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You have to venture outside of your bubble

Name: You have to venture outside of your bubble
Uploaded: 2020-11-08T21:38:31+00:00
Duration: 50 s
Channel: Bob London
Description: In this interview, Bob London emphasizes the critical importance of stepping outside a company's internal perspective by interviewing customers…

8 Nov 2020 · 1 min

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In this interview, Bob London emphasizes the critical importance of stepping outside a company's internal perspective by interviewing customers, advertisers, readers, and employees. He argues that while gathering external voices incurs additional cost, it yields the most valuable insights and leads to successful engagements. The conversation contrasts internal brainstorming with external feedback, highlighting how external viewpoints reveal how the market truly perceives a brand versus how the company sees itself. The speaker underscores that understanding the current state ('what are you today') is essential before shaping future direction.

Chapters

I was excited to talk to you about doing work together because I'm privileged to be able to work with interesting people and interesting companies, and I learn a lot from every engagement. There's a moment where I say, um, so in order to do this right, my recommendation is we have to interview customers, advertisers, and readers, and employees. We have to get some voices from outside of the bubble. I hold my breath when I do that because It costs money. But what I found is that my best engagements are the ones where there's a complete realization that of course we have to do that. Yeah, it's more money, but that's the only way you can do it. I remember very clearly that reaction. Tell me why it's important. Why can't you just sit in a conference room with some smart people inside the company and just come up with a new messaging strategy or mission?
Maybe it's a bit like the voice you hear in your own head versus the voice you hear when you hear yourself talking recorded sounds so different. I don't think you can have a full appreciation of how you're viewed by looking inward and sort of self-reflecting. Here's, here's how I'm viewed, right? Here's how the world sees me or the customer sees me. You, you need to talk to other people to get that. If you want to talk about what you want to become, I think there's a big piece of it that starts with What are you today?
Yeah, right.
If this is what you want to stand for tomorrow, what are you— what do you— what do people think you stand for today? And that has to come from listening to your customers. That has to come from listening to outside perspectives. And when you, you know, for us at least, so that the listening to the customer piece of this, absolutely have to do it.