Chief Change Officer
#92 Mary Shea PhD: From Oboes to Outcomes – A Journey Through Change and Sales Leadership – Part One
Sat, 7 Dec 2024
In this first episode of a two-part series, Mary Shea, General Manager of Hire Quotient and former co-CEO of Mediafly, shares her remarkable journey from classical musician to sales leader and diversity advocate. Mary reflects on the pivotal moments that shaped her career, including the risks she’s taken and the transformative lessons learned. As a proud member of the LGBTQ community, she discusses her mission to amplify underrepresented voices and drive equity in sales leadership. Drawing from her time as Principal Analyst at Forrester, Mary provides valuable insights into the digitization of sales and the role of creativity in building high-performing teams. Packed with passion, advocacy, and actionable advice, this episode sets the stage for an inspiring conclusion in Part Two. Key Highlights of Our Interview: From Music to Business “I started as a classical musician, playing with the Mexico City Philharmonic and Guadalajara Symphony. But when the career palette felt too small, I took a leap into business, changing my life forever.” Sales: The Great Equalizer “Sales is one of the few fields where hard work and skill can lead to financial independence, regardless of where you start. That independence allows you to make meaningful changes in your life and others’.” Playing Catch-Up with Purpose “Coming into the business world with a PhD put me 10 years behind my peers, but it also ignited a fire. I moved quickly, knowing every opportunity was critical to closing that gap.” Creating the Playbook “I’m not just about managing to a playbook—I love creating it. The intellectual stimulation of building strategies with teams and seeing them succeed is what drives me.” _________________________ Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Mary Shea PhD Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. Experiential Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives Global Top 3% Podcast on Listen Notes World's #1 Career Podcast on Apple Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI, JP 2.5 Millions+ Downloads 50+ Countries --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: What journey did Mary Shea take from music to business?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chan, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. In this episode, I'm thrilled to welcome Mary Shea, the co-CEO of Mediafly, a leading revenue enablement company that raised $80 million in capital to turbocharge its growth.
Mary's story is downright inspiring. Mary, a proud LGBT community member and women's empowerment advocate, has taken a path less traveled. Imagine going from a classical musician with a PhD to an entry-level sales job, from playing music to playing a key role in sales, then rising to become a CEO after working as a forester analyst.
If I had to capture Mary's journey in just two words, it would be beyond boundaries. We are our worst enemies, scared of failure or what others might think. But in Mary's case, instead of being paralyzed by the weight of her background as a well-educated musician, a mantle that could have been seen as baggage in her new arena. She chose to reinvent herself. This wasn't about giving up.
It was about moving forward, unburdened. is a powerful reminder of the resilience it takes to truly embrace change and chase success on one's own terms. I'd come to know Mary before I even met her in person. A common friend, so to speak, is her partner, Waverly Deutsch, who was my former professor of entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth.
After I heard all the wonderful things about Mary's business success in the sales space, I finally got to sit down with her over dinner when both of them came to Hong Kong before COVID. Other than good food and wine, fun conversation, I was impressed by all the changes she has led, building herself up with so much resilience and intelligence.
As I was putting together the guest list for the podcast, I thought of her right away. I emailed her directly. Within eight minutes, I got her reply. There, she said, I would love to be on your podcast. Please send over details. Our team will take a look to make sure it's a good fit for me and Mediafly, which I already assume it is. You bet, Mary. Here we go.
Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to reconnect with you. It's been quite some time, hasn't it?
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Chapter 2: How did Mary's academic background influence her career?
Yes, a couple of years, a lot of changes. This podcast is about change. You are the perfect person to talk about that. Now, let's start with your own change. I don't mean just a resume type of introduction, but more about milestones that you've experienced. back in your school days studying music and then move through the business landscape and now you are the co-CEO at Mediaflot.
Start with something brief and then we'll dive into specific details.
Sure. Happy to share that with your listeners and with your audience. I do love change. And if you think about me, I've been in the business world and walking the world for a while here now. I'm also a Gemini, which means I constantly like being challenged. I'm intellectually curious. I sometimes am impatient and like to take on new things. So my professional journey is wrought with
lots of risk and lots of change. And I'll share with you that the biggest risks I've taken have resulted in the biggest upsides, whether it's professional, personal growth or economics or typical roles that you might think about. I started out my career as a classical musician. I was an oboist. So for those of you who don't know, oboe is a double reed instrument like bassoon.
And it's one of the most difficult orchestral instruments there are. I started playing the oboe when I was 12. My whole life was really geared to being a professional classical musician. I played in a number of youth orchestras. I went to college and earned degrees in music performance. And then I went to Mexico and played in the Mexico City Philharmonic and the Guadalajara Symphony Orchestra.
I really lived my dream when I was in my very, very early 20s. which is wonderful because I didn't have to have a midlife crisis then. So I got to do what I wanted from day one.
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Chapter 3: What risks did Mary take during her career transition?
And I came back to the States after making a name for myself in Mexico and thought, well, you know, if I want to support myself as a working musician, classical musician, I should get a PhD so I can teach and have some stability in my income. And I did that. I got a PhD in musicology, which is the study of Western art music or music that's written down.
And also the degree was in ethnomusicology, which is musics of the world or more likely music that's passed down an oral tradition. It was a wonderful experience. As I came to the end of my Ph.D. time, I felt like the palette was a little bit too small for what I saw my professional career as. how I saw my professional career taking shape.
And serendipitously, I met some people from Forrester who recruited me to come join the company and start in sales there. And I took a big, big leap of faith. And that was probably the single most successful transformational moment in my professional and personal life.
It changed the trajectory of my life, both from my spouse to the business role, to the economics that I was able to make and to the impact I was able to have on things that I'm passionate about, Vince. One of the big passions is really leading, inspiring and motivating global teams.
At Forrester, you were the analyst.
You analyze things. You analyze people. You analyze businesses. There's really two sides of my Forrester career. I was at Forrester for a decade, and I was what George Colony, who's the CEO and founder there, calls a boomerang. So I started out my sales career at Forrester in the mid to late 90s as an SDR. So one of those folks that actually...
is front of the cycle rep that sets meetings, that drives interest and demand. And I worked for a number of folks who were very, very well versed in the world of B2B sales and they were very generous. I learned a lot from them. Forrester was on a trajectory at that time where I got promoted almost every six to 12 months.
It actually kind of spoiled me because that's not really the way of the world when you think of it. But I had a great run there. I was there for about five years in a range of different individual contributor roles in sales, sales management, and also sales leadership. I ended up opening up the first satellite office for Forrester in Chicago.
Then I left for a range of different reasons to go out and make a name for myself globally and take on a role as a general manager and chief revenue officer, which was my dream. But subsequently, I went back to Forrester. Around 2015, I was on the product side. And what I did as an analyst was really looked at the changing buying and selling dynamics in the business world.
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Chapter 4: Why is sales considered the great equalizer?
Yep, enabler. I really like this word. Some of the best leaders I've worked with and for over years, they really try to enable my success even before I believe in it. They will say, just do it. I have confidence in you. I'll help you with that. I'll make you a success. That's what I call enablement leadership. That is very empowering.
Yeah, it's really empowering. We're at a wonderful position here at Mediafly where we've recently gotten a very substantial round of funding that allowed me to go out and hire some folks who had actually been very, very successful in terms of scale-ups. We have a new chief customer officer, and she's absolutely phenomenal.
We also have wonderful leaders at Mediafly who have joined us through acquisition. We acquired five companies in the last 20 months. Our competitive set and peers and analog companies were hunkering down and retrenching and trying to make every last dollar of their venture capital last so that they didn't lose unicorn status and take a down round. We've been able to be highly, highly innovative.
A number of those leaders that have come in as CEOs from companies that are acquired are in very key positions here at Mediafly. So I see my role and the role of Carson, our founder, is to really step back, enable, empower those folks, support them, allow them to do their jobs. We need to remove obstacles. We need to encourage. We need to build confidence if someone's a little bit reticent.
Chapter 5: How does Mary view financial independence and its impact?
And we need to instill in all of our C-suite, our executive leadership team, that they are the kind of mini CEOs of their own functional area of the business. we all need to be aligned, they should be running that piece of the business and coming to Carson and me for advice, guidance, to poke holes in their strategy and to get help when they've reached roadblocks or impasses.
That's really how I see my role. I feel pretty confident in what I've accomplished since. To see others be successful is almost more motivating to me than my own personal trajectory. When everyone else is successful, you're successful as a CEO.
I like that term, mini-CEO. You and Carson, the official co-CEO of Radio Flight, you got a lot of mini-CEOs on their own in their own space. They all have their own potential to grow, if I can summarize this way.
Yes, I think that's right. The other thing is that they have very deep and expansive subject matter expertise, whether that's in product, whether that's in customer. They bring a great breadth and depth of experience and expertise in those areas.
Other than sales, business, and tech, I know you are a passionate champion in driving diversity issues forward. especially with respect to women and LGBT communities. Tell us a bit more about your work there.
Yeah, it's a topic that's near and dear to my heart. And yeah, I am a proud member of the LGBTQIA community. And I think it's important to put myself out there because there's lots of people who are struggling. In terms of... Women specifically, right now, the research that I've done shows that about a third of sellers in B2B sales are women. And obviously we're at least 50% of the population.
So I'd love to see selling organizations be more representative of the world around them. not just talking about white women. So how do I and how do others empower folks who have black or brown skin? Like, how do we get more diversity writ large across the organization and the selling organization? That's something that I really want to do more of. So what do I do?
I certainly amplify the voices of diverse voices across the board whenever I can. If I have speaking engagements that I can't do, I try to pass them on to others. I am encouraging. I'm a coach and mentor. I do as much as I can to help folks who are generally part of underrepresented groups be really successful in sales. And this goes back to, I didn't grow up with a silver spoon.
My dad actually was a child of the depression. His family lost all of their money and he had to stand in bread lines. to get food for our family, his family, because his parents were too embarrassed to do so. If anyone has a parent who's gone through that great depression or any other economic challenges globally or worldwide, you never lose that.
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Chapter 6: What role does diversity play in sales leadership for Mary?
And what sales enablement meant was, how do you get the right content into sellers at the right moment in time so they can deliver that in a cohesive way to their buyers? Today, We talk about revenue enablement more broadly because we're not enabling just the direct selling force. There's a whole range of routes to market that companies use. And it could be ecosystem partners.
It could be marketplaces. It could be e-commerce on their website. And of course, their direct selling organization. So enablement has morphed really away from or expanded away from just sort of thinking about enabling the direct selling organization to how do you enable customers everyone who touches a customer and also even enable the buyer.
That's just a little bit of a background so that people understand kind of the difference and why we call it revenue enablement. What revenue enablement does essentially is help everyone in the go-to-market organization engage with prospects and customers in efficient and effective manner.
So that could be everything from our solution serving up dynamic, interactive content that can be delivered in a workspace or in a digital sales room, providing rich signals back to the seller and the selling organization on how that content's being consumed.
It can be leading with a quantitative discussion around how their products and services are going to change their end customers' ability to be more successful from a revenue and business perspective. So we have a value tool that helps sellers use this interactive tool to navigate a value-oriented discussion on what the potential impact of product and service could be.
We also have intelligence, so call recording, call coaching, analytics around how those calls are going between buyers and sellers. And then revenue intelligence, which actually grabs and automates all the buyer-seller interactions that happen over the course of a cycle, captures those into our system.
And then we have bilateral sync with the CRM, broader CDP, if companies use that or prefer that. And we provide this rich data set that it shows you the buyer and seller activity that's been happening over the course of the time, which provides tremendous insights that companies can use with the algorithms to be smarter about how they interact and engage.
As a revenue leader, even as CEO, I can go onto our system and get an energy score of every prospect that we're talking to. Where they are in the pipeline is that energy score, red, yellow, orange. And what are the last interactions been? When was the last time we talked to them? How are they consuming? the content that we sent.
And that allows me at any given time to understand what is the health of the deal, the health of the pipeline, and my forecast so that I can course correct or provide the right coaching as needed.
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