Marketing Helsinki

Joel Willans is an author, creative director and the founder of various popular online communities including Very Finnish Problems which is one of Finland’s most popular social media brands.

Here we discuss the divide between sales and marketing, selling to Finns vs selling to non-Finns, launching and growing a Facebook page to 15 thousand fans in one month organically. But, my favorite part is when Joel talks about discovering some of the happiest words in the world!

My guest in this episode is Alan Weiss PhD. He’s a consultant, speaker, author, coach.
We talk about:
- the first ever consultant
- the kind of people that welcome coaching
- differentiating as a generalist in a competitive market
- being humble as an expert
- small town Finland in 1963 (!) ... and more.

Risto Kuulasmaa is an entrepreneur and executive coach with a background in events, media and tv production.

He has also just launched 3 travel startups in the midst of a global pandemic.

My guest in this episode is Andrew Deutsch CEO of Fangled Tech.

We discuss some philosophy behind sales and marketing. How do we deal with the differences in selling with humility vs with boldness? Should we be mindful of adhering to culture differences when selling internationally? Is there a drawback to being too humble? And somehow we found ourselves discussing tactics behind selling a pig.

In this episode my guest Jaakko Tapaninen is an entrepreneur and content marketing consultant who helps executives build thought leadership.

He was producing a popular Finnish-language podcast 10X Finland for several years before recently relaunching it as the Hybrid Times Podcast.

Kim Oguilve is the chief marketing officer at Maria 01; a not for profit startup coworking community in the center of Helsinki that hosts over 150 tech companies and VCs and is now the Nordic's largest startup campus.

We discuss what marketing means to her, how and why she is making diversity and inclusion a part of her organisation’s business strategy, and also I ask her to name a few of the coolest Finnish startups that she has recently come across.

Anna Rosa Lappalainen is a product builder, business builder, service designer, communicator, negotiator, business development expert, and serial entrepreneur with many interests in emerging tech and the startup community in Finland.

I've worked with her in the past and really enjoyed it because she's so passionate when it comes to talking about business and marketing and growing startups.

In this episode, Steven Keys talks to me from his home in the south of England.

He is truly a man who is, by his own words, juggling many balls. He has been in sales most of his life, he has been a professional motorbike racer, owned and operated a successful bike dealership and these days he's a television writer, director and creator.

He joins me now to talk about the art sales - or the way Steve puts it: Dream making!

Daniel Bogado is a Brit-born Paraguayan and producer/director of multiple award-winning documentaries for major broadcasters around the world.

He's also an old friend from film school.

Here, we talk about his Netflix hit 'Killer Ratings.' We discuss the nuances of telling a compelling story through documentary. And Danny shares his opinion on the power of media to influence the masses.

Tim Conley is a business coach and mentor. Some of the points we cover in this episode:

- the influence of media on creating fear and anxiousness
- lack of knowledge is not a flaw
- intervening in a situation with unknown variables
- the importance of core principles to live a good life

Nathaniel Fetalvero is a writer and producer at Tech in Asia- a media company based in Singapore serving Asia’s tech and startup community.

Some topics we covered:
- what new technology is currently at the top of Nat's mind
- does technology make people more lazy or more productive?
- how Myanmar is developing as the final frontier in South East Asia
- what common traits Nat has noticed among successful Asian startups

My guest is Juho Paasonen, the current Design Lead at a 400-year-old national institution that is the Finnish Postal Service Group: Posti.

Juho talks about starting his professional career at the age of 17 which led to working as Interaction Designer at Google before returning to Finland to build a creative design team at Posti. We discuss the differences between making art and making design, and what's required from good design leadership.

My guest in this episode is Dr. Melissa Farmer. She is a clinician-scientist with roots in sexology, pain research, and neuroscience.
She is also co-founder of a Health Tech startup dealing with chronic pain.
Lots of cool human psychology stuff in this episode including:
- how to fast track information into your brain
- why the brain tends to notice negative situations more
- the principles behind neutralizing traumatic memories... and more!

Riku Vassinen is currently the Managing Partner of Ogilvy Africa.

We talk about attitudes towards advertising and marketing in his native country of Finland. He shares some thoughts and opinions about working in Europe, Asia and Africa.

And since we are both basketball nuts we had to talk a little bit about Michael Jordan and the impact of media hype in the NBA.

My guest in this week's episode is Tim Conley who is a speaker, trainer and a business coach who works with B2B service entrepreneurs.

We talk about how
- successful marketing does not require good ethics.
- nobody truly has vision.
- our actions do not align with our beliefs.
- we're afraid to define big goals.
- successful leaders often ignore external opinion
- we say we want the truth but not really!

Antti-Jussi Annila is a film director whose first film Jade Warrior (2006) had the highest budget ever for a first time director in Finland.

Here, AJ talks about how he handled that pressure… while managing a very ambitious shoot in China.

We also talk about lessons he learned during his filmmaking career and how they’ve helped him become a better creative leader.

G'day! In this episode, I speak to Debbie Steer who is an Animation Producer based in Sydney, Australia. We became friends 13 years ago as struggling filmmakers in Manchester, England.

Debbie shares her story of making the decision to move to Australia and then finding herself in Australia three weeks later! My favourite part is when she shares her mindset towards decision making.

This week I have my first guest on the podcast. His name is Leo Khirug. He's a scientist. He studies brains. He's very interesting.

If you're interested in evolution, human behavior and science experiments on mice, I think you'll enjoy this episode.