Episode 7 Transcript | Pete Larkin of Parlay

Peter Stevenson

Welcome to by subject a Silicon Slopes brand and marketing podcast. My name is Peter Stevenson. I am the host and I’m here with Alicia Smith, my co host.

Alysha Smith

Hello.

Peter Stevenson

She’s the managing director of Modernate and Agency. And today our guest is Pete Larkin, VP of Marketing for Parlay. And welcome, Pete.

Pete Larkin

Thanks. Excited to be here with you guys.

Peter Stevenson

You have a first, great first name, so thanks for being here. You go by Pete rather than Peter. What’s the decision there?

Pete Larkin

I think it was more my uncle’s name is Pete and a lot of people call him Peter. So sad to roll with this. He calls me repeat Pete, and repeat. We’re on a boat, joe classic. You’ve never heard that?

Peter Stevenson

I’ve never heard that one. Of course I have.

Pete Larkin

Okay, come on.

Peter Stevenson

This is great content already. We’re off to a rolling start, so maybe let’s get to know you a little bit. You are also the Silicon Slopes Marketing Chapter president and so people know you through that. People see on LinkedIn, you’re pretty popular there, but maybe give a background of where you came from, where you grew up, what got you into marketing and where you went to school, that kind of stuff.

Pete Larkin

Yeah, I’m originally from South Dakota. I am in fact, a lot of people that I know, I think I may be the only person they know from South Dakota. Yeah. So it’s a real place, it’s a real state. I loved growing up there. Moved out here to Utah when I was about nine. Eight or nine. Okay. Just lived here for a minute and then moved out to California. Was there for a few years and then came back here to Utah. So I’ve been here for long enough to call it home. Also just love it here. The seasons, the mountains, nature. There’s just always something fun to do.

Alysha Smith

What area of Utah did you grow up in?

Pete Larkin

Mostly Layton area. Yeah, and you can tell by the.

Alysha Smith

Way you say it Layton.

Pete Larkin

It’s definitely a transplant because everybody else will be Layton by the mountain. Yeah. So I’ve been here for a while. I went to BYU. I was started in the film school and I thought I was going to do film throughout my career. Really enjoyed the film program. I had a video production company that was rocking it. We were making some good money, especially as college students, and back then it didn’t have the name that it has today. Back then we’re doing a lot of content, material content marketing with video. Now we know it as content, and I probably could have charged more if I would have called it content back then, but it was doing great. And then found myself in the BYU Ad School over a couple of different experiences. But after speaking with some mentors, they pointed me to the Ad School and I applied to that and had a fantastic experience. BYU Ad school is incredible program. I was in the Ad Lab with Jeff Sheets and all of the Ad kids, as they’re called, but loved my time there and quickly found myself into the marketing world, which was kind of a surprise to me. I wasn’t really expecting to find myself here.

Peter Stevenson

As you went through the film production stuff and you learned film and transitioned that into the Ad Lab, were you sort of the resident expert on content right away?

Pete Larkin

Yeah, especially when it came to video and a lot of the storytelling, some of the writing for scripts, I wasn’t the strongest copywriter. But when it came to just the entire video production process, I worked very closely with a lot of the writers and art directors, and it was fantastic. I had the opportunity because I was coming from the film school, I had the awesome opportunity to take some advanced classes beyond what level I was in school to take some senior level classes when it comes to TV production and video production. So it was cool.

Alysha Smith

And would you say now that you’re in marketing full time, does your video background is that kind of your focus or is that your, I know we’re going to get into your career, but just couldn’t help?

Pete Larkin

Yeah, no, that’s a great question, if.

Alysha Smith

That informs what you do or your first go to is video production or video content now?

Pete Larkin

Yeah. When it comes to the actual creation of any type of video content, I don’t do a lot of the creation myself anymore. Most of it is outsourced or I bring people onto different teams to take care of that. So I haven’t been behind a camera in a while. I still love it, still really enjoy the process. It used to be much more of a passion for me, but then over time, it kind of stopped being so much of a passion and became more of a chore, more work. And while I still enjoy it, just the world of kind of just marketing in general became much more interesting to me. And specifically, right as I was finishing up with school and graduating from the Ad program, I was about to head out to Chicago. I had a job offer, and I was really close to joining a big agency in Chicago. And a friend and mentor of mine who’s actually one of my clients at the time in my video production company. His name is Hunter Sobressos. You may know him as the CEO of Bacon right now. So Hunter, I was doing some work with him, and I was about to go out to Chicago, and he stops me and says, hey, I want you to consider coming to work with me and doing that full time. And it was a tough thing to pass up if, you know hunter just an incredible human being, but he made a commitment to me and he said that I will spend a lot of time working with you and mentoring you and kind of training you. And I can guarantee that the experience here, you’ll get a lot more out of it than you will at the ad agency, especially as new entry level position, ad world. And so he convinced me and I stuck around, and I’m really glad that I did, because true to his word, almost every single day, he spent a ton of time just working with me, helping me grow and train me on things. And so that time was really valuable and important to me.

Peter Stevenson

What was that role and where was it at?

Pete Larkin

Yeah, so it’s funny going to like a Chicago ad agency and then going to work with Deseret Book. I came in with a video production role. Now it would be more of a content production, but he taught me so much and spent so much time with me. But after about eleven months there, unfortunately, Desire Book was going through some financial challenges and there were layoffs. And I was part of the layoffs is somewhere around like a 20% reduction, something like that. And it was tough because I was like, dang, I passed up this ad agency role and now here I am, eleven months later getting laid off. Despite that, when I look at the layoffs, that was actually a really critical point in my career that has led me to where I am today. Because when I sat back and looked at all the people that stuck around, who got to stay, who weren’t on that chopping block, and I’m thinking, why am I being laid off here over everybody? What is it about me? And I realized that almost everybody that stayed, they had much more impact on revenue, much more impact on the bottom line. So I decided, hey, I need to make a shift here. I need to focus a little less so much on the creative side and focus more on marketing and what I can do to impact revenue. So I started making a shift. In fact, I went gangbuster. I went crazy on self education. Just everything I could read. This was back during Linda.com days, and Linda and I were just like together all the time.

Peter Stevenson

Linda would tell you they’re still around.

Pete Larkin

Yeah, right. So LinkedIn learning now, right?

Peter Stevenson

Yeah.

Pete Larkin

So I just consumed everything that I could find and I just went crazy. Self education program on marketing and I was building a house at the time. I had a baby on the way and so pressure was high to find a new gig. And the home builder that I was building my house with didn’t have a marketing team. So this was Fieldstone homes? And I went into their corporate office and talked with their team, said, hey, this was, I think, probably right after finishing selecting my backsplash, but talked with them about, hey, I’d love to come and kick your marketing into gear and get things rolling pitched them on that and really grateful that they took me up on it. And that’s really what kind of started more of the shift towards a marketing career.

Peter Stevenson

And so Fieldstone, you had a relationship with somebody there, and so you went in and just pitched them on the idea that they needed to do actual marketing. That’s about right. Did they have anybody in that role who just wasn’t doing their job? Or was it like literally no one was in the marketing department?

Pete Larkin

There was no department. Okay. There were people performing some marketing functions that was one arguably out of their wheelhouse and a stretch for what they were doing, and they were more than happy to take it off their plate.

Peter Stevenson

One big question I always have is, like, you go in learning about marketing is all theory, right? And then you jump into it. As that marketing manager at Fieldstone, what was the thing that you thought, oh, this is what they told me to do? And the theory on Linda versus actually going in and doing it, was there any of those disconnects that once you hit the ground running, you were like, oh, no, this is the way it works, rather than what they told me?

Pete Larkin

Yeah. I mean, the principles that you’re learning in any video courses like that, it’s all kind of like pie in the sky type view of, like, if you do this, you’re going to see great results.

Peter Stevenson

Yeah, right.

Pete Larkin

That’s not always the case. Rarely the case. Right. And so you have to figure out for yourself, I mean, this is marketing. This is just the world of marketing. Sometimes kind of guess and check. Ideally, it’s like an educated guess, but where you’re a scientist, you are performing a ton of experiments to figure out what levers to pull, what’s working, what’s not working, and what do I need to do to make changes to really start seeing some of the results? And so I found out, just trial by fire, I started experimenting with a lot of different stuff and found out fairly quickly what stuff I sucked at, what stuff I was pretty good at, when what stuff was working, wasn’t working, and pretty quickly started seeing some results.

Alysha Smith

I found it interesting that you said you’re kind of a scientist and trying these different experiments and just thinking about your past as more be more maybe you might consider yourself an artist in that video space where you’re being creative. Did you find a nice opportunity to kind of marry those two things together, the art and the science?

Pete Larkin

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s what they say, right? Marketing is an art and a science. And so I had just a lot of fun. I said the trial by fire, there was so much I didn’t know. And in fact, one of the reasons I am where I am today, not only in my career but also in this role with the Silicon Slopes Marketing chapter president is because after that layoff, I knew that I needed to learn not just from these videos and these courses, but I needed to learn from real talented experts and people. So I started going to events like this. Silicon Slopes wasn’t around, but started going to events like the chapter events that we’re running and just met a lot of people and learned from some really fantastic experienced marketers. And one, it solidified my decision to focus more on marketing, and two, I just learned so much from those people and it was just master classes from these really talented experts. So this may be jumping a little bit ahead here in our conversation, but I’m going to roll with it. So just near the tail end of COVID I say that like it’s all completely over, right? But when people started kind of coming back to offices and whatnot, I wanted to start attending some of the Silicon Slopes marking chapter events that I had been prior to COVID really taking its toll, but there really weren’t any events happening. And I have to say one huge shout out to those individuals who were running the chapter beforehand. They did a fantastic job, but just life happened. They all got super busy and they just kind of died off. And even with COVID kind of near that tail end with people coming back into offices and stuff, it just kind of wasn’t really happening anymore, really wasn’t much activity. A lot of the chapter leadership, if you will, they were busy with other stuff. So I reached out to all of them and I said, hey, what’s going on? Stuff happening. And almost everyone came back to me and said, hey, we’re super busy, we can’t really be involved. So then I reached out to Garrett and to some others here at Silicon Philips, and I said, hey, a lot of the leadership team is they’re kind of busy. I’d love to jump in, I’d love to participate and help get these things rolling again. And I want to say that that was somewhere around October what is that, 2021? I want to say it was, yeah. And so we just started putting events together, and now we’ve had one every single month and it’s grown from then it was around 300 members, and now we’re just passing 800. So it’s been a blast. It’s been a lot of fun putting.

Peter Stevenson

The real goal behind what would be the real value, the real goal, the real why behind the marketing chapter from your point of view as the one who’s running it for the last 18 months?

Pete Larkin

Yeah, it is very similar to the Silicon Slopes kind of slogan and mission is to connect, learn surf. I was referring to kind of this idea of master classes I was attending with these events pre COVID, and that’s what I really believe that these are. I have a major focus on education, helping people learn to be better marketers and not just marketers. We have a lot of different content, materials that we cover on leadership and how to just become a better, not just human being, but leader, more connected leader. So I call it the same thing. We have some of the Utah’s top talent. Sometimes we’ve got people coming in from outside of Utah, but some incredibly talented individuals who are coming out to present and share their expertise with us. And every single event when people are there and networking, that’s a big component for me as well, that people get to meet each other. I love hearing stories. Like last week a friend of mine was recently laid off and from one of these events they met someone and they got to talking and they’re now in discussions of them joining this other company. And those are some of the stories I love. Yeah, you’re building relationships and meeting new people, but also there are job opportunities and there’s business to be done together. So I love the education piece, I love the networking piece. But also for me. I feel like it’s almost my way to give back to the community for how much I’ve received in my career and especially in the really vulnerable and difficult time in my life. When I was looking to make that pivot, make those changes, people showed up for me, people that I had no relationship with before, and they were willing to help, to teach, to guide, not only in the setting of I’m going to sit in an audience and watch you, but thereafter going up and talking with them and then meeting up with them after that for lunches and phone calls and everything. And I received so much. And so for me, it’s a great way to give back. But also there’s just so much talent here in Utah and when we can come together, meet each other, know each other, but also marketing is a really special industry where being able to learn what’s working for other people can really help you succeed in your career. To be honest, there could be situations what’s working for someone else, either the way that they’re doing it or the industry in which they’re doing it. The customers they’re focusing on it could slay it and then you could try the same thing and follow that playbook and that framework and it just bombs and hanks. Nevertheless, one of my favorite questions to ask other marketers is what are you doing? What’s working for you, what’s not working for you? And what can I learn from the successes that you’re having that I may be able to or challenges? Absolutely. Yeah. I think a lot of us are experiencing a lot of the same challenges. I mean, it varies by industry, company, people, but I think that we share a lot of the same challenges.

Peter Stevenson

Yeah, so you jumped forward a little bit, but I want to jump back. I noticed that you taught at Ensign College for a little while. Tell me about that experience. Why teaching was something that you felt like you wanted or needed to do at the time.

Pete Larkin

Yeah. So a friend, Joseph Fallon, was teaching at Ensign College at the time back the LDS business College days, and invited me to come be a presenter kind of guest speaker. I presented, had a great time, and I think the program director may have been there, but afterwards came up to me and said, hey, would you be interested in joining our program and teaching here? I hadn’t really thought much about it at the time, but after a couple of interactions, engagements with them and decided to give it a go. Taught my first semester. After that first semester, had a great time. I was teaching marketing management. Oh, no, actually, sorry. At the time I was teaching website management, where we teach students how to build a website from scratch. HTML, CSS, and then transition to WordPress. We were teaching them how to build WordPress websites. But fantastic. Had an awesome experience. And I realized that I love this. I love doing this. Pay was terrible.

Peter Stevenson

Sure.

Pete Larkin

No, it was absolutely terrible. In fact, when you consider the time to get there, the time you spend with students actually teaching and after class, it’s a net loss. So I decided to that it was more again, just like a thing for me to give back. Yeah. And it was a really fulfilling, special experience for me. Built a lot of great relationships. Hired a couple of my students in some of my previous roles. And yeah, at some point I’ll probably go back to teaching. It’s a lot of fun. Really enjoy it. The education component.

Peter Stevenson

The founder of Modernate, Randall Smith, has been teaching branding at the U for 30 years, and never a semester goes by that he doesn’t complain about how much parking he has to pay for. When you’re in the junk profession, they don’t really treat you that well financially. But it is rewarding.

Pete Larkin

It is rewarding.

Peter Stevenson

Yeah. I want to hear more about your new company. What led you to found it. Tell us a little bit about Parlay and what you’re going through as the vice president of marketing and sales there and where you are in that journey.

Pete Larkin

Yeah, thanks. Stepping back even just kind of one role before that because it was pretty influential. Where I’m at now, working with a company called AnglePoint. They have an office here in Linden. Fantastic company. Really incredible people, really niche industry. I was not expecting to be in that industry. So in the world of It asset management and software asset management, basically helping companies manage their software licenses, optimize their budgets. We were working with some of the world’s largest brands, and when I first started, I was there for about six years. So when I first started with them, people didn’t really know who we are, couldn’t even pronounce our name right. They called us Angel Point. And there was no real marketing program either. So I was one of the really the first marketing hire. And so going from $0 in marketing generated revenue when I started. And then at the end we were at around 10 million in marketing generated revenue each year. So it was fantastic growth. Really enjoyed my time there during, I want to say this is probably year like two or three, I went to purchase some software. I went to this was Marketo, and I want to say it was pre Adobe acquisition. Trying to remember that was 2015, 2014. Okay, so maybe it was post. Anyway, point is I went to purchase Marketo and after going through all of the back and forth with the SDR and then after the SDR with the actual demo, and then you finally speak with kind of their closer, right?

Peter Stevenson

Right.

Pete Larkin

After all of the time and energy into it, you finally start talking pricing. And then when we were talking about pricing, we learned that it was annual contracts only, annual contract only. And for us in our size of company where we were, I want to say that we were probably somewhere around like, I don’t know, maybe like 20 million at the time. But annual contract for that size, and I want to say that was still about somewhere around like 20 or 30 grand. But that upfront cost for us was pretty heavy. And when I took it to the CEO, he said, I’m down for the software, we can afford this, but you have to negotiate a monthly pricing. And I tried, for the life of me, couldn’t make it happen. Really, they wouldn’t budge. And come to find out that that’s just like a natural part of their model. They just don’t do real annual or monthly contracts. And so I was talking with my brother about it, Dan Larkin, he’s the CEO, founder of both Encore Solar and Solo, I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, but really successful Solar software company just down the road here was talking with him about that experience with Marketo. Eventually that’s kind of what led to this business parlay today. But that experience with marketo anglepoint ended up going to a competitor. I think it was click dimensions and a lot of reasons why we ended up going with them. But after all is said and done, anglepoint is I think they’re still with them to this day. So years and years of revenue going towards Marketo’s competition simply because of the payment structure, right? And so I understand why SaaS companies really want to focus on annual contracts, but for us it sucked. We got a software we didn’t want and weren’t particularly excited for, right? It was kind of second best, if you will. And so that eventually led to my brother Dan and I and some others building this company parlay with the intent to help democratize software, help get software into the hands of more companies, especially some of this top tier grade A software that often comes with an annual only contract. And really what we do is we take that annual contract, we pay for it up front, and then the buyer pays us on a monthly, we turn it to a monthly payment. So it’s been a fantastic experience so far. We’re just about to launch into our beta. When I first started the discussion, first started meeting with people trying to pitch it and sell it, it was a discussion about financing, about us being a finance company. And I realized that we needed to provide more value than just the financing option. And so we started building out a tech solution, a SaaS organization where what we build in, the solution that we’re offering is for software salespeople. When they encounter someone like myself, when I was at Anglepoint who come in and say, hey, I want your software, but I want to do monthly pricing, before they would just pass them over, they’d say, sorry, it’s not going to happen. But now, and through the technology that we’re building, not only can they offer the monthly pricing with that finance component, but they can identify without having to go through any type of difficult or long underwriting process. We can let the salesperson know within minutes if that buyer is going to qualify for our financing. So what typically would happen in the past is the salesperson or the buyer would say, hey, we want it, we want the monthly payments. Then the, the seller would say, okay, well, let’s, you know, move you into this underwriting process. It could take days, it could take weeks. And especially for SMB, it would be difficult to get any type of financing for something like that. So anyway, we take that process and we turn it into an extremely fast process and we speed it up to where you, as a salesperson, could know within seconds if this person is going to qualify for that monthly payment and then can proceed with the sale. That way they don’t have to end their conversation and then try to pick it up later, which is naturally going to cause a drop in conversion rates.

Peter Stevenson

And so would you say, tell me a little bit about what your past has brought to the leading of developing this company, as in the marketing, the sales, and the other areas that you’re involved in.

Pete Larkin

Yeah, I’ve been now in the marketing world for quite a while and have worked with small companies. I’ve worked agency side. I’ve done a lot of work with a company called Riot based out of Salt Lake City. Really fantastic company as well. I’ve worked with Omadi, a SaaS company here in Utah as well, and then Angle Point. So I’ve done a lot of B, two B and B to C, had a lot of experiences which all have really been really impactful in now what I’m doing with Parlay, what makes it different, Peter, is that what we’re building right now because it’s kind of a new category. There are not many companies, I think we have maybe two or three competitors that we’ve been able to find. And so when you’re creating a new category, it’s not only having to market your company, but also having to educate about what the new category is. So there’s an additional step here which I feel like my past roles I haven’t had to do a lot of, but when it comes to now that we’re about to launch into this beta and really actually start be able to demo, I’m not just selling an idea anymore. Now I’ve got something actually tangible that I can show you. So that part I’m really confident in, I’m really excited about. It is the new category, marketing and education? That’s going to be the challenge. It is really fun, but it’s tricky and I’m looking forward to that challenge.

Peter Stevenson

What do you think? You talk about the challenge of trying to educate people. You now have this other task of sales on top of what you’re doing in marketing. Do you feel like that challenge is one you’re ready for, to take on additional roles and responsibility outside of marketing, or is that something that you think you’re going to need to go out and hire for eventually?

Pete Larkin

Yeah, I mean, eventually I’m certain that I’m going to hire it out. I’m going to bring somebody in and mainly because it’s not a core specialty of mine. That being said, I’ve worked so much with different sales teams, and especially I have a deep belief that account based marketing is one of the best ways to connect salespeoples, salespeople and marketers. I’ve done a lot of that work, and so I’ve worked with so many different sales teams that I feel confident for where we’re at, our company size and position right now to get us to that next step of where we need to be. But I’ll be the first to tell you, I absolutely need a really talented, experienced sales team. So that’s coming it’s down the road, but just not where we’re at right now.

Alysha Smith

And so for listeners that may not be familiar with account based marketing, can you kind of just give a quick elevator speech about what that is?

Pete Larkin

Yeah, like the high level, basically identifying your ideal customer profile, also known as your ICP, figuring out who you’re really going to target working. And this is where the handholding comes in with your sales team and where I think relationships really are built. Because a lot of times, especially in B, two B space, when you’re looking at your sales and marketing teams, your marketing teams, they’re bringing in leads, right, and then handing them off to sales. And it’s kind of the baton pass. And in a lot of. Ways, the sales team, if they’re not really credible, well qualified leads, then they’re going to be upset and they’re going to be given marketing crap, and they’re going to say, like, hey, you guys are bringing us all these crap leads. And then on the other side, marketing is going to be saying, like, well, you can’t close anything. This is your deal. Right. And so it creates a lot of friction between sales and marketing. And I hate that game. I hate that relationship. And so instead of the hey pointing at each other, it’s your fault, it’s your fault. Let’s work together, let’s identify what accounts do you want to go after? Who do you want to win? And then as marketing, I say I’m here to make it happen. Right. Like, we’re hand in hand and we’re going to sit down, we’re going to build out some campaigns specifically on how to close these accounts. And so the account based marketing is really just targeting specific accounts, hand in hand with your salespeople, going after them and making it happen. Your sales team will love you.

Alysha Smith

Yeah. Feels like a no brainer, but for some reason that feels like there’s a lot of resistance out there.

Pete Larkin

Yeah, there’s just so much ego history. Yeah, I think that sometimes there can be, but I think that there’s the way that marketing and sales has been approached for so long in the past. Account based marketing, I don’t think really started officially by this type of name and kind of popularity hasn’t really been really utilized to its full extent, and I’d say until the last six, seven years and especially in the last three years, where it’s really gaining more popularity. But there’s just been so much history and ways of doing things in the past that sometimes it can kind of be hard to get out of that. And it really is specifically to more of a B, two B type selling where account based marketing comes into play. But I have a deep belief that anytime there’s a marketing team and a sales team that needs to work together, there needs to be an ABM function.

Alysha Smith

Well, what a gift to be able to get that going from the start with your company.

Pete Larkin

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m kind of working with myself there.

Peter Stevenson

Pete is working with Peter depending peter is more the sales guy. From your question earlier when you asked, you like to ask other people, what’s working tell us what’s working with you right now in parlay.

Pete Larkin

Yeah, I’m going to be maybe even vulnerably honest here. I haven’t been focusing so much on the marketing sales right now as I have been building it. Yeah, of course I need a strong product and so I’ve been wearing a lot of hats and working with our developer with a lot of research and focus groups. So we’re trying to build quickly and as agile as we can be. But at the same time trying to just get to market with something viable that is really going to provide value. So I’ve been wearing a lot of building hats right now. That being said, I’ve been simultaneously building a foundation of relationships. So I’ve been doing a ton of networking over the last six months or so. So I’ve really put on the gas when it comes to networking and relationship building. So when it comes time to launch, which is happening in two days, I’ve got a list of people that I’m going directly to. I already know who I’m going to.

Peter Stevenson

It’s amazing. There’s nothing better than word of mouth personal connection. And that’s always the best marketing.

Pete Larkin

Yeah, absolutely. I know enough about sales. Of sales really is successful when it’s about relationships.

Peter Stevenson

Awesome. Well, we get to our last couple of questions. So from your perspective, you’re becoming a leader here in the state, in the marketing world, from everyone’s perspective? From everyone’s.

Pete Larkin

I don’t know about that, but it’s an honor, and I take that as a major compliment.

Peter Stevenson

So give some advice to people who are coming up in the world. Think back to the people you were teaching at Ensign. Think back to the people who are coming out of school right now or in Ad Lab. What are some advice you would give to them about career and then also about marketing?

Pete Larkin

Yeah. Be hungry and be humble. Those are probably the two biggest things that I could say. Be hungry, meaning like, get after it, right. Go be driven and motivated. But when it comes to education and always keeping yourself sharp, look for every opportunity to continue to develop your skills. One of the things I love about the Silicon Soaps Marketing chapter and just Silicon Slopes in general, is that it can really, if taken advantage of, it can really help people stay sharp, stay connected, reading books. It’s funny because the marketers that I see really excel much faster than other marketers are those that are always on a continual and never ending learning journey and listening to as many audiobooks as you can get your hands on. And courses. Like LinkedIn courses. But coming to events like this, I’m telling you, these events that we put on people are coming away not only with stronger relationships, but with new, fresh ideas on how to start implementing these ideas in their companies. And sometimes an idea will spark that has nothing to do with what the speaker is even talking about. That can just drive creativity and innovation. But going to events and where you can really learn from talented experts, I really highly suggest people do that. So being hungry is just looking for every opportunity for personal growth. And then humble is being teachable to try and realize that as much as you think that you might know, there’s always more to learn. And the more that you learn, at least this is the case for me. The more that I learned, the more that I realize I don’t know very much and there’s so much to learn. I may have experienced and had some success in my past, but it doesn’t mean that in the future that success is that it’s going to mean or to guarantee that what I was doing in the past is going to work in the future. So stay sharp, work hard and really try to learn from as many people as you can. Yeah.

Peter Stevenson

All right. My favorite question, give us some recommendations for restaurants, bars, coffee shops, places people should go here in silicon slopes.

Pete Larkin

You got an hour.

Peter Stevenson

Yes, I do.

Pete Larkin

My wife is a foodie I am not. So I inherited that from my wife. By nature, I am now a foodie through her. So we like to try a lot of new places. Cool. So by category, I guess I’m a big fan of chinese food. So my favorite chinese places in provo, it’s called shoots. Shoots. It’s fantastic. In the riverwoods. Okay. So good. When it comes to pizza, huge pizza fan as well. The pie always makes fantastic pizza. Village baker. Most people or a lot of people don’t realize they make pizza. Their pizza fantastic. Their chicken corn on blue is amazing. And then slack water.

Peter Stevenson

Okay.

Pete Larkin

Sandy and salt lake, I think.

Peter Stevenson

And ogden.

Pete Larkin

Yeah. Also just incredible pizza. Oh, man. Tacos tacos. You know, my wife is much bigger on mexican food than I, but it’s in draper, man. It’s right off of 120 3rd. You take a right.

Alysha Smith

Cafe rio.

Pete Larkin

Yeah.

Peter Stevenson

You always have to take a right everywhere.

Pete Larkin

I can’t remember the place. I’ll have to remember circle back. It’s fantastic. It’s probably some of my favorites. Good to know. Anyway, awesome.

Alysha Smith

Thank you.

Peter Stevenson

That’s amazing.

Alysha Smith

I’m hungry.

Peter Stevenson

I don’t make it down to provo enough, but next time I do, I’m going to have to check out chinese food. Well, thank you so much for being here. And tell people where to find you online and some of the social handles that you have.

Pete Larkin

Yeah, absolutely. LinkedIn especially. Just search me. Pete larkin. You’ll find me really easily. To be honest, I don’t do a lot of the other socials. Perfect.

Peter Stevenson

That’s the best answer you could ever.

Pete Larkin

Give as a marketer. Maybe not the greatest thing, but I.

Peter Stevenson

Don’T have any either. I’m on the same boat.

Pete Larkin

All right.

Peter Stevenson

Thanks for joining us today on by subject. And we’ll see you next time. By subjects is a production of modern eight agency and silicon slopes. Executive producers are alicia smith and Peter stevenson. Editor and producer is dave meekum. Video production by Connor Mitchell Development production by eric dahl. Production management by shelby sandland. Original music composed by Josh johnson. Website designed by modern eight. Please make sure to follow and share the show with your friends and your enemies. Thanks for joining us.