S1E02 : "Beyond the Product – Transforming to Achieve Customer Success & Differentiation", with Alberto Andolina, VP Customer Marketing & International Transformation, Diabetes at Medtronic

Welcome to the second episode of Season 1 of The Marketing Consultation podcast! In this episode, we have the pleasure of hosting Alberto Andolina. With over 16 years spent at Medtronic, Alberto has played pivotal roles in driving strategic change within the industry. Currently serving as the Vice President of Customer Marketing & International Transformation, Diabetes EMEA, Alberto leads the way in making healthcare more effective, cost-efficient, and accessible. 

Join us for this episode as Alberto shares his valuable insights on: 

• Creating a strong vision that aligns with organizational goals,  
• Driving a successful transformation and implementing a new business model in a highly regulated environment, 
• Going beyond “product success” to deliver “customer success” and be able to create a new space for differentiation,
• The importance of building diverse and specialised marketing teams, 
• And his entrepreneurial journey as the owner of two restaurants in Spain and Italy. 

Overall, Alberto's experiences and insights highlight the importance of persistence, a competitive mindset, creativity, and finding a balance between personal and professional life for success in both entrepreneurship and corporate environments. 

Here are Alberto’s book recommendations: 

• "H2H Marketing: The Genesis of Human-to-Human Marketing" by Philip Kotler, which explores the shift from a product-focused approach to a service-driven, customer-centric perspective.  
• "Hostage at the Table" by George Kohlrieser, examines the skills used by hostage negotiators and how they can be applied to everyday business interactions, emphasizing emotional intelligence and positive conflict resolution. 

Please do not hesitate to share your feedback with us on our LinkedIn or Instagram pages! 

Transcript

0:04

Hi everyone and welcome to the Marketing Consultation, the podcast for Healthcare Marketers by Healthcare Marketers. In the Marketing Consultation, Greg and I are having biweekly conversations with top leaders from the healthcare industry to uncover the key experience, insights and advice when it comes to carry on development, leadership and building high performing teams. Or marketing strategy and innovation. Whether you work in healthcare marketing or are interested in this field, our goal is to help answer your key questions and challenges and support you in your professional growth so that you can accelerate your career and stay ahead of the curve. In this first episode of season one of the marketing Consultation, we have the pleasure of welcoming Alberto Andolina. Alberto joined Medtronic 16 years ago and is currently the Vice President of Customer Marketing and International Transformation for Medtronic Diabetes EMEA. His leadership has been instrumental in driving growth and innovation for the company and his ability to build high performing teams has been a key factor in his success. In this conversation, Alberto shares about his approach to creating and executing on the strong vision. To driving transformation and implementing a new business model reflecting on both external and internal challenges. He also speaks to his experience of building high performing teams, relying on the importance of diversity connection to the field and of going toward more specialization. And finally building on his experience as an entrepreneur. He shares his thoughts on key SuccessFactors as a leader. Highlighting the critical roles of passion, competitive mindset, team and creativity. Hello Alberto, and welcome to the marketing consultation. Hello, Fabienne, we're delighted to have you today and knowing you from our time working together in Medtronic Diabetes, I'm sure we're going to have a very nice and insightful conversation. So you are now a VP of Customer Marketing and International Transformation still at Medtronic Diabetes in Europe. And as part of this role, I guess you have to drive a consistent yet tailored approach to your different customer segments and at the same time driving this transformation that the company is expecting for diabetes. And I think it must require very strong ability to define a clear vision and execute on it. So our first question to you is what is your approach to building a vision? And how do you ensure that it aligns with the overall business goals of the organization? Thank you for being, first of all, hello. For being. Hello, Greg. Hello, everyone. So let's let's start from the vision. It's a good way of breaking the ice here. And what I've learned about myself is that every job I always have to find something that gives me the energy to wake up. Then there has to be something big. And so I ended up for some reason framing visions in several of the jobs that I've had and and so it's, yeah, it's a great, great place to start with. So what I've learned is that first of all, there has to be a team and it's probably going to be a theme that we're going to take through our conversation today and that team has to be diverse. In the sense that obviously you're going to have to build something that is going to look bright for the future. And so you need someone that you know can be bold and maybe wild within the team. But you also want to make sure that in the team there is someone grounded in the business okay. So that then whatever you're pulling up with, you're already having multiple hats at the table, basically avoiding to go too far. And then this is really not something that is going to fit. The organization or the business in that moment. So the diverse theme is the first, is really the first thing that comes to my mind. If I'm thinking at a European vision, then certainly you want to have people from some of the markets. It has to really fit. You really need to make sure that it's built on their experiences. Now, one other thing that found particularly exciting for me. Is that as you start framing that bright future, that vision statement? It would be. It would be cool if it would not only speak about a vision about your company, but ensuring that your drive, your vision is actually gonna improve healthcare. Okay and so for example, I've been working in in Spain for a little period of time and as soon as we realized that our growth vision, we realized that it was very aligned with the fact that healthcare should have improved in that sector. Okay, it was specifically diabetes. You start thinking that if you want to grow, you want to have that bright future, it's not just about you. You're going to have to necessarily change your context to your market and and that's the moment where you move from being. You know, a little team trying to drive your own future to a team that actually can make an impact on patients, on the overall environment, on the healthcare provider and and I guess at that point the vision gets even more exciting. You know that you're there for something bigger than just a result. Well thanks Alberto and you know link to that, you know see you know you're covering different teams will go more into detail. But the first one it's about you know the what's really inside food, it's how you align the needs of the market, the growth of the company and also the value for the healthcare system. And how do you define the business model which is connecting all this element of all the different stakeholder that could be aligned or misaligned and or you're connecting the dots. Yeah, So, so business model change it's I think at least the the one that I've that I'm leaving and that I've been leaving, it's it's really a transformation. It's difficult to think of it as a something that happens marginally really. And so I mean in this, in this job that I'm running right now, we're trying to bring in a subscription model, move to a subscription model which could sound very. At this point maybe more obvious or very basic, but but it's especially in a regulated market and with different markets where you're trying to bring change, you really need to think ahead and and it is a multi year project, OK. And so in what you say Greg around trying to get the different forces at the same table, so you're actually getting the. The patients have to see the benefits there. The providers, the Hcp's have to see benefits and certainly the payers are going to have to figure out that it's worth changing. So a lot of pre work has to happen in order to really understand those needs. So it is full of customer insight. So you have to go test it when the water is cold first in order to really get a sense of the of the possibilities. What I would say and I think what it's interesting is that. You need to really keep that ambidextrous approach, meaning that on one side you're going to have to discover a new way how to do business and find places where that new way may start working. And at the same time, you're still going to have to manage your day-to-day. Your normal business model ensure that you can grow and really manage having those two different hats at the same time. And ensure that really you can play in different tables, different play essentially different games so but it is you know where. We're having here a marketing conversation. For me it is a deep marketing job as the customer insights is really at the beginning of making that change. Then outside and then obviously internally where certainly incentives are going to play a key role. We're certainly in my case, country leaders. So people into each country that can take that business model and make it their own, make it their own success story. Making their own journey as they really develop the market under new umbrella, those are essential elements internally to ensure that that business model can grow and can actually take over a large part of the revenue. What's interesting is that you are not only looking to the classical metric marketing, you are taking some components from outside like the subscription model which is more something than we can find. In FMCG and just would like to react about one element you mentioned which is about navigating A regulated environment or at the same time bringing new concept. Can you elaborate a little bit and share with our audience what was the main challenge but also the opportunities that you've seen there? Yeah and so I guess the obviously we're in met tech and. The way different countries procure is very diverse, Okay obviously the market is regulated. There is a whole history behind each therapy and normally there are several decision makers at the table. Right. So it's not something that you can change in a day. That's why I was saying it's a very transformative process. You need to take it with the right length and development process. So you know in our case and this is specifically a subscription model as you're saying, so we're trying to inherit some of the consumer based models and bring it into a therapy. In this case, it's a diabetes world. And we do see certainly a lot of benefits at at the level of the patients that have you know a lot of that flexibility which is more consumer driven okay and so that becomes an easier bit. But as we know patients are not paying in most of our countries. And so you really need to build a story for payers to change their role procurement process in order to enable a completely new business model. So if they were running tenders. They're going to have to completely rewrite the tender that is normally based on products being delivered into a subscription itself, which ends up being a lot more as a service type of procurement. And so you can imagine countries like Italy with a lot of fragmentation between different. Regions or Spain or countries like Germany where insurers are kicking in, there's a lot of essentially a lot of people have to sort of sit and start working on new terms with you because they believe that that's a better future there. And so that's why I'm saying in that regulated environment, that consumer drive is just not going to make it through. It's not the only driver that you're going to have to deal with, but there's a lot of system. Structure that you have to change in order to essentially get that business model to work, which makes it very exciting because then it means that yeah, it's a long term plan. It has to sit with your vision going back to what we were discussing before and you're trying to change something big in multi in many markets. It seems indeed very exciting and very challenging and a huge task. So but definitely you are the right leader to drive this. So we talked a little bit about the external challenges linked to this transformation and new business models, but you also touched on the internal buying that you need to generate. So could you talk a little bit about what challenges that you have been facing internally? And what are to you the key SuccessFactors to make sure the organization is behind you when driving this change and implementing a new business model? Yeah, well, if we speak about transformation and maybe we go beyond the pure business model, it could be a digital transformation, it could be a customer transformation. But what I've learned is that transformation ends up looking a lot like a marathon, really. Okay. And so with, you know, and when I think of the marathon, I'm thinking at something where you can just Sprint and get your fast wins and exit. You know, you need to be able to keep really a really strong pace and win every 5 kilometers in order to then actually get until the end and and win the 42 kilometers, right. It's going to take a few hours. In this case, it's going to take a few years. Made. And so the challenge that I've seen is that at the beginning, it's rather easy to bring a vision for that transformation and get the 1st 5 kilometers very fast, Okay, because everybody's super excited. People possibly buy into that vision and they get to run with you, You know, they get that sense of movement, that sense of accomplishment that is out there for us. And those first five kilometers are easy. The challenge that I've seen, especially with a large organization, is that the next rounds of five kilometers get more complicated. And for example, one big challenge is that as soon as you don't start seeing immediate effects, you get frustration. And so people at the 2nd 5 kilometers, they start losing a little bit the attention. You know, after a year, probably the business is a little bit in a different state and very emerging challenges come by and even the leaders in the organization forget that you're actually trying to change the game over the long run. And so I think crucial is to keep that transformation scope. High in the agenda of the key leaders. OK, above you, but also below you. So in the countries there has to be an ability of ensuring that you're keeping your plans. Your your daily plans obviously, and 1. But your transformation plan has to be on the table daily, otherwise it gets forgotten. It's never going to happen at the end. Now the other element that I've learned is that large transformation require a proficient level of program management. Okay really, because you really need to understand where do you stand in every moment and all the dependencies and still be able to adjust your plans. Because you know that the context is going to change as you're trying to change yourself, Okay, it's going to take three years, maybe four years to make a full transformation. Things are going to change. You're going to have to be able to react fast and adjust your plans and a big, I think a big mistake and I've seen that I believe that myself is that all that program management that requires really severe project management, rigorous follow up and planning. If it's not done properly at some point there is a, there is a sense of looseness which doesn't. Help at all and then I will go again back to those local leaders. And we're talking here about maybe a regional transformation where you have multiple markets. These objectives have to become really personal at a local level, Okay, this cannot stay at your regional level. Over time, as the transformation becomes more tangible, it has to go down. In the countries, it has to go down as one of the success stories of each of the leaders in the countries and the teams in the countries to make sure that essentially they're building their own local transformation and they are the leader for that change in their country. And it's not just that that it appears to be like that, it is like that because that transformation is going to take a different phase in each in each country. So but there has to be at some point a larger group of people that see their own success. Into making that transformation happen and and that is really essential as change goes down and it starts becoming really a topic of discussion and every leadership meeting in the country but also at every sales meeting in the districts and and down to the red level really. So these are some of the things that that I've seen and. And again it is a marathon, so there is stamina necessary, there is an ability to adjust to the context that is changing and then socializing internally constantly so that then that end state. It's really still top of mind for everyone, although you know daily challenges may still pop up. A lot of interesting insight, Alberto, especially the link with the marathon because every organization want to transform but like you mentioned. It's a multi year exercise and also keeping the momentum eye and learning when things need to be adapted to something, which is really insightful. I would like to take some element of your last discussion here regarding also the success for the team and connecting about, oh, you're building a diverse team, you mentioned that earlier. Also having the right team, the right people, the right local leaders across the organization is critical. And with the opportunity to work together in diabetes, but also previously in patient management and one of your strengths, it's also building that kind of team or bringing a very different profile. And sometimes people look to you and say that's quite interesting what's happening there. And at the same time to see a few months after or a year after then it's really making the differences. Can you share more with us regarding what's your philosophy about building the team, the opportunity, the challenge and? Or do you bring also high energy and momentum in the team? There's probably multiple question in one, but it's really more about looking to all this integrated approach than you're able to do. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. So maybe we'll talk here about maybe marketing specifically. I mean, obviously and I'm quite excited about leading marketing and strategy I do see there. Maybe the other functions are not going to listen here and they're not going to feel bad, but I do see there really an engine for growth and for business planning at the end okay. And so if I'm thinking at my marketing team, I'm going to need, as you were saying, very diverse profiles and certainly there has to be a part of the team where growth becomes. You know the the way they wake up every morning okay and so the ability to look through opportunities and make sure that you know they can connect adults and be fast in identifying you know really growth opportunities is crucial to the point that you certainly want to have people that have gone through specific market market experiences right and and. We've been through it, you know I've been through country responsibilities and European responsibilities and and in that diversity, the diversity of experience, the fact that you can get maybe strategic people really easy building a bigger picture. But you want to put them together with people that have been in the field, that have been having that sales experience or their marketing in the in the country experience becomes essential because then you're you're able to build growth and not just in the next three years, but in the next three months okay and keep that. Quarter focus, right. And so in that diversity, what I also have seen is that there are obvious needs within the team for creating relations and making sure that you keep yourself very influential. Influential because it's really we're discussing before. You know if you're building a team for a European headquarter, then you're going to have to jump into each country and still be very relevant, OK. It's a selling process all the time being an idea or being a plan. And so you need people in the team, they are able to build solid bridges, they are able to be invited in the sales meeting locally that have that. Emotional capability, each with different teams at different level and be able to speak their language as well, Okay. So I would expect it from all the people in the team. But you know that in the team there's going to be those people that are really bringing at the bridge, the bridges they're building that bond that is essentially your equity in front of every of every team. Okay and in most cases you get invited because of that Okay and as a marketing team, if you get invited into sales meeting into the countries, it means that you mean something you you've been doing something good. Okay. So that relational element is for me crucial. And in too many situations even in marketing planning, you're going to have to negotiate some of the things that are going to happen in different markets at that point, that ability to work with emotions with trust. It it's going to make a big difference, You know, it's going to turn a conversation into conflicts or turn conversation into you know, high energy and joint planning processes. OK. And that's what I'm looking for. Maybe maybe one last point which I've been seeing recently and and. It's the fact that in my team I'm learning, especially over the last few years, the fact that I'm looking for people that want to specialize a little bit. Maybe we want to expand that a little bit. But and I'm saying that because recently I've been building a team where there's been a need of having a patient focus A. Hcp's physician focus and a payer focus and at some point one of the big trigger was really not assuming that everybody can do everything Okay and really with the intention of starting to create experience into a customer segment and be willing to go deep okay. And so I've been seeing often marketeers wanting obviously to stay generalists okay which is certainly one of the element, know that also in terms of having opportunities in the future will open several doors. But I'm I'm seeing a lot more the need and the beauty of having specialists, so having people that know how they're actually going to deal with with something, for example, you know running a patient campaign and they understand exactly a lot of the details really that will make you successful. No thanks Alberto. And it resonates with a previous conversation we had with another leader, which was also alluding to maybe the era of the product manager that does everything is is maybe coming to an end. And especially as we move to this omnichannel environment, having more specialization amongst our teams may make sense. So I actually wanted to ask you a question about this marketing organization that you have structured by target audience as you were referring to some nurse patient, etcetera. This has always been very intriguing to me. This is not necessarily the most common set up in our industry. So I really wanted to understand what have been the drivers for you to organize the team like this, but also what pros but also maybe cons or challenges you've seen? In building the team by target audience, yes. So this has been my bread and butter in the last in the last five years now. So it's and it's and it's it's been quite exciting. I I've learned a lot of the market years we've been going through this. What I can tell you is that I think at some point a big driver for making a shift in the organization a big driver has been a reflection which is. You know one of the crucial forces in the market is your customers okay. So they're going to essentially make the day and night for you. And I had a feel at some point that we were essentially focusing ourselves on product success, therapy success. So we had several product manager, the whole organization is built around that product success. But there was no focus on essentially driving customer success okay. And so I end up thinking that you necessarily need both Okay. So I'm not necessarily suggesting that one is taking over the other, but I think the intuition at some point was that by driving products success. You do not necessarily create intimacy with your customers. You you are not able to establish an experience that is going to turn them into you know loyalty or even ambassadors at all Okay and in a chronic environment where those customers are going to be with you for very long time then it it was essentially evident that we needed to do something around customers and try to build that product success. Together on the same level with that customer force that you want on your side. OK. So that's why. And then I mean in this case we're talking about a therapy where the patient is very involved. From you know for many different reasons and so you also start looking at multiple customer segments that have a very high decision making power there. OK. So what we actually did was that we didn't, we left untouched the product management space. So that therapy management still stays there. You still need to have that product owner, that leader that is driving that product success. And we have built an organization really in parallel that is having customer owners. And so it's a customer marketing organization where there is a patient marketing leader, there is an HCP marketing leader that is actually taking care in our nurses and physicians. So there are two separate segments. And then there is a payer organization that is driving, yes, the whole reinborsement process and market access, but it's starting to look seriously at what. Means what it means to build an experience for payers when they work with us. OK. So these are people that wake up in the morning first with the intention of learning about their customer segments in depth. Okay. So and that's why I was touching before about specialization. Okay, understanding how to run and pain to patients, it means that you essentially have already understood your target audience, you have segmented them well. You understand the emotional side, what they're living through, the specific moment that you're probably going to touch. You need to understand all the channels. You need to have a specific language that you're going to use. You know what are some of the things that you don't have to touch upon. Otherwise it's going to destroy the whole interaction and the same thing with physicians, with nurses and with payers. So you start seeing the need for specialists that can really address those customers well. But apart from the insides especially is they wake up in the. Thinking how do I create an experience for these customers that is going to stand out Okay and and so immediately the pros that you have is that you create a new space for differentiation essentially okay. So you create a space where customers may decide to work with you not just because your therapy or your product is necessarily the best. But because they know that with you, they're actually resolving the problem with you. They know that they can trust what you're going to do for them. And they know you know that you're going to do the best experience, that you're going to establish the best solution for them. So you create one space for differentiation on the therapy and product side and another one on the experience side, which immediately drives essentially a service mindset. Okay. And so you move from a product mindset and a product centric mindset to a customer centric mindset where you start thinking servicing the product is not enough and you start identifying headaches of your customer that you can resolve. And sometimes it's not in the box of the product, the solution you're going to have to build it outside Okay. One of the things and and maybe I will touch it a little bit later that has been driving us into this into this thinking is a new, a new something new that is coming up in the in the marketing world which is called H to H marketing, which is human to human marketing. And and this has been over these five years something that has been giving us quite some insights in trying to turn. Every customer relation being that A/B to C or A, B to P customer relation into at the end of the day a human to human interaction where your customer being that anyway even a payer you know he's going to take decisions still with a lot of those human drivers and you have a way of getting into those drivers also through experience, through relation, through you know very well managed touch points essentially so. That's how it came through. These are some of the drivers. We're still learning a lot as we go through, although now it's a few years that we've been into this. Maybe you also asked about the cons and I'm just going to touch upon it as we move, as we move on because the Pro is clearly a new fields of differentiation. The cons is that you're going to have to work with the product team and a customer team and you're going to have to make sure that these teams are working hand in hand, okay. Product success, success is going to have to go through customer success and the other way around. So that real challenge is to be able to keep balance between these two drives, these two big drivers, the product success and the customer success. These two teams have to work really holistically together and they really have to trust each other in order to. To keep that good balance Okay and that's not easy, that's certainly not easy and that's exactly why I asked you the question because I see a lot of benefits but also a lot of challenges and alignment to reach to make this a success. Thanks for sharing a lot of insight and I really and also the customer centric and the H to H it's really the cornerstone of all what you've been. Building and I would like to go back to your previous life at some point you spent a few years in the field as a business director in Spain. You move there like on more or less overnight and taking a new challenge. And just like to understand for you what was the big learning, the challenge and also it has been shaping your marketing mind even more for what you're implementing driving and today and giving the vision. Yes, yes, you're right. I was basically parachuted to Spain at some point without knowing Spanish even. And this was the result of a bright leader that at the time thought that I could that I could take that threat that that that stretch really. And so that was some of the things that we've talked about for example trying to build a vision and and I touched upon that Spanish experience try to build a vision where you. Realize that your vision is actually going to change the healthcare context where you're in Okay. So that was for me a moment where I realized that with, you know, working for a large corporation but working in met tech in healthcare means that, you know, you can actually improve how healthcare has been delivered. It's not just about positioning your product, but that for me was that that Spanish experience. The, the setup was very simple. Diabetes therapy very under penetrated, a very apparently successful team in Spain. There was doing as much as possible to expand the therapy, but still with very little impact. And as I came in essentially I was bringing you know good strategic and marketing skills, but I didn't have a lot of that of that sales experience really. And and yeah, so I I work with Vision. From the first day these guys knew how to sell. They had a very nice sales team. We needed to inject a bit of ambition and a good plan to turn it around. OKI can tell you that change obviously I I spent there three years. We did Ignite and we broke a lot of different inertia points that we had at that point and and it was very fun to see how also. The team can come along with a bold vision. I can tell you that right now Spain is over the last seven years they've been growing like 25%. So it's been obviously at some point I stepped out, but it's clear that what I've learned is that with passion, with vision, but also ensuring that you connect your success with essentially your customers success, your country success, you know it becomes contagious. That team has kept. Hammering on a lot of the good things that we started for multiple years and now the therapy in Spain is a completely different state. I can say that patients, they have a better treatment right now. Yeah, that's great. Thanks, Alberto. So we have one last question to. Really some try to summarize what has been in your view like key SuccessFactors. So not only you are a very successful leader in a big company, but you are also an entrepreneur. You've opened two restaurants, one close to home in Madrid and one little bit further away in Palermo. And I think these two experiences can be extremely complementary and maybe build on different skills, but I'm sure there is also common ground. So I would like to know from you what based on these two experience, what do you think are some of the key skills and traits that are essential for success. Yes, so the the entrepreneurial experience is quite humbling to be frank in the sense that you you got from a very large corporation and you jump into. You know, apparently very simple businesses like for example opening a restaurant, which obviously seems quite simple compared to some of the complexity that we manage. And and it becomes very humbling because you realize that also very simple things in order to be successful, they're not straightforward okay and they require a lot of. Really being stubborn and staying a little bit of that stamina that I was saying before and the things you don't win faster in any environment essentially today. So maybe I will start thinking, especially thinking at my entrepreneurial experience. That that stamina element is seems to be put under stress over and over. OK? And so it's not just about passion, OK? I I started at least at least the second one for for a passion of bringing, you know something to a different country. And I quickly realized that that passion wasn't enough. You know you need to stay on top of your objectives every day with that push. That at some point the passion is not enough. You know passion turns into sorrow. It turns into waking up at night knowing that things are not working out the way you're you're thinking they should be working and and so you need to be there every day and and ensure that you keep pushing essentially. OK. And in fact this is the same in our job and in our work. I mean that that competitive mindset that need to constantly rethink your plan is something that that has to be there awake, not just for a small entrepreneur. But really in any business context, the second piece that I and I'm going to have to go back to this, I think identifying even in a small enterprise, identifying those few, very few people that are with you on the journey is necessary okay and especially as a small entrepreneur you may end up being the loan. And that is essentially the way to to, you know, to kill yourself. So you need to identify those very few people that are there not just because of the money, but because of the of the objective of the vision that you have. And they're going to have to wake up with the same energy that you are putting in there, being the one investing. They're working for you. But they are the people that are going to build the plants. They are the people that they're going to bring out that creativity that you need in order to make it work. And this is exactly. The same that that team around you those few people that you trust on and that they're going to actually you know fight in any context that they're they're really essential and and maybe as a as a last point and it connects with these two that creativity element this has been and this is currently something that keeps you know essentially keeping me awake every every single day. So big marketing leader at this point after several years also working with you guys. You get to a restaurant and and you essentially have every day the challenge of ensuring that that restaurant is full okay and you're thinking this, this must be. I mean, they can't. You know, there has to. This is a simple job and it's not, especially because you don't have the same resources as a large corporation. You realize that you need to be able to craft plans. With very little money there in some cases with no money and still ensure that the that the place is full and you're thinking that there has to be that key and you're behind that key. And so I can find myself with these little team in this restaurant thinking every day what what are we going to do to fill it up. It's you know, there has to be the key and so the creativity, new plans, new actions, new campaigns all the time and that brings back when I'm getting back to my electronic table and I'm thinking the resources we have. I mean the opportunities are infinite, are infinite, but that creativity is exactly the same. You know that the, you know the different in resources available should not change that need every day to bring in a creative idea, a viral idea to make sure that you're actually going beyond what you're doing right now. I think that contrast between entrepreneurship and and corporate life is is quite rich and it's and it's helping me to really figure out that in some cases you you don't really, you don't really need a lot. To make a big blast, thanks for showing you can see a lot of passion and commonalities also between the two worlds and suggest we switch to the last part of our discussion, which is a signature program regarding the behind the scene. Because we have a great and inspiring discussion here regarding your marketing vision. Or do you make it life or do you implement it? But I'm sure our audience would like to know a little bit more about who you are as a person. And the first one, which also connected to your entrepreneurship adventure and can you tell us more about what drove you to start this adventure? Yes, yes. So I would talk about mostly about the second restaurant which was opened here in Madrid. And this happened essentially as a result of the Pandemia Okay. The the Pandemia has had multiple effect on on me in terms of, you know, drive, focus, engagement with what I was doing, but certainly not traveling, has been making my days less, you know, less spicy and less colorful than before Okay. And so at some point I realized that I was needing something else to focus on, maybe even the ability to meet people. And that needs of opening almost, you know, a new Ave. that could give me some side energy popped up. And since I already had a restaurant in Palermo then I thought maybe there was an opportunity of extending it to a different country and come to Madrid with that offer. Okay. And so the real reason why I started this was just because I think my wife had been seeing me sitting at my table in front of Zoom for too many hours. And when I told her that I needed to sort of find something else to ensure that my brain would stay balanced, she she agreed. She said, yeah, I see you. You need something, you need, you need a new little fire there that will make you go ahead. And so the idea of the restaurant came in and I certainly had certainly, I had moments where I regretted the idea of having even started. But it's. But as I said, that stamina is there. So pandemia, Pandemia has changed a lot of different things, yes. Yeah, I I relate totally to what you were saying, Alberto, because I also launched myself in an entrepreneur adventure during the pandemic. And for exactly the same reasons of I I had lost one source of energy which was in creativity, which was to see others to go to the countries, to be exposed to just our teams and our customers. And it triggered for me that the need like a gap that I had to feel and that's also. When I launched my business on the side, not in the gastronomy area but in a different area. So I totally get that and I'm happy to see that other people have went through the same, have gone through the same experience. Thanks both of you for sharing. For me, it's always a pleasure to follow your. Entrepreneurship adventure for both of you on Instagram. It's very inspiring and also very tasty. When I see Madrid and Palermo restaurant Alberto, the next question for you and I'm sure the audience is always curious to see what's inspiring you and if you are looking to a book, is there any book then you will recommend to an audience and what's really eye opening for you? Yes. So I I, I thought first of all I I mentioned this human to human marketing and I mean this is maybe not game changing as you may may be expecting, but it has been something that I've been looking into carefully and as a market here I think it's probably something that more people may be interested. So there is an actual book on H2H marketing and this is a book from Philip Kotler, so obviously big name. He joined other two people and he essentially he says that he's entered into this human or humanistic face of his life, Kotler and and so I suggest it's called H2H marketing, human to human marketing. There are also, you know multiple language versions. I think it came out 2022. And it can be a good read for a marketeer because it turns a little bit that product focus and product driven set up into a service driven and customer centric. I think it's interesting. I have a second book though which did change the way I was looking at relations with people over time. This is also very famous book, so I'm sure your audience will know it. It's called Hostage at the Table. This is a book coming out of the IMD, let's say. School. It's from George Kohlreiser hopefully. I'm I'm saying it well but and what he's doing is that he's looking at hostage negotiators has people that have to apply emotional intelligence to necessarily bond and be able to essentially free up the hostages. Okay. Now obviously it's a very extreme set up but these people are able to actually grant 90% success. Skilled 1. And he's taking those skills of bonding in very extreme conditions to the skills that you need in your everyday business life to actually deal with normal negotiations with conflicts that are ready to arise and where you're actually able to resolve them in a very positive fashion for both parties. And for me that was really high opening and and I'm, I thought this would be maybe a good, good book for everyone. Yeah. Thanks for showing, you know some books to add to her collection and especially, you know, like you mentioned. And creating the the links between one extreme environment or day-to-day you've been sharing with us you know a lot regarding your corporate life. You know you're also a busy entrepreneur. You have a lovely familiar with two boys and what do you do in your free time because that's probably already feeling more than 24 hours. But anything you want to share about or you and are enjoying your your free time. Yes, yes, so, so certainly I mean you you know that the family is is a big. Activity base, especially with the kids, I'm I'm having a lot of sports with them and fun with them. The I have to say also here, Pandemia has changed a little bit the pattern in in a positive sense, in the sense that I do feel like I have a bit more space to organize myself. The fact that a lot more of the action is happening remotely, it means that when I'm closing this, I'm actually with them most of the time. So traveling a little less and this is helping. This is helping a lot. So spending time with them, I'm trying to match some of the maybe I'm pushing them a little bit, but I play tennis and my kids are playing tennis too. So that's a good way of maybe I'm pushing them somewhere where they don't want to go, but we're spending time together in that way and then we with my wife. I mean very obvious thing but we like to plan some little trips and little traveling around and so that's also something that we that we like to do when you know when I managed to take some time off from Medtronic, so, so, so yeah so these are but as I said pandemic has been changing a lot of dynamics and in this case it's there's been I think some gains. From being able to to plan a bit more independently, timing and also decide where you are, it's really helping with the family. No thanks Alberto. And you know the that's also connecting to our last question which is about how do you balance your personal and professional life. You know you mentioned some elements that the pandemic has been helping you have been reflecting to it. Any little secret you want to share with the audience about how to balance the between the the multiple side of the life? Yes. Well it's I still feel it's these are very personal personal things we all find balance in different ways. Well I can tell you I even during calls the infinite calls that we all have probably on zoom in some cases I'm you know I'll just share a secret I do go on mute especially if it's a goal where. There are several people and I'm actually taking my guitar and playing while the goal is drunk. This is maybe not a good news for the people that I know. Your team is going to listen to this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's. I don't know, I do. I figured out that I need to find ways and obviously people go walking where they're having a call or something else, but since. This is becoming a bit of a continuum and we're always on call in some way or another. And then in some cases I'm actually, yeah, stepping out of the typical desk setup and maybe going beyond the figuring out different ways how do I make me maybe even the goal more interesting. But but as I said, I think the good thing of the Pandemia is that as soon as the goal is over then I have my life ready to ready to go. And and if I'm planning well then you know it's. There I feel I gain more freedom by having a slightly more remote life than we had before okay and so. But I would inject certain disruptor to these goals as maybe taking a guitar, although you should be on mute maybe or or figuring out something else that you're doing while you're having a goal. And maybe that triggers also the brain to become even more interesting and and creative. That's clearly a secret, but thanks for thanks for sharing Alberto. Alberto would like to thank you. It's been amazing discussion, very inspiring for our TMC audience. If you want to reach to Alberto, feel free to connect with him to LinkedIn. And Fabienne and myself would like to thank you for this discussion, for your support to the TMC and to be the source of inspiration. Thanks a lot and wish you all the best and then bring us to the end of today's episode. We also found this discussion informative and insightful. 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