[EO Israel] Delivering Value to Global Markets With Orit Oz

Orit Oz Orit Oz is the Owner and CEO of Oz Global B2B, a full-service, global B2B agency. As a certified Hubspot partner, the company offers comprehensive inbound marketing and automation services. Orit has over 20 years of experience building and leading global companies’ business and marketing strategies. She is also a member of the Board of Directors at E3, a worldwide network of branding companies operating in 28 countries.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Orit Oz talks about Oz Global B2B’s specialties
Evolving marketing efforts for a niche company: a case study
Key considerations for transitioning to a global marketplace
How Oz shifted into digital marketing — and how the company leverages webinars to build awareness
The challenges of managing social media marketing for international businesses
Orit’s transition from employee to founder
EO’s impact on Orit’s entrepreneurial journey
How has the Israel-Hamas war affected Oz Global B2B?

In this episode…

Have you considered diversifying your market share? Expanding into global markets allows you to launch additional products and acquire an extensive client base. How can you gain traction in a broad market?

As an entrepreneur in Israel, internationally acclaimed marketer Orit Oz recognized the limitations of Israel’s small-scale market and the vast potential in global verticals. With a B2B service-based business, Orit can deliver value to international businesses in various niches and industries, amplifying her growth prospects. When scaling your company internationally, you must integrate various cultures with your values to build a reputable brand. By sharing your expertise with diverse professionals and companies, you can generate awareness and opportunities.

In today’s segment of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Orit Oz, the Owner and CEO of Oz Global B2B, about building a global agency. Orit explains how she works with niche companies, her transition from employee to entrepreneur, and how she builds awareness in global markets.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode…

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Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 0:13

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com. I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs leaders today is no different. I’ve read the eyes of Ozglobalb2b.com. And Orit before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes, people should check out other podcasts. This is part of my top agency series, but also my top Israel business leaders series. So there’s a couple of COP agencies have had Kevin Hourigan, started his agency this you’ll relate to this Orit. Back in, I think, 1995. He had an agency, right. And so Orit has been doing this, I’m not going to age you for several decades as well. And he talked about the evolution, the landscape and everything else. So that was an interesting one. With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech. On the Israel business leader side, I had Mois Navon of Mobileye, and he talked about how Mobileye’s journey of getting acquired to buy Intel for $15.3 billion. But what kind of struck me with that conversation? Orit was that he had to go back to his family at certain points and tell them you know, we can’t eat out anymore. We can’t do the niceties anymore because there’s ups and downs and there’s a lot of sacrifices that need to be made. So that was interesting. Also, you as fellow EO Israel member Nir Zavaro, we talked about his book. Fuck the Slides, I guess I’ll swear on this, because that’s the name of his book. But it’s and we talked about some of those, how he came to create that book, and some of the lessons also your yo Israel member Amit Oestreicher as director of Xtras and G-nie and how he lost all of his customers overnight, not once, but twice. And what he did. So check those out, and many more on inspiredinsider.com. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25 The Rise25 we help businesses give to connect to their dream 100 relationships? And how do we do that we actually help you run your podcast, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast and we do the strategy, the accountability in the flow execution, you know really are kind of the magic elves that work in the background and make it look easy for the host in the company. So they can develop great relationships create great content, and we do everything else. You know, for me, I’m always looking at ways to give to my relationships. And over the past decade, I found no better way than to profile the people in companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, you can go to rise25.com To learn more, and I’m excited to introduce Orit Oz. She is founder of Oz Global B2B. And she established us back in 1996 and transformed the company from a design studio into a leading full service global b2b agency. And you know, I like I was saying before the past few decades, as has been instrumental in promoting Israeli industry in the global marketplace, but they work beyond Israel as well. And they work closely with customers to really create world class brands across multiple sectors. And they cover the entire spectrum of b2b services from strategy to implementation. There even a certified HubSpot partner to the offer a comprehensive inbound marketing and in marketing automation services as well. So Orit, thanks for joining me.

Orit Oz 3:32

Thanks for having been here. Start

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 3:35

off and just tell people a little bit about Oz Global B2B and what you do.

Orit Oz 3:40

So I actually your introduction was really good. And we as you said, we are a company that operates with companies that have a technological product and sell it in the world. We work with a wide range of companies and we help them from the brand strategy through creating the identity, the visual identity, creating all marketing materials they will need in order to sell around the world and helping them also with the digital marketing. So this is what’s happening today. We didn’t start from there. We started from actually creating marketing materials marketing, communication, and really helping Israeli companies sell their product in the world.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 4:25

Yeah, for some examples and how that works, because I think it’s instructive of any company going global like you you’re forced, obviously when you live in a small country to go global because there’s the market. You can’t just serve only the market in Israel if you want to get bigger and bigger and bigger so you help some of these companies they keep could be anywhere but starting in Israel and go global. Let’s what’s the best example to start with of going from Israel and going global.

Orit Oz 4:58

So first of all, you You, as you said that Israel is a very, very small company country. So I think in general, we have a global mindset, because the Israeli market is too small for these products, any startup, any company that starts in Israel always understands that their potential will be in the global market. And that’s, that’s, I think, one thing. The second thing is because we, I expertise is business to business. That means that really the products that we that we help companies sell, or they are usually in verticals that are that Israel is very good. And we have a lot of companies from water technologies, to alteration companies, companies that do, you know, smart irrigation, or the agri tech companies like that. So, in general, we look at these Rayleigh markets as as like the better site, but really, from day one, when since from the day that the product is ready, we will be looking at the global market. And I think that’s one of the one of the things that I’ve seen over the years, as you’re speaking to agencies in Germany, or in the US, they’re very, they really know their market. But then, but we from the minute we started, you know, our understanding is the global mindset, I think that that is something that’s interesting. We have quite a few companies that have medical device, which is also filled, that Israel is very strong in all different kinds of monitors, and very, very technological products that will you know, like a motion controller that will sit inside the one of HPs printers or things like that. So very technological products. It’s a specific way of marketing, you know, you the people that you walk it to are professional people. So that’s that’s sort of what we do for our day to day. Yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 6:55

I mean, we’ll talk about I know that your company has gone through different evolutions throughout its lifetime. But I you know, you mentioned the water filtration, and water technology. One of those is, I think it’s Medtronic.

Orit Oz 7:14

Right? So yes, maytronics is, it’s actually a really, really great company. They are the company that invented the robots that clean the swimming pools. So it’s not they’re not from the agriculture side there, but they are from cleaning water. And they focused on the day they started on cleaning swimming pools, they are today, they are over 50% of the market, the world market, which in general is something that always I always feel so unbelievable, we have so many companies that are in their niche in their place, they are really market leaders, they can be number two, number three in the world. But I think that’s something that happens a lot in Israel, that you come out with very, very good product many years ago, a lot of the companies we work with, been around for many years, maytronics I think just had 14 years, 40 year anniversary, to maytronics day, it’s a great example, they produce robots that clean swimming pools, but as they sell in the world, they sell through partners. So if you think about we started working with them about 15 years ago, that all their marketing was through the partners through distributors, it’s something that happens a lot. Okay, got my

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 8:34

way I’m looking. If you’re watching, if you’re listening, there is a video here and we’re at ozglobalb2b.com, right here, but you could see here is what we’re talking about. This is the right one. Yeah, yeah.

Orit Oz 8:49

And you can see the case study in our in our website. So I think what I really like about the Medtronic story is we started working with maytronics after they acquired the company in France, the project was actually branding the acquisition of two companies and they expanded the proposition and it was the first time anything for the company, technical company like them really understood the power of the brand as being something that can can connect employees and connect employees from all around the world also become a very, very strong brand outside so we work a lot when if we talk about what we do, when we build the brand strategy, the brand promise is actually the tool that will connect all the employees you know to why we why we get up in the morning what we want to do in maytronics it was two simple words exceptional experience. And I think those two words are exceptional. Spence has been since really something that that with the values of the company and with the promise in some that really drove the company forward, the company has grown is now in the Tel Aviv exchanger Stock Exchange and one of the 15 biggest companies in Israel, they grew very much. And we over the years, we created all their, all their marketing materials. And now as they grown, they brought in, they brought in services in house because they’re already very, very big. And we just helped them with things that they need. But we were really the ones that create with them the brand and you know, something that

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 10:35

talk about some of those things read that you did do with with them. You know, the evolution of okay started with like you said the brand, but what are some? What are some other things you had to do? Because I think it’d be instructive for anyone, okay, here’s what they did. And there may be other companies that want to go more global, even if they’re in the US, and they want to go outside the US, right? Obviously, there’s a big market in the US, some people aren’t even thinking about going global. But there’s obviously that expands the market there. So what are some things you did? What did they want initially, when, when they first came to you?

Orit Oz 11:09

So so the I think the big question was, how a company that started in Israel in a kibbutz and is growing, and is becoming global? How do we keep the spirit? And what made the success when we become global, we become big, because in the end you it’s okay. When you have, you know, all Israelis, they all get it, they understand the culture. Now you have employees in France, and you have employees in Germany, and you have employees in the US, and how do you connect them all together to one brand. So that was I think that that was the point where they, they understood that we need to have something that will connect everyone, the project we did was a global project, we did it with the global management. And actually, after we after creating the brand promise, and after creating the values, there was like a roadshow going from country to country, that we gave them the tools and the management went from country to country and did workshops, and that we help them with it. And actually, you know, bring so that everyone, if you’re an employee maytronics You all have the same language. And think if you have, I think one of the things, one of the points where we knew we succeeded was when from Australia, though, Manager of maytronics, Australia, phoned up the manager in Israel, and I said, Listen, my one of my employees came to me and said, Listen, we have to change something we’re doing. It’s what we’re doing here isn’t an exception experiments, it’s really bad, we have to change it. And we said, Okay, we that’s what we wanted, we wanted that, you know, the everywhere where you are in the world, you understand that? If you’re a maytronics worker, and if you producing maytronics, probably products, it will be an exception experience. Now, what you’re showing here is what I’ve been talking quite a lot about the internal, but at the same time, we have, we have the brand we have, we want all the marketing materials all around the world to look the same. Later on. When we talk about digital marketing, we can talk about the challenge of building a global brand, when you know, in social media, each country is very, very different. And that’s that’s something that we’ll talk about later. Because it really connects us to the to how the marketing is evolving. And the challenges it brings that when we did make tronics you know, there were trade shows, There were shops, where there were the use, you saw the things and you saw the things and everything was the same look the same. We used to create the materials and distribute them all around the world and building really a strong, strong brand. So you can see and the website

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Dr. Jeremy Weisz 14:01

Orit just describe what we’re looking at, because people may be just listening. And also, what did it look like before right now describe what we’re seeing here and with that with the branding, and then what was it like before this?

Orit Oz 14:14

So so first of all, what you’re showing here is a wide range of marketing materials, we can see an exhibition booth. So if you think that whenever there’s a tradeshow anywhere in the world with will look the same, the internet packaging, so everything, you know, icons, explaining it’s one of the things that I think are interesting with this is a product in the end gets to the house, it gets the consumer but it’s still a very technological product. So usually the person that will recommend it is a professional person. So that’s a now that the question how it looks. One of the things was the product is called dolphin for many years in the world they it was known as dolphins Also known as dolphin biomechatronics, that part of what we did in the brand strategy is really giving the maytronics umbrella because in order to enable more product lines to come in, so over the last 15 years, we’ve done I think about three rebranding each time updating the look and feel, making it more up to date more connected to the new products, because they come up with new products all the time. They so the what we do always connects to the, to the business strategy of the company. So if maytronics, the beginning had a premium product, and later on, they decided they’re going to widen that to to, you know, you have now a lot of people have a swimming pool in the in the garden, that’s, you know, they bought an index or whatever swimming pool, not that. So they they develop products that will work for there as well. So, our work is always to support with the marketing materials and with the messaging to support the company’s strategy.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 16:13

So let’s talk about you know, I could see how you want the brand strategy and the look in the field to be universal. So wherever you are, people will actually recognize it. The second part is also the digital marketing. What did you What were some of the things you did on the digital marketing side? Because I’m looking at this and it says, you know, digital marketing 360, SEO, HubSpot webinars, smart content, what were some of the things you did on the digital marketing side? So

Orit Oz 16:42

actually, I think digital marketing takes us a bit fast forward. So perhaps I’ll change the example if that’s okay with you. Sure. Well, I’ll pass decibel, I can say a few words about how the, how Oz evolved into digital marketing. Of course, you know, 10 years ago, we didn’t have the technology we have today. So over the, in the last seven years, we’ve we’ve added more and more capabilities in the company today, about half of our activity in ours is digital marketing. And I think we we have, we have here a team that can really be extension of a marketing department in for our clients. I said before that, you know, maytronics has really, really grown, they have a lot of the capabilities in house. So the example I want to give as perhaps a different example is a company that doesn’t have a very, very big marketing department, they have perhaps a marketing manager, CMO, and perhaps a marketing communications or digital marketing manager. And now in order to do a really effective marketing activities around the world, you need about five or six different people, each one with a different expertise, you need someone to write the content, and you need someone to do the strategy. And you need someone to do the SEO and the PPC and Inbound and HubSpot. And a lot of you know, the I think the digital marketing has a lot of expertise in it. So the place that we bring value is companies that don’t have the ability to, to bring in all these people, we actually that’s why we call ourself your marketing partner, we become their partner, and we become an extension of their of their company of their marketing agency. There’s a if you could see there’s a company perhaps the good example is Teflon, you can see here, Teflon is if we’re talking about water technologies there, there are companies that sell to the in the agriculture market. And then we’re we operate as an extension of their marketing department really building up their we did, we gave him the whole package here. So we started building their brand strategy and updating the look and feel. But in the digital marketing, as you can see, it says it to the marketing 360 degrees, which means we are like their team. So we we build a yearly plan, we build the content strategy. And then we we really we have people here that are like they’re marked the digital marketing managers helping them or doing the activities for the company, if they have a trade show now, so a month and a half before we start promoting the trade show and doing sponsored campaigns. And so it’s really, you know, I think, talking about it, I can say that one of the biggest advantages of us today is the combination between the branding capabilities and the messaging to the digital Mark. Getting any and we see it out you know a lot of competition there either branding agencies or digital marketing agencies there are many companies that have both capabilities combined very very strongly and it brings a big advantage because we see the whole picture so if we after we’ve created the brand, we know exactly what the what their value proposition is what the messaging is and and we start breaking it down and so if we know we have a tradeshow now we will design the booth but we’ll also do the marketing materials for the for the company. So that’s a good example of a smaller company or medium sized company in Israel that we can really give them the whole package. I wanted to go back to your question and give an example because you talked about the global challenge. So I want to give a different completely different example with a bigger company called Stratasys Stratasys is is is a world leader in 3d printers.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 21:10

Quick question Orit will talk about stress in a second I just have a question about this one one is why Why does Israel have so many more innovations around you know the water filtration and in that space irrigation?

Orit Oz 21:31

I think that the answer is very simple. Half more than half of Israel is desert Israel Israelis in general all the notion of startup notion it startup nation comes from I think our culture that when you have a problem you have to solve the problem so many many years ago when we we have a small country and half the country is desert the question was okay, how do we grow agriculture in the desert? And from there there were all the drip irrigation and a lot of innovations came out also all the all the need for I don’t know if you know But Israel has today I hope I’m not met in between 70 and 90% of the water in Israel is water that’s been is is desalination water, so water from the sea that has been and a lot of the innovation in Israel comes out from the pop problems we have so agriculture waters today, there’s no problem watering Israel, because we have all these desalination plants and in general, I think that’s true for a lot of things that happen in Israel and water technologies and agri tech Are you know one of the leading leading innovations and you look at our customers you will get the range of what Israel really strong in or you know, what are the and you can see as they’re in the industry so you know,

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 23:12

you agriculture here you have water treatment, tech, medical, automotive, high tech, and manufacturing. b2b To see to Yeah. Anyways, I just want to ask about that. And then the second on the on this one, or it is a webinars what kind of stuff and work you do around with webinars, recombinant. Okay,

Orit Oz 23:36

so one of one of the biggest challenges is to try and bring in new into bring it by bringing in leads the company wants to bring, make, you know, make the exposure as big as possible, bring the awareness as big as possible. We found it started in the COVID that perhaps I’ll go back a step four before. One of the one of the tools that a lot of technological companies have is seminars to what they used to do. They used to bring over 1520 engineers for five days. Give them a very interesting seminar, take them around as well to see Israel to learn about what’s happening here. And that was that was one of the main marketing tools. When the COVID started, everything stopped. And really I think in two or three weeks, we we came and offered them to do instead of those seminars, we said let’s create webinars and do webinars. And really, we did a very, very fast shift. And what was unbelievable is, instead of 1520 engineers coming over, suddenly we had 300 people all around the world, listening to the webinar. Now a webinar is when you create a webinar, you have to bring value to the people So first of all the people that come on the webinar really, really, that the right fits, they’re usually really good leads potential customers. Also, one of the great things about the webinar is that it’s a very, very strong marketing tool before, during, and after. So before, what you put out the you know, you promote it around the around the social media, and email marketing, all the

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 25:28

lot of awareness, we

Orit Oz 25:30

have Yes. And then you start people start registering. So so even if, in the end, the statistics say that about 50% of the people that register will, will attend, it’s okay for us, because when we do the webinar, we record it, and now we have content that we can distribute. And we have really, really good leads that you can lead nurture, and you can send them and materials and, and you have questions, and we found that the webinar is, I think one of the most powerful marketing tools, the only thing that you need is really good content. And as long as you have good content, you can really, really leverage it to great things. And then afterwards, you keep it online, people can download it, people can listen to it afterwards. So you have a lot of different tools, so that the webinar is one of the strongest tools. But in the end, when we build a marketing strategy for for a customer online marketing strategy, we try and look at the urine. So they have the places where you know, either it’s a tradeshow or it’s a webinar, or it’s a conference to the anchors. And then we will create the marketing materials around that. And then

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 26:49

we’ll talk about you know, we are mentioning, Orit around the three phases, kind of the evolution of your company, it kind of, you know, went from graphic studio, to branding, to digital and doing all digital stuff. Well, we’ll go back to kind of the inception, where I came from the color graphic side, kind of from the graphic to the branding, and seems the maytronics. And then we go from branding to digital, which is the Stratasys. So talk about some of the stuff that you did, you know, because interesting to see from a digital agency perspective, the evolution that any agency goes, sometimes I found they’ve decreased their services, and they started one and then some have grown because of the need of their clients are demanding of them these things, what, what kind of work did you do with Stratasys?

Orit Oz 27:47

So first of all, I just wanted a small correction from from our perception, we moved from being a branding agency to a marketing agency. Today in the marketing, a lot of the marketing activities is online is digital marketing, but not only. And I think that’s part of the understanding that you want to combine online offline. So I think the first of all, talk about the evolution of the of the, of the company of ours, it’s from being to supporting the marketing activities to really being part of the marketing activities. Now, I told quite a long story about Puffin. It’s a medium sized company. Stratasys is a very, very big company, a global company. They have they I think that’s the one of the two biggest companies for 3d printing. And the big challenge that that we found there was, first of all, I’ll say a few words about Stratasys. They produce 3d printers, but they produce produce 3d printers, for automotive and also for medical and for dentists and for aerospace. So you have so many different verticals, it’s really big challenge. So you have that one challenge many, many verticals, many different target audiences. And the second challenge is that after all those things we did also, you want to do globally, so you want to do in France, and in Germany and in the US and in Asia and wherever it is. And what happens a lot of times is that if they’re in one country, they’re in the marketing department of, let’s say Stratasys. In France, there’s someone that knows digital marketing, so they start working and doing, you know, posting online and doing things online. What we understood is that the big challenge in social media is that you want to build a strong brand which means you want want your brand to look the same all around the world? If you think of Coca Cola, there’s no question Coca Cola looks the same all around the world, but they do. Even Coca Cola has their source of adaptions local production. So the what we did here, the one of the projects that we did was to create the social media strategy, the global social media strategy for Stratasys. And to build the guidelines so that we build a guideline that talks about what you talk about, what are the values, what are the what are the advantages, it’s very big projects, I, you know, I won’t be able to talk about it, talk about it all. But in the end, the, the outcome was very, very big, like, think manual that gives explains all around the world, how they need, how they should work in the different on the different social media platforms. So how they work and how they need to work in LinkedIn, how on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever, whatever they’re doing, also giving guidelines but also understanding that they will, each country will have their own adaptions. And each business unit will come out with their content. So the content comes is created from all around the world. So you have sort of it’s if you can think of it as something that starts from the headquarters down, but also from the business units units up. So it’s like so it’s, and I think, the outputs and it’s it’s a project that is evolving all the time, it’s not something you know, digital marketing isn’t something to stop, but it really, it really sort of made sort of some kind of unity made unifying people say, what you’re what we’re seeing here is, like the templates, templates for webinars templates for if you’re showing your use case templates, or different things that they can use, and and these are now all around the world, and they’re working with them.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 32:23

It seems like Orit seems very complicated, because you have, it would be complicated, if it was just Dental, even, right. But now, like, if you’re looking at the screen, we could see some of these 3d printing, there is a bunch of dental examples, okay, that it’s still a pretty complicated project, because it’s global. And it’s gotta have, like you said, all the guidelines, but now you add, you know, you know, dental, you add healthcare un, you add all these other, you know, use cases? Where do you start with getting the, like everyone on the same page, even though there’s different uses and products.

Orit Oz 33:10

So just just to clarify about the project, they were looking about, looking at Dental, the dental actually was, was a strategic project. And it was to brand, the Dental. Division, under Stratasys. Okay, so I think that’s a good example, when you work with very, very big companies, then you have these, you have these projects, that the strategic products that what is the value proposition of the strategies, the strategies, the products for the dental market, that was a strategic project? And, and there are a lot of those going on. But what we were talking about before is, and you’re right, it’s really complicated is really building some kind of guideline that is that on one side is makes it clear to everyone how to how, what the right that the tone of voice is going to be, what, what different kinds of content can we create? How do we post on different platforms, but on the other side, to give them the freedom to really create their own content because we want the content, you know, if you have a perhaps key opinion leader, that’s someone that works with their with with their printer somewhere and you want them to publish content, we want that to happen as well. You know, we don’t want all to be cooperate. But so it’s, it’s a very delicate sort of balance between creating guidelines so that when people see content from Stratasys all around the world they say, Ah, this is bad. Business, on the other hand, gives us the freedom to really keep the UN Yes, it’s a complicated project. And also, I think it’s a product that evolves. I think everyone’s learning, you know, learning this, the this idea of how do I really create now I have social media and I have so many different sources of content coming out, how do I really create, strengthen the brand, and it’s something that I can say that it’s a big challenge, we see it, we see it with a lot of our customers, not all the companies that their customers are online, so much. So that’s also something to understand their their countries or they’re our verticals, where there’s a big question about our farmers online or not online, you know, where how do I catch them? They have their mobile phone they. So yes, it’s, I think the b2b in general is complicated, but very fascinating and interesting.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 36:05

Orit how did you get started talking about the transition from employee to

Orit Oz 36:14

founder? Well, that was taking me back 30 years back, the beginning of the story. So actually, I started my career in a company called scar. Scar is, as well known in Israel, I think it was, it may be quite well known as an industrial company that Warren Buffett acquired about, I think, seven, eight years ago, and he’s still defines it as the best company ever acquired. It’s a it’s a, it’s a company that manufactures physical, they develop and manufacture cutting tools to the metal industry, leading in the world, they were acquired for over four and a half billion dollars, I think, if I remember right, quite many years ago, before then today, it’s already become the multiples have grown. But anyway, very, very good company. And it was my my, I would say, my school for marketing. I work there in the marketing department as a marketing communications manager there, and was in charge with the team for all the marketing communications of the scar in the world. So that was, you can understand the sort of the, I’d say, opened my path to my career. I worked there for five years, I loved every minute of it, it was a company that had great budgets for marketing, they really, really believed in marketing, which is something that a lot of times is very challenging in industrial companies. But other times, we have to persuade industrial companies, they really need to invest in marketing, they are much more into sales. So you scan really put in a lot. The marketing was really the center of the company. And after five years of really doing from catalogs, to multimedia to designing the website, when it was really, I think probably one of the first websites, industrial, you know, business websites in Israel and doing great things. I just don’t know how many times I’ve been asked about this, I just had a felt I need to go I want to do something independently, and it was it’s strange, it’s something I thought about a lot since because I’d been asked about it. Why do you leave really great job, you know, I was really successful, and I really liked it. To start something by yourself, and I don’t have the the answer. I just think I felt that I want to do something for myself. I’m very, very optimistic person and a person that sees opportunities everywhere. So just it seemed to me that, okay, I’m gonna, you know, buy a Macintosh and I was designed so, you know, start designing for companies that want my what my work? What happens was that the expertise that I came out with, and the fact that I’m located in the north, which we didn’t talk about a bit unusual, I don’t live in Tel Aviv where everything happens in Israel. I actually live in the Galilee. So the combination of those two things I think, the main brought to me, companies like E Scout were technical companies, and very quickly I started employing people and growing and I think one of the advantages there was I understood was even though we weren’t graphic studio, we understood, we looked at the marketing materials through the marketing eyes. So we brought in something that I think was was then an advantage and and the company grew very quickly. And after probably a year or two, when I was finding myself designing at two o’clock in the morning, I understood I have to stop designing and going to and since then I’ve been, I see myself more as a marketeer and you know, strategy and managing the company. I think the lessons I’ve learned from grind, the company is probably a podcast by itself. So we won’t go into it. But it’s really, it was one of those lessons. I think the biggest lesson I may I took me quite a few years is to really trust, trust people bring in people that know how to know, to do things better than you do in the profession. And, and changing your job, your my job today isn’t doing the work, it’s actually mentoring people actually, you know, being really more a mentor more grind the people in my team grind my managers that grow their teams, and it was something that took me I mean, it’s not easy, not easy to sort of go back, and, and really give the responsibility 100% to the people that are under you. I, in my journey, I had nearly 10 years that I wasn’t the CEO of my own company, I brought in the CEO, someone that grew up. So that was a big lesson of really giving her the space and the responsibility really managing the company while I went aside that so I think it’s understanding that, you know, we may do things very, very well, maybe maybe very good at things, but we make mistakes as well like employees and and just to have this as a verb to really have the understanding that if you bring in really, really good people really good thing you can go further, I have to say in that aspect that I understood a few years ago that digital marketing will never be my mother tongue. It was I talked about it as my second language. And I understood it when my son, my oldest son that is a digital marketer, and he works in technology company. When we spoke when we talked together and I really understood I will never understand digital marketing, like he was born into it. So it’s his mother tongue. And it’s my second language. I think that’s an understanding as well that we bring a lot of experience we bring, you know, why the bat. But in the end, with all this technology in the world changing I think it’s really important to bring the people that can really that really

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 43:18

Yeah, so you obviously have hired team members that are that’s their, their strength. I’m wondering, when you brought in a CEO? Or what How did what did your role look like, at that

Orit Oz 43:28

point? So I first of all, for about two years, I just went back I need that sort of it was after seven years, 17 years of managing company, I just needed to get out of the every day and bring my life back to myself, I think, in a way. And what’s what’s happened in from that experience is that when I came back to manage the company two and a half years ago, there was already the company is much more organized because me as an entrepreneur, you know, I am very I see opportunities all the time, and what’s the next thing and that so first of all, my main role in those years, were bringing the next thing bringing in the next strategic project bringing in the next trends understanding what being an entrepreneur, the everyone talks about, you know, you have the visionary and a visionary and the

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 44:30

integrator. Yep. integrator.

Orit Oz 44:32

I’m a terrible integrator. Everyone always says that it really really terrible and understanding that you know, is a big understanding. So I love being in the more business development place in the that’s what I did most of the time. When I when I had a CEO coming back. I came back I actually said it’s the first time I’m a real I’m really a CEO was because I started company, I was in everything. I wasn’t really a CEO, I was the marketing manager, I was account manager, I was after going back, coming back as its as a co chair, I came back much more mature much more, I think, ready, and to a company that already had management. And today, I really see I really see my role, as I said before, as you know, being as sort of managing the company, managing the helping the team, you know, grow the business, I still seeing what’s the next thing that we need? What’s the next challenge? How, you know, how do we go forward all the time.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 45:46

I want to talk about mentors that have helped along the way. But talk about how is CEO impacted you?

Orit Oz 45:55

Wow. So this is what, in general, talking about mentors, at any juncture, and I had in my career, I would have always had someone next to me. I never did it by myself, I never, whenever I had, you know, had the chance to the next thing, I always I really, really believe in finding the right people in the right stages and learning from people that have done it. So that’s general I joined EO two and a half years ago. And the first thing I understood was, I was so sorry, I didn’t join join earlier, really, really, I joined EO, in quite a challenging time, it was just before I came back to manage the company. And the first of all, when when you meet in the Faro mind, the chapter, you understand how most of the people around us in our everyday our employees, there aren’t business owners. And I have really I have really, really good friends that were CEOs of, you know, really big companies hundreds of millions of dollars and that but in the end, it’s not their company and the when you meet the people in do you understand is there some kind of energy and, and also the, the safe zone that you’re in understanding that you whenever you meet someone to do, you can sit, you’ve never met them before you’re sick, after quarter an hour, you can open up your heart and say everything. And I think that those are the things that really, really, really have helped me. We’re now as we’re recording this, we’re in a very, very challenging time in Israel, a month into the war and alter things that we’ve passed and the support we’ve got from around the world that has been really there were days where I felt that they sort of pushed me pushed me, you know, to continue and to go forward and really to really, so it’s one side, it’s the support from the other side, really to speak with people have already been there done, it has been down been up. The value that I get from the forum is that I, whoever I can recommend to join yo as a young entrepreneur, young founder I do I really I think it’s really, really great organization. I

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 48:44

want to if people don’t know what to do is it’s it’s called Entrepreneurs Organization. I think there’s over, I don’t know, 14,000 people in over 60 countries. So it’s a global organization. It’s great people get together and share what they’re working on challenges, struggles and have a group to support that. So you know, the other question, obviously, you mentioned this, how is the war affected your company? First

Orit Oz 49:14

of all, it’s, I think, explaining what’s happening here is something that perhaps the I understand people don’t really understand the reality we live in. So four weeks, four and a half weeks ago, with all the terrible things that happen here. First of all, Israel is a very small country, you reach you they say you reach any person with three connections. So you can understand that there isn’t anyone here in Israel that doesn’t know someone that was killed or that’s been kidnapped or that’s missing or that so that, first of all, emotionally very, very big, very, very difficult time. And it still is. But then just to talk about what’s happening in the everyday, so they’ve, there’s 350,000, men and women that’s been queued up to the army. One of my sons, a month ago, he’s an engineer in a startup company, was on his uniform left his wife. And since he’s been in the Northeast Israel training, hopefully he won’t need to fight. But 350,000 people, men and women have stopped their life and are now in the army. Then for three weeks, there were no schools. So my team, I didn’t say, but out of the 30 people in my team, I have 25 women, lots of them young women with young children at home, so three weeks at home with the children, but still continuing to work. While they’re putting the you know, making sure that the children are okay, that Now luckily, they’ve gone back to school and back to kindergarten. So that made it easier. But after saying that, think of a lot of places in Israel two, three times a day you get you have a siren there rockets coming over, you have to run into the bomb shelter. And after seeing all that we continue to work, we continue to deliver we have our customers have customers all around the world, we know the world is continuing to work, and and all those challenging situations we continue to work. I think the biggest impact it’s had on us is that everything has slowed down. So for me, my main focus today is to retain my team, and to try and bring in work from outside of Israel, as we were saying, most of our clients are headquartered in Israel with global operations, but we do have customers from outside Israel. And the understanding that if we seek to bring in, you know, if there are more companies that really can value from my expertise, from our experience, and bring in projects from outside of Israel, that will be my, that’s the main thing I’m now focusing on in the you know, trying to bring in work so that we can we talk about continue to, to the Israeli economy needs to continue to run, that’s part of our strength here, we can’t stop the economy. So for us, we get up in the morning, in order to do that, to continue to run the Israeli economy and to really serve our customers and hopefully to bring our expertise and our experience to other companies in the world. So from just an example, out from such a big challenge, I hope there’ll be an opportunity here and really, to do it, but it’s it’s been challenging times emotionally, and you know, what’s going around, but even so, I think that we’re strong people, and we don’t have a choice. And I, you know, we will continue to continue to succeed, just to say, as well, but to see the impact it’s it’s had on the world is also very, very, it’s really hard for us see how Jewish people around the world have really been impacted from this. And yeah, that’s where it’s not easy, but I think, you know, where we were optimistic people, and we believe that we believe that we will, you know, continue and grow from this from this big, big crisis that there’s been here.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 53:50

First of all, I hope your son and everyone else, you know, stay safe. And, um, the the global strategy, you know, so anyone thinking of, okay, we need this global strategy, we need these guidelines to build because we’re all over the, you know, all over the map, who are ideal, who are some of the ideal companies that you think of maybe that aren’t in Israel, that would be a good fit for your company?

Orit Oz 54:17

So it’s a great question. And I can, I can give an example an example of quite a few years ago, five to six years ago, I got an email from a company called XM that are located in California, a family owned company that they are in water technologies, they manufacture very special men brands, it’s cooled. So very, very micro filtration

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 54:49

around membranes. membranes, yeah,

Orit Oz 54:52

membranes. I say that the right one, it’s fine. It’s the desalination and for very, very, very micro filtration And so, and he sent us an email and says, I’m, I’m would like to have a meeting with you. And because I want to do a brand strategy projects and as well hasn’t got any connection to Israel doesn’t know he just and I said and when we when we met I said, Well, how did you how did you hear about us? And he said, Well, I actually I’m following your customer, your main customer that that time it was me and um yeah, this is one of the leading filteration companies. And he said, I’m so fed up of trying to explain to agencies around here about my industry and this I thought, I’ll see who does on the ads work and our, you know, the credits was on the website. And that’s how he got to us. And we we actually built his brand strategy created all his marketing materials implemented HubSpot there, does, everything can go from there, he continued with the local agency, but we built all his materials. So that that’s one example. So that example talks about really, industries that were really really good in but after saying that, any b2b company that was that operates globally or wants to operate globally. I think we can we can help brand strategy you can help in creating marketing materials. We have we have storytellers and designers here to unbelievable presentations, investor presentations, marketing, presentation, sell tools, a lot of marketing materials that we create. And and the examples that we talked about, like really creating a global strategy for social media or doing a webinar or with anything that I think that the companies that are best fit or the b2b companies that operate globally, or like XM wanted to he was working, he was operating in us and wanted to grow to grow market. Um, and yes, as I gave examples of medium size or big size depends, you know, the different size companies have different challenges or different needs that we can really help him.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 57:24

First of all, I want to be the first one to thank you, everyone should check out ozglobalb2b.com to learn more about what they’re working on. And just think so You know, I can’t imagine going through it you and your surrounding family and friends are going through and still just pushing forward to just business not as like business as usual, but but from the companies working with it’s kind of business as usual. So thanks for sharing your lessons and your story. And we’ll see everyone next time. Great. Thank you very much.

Orit Oz 58:04

Thank you very much for having me here.

Outro 58:06

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