[Podcast] Key Leadership Insights from a Senior Executive at Patron Tequila

Adrian Parker, the Global VP of Marketing at Patron Tequila, provides key leadership insights from the course of his career and how these may be applicable to you. Prior to joining Patron, Adrian worked for other large brands including Intuit, RadioShack, Kate Spade, and FootLocker. Join this great conversation about the differences between a leader and a manager, balancing home and family life, and what being a senior executive really means.

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MACHINE-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript likely contains errors and is not a substitute for listening to the podcast.

Welcome to episode number two of the builds unstoppable podcast. I'm your host, Justin Levy. And today I'm joined by Adrian Parker, who's the global Vice President of Marketing for petroleum tequila. Thanks for joining the podcast today.

And thank you Justin for the invitation. I'm so happy to be able to share on this platform you are building and hopefully something I share, you will find valuable and hopefully your listeners will too.

Great. So kind of question number one is I'm sure listeners know the petroleum brand and may wonder what a typical day might look like for you. Beyond endless meetings, presentations and all that fun stuff that executive gifts to do.

I would say yeah, meetings and presentations and budgets are pretty much the language of running a global brand. You know, I so I've been with patrol about six and a half years total last August. I took on the role of the global Vice President of Marketing.

And so I effectively run the Patron brand across all 140 countries we're in so anything with the patrol logo, from the bottle label, to commercials to social to digital, to, you know how we show up in the trade in bars and restaurants, etc, all that flows through a talented team of competitive professionals that I have the honor and privilege of learning form from each and every day.

You know, patrolling everybody knows patrolling the US outside the US is funny. Tequila is a very emerging liquid or emerging spirit. And so we spend a lot of time educating people outside the US and Mexico about tequila how to drink it and and its provenance. But you know, I think picking up on one of the most well known most talked about spirits brands in the world.

Last year, we had our most profitable year in the company's history and so a lot of my time Spent taking down barriers, reducing friction for the marketing team to execute the plans they need to deliver the business.

A good amount is just procuring resources, ideas, approvals, and structure to make sure that we can implement I spent a lot of time on strategy, right? So where's our five or 10 year vision for not only our volume and our ourselves and our our sales growth, but also what does that team look like? What does that structure look like? What are the experiences, the brand ideas or the communication platforms that are going to help us tap into our consumer insights as well?

So it's really a job that's about asking questions, being curious about the consumer behavior, challenging yourself, but also getting out of the way. So I spend a lot of time dodging my team because I need to get out of their way because they're sprinting by. So you know, it's a lot of coordination, a lot of mental agility and honestly, a lot of money. Starting to I mean, this year has been a a PhD and just like how do you deal with the unknown and I think a lot of us are having to learn on our feet.

Well, I can honestly say that my wife in mind, favorite drink is margaritas. solemnize good. Um, and we take a trip for our anniversary every year down to Cabo and spend the entire week drinking margaritas without except without this year because of everything going on. But fortunately, my wife knows how to make a good Margarita so we definitely enjoyed them at home.

Oh man, I love murder actually, you know, margaritas is the one that actually is the number one cocktail in the United States for past decade. So we love margaritas we have a love affair with that drink, but also Cabo I've been four times it's our favorite destination flight from Texas. So I'm all about me and you got to hang out in Cabo with Margarita as soon as we can get down there. Yes, sir.

So, at your level, right at an executive leadership level and your career has been on that trajectory for a while. How do you define leadership? When you think of it, how you actually define that for someone?

Yeah, I think leadership and I'll define it in terms of how it differs from management. I think leadership is a setting and identifying a vision that moves a team and its resources forward towards something that they otherwise might not have been able to accomplish.

I think leadership and I think what sets leadership apart from management is, you know, management is the, you know, it's the operationalizing the discipline of getting things done towards the task, right. And that's very important.

So the tool of leadership is often management is culture. It's it's a lot of those things that we talk about a lot, but I think what sets leadership apart defines a leader is the ability to set that vision to ignite, whether it's hearts minds or even heads in terms of moving forward towards towards a preferred or forecasted version of the future, managing today's company and tomorrow's company and moving those forward progressively while navigating all the accompanying landmines.

Yeah, absolutely. And, and when I think of those two as well, you know, I think of, you can be a leader by title right. So you can be a, have a, a VP or SVP or whatever that title is. And we as a society typically define that as a leader.

But that person may be nothing more than a micromanager that their people only follow because they have that title. So they just do what they're told to do. Because they have that title. And whereas you can have a leader even at a, at a lesser title, that person could be a director for example. But people buy into that to them. So they are maybe, quote unquote, just a people manager. But their leader, right, they're an aspiring leader because their people would move heaven and earth for that person. That's good. Yeah,

I think what truly and it's gonna sound so cliche, so I will, I will unpack it appropriately, what sets leaders apart and what I found in my own experience, and not that I've attained this level of leadership mastery, but I'm always learning forward.

A leader has a heart for people. A person that loves change or business more than they love people isn't a good leader because it will always be about the outcome. And so we have great titans of industry in business that we've celebrated for decades.

But you know, actually might not have been good human beings. They weren't compassionate. They weren't supportive. But they, they drove companies toward, you know, record revenue, they launched products, etc. And so I think over time, we've so canonized and he realized this notion of the man or woman that can, you know, pull themselves up and conquer business.

I think what you're finding is this emerging definition of a leader, that ability to really have compassion and lead people in a way that's heartfelt, and leading people holistically, there's no longer the separation between your work life and then there's your home life and then they're like, it all kind of blurs. I think the ability for leaders now is to lead people in a way that's much more I think, inclusive, much more, I think, holistic as well. And I think it creates opportunities and challenges as we move away from that old school leader that was you know, he was the he was the answer, and oftentimes online It was a he right? Um, it was this you come to me with the for, you know, for information.

And you know, I have access and I think now because our teams are so distributed, but still coordinated so globalize, etc, the definition of successful leader has become much more about, you know, driving towards outcomes, but also supporting employees and culture and people and it's much more of, you know, instead of being the, you know, the battleship commander, it's actually a lot more of, you know, being that, that that visionary ambassador to really, really, I think, the archetype for the values of your company, your product, and then translate that into how it comes alive.

Yeah. And you you actually hit on part of it as well, right? You add in that, that diversity piece and for people that don't work within companies or haven't had the opportunity to work with anything Companies, especially larger companies, that have diversified their senior leadership, including their C suite, their boards, things like that. It is really a differentiator. And you see the difference with that diversification because it helps to inform everything that that company is doing, including the culture.

Yeah, absolutely. I think you have to have that diversity of experience of background of geography, I think as much as possible. And I think it's a relatively new phenomenon, I think, you know, after, you know, look at the Industrial Revolution, I mean, I mean, the things of the typical standardized and traditional management, practices and tactics, they worked for a season, meaning I needed you to make more widgets faster.

And so we could measure that we can monitor it, I needed you to, you know, I could I could manage People not as solutions, but as tools. People were tools. And so we manage them like they're a task. And I think as we've evolved, right, I think we've moved to a model where like, people are solving problems and creating value and doing things that would have never been imaginable just half a century ago.

And so I think it's required us to break down the leadership myths or the outdated views and build up a new model as etc. and other challenges let me know out of our companies, legacy companies, you're so beholden to that, you know, I used to work for Radio Shack, you know, which it's, you know, contrary to popular belief raincheck still floating out there still food franchises here, there. You're in a small town, you'll still find a radio shack on the corner. But you know, Radio Shack is an ongoing corporate entity, especially the retailer no longer exists. And I remember my story.

First time I got I felt like a leader essentially was when I was leading social for radio sec, and I'm had I'd had a director title before, so I had to Reporting to me as a leader before when I worked for Kate Spade in New York City, but I was just kind of more of a, I had a title. I wasn't really leading like I was kind of more, I was more of a project manager, I was getting stuff done. I remember at RadioShack, though, we're going through some some tough times.

And I remember, you know, I only had a two person social team, but there was no one bringing the full digital teams together. So there was no one that was saying, hey, social, paid media, e commerce, digital content, etc. They all report the different teams and nobody was bringing a team together. So we could look at the holistic consumer experience.

And we're going through so many bad, you know, negative revenue, declining quarters. You know, honestly, when that happened, a lot of leadership gets insulated. They kind of like, let's not have that status, because the good news and so the status meetings get cancelled, no one's talking about the obvious issues. Everyone goes into preservation mode.

I remember that was the first time I started seeing set up this simple thing that was called the Monday mashup. And every Monday, I got all the digital counterparts together from across the company for just a 15 minute standing session where we all talk together, we had coffee and bagels, and we all started to share what we're working on and how we could help one another. And that went on for months. And we started this exercise just kind of coming together.

I remember one of the VPS called me into their office and was like, hey, wait, what are you doing? I'm bringing the team together. We're talking. We're working on projects by Rasul, right, we're coming together to unite to face the challenges of our business. I remember his comment, and he was kind of mad at me, he was like, well, that's my job. Right? And, you know, like, obviously, I didn't have to say, I didn't have to respond. It was like, Well, you know, aren't you doing it? And so I remember that.

I remember, I think that's the difference between management and leadership is the ability to see the needs of a team. It's gonna, it's gonna evolve, it's gonna change and so that's ability to bring people together face those challenges head on even when you don't have the answer, I think is the is the ability for a leader to navigate those those dark alleys even when you're alone and you know, sometimes leadership gets lonely it gets hurtful and we don't talk nearly enough about those times.

Absolutely. Now one of the things you mentioned and I completely agree is before and not too long ago people and and even nowadays try to delineate between their quote unquote personal and professional lives right and and I think we both agree that that doesn't exist.

Your life is your life, whether that's professional or personal, they blind. Now, I know from being friends that your family man with a beautiful family, you're happy to live with your church and you know you focus on your fitness. So how Would you say that those aspects, those things that you're passionate about help to inform and help to round you out? For when you're at work, and how those work help to inform you, you know, back at home? ideal.

Yeah, that's good. It's the great debate and my wife listing she would say, I probably haven't been on the fitness track enough during quarantine. So Honey, I'm gonna get back on it. The peloton is calling me All right.

Now I'll say this. I remember going to your original question. And then I'm packing it in terms of that dichotomy between personal and professional life. I remember when I was into it, I was leading a team of like social and mobile marketers globally.

I remember, our one of our VPS was talking at the time. And I remember we were trying to coach you know, executives on how to get online and social media. And they always wanted to separate their personal Twitter profile from their professional and a lot of them up. T

here's different ones right? I remember telling you the notion that like, people don't want to like talk to business you they want to talk to real you. And I think it was such a profound notion at that time that people would actually just want to know that I'm a Duke basketball fan, but also Hey, I lead digital or people want to know that you know, I have a puppy and a kid but also Hey, I, I you know, I, I lead a multi billion dollar tequila company. I mean, that's a it's a very new I think phenomenon.

I think for me, I started to make the decision is probably about eight years ago, that I no longer wanted to segment my life. I wanted to be holistically and authentically Adrian at work.

And I wanted that work to be something that I could talk to my kids about, talk to my family about, a because it's so exhausting to try to break it apart. You know, Google released some research last year talking about the people who were second mentors and integrators, so about 30% of us.

Our segment is where we have this clear line between work and family and there's all kinds of health benefits still by being able to you know, Cut your work off at five and turn on family time.

But the lion's share of a 70% or we're integrated, we're integrated our lives into work in our schedules and our families into this kind of perpetual journey of sometimes balancing. And I think what I found is that ability to be the best at work, I have to be the best at home, and and be the best at home, I have to be the best at work. And so those things come together for me. And so for me, it's fitness, also my faith and my spirituality.

It's also my work, my purpose, my kids, all those things combined, to make me uniquely me, doesn't mean I'm better than anybody is uniquely Adrian, I think when you can inspire your team to bring that to work each and every day, you start to get the solutions you're looking for right there in your team, right.

And I think those passions, those interests, those backgrounds, all of that makes your team so much more beautiful. It's like a bouquet of talent that you have sitting right there in your org chart and I think the ability to unlock that is bringing all that to work, not just your your LinkedIn profile is bringing your full self. But oftentimes leaders have to role model that otherwise, it's not necessarily an accepted practice in many businesses still.

Yeah. It's funny that you mentioned that because when I've helped CEOs, especially become present on say, Twitter, you know, they kind of understand LinkedIn, it's their professional profile, it's probably somewhere where they've already been.

But Twitter's the kind of scary ground, the unknown for them. And I always coach them and sometimes, you know, depend on the CEO, we would provide them with the content, they would approve it, but we would manage it. Other times they would want to post it themselves, but we would help suggest content to them.

But every time we would push them to here's the topic About the company that we've posted, here's the company blog, here's new announcements, whatever that may be. Here's third party comments about the company, maybe another, you know, blog site or whatever it is analysts wrote about us. And so you want to highlight them and it still talks about the company.

But you also need to now post things that you're passionate about, whether that's space or like you said, basketball or whatever that may be you have to sound like a human you're just not CEO at fill in the blank company. So no, I've had to coach plenty of CEOs on that same exact thing.

Yeah, yeah. At the ongoing I think a challenge but also creates an opportunity when you bring your humanity so work, it opens up such a great conversation. But also the empathy that you combined. And obviously, you know, we know cautionary tales of CEOs or businesses who have shared, you know, they've been authentically themselves.

And it's backfired. Right? And I think, you know, you look at response to COVID, or even the response of Black Lives Matter movement and some of the social injustice, conversation, you know, there are times, you know, you look at, you know, the, you know, the one of the founders of CrossFit, right, or something. And so and so I think, as leaders, you have to have the EQ. To know your voice has ramifications and consequences, largely outside of your personal identity. And so it creates a platform but also creates a responsibility to, to, you know, to, to attempt to guard your words, and I think the best thing I've learned is, you know, you can think in private then talk in public.

I think sometimes what happens is, we're think we're wrestling with a thought and we think it out loud to publicly too soon. And so I think oftentimes a lot of us, even me myself, my wife is probably the best coach on this. And you probably do this because you got a comms background, hey, let's have that uncomfortable, awkward conversation, a small group of us in a room, let's get it all out. But like man, like before we get in front of the, you know, the town hall or Twitter or whatever it is, let's let's let's let's coach and let's get there. And so I think communication creates an avenue for that. But yeah, it does create those a governance that you have to have to make sure that the message is received with the with the intent in which it was given.

So as someone with so many things on your plate at any given time, I think what some people will think and would be helpful to them is How do you stay productive on the actual work that will move the ball forward for patrol?

Oh, this is the billion dollar question. I mean, quite literally a billion dollar question. A few things kind of maybe not. And my caveat is always this, I don't give advice. I give evidence. So advice you can get from keynotes and conferences, and there are a lot of smart people with PhDs and everything. And I read a lot of their books.

Evidence is just hey, here's my experience. And so yeah, ignore it. If it didn't work, I think for me, part of that staying on top of the needs of the business and my family, etc. Two things one is surround yourself with smart people, hire your tutor, hire people that you can learn from that are able to take a business or division or a tactic or a team farther than you could right and so having that trust is super super important but also paramount to to building to building that that life that you can navigate multiple competing priorities. Speak to is be okay saying no. be okay.

Not being online. Call be okay. missing the meeting, calling it out. I think oftentimes we have culture, especially in larger companies where there's a lot of bureaucracy. I think there's this notion of, you know, let's call it presenteeism where you know, you, you got to be a part of it because you have to be me, aspects of it, where you just have to do something that you don't think it's valuable, but think you've got to own your destiny and direct your day. And so having a clear schedule, having clear guardrails on your family time versus your, your, your professional time, which is challenging during cobit, and I'll be quite honest, I had a killer schedule.

Before COVID. I was chilling, I had it mapped out, I sent it to my team. I read his book called a free free to focus by Michael Hyatt had mapped out, hey, where do I add the most value? Right? And you know, there's two or three things that I'm really good at. And then here's the other five things I'm not really good at.

So hey, my team's really take that on as well. And I think as leaders, then the myth of the well rounded leader is probably the most damaging piece How to Be good all these things no, like no, don't be well rounded have a well rounded team, I think that's the opportunity to make sure you're balancing your highest and best use with, you know, the requirements of being a father or husband or you know, a wife, etc. And so yeah, it's a moving target. But I think a team you can trust time management saying no, I think

Lastly, you know, this, and this might be something somewhat controversial. The Psalm is, there's only one guy, Adrian Parker, who could be a husband to my wife or a father to my kids. At this point, I'll be honest, there's probably 100 people who could potentially run petroleum tequila and quite honestly might do it better. And so I think you got it, you gotta prioritize and you know, you have to set those boundaries and, you know, invest the head for what's most important, or setting your team up to be successful as well.

Absolutely not. I couldn't agree more with that. And you can. I think all of us in how our lives blend right when you take your Personal life which is your family and and maybe your hobbies and and whatever else that may be and balance it against essentially your professional life just what your job is and how many hours you have to put into that.

You have to keep yourself in check. And sometimes one thing may out balance the other for some reason, given the day, week, month kind of season, but you don't. What you see too many people do is they focus on their job 18 to 20 hours a day. They lose sleep, they actually are less productive in the long run. They end up at the worst case divorced. You know, their kids grow up without them around, you know, name it, we've all seen it. Yeah, and unfortunately experienced it in our offices, seeing people that have gone Through that, that we know and it's, that's not safe.

You know you have to be dialed in to work because we all carry our phones and our laptops and, and all that stuff. But when it comes to get in home and things like that, especially you with kids, I don't, I don't have kids. But when you get home, a lot of that stuff for me goes on pause for a little while I come home, have dinner and relax for a few and then maybe before bed or something like that I might jump back on to make sure that always well. But you have to have you have to balance your life and ensure that it's not simply work because that to to what a lot of these books will say and things of that nature. You'll become less productive in the end.

Yeah, no, I agree. I quickly share some research. Last year I found from Harvard, two phenomenons that happen. One is the fallacy of the fallacy of a rival when you keep putting future happiness and joy. It's always future tense.

And so it's the job the promotion the bigger house, the you know, I don't know call it you know, whatever the spouse, you you push off the hope. And when you get it at all, you know, there's that cognitive dissonance dissonance because there's a gap in expectation and then to the single most greatest indicator of happiness is their relationships.

It's not money, idle, prestige or privilege is actually relationships and so what happens especially for up and coming executives, and I've seen this in my own life and seniors in my peers is what happens is there's this double jeopardy that when you're trying to climb the ladder, you still time from the things relationships, or hobbies or fitness Because you're you're investing that effort ahead into your career, what happens when you you hit a hard spot in your career, you don't have the fallback of family relationships, etc, or fitness because you haven't invested. And so it creates this double jeopardy when the times you need non work support the most you don't, you've invested at least in it. And I think we have to start to change that narrative where we're leading our teams to be okay, unplugging to not have that double jeopardy, hey, make sure your parents are okay, take the time to like, take care of your kids take the time to unplug. Roboto what it looks like to be out of office.

So you know, you know, for years, I never set my out of office, right? Because as a leader, it's like, oh, you never really off right. I mean, you know, you have you have this great title. So even if you're on vacation, you should probably be you know, you know, assessable I remember I started a year ago to set my out of office and truly honor time off because it made such a statement and I think my peers and also my team And so I think we've got to start to do that.

Otherwise, you're gonna continue to see that cycle that you've seen where the divorce or the exchange relationships from kids and all those things are the byproduct. And so you have this great career. But man, like you don't have anything to really show for it from a personal perspective.

Absolutely. And I saw I had this experience when we were in Cabo, a few years ago. And I took a photo of our friends book, which had just come out and I was reading it by the pool and enjoying it. And I wanted to show it help influence people to hopefully go by it. And here I was on vacation in the middle of relaxing. And I posted the photo to Instagram and Facebook or whatever it was. And I immediately got a text from someone at work that had my cell phone number, saying, I know that you're online, even though you have you're out of office. posted, because you posted that photo, I have a quick question for you. And I replied, I'm on vacation.

That doesn't mean that I'm offline. Because just because I'm on vacation doesn't mean that I'm not, I'm not going to post photos, it means that I'm not going to return your emails. That's what it means. And you know that, that experience has always stuck out in my mind. And I'll probably remember for the rest of my career, even though I don't remember who that person was, because it it just caught me with such an edge. When

Yeah, when that experience happened. So we've come to the final question, which is one that I asked everyone and that I hopefully will wrap into a pretty little bow, you know, 10s of hundreds of episodes into this, but what does being built on stoppable means to you.

Well, thanks first of all for the opportunity to share and connect. I'm learning this as much as I hope I'm sharing things that are worth learning. I think for me, being built stoppable means tapping into the unique you, you know there is a gift, a skill, a purpose that only you can, you can deliver.

And the notion that you can move forward towards that through uncertainty, through setbacks, through landmines through global pandemics doesn't matter. It's unstoppable is that gravitational pull towards you being the best, truest and most honest version of yourself.

And so that's not only in business, that's also in our relationships, that's also at home. That's also in this how we treat our people in our community. I think build unstoppable is that it's that pool towards being the best version of ourselves or honoring, you know, our own purpose and not looking to the right to the left and comparing that unstoppable About that, that resilience that only comes from knowing who you are and why you're here.

Awesome. And where can people find you on the web?

Yeah, you know, if you want to, you know, check me out. I have a blog, Adrian de Parker comm where I'll share some some thoughts, disagree or agree, you know, check that out, also, obviously, on Instagram, LinkedIn as well and actually just launched my first podcast with one of my good friends Darryl coffee. I have a podcast on Spotify and Apple called unfollow Podcast, where you know, some of this conversation, I'm talking about all the bad things, bad advice I'm letting go of to move forward into a better, more authentic version of myself for my business, my team and my family.

And so yeah, anywhere online, check me out. And I'd love to hear responses or comments or questions from this podcast as well.

Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining the built unstoppable podcast this week. Adrian, I really appreciate you taking the time.

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