One Take with Leslie Russell

Leslie’s story is inspirational for everyone who is over 40 and looking for their next big thing.

She lives in Portugal, which is an amazing country to work and live in and is at the heart of the digital industry.

Decisive Moments – The first one, while working in the fashion industry in New York, Leslie (who speaks Spanish perfectly) was introduced to a person who mentioned that another person was looking for a bilingual sales rep. And that’s how Leslie wound up working for Vista Magazine, one of the leading pan-regional magazines in Latin America.

The second one, with the implosion of print, she was interviewing when the interviewer said, “you have to tell them that you're a grownup and you can do it for them”. In another interview she offered the company that she would create multicultural DSPs for them. Lo and behold, 8 years later, she’s still doing that.

Unpredictable change: Print became a dinosaur, got irrelevant, imploded.

Coping with change: Pivoted squarely into the heart of digital advertising –80% - 90% of all digital advertising is considered programmatic—and created several multicultural DSPs.

Advising a CEO: They (older people) come to the table with years of experience with, a book of business and sales. They come to the table with relationships that they've developed over many years. They will get meetings. They will get audiences.

And I think that the other thing is that the more mature is really about relationship building and they're about a different way of communicating. They're about looking you in the eye, they're about conversation, they're not just about transactional communication. And I think that that makes a big difference no matter what your business may be.