Maury Shenk on The Sales Scoop, Founder @ PlaylistBuilder

Automated Transcript

Alastair Cole 0:04

Hello, good afternoon and welcome to ‘The Sales Scoop’. This is a weekly live show for the founders and senior leaders of technology businesses who want to accelerate how they sell. My name is Alastair Cole I'm a computer scientist and a software engineer with two decades experience in sales and marketing, and I'm delighted to say that my guest today on the sales scoop is Maury Schenk, good afternoon. Maury, fantastic to have you here on the show. Hello.

Maury Shenk 0:37

Hello, Alastair, it's great to be here. Well,

Alastair Cole 0:41

Thank you very much for making the time. We appreciate it enormously. You are a fascinating guest for me because of your experience. Maury across numerous businesses. You know, you've worked as a top tier law partner. You're at Harvard and Stanford educated. You're a visionary educator and an entrepreneur and innovator in the tech space, and I think that is one of the things that group is really interesting for me, because I'm sure you have some very unique, special learnings in the world of sales. Before we dive into your sales scoop, the number one thing you'd like to bring to our audience. Can you tell us a little bit about you, your rich journey and your story so far?

Maury Shenk 1:29

Well, thanks for your very kind words. Alastair, I've done a few things, so I won't, I won't take time to talk about them all, but I spent the first half of my career as a law firm, lawyer and like that, but wanted to do a few other things, and I've been an entrepreneur, Director, investor for the last 15 to 20 years. Right now, I'm spending a lot of time building a business called playlist builder, which is a learning business. It uses AI to recommend YouTube videos. And YouTube is the largest collection of learning content, video learning, video content, in the world. So we use AI to recommend YouTube videos on any topic.

Alastair Cole 2:16

Yeah. I mean, video learning is, you know, absolutely massive at the moment. And you know, we're, we're live on video right now. And I know that you're a big fan of building in public right from having spent some time with you and watched your shows, we kind of feel like we're doing it now. Is this a debut for you? Live on LinkedIn. Mari,

Maury Shenk 2:37

live on LinkedIn. This is my first time. I've done a ton of podcasts. So I used to be on a show called The Cyber law podcast, maybe 40 or 50 times so, and I speak live all the time, but live on LinkedIn. This is, you know, this is it. Well,

Alastair Cole 2:54

It's great that we're able to break new ground. And I've heard you say recently, just talk about how complex education is, right, the complexity, the many variables right and and how it's considerably more complex and manufacturing. You know, you've got a lot of experience in the educational sector with learner shape and now a playlist builder, what? What are your thoughts on, on, on, on what video can do what video learning does for students that other mediums can't.

Maury Shenk 3:26

I recently wrote a blog about this. I mean, video learning is not new. I used to get excited in elementary school when they would show a film or even a film strip. It was interesting. And video learning really has taken off in the last 20 years, even in 2008 people thought it was going to take over with MOOCs, massively open online courses, and they, you know, it didn't quite take over the world like people predicted. And now people are even starting to move past it a little bit with generated content rather than individually prepared videos. But I believe that AI is an opportunity for video learning to continue to play a really big role in education, particularly through curation. You know, because there's so much video out there, let's find let's help people sort through this overwhelming quantity of content and find the best content.

Alastair Cole 4:24

Yeah, I did some digging before the show, and I think I opened my Gmail account in 2006 and I remember hearing about it at a party and getting an invite from somebody. And I think that was really when I dipped my toe into the Google world. No, I really never left and obviously watched YouTube arrive, seeing the massive content being. I've been part of huge creative global agencies where we've leveraged that technology and now in our work helping other businesses, you know, we've, we've, we've spent a lot of time investing in you. Micro learning, video short, just in time, learning to top you up. And so we're big, big fans of different routes into video learning. You know, you talked about the promise of AI there for video learning. What? What do you hope for? You know, what is the potential for the future when it comes to, you know, the immediate and kind of next generation of how video learning can help, what's coming around the corner?

Maury Shenk 5:29

Well, you know, it's curation, like I said, picking the best video learning, and it's also generational. Generation isn't what we do, but it's what some of the some of the cutting edge AI models are getting pretty good at generating video. I mean, they can definitely generate an avatar, very persuasively, reading a prepared text, but generating a whole story and video is something that's coming. It's not very good yet, but people are making progress, and I think there will be innovations that we don't expect yet. You know, we're in the early days of AI. People are very excited about the things they see chat GPT doing and and the other competitors for chat GPT like and so forth. But there are so many things you can build on top of that, agents are people who are very recently getting excited about programs that go out there and do things when you maybe find videos, for example, or create videos, or whatever, there's a lot to play for. It's a very exciting time to be in the tech industry at the moment.

Alastair Cole 6:38

Okay, so, so if you pick up on your curation point, right? What? What? What for people in education, what is the benefit of using playlist builder? How do you make curation easier for them?

Maury Shenk 6:52

Well, you too. You know, we have some tech at learner shape, which is the company that created playlist builder that can recommend a video or content from any source. We decided to build a really simple app focused on YouTube, because YouTube is by far the largest repository of video content on almost any topic. YouTube has, they don't tell you how many, but we think about 15 billion plus videos, and so finding the right videos in that is difficult. You could do it with the YouTube app. They have a search function, but they will tell you themselves. You know that curation isn't their priority. There's, I've got a great quote from Seth Godin, who says, YouTube doesn't do curation. They let the crowd do it for them, and so we provide a set of tools that allow you to search those videos in a more targeted way. And we're working with Google, with YouTube on that. People like us make it easier and better to use their services.

Alastair Cole 8:06

Yeah, and so I guess there's, there's a benefit in terms of time and quality of playlists that can be created for educators. And you know, what feedback are you getting from students about the results of Playlist builder. Are those playlists going down? Well, are they reaching places or able to surface onto something that hasn't happened before. What's the feedback from end users?

Maury Shenk 8:34

Well, users are telling us that it does a very good job of finding the right content. The playlist builder does an excellent job of finding the right content. Some searches are better than others. We're constantly and this is one thing that focuses on curation and search is really interesting because that's our primary focus. And we can keep making it better. We can give you, you know, at the moment, you can restrict it in terms of the length of the video. We're going to allow you to restrict it in terms of the date of the video and provide recent updates. And so people are telling us, well, these are really useful features to have and create. You know, a part of it, it's a really simple tool. I'm a really big believer in building simple tools that people find their own uses for so we're hearing lots of different uses that people are putting this to.

Alastair Cole 9:26

Yeah, and like you say, this is a very exciting time. You know, there's so much data out there. Like you said, I mean, YouTube was always cited for me in the agency world time as kind of the second biggest search engine just because of the sheer volume of content and the number of people that are in there. So it's a very exciting time for AI to be sitting on top of this data and using it for curation. I've used a playlist builder. It's super simple. It's unbelievably quick. You know, I searched for philosophy, which is a favorite topic of mine, and got phenomenal videos back really intelligently, if anybody watching or listening is interested. It is checking out. They can head over to Playlist builder.ai. And you know, talking about bringing high quality content, let's move or it at the right moment, in the right in the right at the right time, in the right way. Let's, let's get on to your sales scoop, the number one thing that you've learned, or you'd like to pass on to our audience from your varied and successful career. What? What is that that that one area of x, that one, that one sales keep, like to bring you almost,

Maury Shenk 10:31

you almost took the hat there. Alastair, yeah, the thing I'd like to talk about is expertise. That expertise is a really good way to sell when, and this is something that I learned as a law firm partner, is that if you can convince people that you really know what you're talking about, and may and convince them before they buy, perhaps convince them, very likely, convince them for free, by giving them something for free, that they can show that you really know what you're doing. That is a tremendously effective way to sell. That's the way that I did 80, 90% of my selling as a law firm lawyer. Now, I've been an entrepreneur for more than 15 years, and built a number of businesses. That's not quite as obvious in So, for example, what we're doing with playlist builder. But I think, and we've discussed this a little bit, that there's a rather powerful insight there, that as a tech business, showing people that you've got the tech, particularly in the AI world, to do something really well that you have the expertise, either from knowledge or data or tech, to deliver something great and showing them that is a tremendously effective way to sell.

Alastair Cole 11:54

Yeah, and you know, so much easier said than done when I picture myself, kind of demonstrating myself as an expert, you know, it's, it's, you know, ideally, in front of someone in real life. But it might be virtual these days. Obviously it's online too, but it's that kind of moment with another human being, or another group of human beings, where you're having to kind of deliver in real time. It's kind of, you know, it's quite fun and exciting, but I know that there's so much that happens before and after, but before we get into that kind of timeline of how you get into that place, what are your thoughts on, you know, is this a, is this a one time thing, demonstrating expertise, or do you have to keep demonstrating expertise to potential buyers and clients, and if so, then, then how often? How many to how often do you have to do that? Well,

Maury Shenk 12:49

I think it's kind of a way of life, you know? I mean, I don't know that there's a timetable on which you have to do it. And as you know, well, Alastair is an experienced salesperson. You don't sell to everybody. You sell to the people who are interested. And you look for those opportunities to demonstrate expertise. And that can be through content creation. It can be in one to one meetings. It can be through the product you deliver. There are lots of ways. So I think it's the other. The flip side of expertise is interest. You know, if you're interested in something, and you talk about the timeline, to become an expert, you have to spend a lot of time learning about the thing, and so it helps a ton if you're interested. I'll drop in. My very favorite quote is from an American theologian called Howard Thurman, that I heard first from Oprah Winfrey when she spoke at my 25th 25 year college reunion at Harvard, and she said this quote, don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people to come alive. So if you're if something makes you come alive, you end up doing a great job at it, and that's a part of developing and showing expertise,

Alastair Cole 14:06

Yeah, and I feel like in those moments where you're where you are when you show that expertise as a salesperson, or in a sales role, in a sales mode, say, right, as a business person, when, when you're able to demonstrate that something happens to the other people. You know, something happens to the buyer. You see, there's a flash of recognition, or a moment where you feel like you've hooked them, or you've closed them, or whatever. And that is a real, that is a real, that's a real rush. How do you stop yourself being, you know, bringing your expertise? Do you bring it in all areas of life, or how do you disconnect? And when is the right time to like, not to sit back and not demonstrate expertise?

Maury Shenk 14:51

Well, let's see. I mean, there's, there are times I used to say, when I was a lawyer, that you know the legal way of thinking, which is like, break a problem and. Pieces and apply a piece teacher a rule to each piece. It is really good for the law, but it's terrible for things like relationships. So I try not to be an expert with my wife or my daughter, except maybe when I'm teaching her at school, but, but I think, you know, I in terms of business, I think that there, you know, there's a role for expertise to show to get people hooked in the sales process. Then there's a certain mechanization to it, which you're an expert at. I would say Alastair more than I do and buy the nuts and bolts of marketing. I don't think so. I don't think you have to constantly be showing expertise there. You have to get yourself in front of people. You have to give them a product that works. So expertise alone is certainly not enough to deliver a successful product. So you have to do, I wouldn't say you stop being an expert, but there's lots of other things to a successful business, besides expertise,

Alastair Cole 16:03

yes, and I mean, I remember doing research in an agency role and digging into the word experiment to understand because we were, I was working in an innovation role, we were trying new things. And I did some research into that word, and actually found out that it came from the Latin word expirer, which is to try, from which experience comes. And I found out at the time that the word expert was the past participle of that, right? And if you've done it, basically, if you tried stuff and experienced it and done things, then you did become you. We could become experts, right? But, and you know, Malcolm Gladwell talked a lot about 10,000 hours right in his famous tipping point book. And obviously you have to put the groundwork in, right? And that's where you've been, you know, successful in the law for so many years. What a lot of the people on the call, our audiences, you know, technology founders like you, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've spanned different kinds of careers. And I know, because I felt like this was a bit of imposter syndrome when I switched. And so, have you got any, you know, have you got any tips about how do you, you know, how do you go about it from a human point of view, you know, moving from a law into entrepreneurship, how did you build expertise in a kind of a new in a new world? How'd you do that

Maury Shenk 17:25

So well, I think there's a lot I have to say about this. But, you know, it starts with leveraging what you have. So when I moved into entrepreneurship, it started in the areas that I knew I didn't immediately find a company. I spent quite a few years helping companies, technology companies, in areas that I knew, investing in them, seeing what process, seeing from an investor or a director perspective, what things these companies would go through, and in the in the specific space I'm in ed tech with playlist builder, Ed Tech and AI, I spent a lot of time learning before I tried to find a company. I had been I also have a role as a senior executive, very fast growing unicorn ed tech company called people cert, and I had been with them six, seven years before I founded playlist builder, I'd also taken courses in AI, and so I knew quite a lot about it. When we looked at this particular idea of helping use AI to improve the education market, I, with co-founders, spent more than a year researching and building before we started the company. So it's not an easy thing to start a company. I mean, you really have to know the area playlist builder is still, you know, in relatively early days, and we, we believe in it, but there's a lot to do and still a lot to learn. Yeah,

Alastair Cole 19:03

Thank you. And then, you know, in terms of the before, during after, kind of bringing that expertise to either push a deal along, or, you know, convince a client of something. Obviously, there's hours and years and decades in some cases, of the kind of research that goes in an effort to build that career. But then when that sales opportunity is there, that new business opportunity is there, it's then a curation job. Right to pick what is the right thing? How much work do you do before going into the room with a potential buyer, in order that you're able to bring relevant expertise for them. How much prep work do you do? And what's the importance of that?

Maury Shenk 19:46

Well, once a buyer is interested, I think the role of expertise becomes perhaps a little less well. First of all, playlist builder is a mass market product. Low. Touch. You can sign up. You know, if you're interested, please go sign up today. You can try it out. And so we don't have those high tech sales processes. But when I've had high tech sales processes before, I try to really understand the needs of the person that I'm selling to. And, you know, explain how, how I in whatever I'm doing in that particular context, can address those needs. They may have particular questions of detail, and I think that's when expertise becomes relevant, because if you can do a very fluent job of answering questions, that gives people confidence, because you jump into an unknown situation, or maybe not an unknown situation, but a new situation. And if you're confident and fluent, people think, oh, this person really gets this kind of situation. They've done it before. I want them on my team.

Alastair Cole 20:55

Yeah, have you always felt super confident about kind of delivering your expertise and bringing that information, curating that information, kind of like in real time. Is that something that's always

Maury Shenk 21:09

come naturally to you? Yeah, I've always had a lot of self confidence. I mean, but I was, I've had a lot of self confidence that I know what I'm talking about. I wasn't as great a speaker. I was a bit shy as a kid, and it took me a while to become personally confident dealing with people. And there was also an insight I had, which I speak a fair amount to people. And up until a number of years ago, people liked my speaking. They liked the information I would deliver, but they didn't love it. And I had an aha moment when I realized the speaking that I loved, that people loved, that I did was after dinner speeches at family dinners and things like that, or dinners of friends. And I realized that I have an approach, which is I would sit before speaking and come up with a story and tell it as a story. People like to hear stories, and so I now always, when I'm speaking, try to tell a story. And speaking, you know, speaking like this to you, which is kind of a conversation, speaking in a more formal context where I'm giving a presentation, or speaking in a less formal context where it's about addressing somebody's needs. Telling a story is a very powerful thing to do,

Alastair Cole 22:26

yeah, and an essential part of being a salesperson, right? We remember stories that's, that's, that's how we share information as humans, that storytelling is really powerful. It's interesting that your community, your community, your kind of communication style, your speaking style, has kind of evolved there. How would you say you're the way that you deliver your expertise? How is that? Has that changed as you've morphed through different kinds of areas of expertise, from law to entrepreneurship and education. How have you changed the result of that varied background?

Maury Shenk 23:10

Well, the one really big change was from law to business. You know, in law, you're solving people's problems, although I always used to tell the junior lawyers who I helped train, don't forget, we're not solving legal problems. We're usually solving business problems, and we're giving legal advice to solve business problems. So I think I had to because a lot of lawyers are too legalistic, but even so, I was always solving a problem, and then I got out into the business world, and I wanted to solve people's problems. And that doesn't often work as a conversation. As a business conversation, you come in and you immediately say, here's the answer. But a business conversation is often a conversation you know, you think about, you know this is going to transpire over the next few days or weeks or months or even years. What's the step that I want to get to today in this conversation? And it's a much narrower result. What do I want this conversation to be about, rather than what problem do I want to solve? And when I first left law, I was really not very good at pure business conversations. I'm much better at them now,

Alastair Cole 24:26

Okay, yeah, that's, that's, that's fascinating. And, you know, you talked about, you know, being kind of shy personally in terms of or for a while, until you kind of developed yourself and that, that's something that I, you know, really struggled with, kind of putting on a mask of confidence early on in my career, when really I didn't feel like that, and you could kind of see that that wasn't really the case. You know, do you feel like you've worked for yourself? Any kind of like technology founder imposter syndrome, or was that something that, you know, you were so excited about starting, you know, talking about following your passions, that actually, it was you felt like you were destined for that from the start.

Maury Shenk 25:16

Yeah. I mean, I hope this doesn't come across as arrogant, and I haven't founded a great technology company yet. I've been involved with a number of quite successful technology companies, but I haven't, you know, founded an open AI or something like that, or even a smaller version of that. But I've never had imposter syndrome. I always kind of believe in what I'm doing, even if I'm a little bit shy about communicating. I've always believed in that. So I don't have great advice for imposter syndrome, except to say, believe in yourself. You know, believe because great being articulate is really confidence is the biggest thing. And I think you can fake it. I mean, you say, you know, people say, Oh, I was faking it. I think people could see through it. I think they can often see through it less than you think, and particularly if you can talk like you know what you're talking about, and start to get into that habit. It becomes a habit, at least, that's what I mean. I do observe with myself that if I sound like, if I think I sound like what I'm, that I know what I'm talking about. It builds on itself.

Alastair Cole 26:24

Yeah, completely. And I think there are some parallels between the playlist builder platform and your sales team about bringing the expertise in that moment. You know, certainly playlist builders about curating right from a huge number of videos that are out there, and does it in seconds and delivers great content. And I feel like it's, it's when you're live in a meeting with a buyer, you've done your homework, but you you actually have to kind of think on the fly, and it's about selecting the right information at the right time and delivering it in a in a personal in a personalized way, right? You know, you're the playlist builder platform. It seems to me like the benefits could extend beyond just education. Are there any other areas that you see that might move into or might be interesting.

Maury Shenk 27:24

Well, I think it could move into almost any area of knowledge. I mean, we co developed playlist builder with Northeastern University. We were doing some other things. We were building, we had bigger projects building that kind of application. And then about a year ago, we took playlist builder to a conference of the world's leading ed tech conference in San Diego called ASU, well, the world's leading ed tech investment conference called ASU, GSV, and people got interested in it, and so we thought, we're going to take it to education. And then we said, Okay, we're going to productize this thing as something anybody could use, and started to talk to potential customers, who said, I'd use this for other things. And there's all kinds of other things that they would use it for. When you're selling it, and we're in the early days of selling it, you do have to sell in a targeted way. So we have focused on educators, on university educators, and learning and development departments of small and medium sized businesses, but almost anything can have a collection of videos. So we hope we'll have a simple tool that people can use in a whole lot of context. Well, I

Alastair Cole 28:33

love the similarities between your sales group about bringing expertise in that moment and and the expertise right that those students will get from receiving the playlists that are highly curated in this specific topic, relevant, timely, and really just bringing that kind of educational expertise in front of them. And, you know, the stats are enormous. 85% of students say that video learning enhances their learning experience, which is amazing and an important part of, as you said, a very complex mechanism. So if you're in the world of education or a student, or, you know, an educator putting a playlist together, head over to failures builder.ai, tell your course leaders and your fellow students about it and check it out. We're out of time now. Maurice, so All there is left for me to do is really to thank you very much for your time and your insights on expertise. Thanks very much.

Maury Shenk 29:39

You're welcome. It was just been a really interesting conversation, and

Alastair Cole 29:44

you've dropped a couple of cracking quotes there. I'm going to put you on the spot. Now wonder if there's, if there is a quote or a little statement, a nugget of words of wisdom you might leave our audiences with when it comes to. Expertise, or just your you know, the one next step somebody might need to take if, if they feel like they're not coming across as an expert and they and they'd like to get closer to that, what would you recommend they do?

Maury Shenk 30:13

Well, I would say two things, which is advice I commonly give. One is related to the quote I use, the Howard Thurman quote about coming alive, is to think about what you're interested in. And number two is, if you want to get into a new area, it doesn't need to. It may not need to be as far away from where you currently are as you think. Sometimes smaller adjustments are quite helpful and it can be easier to develop that expertise if it's in something related to what you've done before.

Alastair Cole 30:47

Yes, and if, and to quote you from earlier, if you're feeling like you're not sure or you have a bit of imposter syndrome, just go for it, right? Have a go. It won't feel that bad. Maury, look. Thanks very much for your time. Our next show isn't for a few weeks. It's the end of this month, on the 29th of April, where Kieran and I will be back diving deep into the modern hybrid cellar, which you definitely are. Maury, you've got, you know, high touch, you know, human sales relationship from the law days and now with playlist builder is low touch, high volume. SAS selling. So I think you'd fit the bill. That's our show at the end of April next time we're going to be live in the sales group. Bori. Thank you so much for your time and expertise. Absolutely.

Maury Shenk 31:39

My pleasure.

Alastair Cole 31:41

Okay, bye, bye, for now, then take care. Bye, bye, bye,

Maury Shenk 31:45

Bye, have a great day. Thank you. Bye.