"What Got You Here Won't Get You There" with Mark Coleman

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Don’t Tell Me About Yourself Podcast. We are here live at Unleash 2026 in Paris. And we're sitting with Mark Coleman, who is Unleash royalty, but I'm going to let him do a quick introduction of himself. For people who may not know who you are, tell us who you are and your industry and what you're up to.

[00:00:19] Founder, CEO, troublemaker, which you probably hear from the accent Irish. So having fun in the world of events and future work in HR. So yeah, we're Unleash. Our home is Paris. Our flagship is Paris. And in the US of A, Miami is our next launch next April.

[00:00:41] We are so excited. We are so excited. I think we've been your ambassadors running around. I just asked Daniel right over there at start if he was attending. And, you know, I'm like, come on, have you ever been to Miami? Gotta go, the ocean. So I'm curious to know, since we're coming to the end of this event, it's still alive. It's still happening. But I'm wondering if you've had any conversations that have stuck out to you or you've seen any conversations that are like, wow, that's new and different. Anything that's sticking out in your mind as of right now?

[00:01:10] Look, our goal is to build Marketplace. That's our mission. And so the conversations that are happening here is mostly deal making between buyers and obviously sellers, vendors side. So they're a bit more grown up and serious, but they're across the board. They're across everything that's out there. The buyers are, I would say for the second year in a row, very confused looking at AI.

[00:01:32] It's a bit like the old conversation we had years ago about big data or small data or smart data, whatever you wanted to call it back then, but for good or for evil. And there's plenty for good. But then there's just this massive legal piece around GDPR and IP. And like, it's just a long list of stuff. It really is. And it's painful. Right. And so, yeah. I mean, those are big problems to solve. They're a big problem.

[00:01:59] And it is nice to have a whole bunch of people come together so that they can have those conversations and see if anyone's inching forward in any of those aspects and start sharing some of that knowledge. Yeah, absolutely. And what a great place to do it. A beautiful city. Yeah. Wonderful place. The lack of guardrails is something that we talk about a lot. And Lorna got familiar with GDPR this past year more than you ever wanted to. You went deep. I did. I had to go deep into GDPR. I was helping to train a team in Cyprus, but nonetheless.

[00:02:25] So if anyone wants to, you know, ask, learn any questions about that, that's your thing. So you mentioned that things are changing. So I guess what's something that you think the leaders here are thinking about differently outside of AI, right? Outside of that, is there anything that's coming up that you think they're thinking about differently? There's so much complexity to what's happening right now. Young people, like we're here in France. We've suffered these last few weeks because Air France and five other airlines have been threatening strikes. Nice.

[00:02:54] There's riot police everywhere. And of course, on the media, it looks like France has been burnt to a crisp, which is not the case. No. Can't confirm. Yes. But it's happening and all of it's HR related. So the strikes are pensions and pay. Right.

[00:03:14] The riots are education. We don't have jobs, inflation, all this kind of stuff. So I think Unleash has, we have a role to play in all of this. And it is really trying to figure out what the future workforce looks like. Yeah. The human are, I think, what the Peter Hinson say yesterday, call it meat. He called us meat versus agents.

[00:03:41] And yeah, I think that's the humans and AI is the thing I'm embracing with our biggest stage. I think pay, pay for what I just talked about is going to be our most important stage going forward. And that's poor HR. And I think maybe it's the, where the SaaS vendors are, there's pain in this market. You guys come from TA. TA has suffered a lot in the last two years. It's not over. I'm sorry to say. We've been suffering most of our TA lives, so we get it. I know. Well, there was, there was glory days.

[00:04:09] Some good ones. Some good ones for sure. So I think there's, there's that. And maybe the third thing I would talk about is skills, the ability to unlearn what you, what your career, like, especially if I'm hitting 50 next year, but it's kind of what you've known for the last 25 years is no good to you in the, in the world that we're stepping into. So I'm very excited about that. Upskilling, becoming AI native, because if you're not becoming this, you're, you're toast.

[00:04:37] Right. We talked about that a lot, that our biggest challenge or obstacle is the way things have always been done. It is literally the thing we fight day in and day out because getting people to think differently is really challenging, especially when it comes to HR related, hiring related concepts. Well, it's, it's the carrying, this is how we always did things, right? Yeah. And there's ego in that, you know, people are tied to what they've done and it's worked in the past, but what you're saying and what I'm hearing is what got you here won't get you there.

[00:05:05] No, a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. You've spent years building this community. Twice now. Let's just throw that in there. This is his first rodeo, folks. I know. When everyone said we didn't need live events anymore, it was like, we're happier doing webinars and podcasts and all this kind of stuff. So, but I think the in-person now, I would have said it's more important. I would have said it four or five years ago, but now that, especially in the U.S. Yes. Where you guys are at, most people are working from home. They are.

[00:05:33] All of our big customers, all the big vendors here, all the consultants, everyone's working from home. So what I love about Unleash, it's no longer this thing where it's like seeing your friends from the community. It's quite often people that work together are seeing themselves in person for the first time at Unleash. Right. That's a great point. It is. Yeah. I mean, I joke with my children like, well, what did you do today? I'm like, well, I made a lot of videos where I talked to myself the entire time. Right. And if I weren't being paid for it, some people would think that's like true psychosis.

[00:06:04] But here we get to make videos with other humans. Yeah. It's so much more fun. It is. It is. It is. That human interaction is so important. And then, and then stumbling across knowledge I didn't know I needed. Yeah. It's really, it's a wonderful opportunity to do that. I'm curious to know if there's something specific that you think people still underestimate about the importance of HR. I would say it's more important now than ever before. I've been at this for a while.

[00:06:27] So when I first entered the industry 15, 16 years ago, everything about like Ulrich and all the kind of gurus that were in HR back then were also like it was Jack Welch at GE. They were talking about stakeholder value and they flipped it a little bit. So that's where the HR business partner piece came out. Yeah. I think that got out of control because people were giving themselves this business partner job title, but not actually being business partners. It worked well though. I don't want to dismiss the work that Dave did for the industry.

[00:06:57] I think HR was designed by HR back then. Then there was all these years of employee experience and of course the employee owned everything. But now is HR's moment for, I say this delicately, it's HR's moment for figuring out what the future workforce looks like. How do we get this humans and AI? How do we get this up and going successfully? And so some HR are getting the badge for HR and innovation, HR and AI, people agents, all that. You know, the job titles are forever.

[00:07:27] Right. Yeah. But I think there's, there's a unique opportunity for HR. I think it'll have, I think, you know, there's whatever 10, 11, 12 functions of HR right now. That's what I calculate. I think that's what Josh Burson and the Burson gang, I think they've got something similar, maybe 10 or 11. But I think that'll have very, very quickly over the next two, three years. So, so it's not just TA. Yeah, sure. Their moment is now, but here's an interesting thing. A lot of CHROs are going into retirement.

[00:07:57] So they're like, I don't want to figure this shit out. Right. Now's the time to. Yeah. I just want an easy life. Right. I can't blame them, honestly. They are facing one of the biggest challenge, technical challenges in the world right now. This is pretty much since like the internet boom. I feel like that's basically what we're in. So I do. Yeah. Well, we talked about something we teased a little earlier about Unleash Miami 2027.

[00:08:19] So I'm curious a little bit to learn about why you made the decision to pick a different venue and what you're maybe trying to do differently there. There's lots of reasons for being there. I think Vegas, lots of fatigue, too many events. There's market saturation. Every HR event is there. Our reasons for being there initially were just drowned out as the years rolled by. I think for me, my experience is the level of distraction that's there.

[00:08:45] So if you've got 150 vendors on site, there's another 150 pitched up outside and everyone is fighting for HR. And if they get two or three hours of just normality, I mean, what people get at Unleash here in Paris is three full days and lots of different formats and dinners.

[00:09:07] And you're meeting lots of people and we make it easy for people because, hey, as you get more senior, you tend to get lazier in terms of your networking. So they look to us to be able to make that happen. And they just don't want to meet the same people all the time. So with Vegas, it's like people are trying to kind of rugby tackle you nonstop from the minute you get up. Not us ever. We don't get in our videos.

[00:09:34] So I suppose the other thing, look, our team is UK, our headquarters in the UK. I'm based in Budapest, but it gives us about 40,000 hours back a year by being on the East Coast, which is significant. And that's a game changer for us. What I love about Miami, I looked at New York, I looked at Boston, all the ways down and a few other places. But for us, it's not just the destination. So most people I talk to is like, they'll bring the wife or bring the, you bring the better half, bring the husband.

[00:10:01] I think there's, it's just, we want to be the team event, right? Where you, you know, it's, you're thinking of bringing three people or five people or eight people. You're bringing your leadership team and you're getting shit done for the next 12 months. It's all about decision making. So our goals have changed. Our purpose has changed in the last 12 months as well. So I'm saying to my guys, it's all about decisions. We've got to make better decisions. It's about my career. It's about my team. It's about my company.

[00:10:30] There's a selfishness to all of it, right? So it's ultimately, it's my, it's my career. And if, yeah, if I'm not so selfish, it's about my team. No. And I think that, I mean, that probably resonates with a lot of people. The reason why we change things is because selfishly our job was hard and we wanted to make it easier by making the hiring managers understand what they were doing. So I, I think it's a drive for change. And if everyone takes that kind of ownership and what they're doing, then great things happen. Exactly.

[00:10:57] So it's just, I'm just pumped like as an attendee that you're going to take us somewhere different. That's so fresh. We are very excited. I know. It is like fresh Miami vibes. Yes. Yeah. It's got a, it's got a different, it does have vibe. Like the food there is great. It just feels relaxing while you're there. And that's the environment we want. And we've got, we've got all the South Beach hotels. We've got lots going on. Correct. And does Marriott, Hilton, lots of different places. Beautiful. Yeah. So we get to bring a bit of what we're doing here. That's what I was going to say.

[00:11:27] This feels like an immersive experience. And what you're describing in Miami will hopefully give people that same vibe. Because in Vegas, I feel like I'm sort of in an alternate universe. Like I'm breathing that oxygen that they pump into the cleanos 24-7. And then you can't find the outdoors. And I don't know what day it is, what time it is. I'm like, what's going on? And here in Paris, like it is a different experience. So I'm imagining that. There's the dynamic too. Like I had to figure it out the hard, like I'm Irish.

[00:11:54] So like I went to America thinking, oh, I know what the marketing needs to look like. Because I had past experiences. But I went to San Francisco and realized most of America doesn't want to go to San Francisco. Sure. Because it's really difficult to bring the rest. Like the East Coast won't go West. The West Coast won't East. Vegas is the kind of, was the common denominator. But with the level of fatigue, everyone is really fatigued from Vegas.

[00:12:24] Miami gives us options for Latin America, international. Our bread and butter is fortune. So like we've got like four of, four, four CHROs of the four biggest banks in America confirmed. I can't, we can't get them to Vegas for love and money. We can't. Like the CHRO of Accenture called up last week and asked to speak on the event. Those kinds of things don't happen every day. That is so cool. That is amazing. Congrats on that. For anybody who was thinking about coming and wondering if there was going to be some different people there. It sounds like there will be. Yeah.

[00:12:54] Really exciting. Yeah. One more deeper question into that. So for people that are thinking about going and like they're wondering, is this for me? Yep. Can you speak to that? Because other than them coming there and seeing us. Yes. You can come see us. Why else should they be there? Like who is this for? It's for, it's for large market enterprises. It's for HR leaders. It's for C, you know, we have CHRO summits. That's worked really well the last two years. We've been building and building and building. We also have program on the vendor side.

[00:13:23] We have programmatic for CEOs now as well. So, and here in Paris, that's worked particularly well. So if you look to the two biggest announcements this year in the HR industry is Tech Wolf being bought by SAP. So Andreas and the gang are here. They started as a little kiosk. So cool. And they're showing how they grew it on Leach for the last nine years. Yeah. And that was the biggest deal in Belgium ever, apparently. That's amazing. Yeah. They're only like in their late 20s.

[00:13:52] I mean, so, so there's that kind of, that kind of stuff. Ronnie's here from Haibov and he just got 200 million off Mark Benyau. So the big stuff on the vendor side, and I think on the HR side, TA side, we have programmatic for, for each and every function. There's something there for everyone. But ultimately, what we're trying to do is help people make better decisions and come with a, almost like an Unleashed journey book.

[00:14:16] And go home with the ability, not just to take intelligent action, but you've made decisions on site at Unleashed. Yeah. And that doesn't always happen at events, right? It doesn't. Yeah. We're going to be screaming it from the rooftops. It truly is one of our very favorite events ever. And we're going to continue to, to tell anyone who will listen to be in Miami. So. Lorna just really wants to do something fun with a Miami skit. I know. She's already been plotting. Yeah. How do we, how do we make this fun for our audience? My office is going to be filled with sand.

[00:14:46] Oh my gosh. You're going to do something crazy. She lit money on fire in one of our skits. And wild. They were like, so she goes to, there's no limit. I know. And Miami, something will come to me from Miami. But so where can people find information about Unleashed, about you? Unleashed.ai. Yep. Pretty simple. And Mark Coleman on LinkedIn. Yeah. Mark Coleman on the show. You'll find me on there. Great. Thank you so much for coming and talking to us. You're most welcome. And thank you for hosting this event. We've had the best time. It really is wonderful.

[00:15:15] Happy interviewing everyone.