibility, more fluidity, and in some different definitions of what a workplace actually looks like, that's probably going to be...

 

Robert Berkeley  30:07  

Ah...you talked about early, much earlier on you were talking about in Wisconsin, the availability of skills and the availability of so on. And we have very quickly moved to a world where I've seen ads for in house agencies advertising, creative directors, and it simply says, don't care where you are.

 

Gary Lancina  30:22  

Yep.

 

Robert Berkeley  30:23  

You know, for a company like mine, that you know, where I'm my workforce is global. Again, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's sort of a very appropriate mindset, too. Do you see that happening more and more that you might recruit the right person, regardless of geography rather than geography being a requirement.

 

Gary Lancina  30:41  

Sure, actually have a first person example of that, you know, before the pandemic response, kicked into action, we were in the process of recruiting a replacement for a member of the team who will be retiring. And that got put in a holding pattern. At the time that we were recruiting, we had narrowed down to a couple of candidates. Our our preferred candidate was someone who was very open about his inclination to stay in a different part of the US. And that was a real issue for some of the more senior members of management. So, we go on a hiring freeze, we delay things. Well, the retirement of the team member is now imminent, so we were able to reopen the position. Lead candidates still interested in the position, we got to the point of wanting to make an offer, the circumstances were the same, but the the inclination of our senior management, the aversion to bringing someone on regardless of location, had if not evaporated, become much less sensitive and much less important for them. And and again, I think that's, that's something that will probably continue to happen.

 

Robert Berkeley  31:45  

Do you, do you have any hobbies on the side or is parenting and work that take up all your time?

 

Gary Lancina  31:49  

Well, I I parenting is a is a great thing. And my kids are of an age now where we have we have a lot of music in the house. So there are multiple guitars out a piano in the living room. There's always somebody playing something or making beautiful noises. So, that's a... that's definitely an area of activity that I appreciate.

 

Robert Berkeley  32:09  

Do you play guitar as well?

 

Gary Lancina  32:10  

I've played guitar since I was 13 years old. In fact, my first guitar is sitting on a stand about 15 feet from here.

 

Robert Berkeley  32:17  

Gary, if anyone wants to contact you to follow up on any of the issues that you've discussed and raised your insights, you clearly give everything you do a massive amount of thought. How is the... What's the best way for them to do that? Are you a big social media fiend or email or

 

Gary Lancina  32:32  

I'm ah... I'm a very active social media person in in terms of monitoring and direct personal communications. My LinkedIn account is easy to find. I'm the only Gary Lancina on the world in the world. So ah somebody wants to connect through that they are more than welcome to and if they refer to this podcast, it just makes it that much easier to identify them and get an immediate response.

 

Robert Berkeley  32:57  

Absolutely. Gary, thanks so much for your time on the Inside Jobs podcast.

 

Gary Lancina  33:01  

Thank you so much for the opportunity. This was fun, and stay well and stay healthy.

 

Robert Berkeley  33:06  

Thanks so much to Gary at Mercury Marine for joining us on Inside Jobs. And if you thought to yourself, here is a man with a voice for radio, you're not wrong, as he actually did spend his formative years hosting various shows in Southern California and elsewhere, including, it won't surprise you to learn a late night show. I particularly enjoyed hearing about his time at BP and how that shaped his respect for how a corporation's leadership can pull everyone together when faced by dire adversity. I also want to thank our fabulous partners IHAF, specifically Emily Foster, and my producer Prateek Shrivastava for making all of these things happen. Also, to the Express KCS AV squad for handling the podcast editing, I can tell you, I don't make it easy for them. If you've not heard my podcast before, then a very warm welcome! You can also sign up to my very intimate and Inside Jobs newsletter, and I try and reply to any email we get, also, anything via LinkedIn, too. So, please do keep the feedback coming. And also please do yourself and me a favor, get onto iTunes, and post a comment. Obviously a good one and a review. And you'll be doing your friends a favor if you recommend Inside Jobs for them, too. Anyway, I want to say goodbye, Au revoir, À la prochaine as they say in France.