"Our leadership model is to do lots of things fast and never get comfortable with what we have. We will always do more."
Brian Minick is the Chief Operating Officer for ZeroBounce. His background is in Technology and Marketing. Brian has spent his entire career in this space and loves every minute of it. At a very young age, he was writing software and just curious about the internet and what computers could do.
He’s been with ZeroBounce for four years now. ZeroBounce is an online email validation platform committed to helping our customers get into the inbox by removing invalid, toxic, abusive, and problematic emails from your database, list, or CRM system. They’ve also developed other tools to help people measure and improve their deliverability, from inbox placement testing to blacklist monitoring tools.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Brian Minick: My name is Brian Minick and I’m the Chief Operating Officer for ZeroBounce. My background is in Technology and Marketing. I’ve spent my entire career in this space and love every minute of it. At a very young age, I was writing software and just curious about the internet and what computers could do.
I’ve been with ZeroBounce for four years now. ZeroBounce is an online email validation platform committed to helping our customers get into the inbox by removing invalid, toxic, abusive, and problematic emails from your database, list, or CRM system. We’ve also developed other tools to help people measure and improve their deliverability, from inbox placement testing to blacklist monitoring tools.
If you were in an elevator with Warren Buffet, how would you describe your company, your services or products? What makes your company different from others? What is your company’s biggest strength?
Brian Minick: I would say that we are the ones who are cleaning up data in the world. As companies collect and “hoard” data, it’s important to keep things clean and fresh. In the online space, email addresses are our unique identifiers. We help make sure your contacts would actually get your message if you sent an email to them.
What makes us different is our commitment to accuracy, availability, and the privacy and security of data submitted to our platform. Unlike other vendors in our space, we would never use your data and resell it. We protect it as if we were the ones who submitted it. More companies need to take security seriously.
Our biggest strength is the ability to pivot fast and efficiently towards something. Our leadership model is to do lots of things fast and never get comfortable with what we have. We will always do more.
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
Brian Minick: As the Chief Operating Officer, I would say it’s the sustainable and continued growth. In 2022 we have doubled the overall company size. This came with lots of challenges as well. More managers, more procedures, and inevitably, mistakes.
Our company culture embraces change and mistakes, as no one is perfect. We think that if we talk about and fix the mistake – vs. burying it and hoping no one ever sees it – as a whole, we’ll be in a better place and our team mates will grow.
One of the other big achievements with our growth is the internal promotion structure that I’ve seen take place. Our support team, for example, is constantly moving people into other parts of the company, such as deliverability experts, the QA team, or the sales team. We always look to promote within rather than to hire from the outside. I’m very proud of this and our team. They work so hard!
Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, are an ongoing trend causing many businesses to struggle keeping talent engaged and motivated. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. In your experience, what keeps employees happy? And how are adapting to the current shift we see?
Brian Minick: I love this topic. I talk about it a lot when I run into other people running businesses. What I’ve found is that managers or leadership teams are simply not seeing the big picture. People need to be motivated, and motivation is not the same for every person on your team. Some are motivated by money, some are motivated by recognition. Others may be motivated by seeing their ideas being accepted into the organization.
My question to other leaders is, why don’t you know this for every person that is on your team? I find it imperative to have every manager know what makes each of their team members tick. Why do they come to work every day? Take those ideas and use them to build the person and help them grow.
Too often we assume we’ve covered everything. Keep learning from your team. With each new team member, new ideas come in. Don’t ignore them.
What advice do you wish you received when you started your business journey and what do you intend on improving in the next quarter?
Brian Minick: In our business, we have thousands of new customers every month. I wish someone would have told me that you can’t take to heart every single comment that comes your way. If it’s negative feedback, instead of taking it personally, find out how to improve.
In the beginning, it felt like an attack, but as you grow you realize this information is usually very valuable. Take that information and do something with it. For us, we intend to launch new products that our customers have been asking us for.
We heard it enough times, it’s time to do something about it. I really appreciate it when our customers give us feedback, both positive and negative. They both have their benefits.
Online business keeps on surging higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for the year to come and how are you capitalizing on the tidal wave?
Brian Minick: I think the email space will continue to grow. We are still seeing a significant increase in new users coming into our space. Our biggest goal is to continue to educate our customers and help them with information and useful tips. Our company went 100% virtual when COVID hit and I think we need to embrace this new way of working together as colleagues, clients and for our own personal needs.
While in-person interactions are still very important, you can only capitalize on the scenarios presented to you. Take advantage of everything that is in front of you, while it’s in front of you.
Here is a two fold question: What is the book that influenced you the most and how? Please share some life lessons you learned. Now, what book have you gifted the most and why?
Brian Minick: One of my favorite things to say is: “so many books, so little time.” There are many books that have helped me so much or opened my mind to new possibilities. If I had to pick the most influential, it has to be my worn-out paperback copy of “Dave’s Way: A New Approach to Old-Fashioned Success by Dave Thomas.” Yes, the same Dave Thomas from the Wendy’s commercial.
Dave’s been gone for 20 years now, and I never met him. But having read this book, it feels like I know him. The book feels like Dave is talking to you. There are so many lessons you get from the book, but there’s an overarching theme.
You can have passion and great pride in the work you do and the products you offer. At the same time, you can still keep humility. If you can achieve excellence and not forget humility, you’ll be that much more accessible. Dave Thomas and Wendy’s restaurants became world-famous, but he always treated people with the utmost respect.
As far as the book I’ve gifted the most, that would be Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. Relationships with people are not just the most important thing in business, but outside of business, too. People need people, and the better we are at making friends and partners, the more good we can do.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Brian Minick: The real challenge right now is straddling the wonders of technology and the importance of human-to-human interaction. We’re foolish if we don’t take advantage of the remarkably useful apps, SaaS, and automations available.
However, we can’t do without people. We have to always remember a person is at the end of every email address or username. Use the great technological advancements, but don’t forget that we’re all just flesh and bone.
Of course, I’m always going to do my best to connect in person when I can. With that said, email, Skype, and texting are all valuable. I try to inflect a bit of personality no matter what the means of communication is.
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?
Brian Minick: I think the most underestimated part is keeping everyone on the same page, and at the same pace, especially as you grow. Many people want to know the ‘why’ of things we are doing, or they are asked to do. As you grow and scale up, getting everyone aligned becomes more and more challenging, and also more and more important.
When you are small, you do things super fast, and can easily share that with a few people. But when you now have different departments, vacations, holidays, sick time, time zones, preferred methods of communication and so on, everything becomes much harder to do. I encourage people to figure out a channel that works for everyone and really push that as the way to get updates. This is something we are still working on and have yet to find it. I do wish however, we had this in place before a big growth spike, as now we have to adapt to it, vs show everyone how they would get the information.
2020, 2021, 2022 threw a lot of curve balls into businesses on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past years, how can businesses thrive in 2023? What lessons have you learned and what advice would you share?
Brian Minick: The time or the year we are in is absolutely meaningless. What we did in 2020 might not work in 2023. You have to stay agile and ready to adapt to literally anything. For example, everyone was doing ads on Facebook, or LinkedIn and we all thought things were great. In the meantime, other platforms have emerged, and your content creators might have to adopt totally unknown mediums to help you grow your business there.
Many people think they need to be a ‘visionary’ in order to grow a business. I really disagree with this. You have to make constant improvements, all the time, and build momentum. I will take momentum over vision any day.
Vision is subjective, not everyone will agree with you. Momentum is something that everyone picks up on, and it builds like a giant snowball if you can get it rolling down a hill.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Brian Minick: I would launch fully built products and services in just one day. Take the idea and – boom, it’s ready!
Since my background originated in software and coding, this is something that I would absolutely love to have and be able to do. People have tons of great ideas, but the fact is they need to be executed. So many times I hear the idea and think, ok, more for the dev team to deal with. They are humans, too!
You can never have enough developers when innovation is a core value of your business. I wish it were just a blink of an eye and the software is built and perfect.
What does success in the year to come mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Brian Minick: Success for me in the next year is to watch our team grow. I don’t mean company size, I mean their abilities, skill set, personal, and professional development. It makes me very happy to see people who started at ZeroBounce with a role and then evolved into something much greater.
I’ve seen people in our company completely shift their careers in a different direction because of an opportunity we saw and asked them if they wanted to do it. I think enough people don’t give people chances.
If you are doubtful as a leader and then never give an opportunity to people – or even worse, give them an opportunity but expect them to fail – you can put your company in a terrible position. Employees don’t want to work there.
Secondly, it’s not just about work. I constantly check in on my teammates about personal issues, their family, their aspirations in life. It’s just as important! Every single person on our team is unique, and I love it. What all these people don’t realize is that they all really help me and make me better as a person and individual when we can work and talk without fear or doubt. This is the definition of success for me.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Brian Minick for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Brian Minick or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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