Musings on the Value of Change, Technology and Innovation and of course AI - with Tom Goodwin.

The CRO Spotlight Podcast, Powered by the Growth Firm Production. Hi, I'm Warren Zenna, Founder and CEO of the CRO Collective and welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. This show is focused exclusively on the success of Chief Revenue Officers. Each week we have an open, frank and freeform conversation with top experts in the revenue space about the CRO role and its critical impact on B2B businesses. This podcast is the place to be for CROs, sales and marketing leaders who aspire to become CROs and founders who are looking to appoint the CRO or want to support their CRO to succeed. Thanks for listening. Now let's go mix it up. So first off, I just want to say thanks for being here.

My pleasure.

So you know, Tom and I have known each other now since 2000 and 2014 or 15. It's crazy think that I met Tom because I was a executive at Havas and Tom was as well. He was like the head of strategy there. And you know, I'll say this, when, when you get a job at a big company, not everyone, some people really get along with everybody. I don't. And I probably found that like I got along with like four or five people in every job I take. And Tom was someone just. We connected right away. And I'm glad to say that we become friends and we talk a lot. And also I'm very excited because Tom is such a great audience and network and we talk a lot about really interesting things. So thanks for coming here because I'm sure it'd be cool for people to listen to some of our conversations that are interesting.

I am really enjoying. I've been looking forward to this for quite some time. I hope it's as good as I expect it to be.

Well, I'm sure it will be. So what you up to these days? Like what is it that you're working on right now? I know that you're speaking a lot, but we haven't really caught up in terms of how you've navigated since the last couple of years.

So tell me the the thing I'm looking to do more of and enjoy is actually helping companies transform. There is so much that has been said about how companies need to change and so much of it is nonsense. So much of it is looking for band Aids, so much of it is looking for a headline. So I'm trying to work with often large companies who are finding that life is fine, but they could be doing more. And often there are some hand raisers within those organizations that want to be proud of what they can make happen. A lot of these companies are not existentially screwed. Contrary to popular opinion, a lot of these companies are making more money than ever. But that doesn't mean that things can't be done better. So it's often helping with things like culture change initiatives, often helping with building better systems, often better processes for innovation. But it's designed to be meaningful. This is the opposite to Web3 as a, as a sort of headline. This is the opposite, a kind of quick and simple patch. This is much more sort of existential change.

Okay, so a lot of things come up in that description. Things that I talk about a lot. And I say three of them come up. One is this sort of pervasive disease of short termism.

Yes.

Which I think is, you probably would agree is one of the barriers to innovation. People just don't want to take long term decisions about anything. They want everything done next month. And you can't innovate if you're thinking that way. And then the second thing is also just more understanding. Just a question is really more what might be? And you maybe can answer. This is an example of the kind of thing that you would do for a client right now that would move the needle forward. And the second part of that question is what types of clients are usually looking for that right now in today's environment?

There is a lot there. Um, and I'm going to start off perhaps talking too much about the broader context in which this is happening. I think around about 2004 to 2010, there was enormous change in the world. And we had smartphones and we had cloud computing and we had broadband. And it seemed that everything was different. And you saw these huge companies, you know, sort of dominate the marketplace. In the last 10 years, not that much has happened. And no one really realizes that because it feels like there's this enormous tension in the air. And the tension is because the sort of platform on which businesses were built was suddenly different, but most companies couldn't change. Most companies were too big, they were too successful, they didn't have to. But there's this enormous sort of tension and uncertainty and sort of paranoia that's out there. And it means that everyone is terrified. Like, you know, we almost need to sort of have like an amnesty on this. But I think most people working for small, medium and large companies and who work for themselves are terrified. They think that every new technology is an existential threat. They think that everything that they know is not deep enough and they need to know more about stochastic learning. Or deep learning or machine learning. There's a real sense of sort of fear out there and a sense that they're missing a trick. So more than anything else, I like to go in and be reassuring, which is not a glamorous way to do this job. And it doesn't get as many sort of headlines, but it's to get companies to realize that many of the qualities that allowed them to succeed for a really long period of time are still the case. And it's to get people to be more confident in saying no. It's to get people to be more confident in doing bigger things that are deeper less often, but to the things that actually really make a difference. So a lot of what I do is much more about sort of simplification. I probably can't really go into sort of specifics because of sort of NDAs and stuff, but I'm working with a very large car company, and probably more than any other industry in the entire world right now, the car industry is absolutely changing. EVs have completely changed the economics. They've changed our relationship with vehicles. The growth of Chinese manufacturers could be as disruptive as Japanese or Korean manufacturers. And therefore there's this desire, I think, for some companies to act in denial of this and to sort of close their eyes and to not leave Detroit and to sort of feel that things are going to be okay. And then there's other people that are sort of going around saying, you know, everything's different, we're all screwed. I. I try to work with people who want to have a more profound understanding of these changes and are prepared to latch on to one or two things that are really significant, and then to use that to drive meaningful change. So I might mean having conversations about the way that they work with dealers. It might mean having conversations about the way that they design cars. It might mean having conversations about the way that they're structured. It's unfashionable to say it, but I'm aware that lots of companies are way too big. We both worked in organizations that are probably overstaffed. And you combine having too many people with pervasive paranoia, and you end up just with this culture of insanity where people are running around in all directions, political battles form, communication lines, get very complicated. So I. I try and be a sort of a provocative force that asks the sorts of questions that other people don't ask, because often it's not that profitable to, as a consultant, to be asking these questions.

Yeah, I get it. And I can relate to everything you're Saying, most of the people that I'm dealing with are. I. I don't know the right word. I call them growth stage companies. It's not a startup. You know, they've got money, maybe they're north of 15, 20 million in revenues. They have a business, they have a customer base, they got, you know, sales organization. And they're onto something. And they know that they're going to probably double or triple their revenues in the next three or four years. And so they're making some smart and sometimes precarious decisions about how they're going to do that. Because, you know, there's a lot of trendiness that goes into those decisions. Right. I get the same tech that everyone else got. I buy the same tech tech stack that everyone else got. I get the same CRM that everyone else got, you know, and I hire the people the same way everybody else did. Just everyone sort of does. Everybody else does because it seems like that's what everybody. It really. I don't see much else thinking going into a lot of this, honestly. And like you, right, I'm sort of kicking the tires on these decisions and I'm having them ask why. So, you know, in your case, understandably, you're looking at it from a technological perspective. I'm looking at it also from an organizational perspective. Like just one example, which might be kind of similar to what you're doing is I'll see companies just say, well, we're about to stand up our SDR group. And my question is, why? What drove that decision? Why did you. Why are you thinking about an SDR organization for, you know, they're sometimes buff, baffled by that question. Like, what do you mean? Like, why wouldn't I think about, well, why are you. What's the business outcome? What drove it? And most of the time it's because, well, that's just what you do. Really. That's. It's not that complicated as an answer. It's just what. That's what you do. And so similarly, you know, if I'm buying tech and I'm building a stack of technologies that are going to enable me, or maybe I already have one and now I have to rethink it, what are some of the things that you look at in terms of how a leader of an organization that's running a business that's at that very precarious growth stage needs to think a little bit more about this stuff so that when they, before they get too big and these decisions become even more complicated that they can do now to maybe bring A different perspective on the way that they innovate earlier so that they become, maybe, I don't know, try to be more culturally able to innovate later. You know, like what, what would you say to someone in that state?

Let's say I think people need confidence. I, I've seen a lot of rooms over the years, often with you in the same room at the same time. And there's almost like a script that people read. Like there are times when I almost felt like I was in a sort of weird hidden camera show because people sort of reel off things. You know, people will talk about personalization at scale and people need a data driven approach to refining insights. And this program gleaned, there's all these sort of words that people say and it almost becomes the sort of dictionary of what we do. And I quite often think that no one really understands what we're saying. And everyone's kind of afraid to put their hand up and go, wait a minute, you know, do we need like another third party data provider? You know, a cookies, you know, is the death of cookies really damaging to our business? Because I think a lot of people are going through the motions and there's, there's a sense that somehow we need to pretend to understand more than we do. I think people need the confidence to look into these things themselves, come up with their own opinion, know when to say no to something. And just because everyone else is doing it doesn't mean it's a good idea. Yeah, there's a sort of weird thing in B2B because for a long time it was sort of, no one ever got fired for buying an IBM. And that was a sort of classic B2B thing about sort of fear and people not really wanting to maximize something, people wanting to just have the, the thing that's most defendable. And I think that that's still prevailing, but I think it's now sort of. No one ever got fired, you know, for talking about adding AI or no one ever got fired for outsourcing call centers to the Philippines. No one ever got fired for putting a chat bot on the front page of their website. No one ever got fired for buying too much data. And I think people are lured into the, the sort of whimsical themes of every year. And I just wish that people could have the confidence to say this doesn't matter, we don't need this. Our system works. The problem is elsewhere. You know, what are the things that you're going to do that actually really make a difference to the short medium and long term future of your business. And it's not taking every meeting, it's not flying to ces. And you know, watching the CEO Samsung speak, it might be to do completely different things. It might be to talk to your staff, maybe to talk to your customers. It might be to walk down a high street and look at people.

Yep. Now, you didn't go to ces, did you?

No. I mean, I do quite like it. I just, I haven't been for four years and I've realized I'm not missing much.

Right. Thanks again for listening to the CRO Spotlight podcast. We're excited about all the great guests we have and more importantly, we're excited mostly about you for being avid listeners and supporting the work that we do here. Feel free please to share the CRO spot like podcast with any of your colleagues. We just think there's a great wealth of information here and want to get the word out to as many people as possible. And your, your support of the show is really appreciated. I wanted to share information about a program that we offer called the CRO Masters Council. The CRO Masters Council is a bimonthly group of six seasoned Chief Revenue Officers who are looking for a Chief Revenue Officer Board of Directors, so to speak, that they could share what's going on with them, collaborate with ideas, get some feedback on what's going on in their current role. And these are great conversations. I facilitate them. The CRO Master's Councils, again, they're twice a month and they last for at least six months to a year. So if you're interested in having your own CRO suite, your own Board of Directors of Chief Revenue Officers, it's a private confidential conversation that we have. It's infinitely useful. Imagine having a room full of other Chief Revenue Officers you can talk to and say, hey, I'm working on this or have you guys figured that out? Or I'm having this issue right now with my business or my results. These are just invaluable conversations with Chief Revenue Officers. Chief Revenue Officers have a very, very unique role. It's a very lonely job and only other CROs understand what you're going through. So that's why we created this program. So if you're interested in being a member of the next CRO Masters Council, which we have a number of them being put together right now, just go to my LinkedIn and DM me masters or Master's Council and I'll follow up with you and set up a call or send you some more information about it. Looking forward to seeing you there. And thank you. I understand. And was the kind of place I figured either I could see why you would be there and why you wouldn't be there. So I guess I was right half, the, half the way. But so I wanted to stick with that because what I'm seeing really, because everything you're saying is I so agree. I mean, I speak to these people.

Have to, I mean, it's incredible how they, I like people saying, it's not like that, Tom. You know, you don't get it. Like, we do need more data and, and stuff like that.

I, I, I don't, I don't think that, I think that a lot of these things are distractions. I do think that there's, like you said, there's, without question, there's a script that I hear. I don't think there's anyone that will raise their hand and say, hey, you know, I don't know what we're talking about, but I think wherever it comes from, and I've sort of, you probably landed on this one, you know, largely it's economics because the companies I'm talking to, they're at the stage where they've not all of them, but most of them have gotten funding. Right. And when that happens, it changes things a lot.

Yeah.

Okay. So now, now they've got money from some entity, and, you know, they don't always have the ability as they, as they would like to pick and choose the type of group that they're going to get money from. They get the money from where they get it many times because it's not easy to get money, particularly now. And so then they get that money. And with that money comes a whole other consciousness that has all sorts of other agendas and reasons how that money is going to be invested and how it's going to be renumerated and utilized, et cetera. And many times the boards that come with that money or the groups that come with that money have their own ideas and own thoughts on how they want that business to be run, the technologies they like to use. Sometimes they even fund certain technologies that they like their companies to use. So now you got a whole other slew of problems that are both psychological. One is, boy, I better make these people happy. They just gave me money. And the other one is now I got a whole other bunch of people giving me more ideas that are just going to be more distracting. And I see the, what I think these founders need to endeavor to do, and it's hard to do at this stage is to sort of stick with your guns and sort of know what it is that you're trying to accomplish and what's going to work and kind of remove distractions and be a bulwark to some of the cacophony of stuff. Particularly if I just read the newspaper in the morning, or newspaper, whatever you call it, look at me, I'm an old fart here. If I look at the Axios or whatever it is, and I see the CES rundown of all the new AI technology come out, I mean, it's likely I'm probably going to want to pick one of them and test it. So, you know, I'd be curious to know your thoughts on how economics, aside from culture, plays a role in this, because this is the area where I'm seeing the most problems, particularly for a chief revenue officer who's responsible for growing a business, probably to accelerate growth a lot faster than it really is natural because of all the decisions they have to make because of all the factors that they're up against that have nothing to do with the business.

Many times it's a really hard thing. The dynamics of acquisition are really strange. It's not unlike sort of human relationships, really, and sort of marriage where, you know, in theory, the person marries you because they love everything about you and they don't want you to change. And then all of a sudden things get different because, you know, they have sort of more involvement in your life. And. And you can't confidently say, I shouldn't change anything because you like me before. But there's absolutely a thing where from a distance, these companies look fantastic. And from a distance there's these investors look fantastic and they say the right things because it's the kind of the dating stage of a relationship. And then when they realize they're in the hall together, you realize that actually they do want you to change and they didn't buy you for the reasons that they. They. You thought they did. And their growth projections were sort of based on a different economic climate and money's more expensive now, and everything's different. I, I don't think I've got any real advice because I don't think it's a particularly easy thing to navigate. But I would say that these things are highly typical and that almost everything that's worth discussing and that will lead to a better place comes from very honest conversations. It comes from admitting mistakes. It comes from admitting our sort of human characteristics that allow us to become emotional. It comes from complete clarity in, in. In goal setting, like it comes from good communication. And I think ultimately everyone wants the same thing. Like ultimately. No. No large investment body buys a company because it thinks it's not that good and huge changes need to happen. They buy it because they think the founders are good and the product's good and that the idea is good. And then over time, things change. But I think sort of honest and clear and regular communication is, Is the start of, of better solutions. As vague as that sounds.

Right. It's true. And I see it's a. Probably the biggest problem that companies have is good communications.

Yeah, yeah.

But, you know, I want to talk about something you and I talk about a lot, and you talk about a lot, and that is the customers. So customers are lost in these conversations. They're like the last thing people talk about. You know, I was saying to a client of mine that, I don't know, you probably get the same experience. Maybe you haven't articulated it. I'm sure he's noticed it, that when you log into any of the dashboards that you use right now, probably use as much as I do, you open it up, let's say whatever it's here, you know, maybe it's your, your productivity tool or it's your payment platform, whatever it might be. Little thing I noticed is that the login button is microscopic, but the sign up now button is huge, you know, which is an indicator of the interface is clearly showing the priority priorities of the organization. It really wants more customers. It doesn't really care all that much for the person who is already paying for the platform. Because if I have to hunt for the login button, then obviously I'm, I'm second fiddle here in this experience. Right. And that's indic. Indicative of a lot of things. So I'm curious to know when you think about customers, because I know you read it, you write about this a lot. We talk about it a lot. What is going on in the world of customer service or customer development or customer growth? What can we do about this? Because with SDRs and all this outbound that's going on right now, it seems like it's only getting worse and harder. And I think more people are less good at what they do now than I've ever seen. That's amazing how incompetent I'm sitting when I get on the phone with somebody. It's like getting worse and worse and worse. Is this, is this going to stop? What do you think's going on here?

I find it so weird, you know, like, I find it. I find it amazing how good people are and how brilliant people's brains are. And then I see small teams of people that accomplish remarkable things and they create incredible sort of inventions and stuff that I can only dream of. And then you see the kind of really stupid mistakes they make with customer service. You see the kind of. I think it's the sort of the worshiping of the spreadsheet. I think people sort of completely removed from reality and just looking at ratios and numbers on the spreadsheet, I think there's two different things to talk about here. One is the sort of design of the product itself. I'm amazed at how few companies actively seek to include knowledge of their likely customer base within the design and the development stage. You know, because we talked about ces, that's a good example. You know, if you took a normal person around CES and got them to sort of comment on what they, they saw, I think they would be. They'd be completely perplexed. They'd see all these things they don't need. They do these things that don't really make any sense to them. And at the same time they'd have very real concerns. You know, there'd be sort of washing machines that make too many noises, there'd be micro microwaves have got too many buttons. There'd be sort of TVs with ugly remote controls. It's. It's something, I think that's happened particularly in this sort of tech driven paradigm of the last 10 years, where people have been so busy sort of metaphorically wearing white coats and sort of discovering new elements and challenging material science and writing new code, that they've completely lost any interest whatsoever in what people actually want. And therefore the marketing department's job is to try and explain why this thing that people don't want actually sort of works for them. We see this a lot in software. You know, like if you actually ask most companies to be honest about how different their product is, you know, most products are pretty similar these days, yet there are incredible opportunities to make something that's different. So I think one is we miss sort of customer curiosity and customer knowledge within the design and development phase. And then the next thing is customer service. I think the fault here lays that management consultants, I think everyone is able to measure the costs precisely of something. You can measure the cost of having a call center, you can measure the cost of replying to emails, but you're never really able to measure the cost of a really unhappy customer. You're never really able to measure the cost of Someone who would have paid more and spread the word to their friends and didn't. And therefore, I think. I can't remember what it's called. There's some sort of principle to do with fences, things like Bain Ridges fence or something where, like, fences exist, because if people take them away, it takes them a long time to see why that fence was there. I think customer service has acted like this, where we basically removed it and removed it and removed it, and we're waiting for something bad to happen, and we're not able to see it because we don't measure it. For me, the advertising industry spends about a trillion dollars a year on. On stuff to talk to people. And we hope that people notice. We hope people care. We hope that people pay attention. And then the minute that people want to reply to that, we think of it as a terrible thing and something to automate. That doesn't make any sense to me. If I'm on a car dealer's website and there's a chatbot there that. That's. That's utterly preposterous. I. I potentially could be spending, you know, $100,000 on a vehicle, and you can't be bothered to employ someone to listen to me. For me, we need an entire reorientation of the customer experience and customer service world. And we need to recognize that there is incredible value to people and who become somewhat happy with our services. There's incredible value to people who stay with us for longer. You know, I don't believe that people are loyal. I don't believe that people are fans. I don't believe that people are advocates. I think we're out of our mind if we think that people think about our products that way. But to have people that might casually recommend us, to have people that quite like us, to have us, people who are likely to forgive us if we fuck up, there's enormous value to that. And there's all this modeling out there that shows that existing customers are far more lucrative than recruiting new ones. And it's far more cost effective, but nobody seems to care.

Thank you so much again for listening to the CRO Spotlight podcast. This podcast is an important plank in the Sierra Collective communication strategy, and we're really thrilled to have such great guests on here. So listening and sharing the podcast with other people is really vital because we want to get as many people listening to this great stuff as possible. A couple things to note. If you're a aspiring CRO or a recently hired CRO, or even a old salty CRO, and you're looking to either become a Chief Revenue Officer or improve your chops and gain some more insights and improve your competencies as a Chief Revenue officer. We offer the CRO accelerator course. It's five years now. It's the first CRO focused course that was out there. It's a 15 week course that is populated by aspiring Chief revenue officers and CROs. We're pretty selective in terms of who can be a member of the CRO Accelerator Course. It's people who are probably like more like ready to be a CRO right now. They have number of years under their belt as a revenue leader, whether it be a sales leader or a marketing leader or even rev ops leader. And they either want to move into the C suite or they're CROs that want to just make sure that they win in the role. The Serial Accelerator course, we kick off the next one in May, mid May 2025. So if you are interested in being a member of the next cohort, please just write me a note on LinkedIn. Just DM me CRO accelerator and we'll set up a time to talk and then I can send you more information to give you a brochure of the course. So again, CRO accelerator course, 15 week program for aspiring and newly hired CROs. Take advantage of it. It's been great. And you'll see some more information about it on the website.

Thanks.

Yeah, I get it and I agree. And I think the issue seems to be, like you said, there's too much investment going on into trying to acquire customers and not enough attention you put on to taking care of the ones that you have. But to your point too, even in the buying process, it's a miserable experience when I'm trying to purchase a product. Particularly I think the more complicated a product is, the harder it is to buy.

Yes.

Which is incredible to me. I know that you had recently indicated that you just bought a car and so it's like that must be. It's a crazy decision. I got one too. I ended up getting. I didn't get an EV. I got an F150 for the reasons that you and I discussed. I need to lug a lot of crap around now and it's really fun to drive this thing on. It's incredible. And you know, here's the thing. I want to talk about it. I was going to get the Lightning, which is the EV version of the Ford F150. Right. And you know, it's a big deal mainly because the car is so popular and there's More made than any other car in the United States right now. It's most people buy it. So as a result, Ford's really worked out a lot of the kinks in their combustion engine vehicle. It's great because it's been the tires literally been kicked on it for so long. It really works really well. So I thought how much of that are they going to bring to an electric car? So I did a lot of research on it. It was fascinating to things because people are amazing how much they post online about these things. You know, if someone's an advocate for these things, it's amazing how much information you can get. So I was doing all this research on the lightning and the pervasive attitude was, you know, in short, it's like, man, I really wanted to love this car. I really did, you know, and it was all because. And look, I think a lot of this is also because God bless Ford, you know, they're just going to figure this out over the next 10 or 15 years. They're going to work the kinks out. But the new, the recent new buyers are going to be the ones that see it. But the problems are ones that you think they would have figured out. And mostly, you know, what it was, it was in the interfaces, it was in how I just used the car, you know, the app that they gave me and how I, you know, the ergonomics and the technologies that go along with it. None of them worked, you know, and so I do think like those are the most customer facing parts of the vehicle when at the end of the day, and it's probably not their forte. I mean, they're not Apple, you know, or other companies that have done a lot of work in this area. But you'd think that they would have gotten people who were smart about that, particularly given the size of the company that they're in. So you could see that they fell short on it as an indicator to me of where their focus is more in engineering as opposed to on the customer inner experience. And they also said the buying experience is actually really bad too. Wasn't like a Tesla where you could just go to a place and just go pick one up. It was still the same dealer model with all these trappings and too many different, you know, features and functions and levels and trim levels and things that just are just overwhelmingly ridiculous to know how to buy. So what was the experience in you buying this car? I assume you bought an ev, right?

Well, I mean, oddly, I bought two cars at the same time. So one was a used vehicle, which was every bit as challenging as you might expect. I mean, I think there's a huge difference between things which are excusable and things that are explainable. And I think I, I can sort of explain, I can understand why, you know, they pretend to go and ask the manager, you know, very slowly, you know, if they will increase the trade in on your, your vehicle, because they're trying to make you frustrated and exhausted and prepared to sort of accept whatever it is that they're. They're doing. But it's, it's odd because for me, a lot of what you experience is people carrying on behaviors that worked before the Internet existed. I think, you know, for a long time people were not going to walk out of the office for a long time. People did come in clueless for a long time. You know, people would think that they were on the sort of back foot, and that's just not the case. You know, I think a lot of people, especially people with means, you know, their sanity and their time is far more valuable than anything else. And they don't want something that's cheaper. They want something that's more sort of delightful. The, the other one was, it was a lucid. So I've sort of leased an EV to try and experience what the future of automotive is. And, you know, I've got a lot of things I can say about this, and I'm trying to make sure that I'm saying the most interesting things. One thing that amazes me that somewhat related to what we were talking about before is the sort of decline of buttons, because I don't, I don't think there's anyone on the planet that likes a car that doesn't have buttons. But yet almost all automakers have started making cars without many buttons at all. And you can probably suggest that that's down to a degree of cost savings. But I refuse to believe that it's cheaper to have a glove box that requires a touch screen interface. Like, you know, plastic cannot be so expensive that a little switch is that expensive. And, and these things become quite significant to me because it kind of shows that I don't think anyone has thought to ask people, like, you know, there's this sort of whole thing about, oh, if I'd asked people what they wanted, you know, they'd have told me they wanted a faster horse. That's not true at all. You know, people love talking about how bad their flight was. People love talking about how crappy it is in a hotel room that you can't figure out which light switch does which. And people will offer you stuff for free and they will love it. And I have absolutely no idea why we don't welcome that input into the design process. And there would be an extraordinarily large amount of value created both by making those people more happy because you're listening to them, but also by doing sort of free R and D on what you make.

No doubt. And I'm a pain in the neck. I call software companies all the time and I tell them what's wrong and what they should do. Yes, I did this last week. I had an experience with a client, well, that was a vendor who. Their sales process was clearly designed to incentivize their front end people to close a deal with a certain level of velocity so that they would get the money in their pockets sooner than later. Right. You could tell they were trying to push me through a funnel. You know, it wasn't really listening to my timeline. It was, their timeline seemed to be German leading this thing. And it created all sorts of problems. Anyway, long story short, I called the CEO of the company. We got on the phone and I said, look, you know, here's some things I'm noticing about your product and you're offering, blah, blah, blah. My point I'm making is, you know, this person was obviously grateful that somebody with some means was calling them up and giving them some free feedback. Didn't look at me like a pain in the ass, was taking furious notes, you know, but it is, unfortunately, I mean, I think the most. I was like, who the hell are you, you crackpot? You know, leave me alone. I got better things I got to do. But this person was particularly eager to hear what I had to say and in fact wanted to schedule a second call with me. I was going to, I got to charge him, you know, but, you know, it was, it was interesting and I think that you're correct. I think there's a treasure trove of incredible insights out there for people that are running companies and they're ignored because they're not. There's no channel for them and there's no process inside the organization for that insight to be utilized in, in any way. So it sort of just becomes just noise or complaints, Right. And so as a result, people are given a free this or a bonus that or a discount this to satisfy them as opposed to, yeah, you know, we heard you, we're going to do something about it. You know, I'm. What I'm kind of curious to know in your view is, I mean, is this Something that we think is just persistent. I mean, do you see that there's any way in, in the way that things are developing now? Maybe, I don't know. I say AI because I hate using this word because it's just annoying thing. But I mean, are we at a point where this data that we're getting from customers can be utilized better? Are you seeing any evidence of this or is it just going to get progressively worse? Because I don't think it's getting any better right now. I don't see it getting better.

I think it all comes down to the love of the spreadsheet again. I mean, I personally think, think the, the whole kind of net promoter score I think was the, the sort of beginning of the end and it, it's so unbelievably stupid. I mean, can you imagine doing anything in life knowing that you have a chance to access someone's brain for about 15 seconds and in that access to someone's time and attention, you're going to ask them to just give you a number. I mean, and then. But you're going to take those numbers and sort of stick them in a spreadsheet and it's going to give you another number and then every single sort of quarter you're going to look at those numbers and then try and establish some sort of trend line or meaning from that. You know, for me, those scores are entirely about giving out bonuses to suppliers. You know, if the toilet gets a 7.2, then you know, we, we take 2% off your, you know, monthly service contract. For me, it's got nothing to do with improving customer service. I have no idea why no single company has ever not experimented with the idea of just saying, we're not going to ask you to give us number. If there's anything we should know, please tell us. And you'd get crazy people. There'd be people with nothing better to do who write books for you. And there would be people that say, you know, Sally in South Dakota was amazing and you've got no idea how to get in touch with Sally. And it's a bit sad, but there'd be a lot of people that would say quite interesting things. And I think somehow if a company, let's say like a huge company, had that and they had a million responses, you know, let's say that the Walmart or BMW do that and they've now got a million emails every day to pass through. That's quite a good problem, isn't it? I mean, it is a problem, but in a Parallel universe. We would give that a fancy sort of technological name and we'd call it sort of real time sentiment analysis or something like that. Now, of course, we could use AI and we could get AI to sort of understand that and we could turn it into, you know, all manner of dashboards that tell us, you know, how many words people are writing and how common the letter A is and are people speaking French these days still. Or we could just have sort of fairly interested middle managers who just every day decided to read 10 of them and they pick them at random. And then probably every day they'd sort of get quite a good sense of where the company is going. They'd probably be able to send on the most interesting ones to a department. They probably get one or two really important people who are complaining that actually should be phoned up. Somehow we're not able to do that. Somehow we think of that as work and effort. That makes absolutely no sense to me. I think we need to think a lot more. We have this amazing technology. We can listen to anyone on the planet. We can speak to anyone for free on a video phone. We can email things around the world, we can turn things into graphs. We should love all of this stuff.

We should. Here's the thing that dovetails. This is purpose based or cause based marketing. People love brands because what they stand for, that falls into the same thing in my view as the, as the, the scoring, you know, modems that you already alluded to before, which is this idea that. I know you talked about this a lot, but I think the. What we stand for is about one of the strangest things, because I don't think people care. I don't think people buy products because of what a company stands for. I don't think so. So again, I don't think it stops. I still think that more of this, I see a lot more of the sort of brand purpose or brand virtue, singling, signaling stuff going on. I see it, it's not abating. I think that every topic that comes up there seems to be a brand that wants to align themselves with the next cause or the next thing that's going on. And it's amazing to me that no one's quite figured out that no one really cares. I don't if they can really tie any sales to this sort of thing. So I know you have a lot of thoughts on this, but I think it goes into the same thing. It goes into that similar sort of weird, these indulgences that seem to have very little to do with Building good products, but seem to be catchy. There's a company right now that sells this sort of thing. What they do is you get a score for your alignment with a certain cause and as a result of it, then you get points for having a certain level of awareness about a certain, you know, issue or something like that. It's crazy to me, it just seems so divergent away from the actual everyday use of a product. I couldn't imagine using toothpaste because they care about what's going on in the Middle East. At the same time, though, I would say that there may be people that avoid buying certain products because their alignment with things that they don't agree with. I think politics has also created a lot of divisiveness too. So it's a weird dichotomy. I don't think people are going to gravitate necessarily towards something, but they may run away from something if they don't like their association with things. This is where that whole brand safety thing comes into play. So I see a lot of ways and a lot of this stuff is affecting the decisions that companies are making. And I know you have a lot of thoughts on this. We've dallied around this topic before.

Yeah, I've got a lot to say. I mean, first of all, companies like that company that you talk about that assesses alignment, you know, to a score, you know, these things exist because management consultants do an amazing job of putting out reports where they'll get enough data that they can prove any hypothesis to be correct. You know, if you wanted to, you could produce something that shows that companies that have more blue, you know, are caused like the, the, the blue leading companies and they're more likely to outperform the Russell 500 by 2.9% and everyone should change their logo to blue. And no one would look at that and just go, that doesn't make any sense. You've just harvested the data in such a way to do that, so these reports are completely meaningless. But that doesn't mean that people don't use them to sell stuff. The, the sort of notion of brand purpose I think has become very confused. I think for half of the people it means a sort of greater, loftier goal, you know, so brand purpose should be that your shoe polish, you know, is supporting the, you know, giving back of land to Inuits. It should be your, your sort of shampoo, you know, stands for, you know, a world with sort of cleaner oceans. And I think the, the reality is that the people don't have time to think that way. Like, if we went shopping around Kroger and we had to sort of assess, you know, how aligned our tomato sauce was with Middle east politics, it would take quite a long time to go shopping, and we'd probably just have a sort of mental breakdown and feel slightly lost halfway through. So. So, you know, for some companies that are small, it makes sense because it gives you something to talk about. So I don't think brand purpose has to be about making the world a better place, I'm sorry to say. I do think that there's. That there's something in brand purpose giving a sense of logic and alignment to what you make. But it's probably more important internally for many categories. It's probably not that easy to come up with something that's compelling and differentiating, and we tend to get lost in sort of wordsmithing, you know, so if you, you know, every bank probably has a sort of company vision, you know, which is to sort of make the world a better place, to sort of empower people with financial freedom. You know, every single source shampoo will probably be based around sort of enabling people to live their best lives and sort of feel good inside. So I can. I can see the merit, especially when it's internal and especially when it's used as a sort of product roadmap. But more often than not, these things become sort of taglines and commercials. We are in this really weird period of time where actually, I think people are afraid of how simple their jobs are. I think people need to be busy. You know, a lot of marketers will change the logo more often than it needs to be done because they're bored of it. A lot of marketers think that somehow every time there's a breaking news story, they need to put their views out. Brands are not people. They don't have opinions, they don't make decisions. Brands are sort of systems and memories and constructs that are in our mind. And again, if you're a tiny company, it's a great way to get noticed. You know, if I. If I sort of ran a company that sold shoelaces that were made out of bamboo, it's probably good for me to tell the world that I'm pausing my spend on Twitter, you know, because Elon's just done something stupid, because it might get me noticed. It might be good for me to say something outrageous to get noticed. But I think for most big brands, it's a complete distraction. It's not your job. No one needs you to do this. Focus on the Things that matter. You know, make. Make a product that's good, explain it in a way that's compelling. Keep things sufficiently stable and consistent over a long period of time. People understand what you're about.

Yeah. It'd be too easy, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

You know, I think I. I do think a lot of reasons why these. A lot of people do this sort of thing is because they sort of can't really tie any real value to what they're selling. So they want to tie it to something that they perceive as being valuable that'll increase its value in the marketplace or perceived, anyway. I do. I think it's a. It's a lack of ability to be able to speak, and it could be, in some instances, like your product just may not be that exciting to begin with. I mean, there's some products that really aren't that interesting. They're just kind of utilitarian. You know, it's like a doorknob or something like that.

That definitely. I mean, there's a whole other thing. I think, you know, people don't have religion in their lives anymore, so they kind of. They've lost a bit of meaning and purpose. People somehow sort of expect their job to give them meaning, you know, so, you know, rather than going for some.

People, it does what you do. But you're right, it's a very few segment of the population that have the benefit of that sort of thing where their. Their religion and their job is very well aligned. Most people are making a living, I think, look, you're doing something that matters to you, right? I mean, there's a lot of things you can be doing. You, You, You've been able to carve out a really unique space for yourself. And so, you know, I. It sounds like you. You give a crap about what you're doing, you know, and I understand you're making some cash doing it, which is great. You know, if you can do both, then God bless. Right.

I think there's a. I don't like giving advice that maybe this comes close to that, but I think that there's an enormous amount to be said not for doing something that's changing the world, but doing something that you feel a little bit proud about.

Sure.

It's quite nice to have a sort of day where you sort of feel a little bit, you know, a little bit sort of gee ed up because you made something happen that you thought was a little bit.

No question. I feel that way. I do.

Yeah.

I think a lot of it is also because it's Your own thing, if you make your own thing, there's a certain thing that comes with having your own thing. When you work for somebody else, there's a distance between you and that product that you can't. I mean, it's really hard to get people to care as much as you do about what you're built. I think that's not part of what we're seeing too is there's a lot of apathy in the world. People don't care about what they're doing a lot and they're just doing their jobs.

Yes. I mean, it's also exhausting as well, because when you care and things go well, it's an amazing time. And when you care and things go badly, it's sort of crushing.

I'm sure, I'm sure. You know, it kind of goes to another point that I want to bring up that you bring up a lot, which is a really interesting topic. I think it's coming to a head and that is around remote work. So, you know, I have a lot of people I work with right now whom are now rehiring or they just let go a lot of people and now they're in the point of building up their teams again. And the question comes up of is, do I want to bring people back to an office? Do I have. I just totally moved on to the fact that I now know I can get people anywhere. What's the right model? Is it. Does it really work to have people working remotely? And you know, what are the effects of this and is it here to stay? And if so, you know, what does it mean for. I mean, we actually met with people here in Mexico yesterday whom haven't worked in the same country in like five years. They just travel all over the place and they do their work wherever they go. And I know that's a unique thing, but there's more of this now and there are countries who are actually open themselves up to people who fall into that category and they're. You're creating environments for them economically for them to come and bring their work there where you think we are with this remote work thing.

Again, it's a topic I've got a lot to say on. One, we need to recognize we're in the early stages of this. We have no idea what the sort of longer term impacts of this will be. And it's very. It's far too early to sort of declare that something is working or not working. Two, we need to be very aware of how different people are and how different industries are and how different jobs are. The sort of online discourse is sort of dominated by people that write software or they write sort of brand reports. And they love the fact that they get to be in sort of, you know, Machu Picchu and sort of do ayahuasca while writing some code or something. You know, a lot of people don't have jobs like that. A lot of people are architects. A lot of people are working for a local government. A lot of people need to be next to the factory so they can go downstairs and see why the buzz has gone off. And I think we need to be mindful of how different it is to people based on their own circumstances, where they are in their careers. Generally speaking, I think it's important that people make a choice and people have freedom to decide. At the same time, I recognize that a lot of people make very bad decisions. I think the working from home thing has made me realize that we default to being quite lazy, actually. We default to an easy life and we default to things that don't require as much effort. And we don't work out our muscles, we don't work out our social muscles, we don't work out our sort of physical muscles even. And I think a lot of people are kind of hiding a little bit. I think a lot of people are becoming more introverted. And I think, therefore, we must not expect that people always make decisions that are in their own best interests. So I think generally speaking, companies should be more happy about forcing people back to the office. This sounds quite weird, but it's sort of extraordinary how far we've gone. I mean, can you imagine in sort of 2017 saying, you know, this is outrageous. My company wants me to go to the office three and a half days a week. You know, that that would be flexible working. That would be a very future forward industry. Like we, we did all sign contracts that said that we were going to go to the office probably five days a week. So to return to that environment, you know, in order to do a job that you get paid to do and that you can leave whenever you want, you know, that's not some sort of human rights issue. That's a sort of commercial and personal decision. So I think everyone needs to sort of find their own way. I think people need to be mature and recognize what's really good for them and what's a really good way to do their jobs. And I think often when people are given that freedom, it slowly dawns on people a little bit like wearing a suit that actually is quite good. For us. I don't like wearing a suit. It's expensive, you have to get them dry clean. But whenever I wear one, I am, I am a little bit better at everything I do. I am a little bit more proud, I am a little bit more empowered, but I don't want to do it. I, I think what we realize is that when people are working remotely a lot that companies are not having the difficult conversations they need to have. A lot of the harder decisions, a lot of the harder discussions, a lot of the, the, the sort of multi dimensional elements of non verbal communication are missing. People slowly feel disconnected, people slowly feel like they don't belong, people don't care as much. So I think it's really important that most companies and most roles have a way to make people feel part of something. People feel proud of something. People feel like there's significance to what they do.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a hybrid that's awaiting us here because I agree that while I'm enjoying the fact that I happen to fall, and you as well fall into the category of the type of work that allows me to work wherever I want and I benefited from it in many ways. I also feel I know my personality, you know, I like people, I like being around people, I like working with people. Not everybody, you know, but you know, I like working with people. And so I find that it can be isolating. I definitely can feel that my skills can get softened. I absolutely agree that there's a casualness that comes with it that while it feels kind of cool, it also takes some of the sharp edges off of things. I completely concur with you that I feel better when I throw on some duds and if I'm not wearing them, I'm sort of like my brain is in kind of casual mode. And I do think that you're right. It's too early for us to know what the effects of that are going to be. But I don't think they're going to be good. I don't. More importantly, my concern is as much about productivity and stuff as it is just about people. I don't think we're designed for this. I don't, you know, we're not.

I worry a lot about this younger people and also for the record, I mean people never believe me when I say this, but I am quite introverted. Like I love people in theory, but in reality I'm quite awkward.

I'm quite shy. You and I are both very much alike this way. I totally agree with you.

Yeah. But this isn't. These things often become sort of introverted, extroverted things where introverted people will jump on me on the Internet for saying that I like going to the office. It's because it's good for me. Like. Like, for me, the office is the gym. I don't. I don't want to do it, but if I do it a lot, I recognize that it's a very, very good thing for me. And we're very good at lying to ourselves about the degree to which we don't need this.

I agree. And I think it's also because, like you said, if I can get the same, well, not the same, but similar benefit from not having to do something I don't like, well, why the hell wouldn't my addictive nature like that? Right? But that's not what's best for me. I. I agree. I know that when I went into an office every day, it forced me to have to take on certain characteristics that I knew ultimately were better for me that I just maybe didn't find comfortable, but they worked for me that I don't have to muscle up with anymore, you know, which is why I'm trying to have more meetings now, you know, if I can. But truth is, it's hard because most of people I meet with are like, you and I were in completely different parts of the world, so we can't. And I think the. These video interfaces, it's cool. If it's cool, I'd be able to talk to you and I can look at you. You have a conversation. It is. It's fascinating and it's. It's miraculous. But there is something different about, you know, if I were to just come to Miami, we just go get a cup of coffee and hang out together, just. It just feels different. There's something three dimensional about it you can't deny. But I think it's interesting because I'm seeing right now with the clients I have, is they wrestle with this. Their attitude is, is. Is one, is, what should my policy be? Should I ask people to come to the office and how much? And if so, am I cutting off my hiring pool? Because there's a lot of people who I really would love to have in my company that don't want to work in an office right now. And I really would like them to work with me, and they're willing to if they can stay in, you know, Jamaica, you know, and that's a tough call to make. You know, what's the better decision? Is it getting the right People in on their terms or is it finding people that are willing to work on your terms? And I, there's no answer to it, but it's a fascinating thing I see happening.

It's a fascinating thing. I, I do think there is one statement that people make which I think is a bit of a myth. There has been a lot of people that think that the very best talent in the world has so many options that they will always choose to work remotely. And therefore, by asking people to come into an office, pretty often you're missing out on that talent. I, I think there are some domains where that might be true. You know, I can imagine the world's best sort of coders, for example, but I actually think that the very, very, very best people I know across a number of different fields, they're not extroverted, they're not people that need their egos rubbed. They're not people that love free beer in the office on a Thursday. They are people that know themselves enough and know what's important to them about their sense of purpose, that they recognize it's probably quite good for them to come into an office quite often. Again, how we define quite often is quite hard. You know, for me, we're talking about sort of 65 to 75% of the time in the office. I think any more than that and it becomes a kind of, it becomes a punishment. But I, I, I think there is a wonderful thing that happens when people get together and, and you know, I have always enjoyed working in the places I've worked. I've always loved the fact that people are in sort of weird situations together. There's a sort of the, the meeting room that's not booked and you get moved into a sort of a cupboard where nothing works. And then you have the sort of banter while someone gets the Internet to work and you find out, you know, that the client's looking a bit unhappy because, you know, their daughter's having a bad time at school. There's the, the sort of cramming in a taxi and having your elbow stuck up someone's sort of nostril, you know, that sort of breaks the ice before you present together. I think we sort of forget how important the things that don't, don't seem important are to camaraderie, to a sense of understanding, to a sense of empathy, to a sense of shared vision. I think we stripped out that very quickly, and it's taking us a long time to realize what we're missing.

Yeah, I got it. I think you're Right. And I think the other part that we haven't touched upon in that particular topic is also there's a much greater divide ideologically in this, in the United States, particularly right now, may probably even Western world right now, and people don't want to be around each other as much. There's a lot of potential conflicts that happen in offices now based on a lot of identity related stuff and DEI related stuff that kind of makes it harder for people to be together because of all the kind of simmering opportunity for conflict that can go on just from small things. And so as a result, it strangely seems like at the same time that that became more proliferate, we also were then also given the freedom to not have to be together as much. And it almost made it easier for us to retreat into our separate corners, not have to work that stuff out. And so I think that there's a weird thing that those two things happen. Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe not. But, you know, I don't know the answer to that question, but I can tell you that the office environment, even if you're in one right now, is much more volatile than it used to be. I mean, I've been working in an office for the last 30 years or so and you should just be just like everyone just came in and hung out, for instance, for so what? Who cares if you like the Yankees and I like the Mets, it didn't matter. But today it's a big thing. And I think in a way this sort of work from home thing is a way to temper some of that stuff that may happen because we're seeing a lot now of these things happening in the office. And I think that that's another whole other factor that goes into this and in the way in which companies have to align themselves around cultural factors, technological factors, work from home factors, it's really just an incredibly complicated thing to deal with. Do I get a DEI person? Do I hire an ESG person? Do I have to? And if I do, you know, how do I organize my people around this? And when I do have the meeting, how much of this do I have to take into account when I start to run my conversations with all them? I mean, the amount of things that we have to deal with these days to run a business, it's, it's insane. And all we want to do is just get down to work and, you know, it's really hard to do. So anyway, I, I think these are all kind of things we, you and I could probably get on here for about three more hours. But I wanted to ask you a couple questions before we sign off here. So I know you bought an EV recently, but I'm curious to know what, what are some technologies that you're using right now that you find really, just really amazing that you're finding like, wow, this is something I haven't noticed before or saw before.

So interestingly, I find pretty much everything about generative AI to be absolutely incredible but not particularly helpful. So if I'm answering your question quite specifically and accurately, I find AI and generative AI and L LLMs totally remarkable. The question becomes how do we sort of use them more and how do we sort of rethink the way that we work around them? I mean, somewhat related, I'm using voice to text quite a lot. I. It takes quite a lot of getting used to because you realize that you don't enunciate your words very clearly, but you also realize that sort of words come out of your mouth in a different fashion to your fingers. You realize that you reply to emails in a very wordy way. But I'm experimenting with how I can write more material that way by practicing more.

Like if my ask mean like, like Siri or specific text to.

I mean it's on my Mac so I sort of press the function twice, then you get the little microphone.

Okay.

Oddly, oddly, it works a lot better on your phone than it is on your. Your Mac.

Yep, I agree.

I find the same so that I'm finding that quite transformative. I mean I've said this for quite a few years, but I actually think that the technology that we've had for a really long time has still not been made the most of the mobile phone, the, you know, cash. Like why is it that I'm sort of logged out of websites all the time, things like sort of APIs, you know, I don't understand why my Internet is and all of these call outs and sort of threaded experiences that mean I get to stay on one site and have this sort of beautiful integrated experience. So I sort of love the mundane things. You know, I like it when you get an email saying, you know, you've ordered this product and then the sort of tracking information will come through and then sort of show you where it is in real time. Just, just in that email you sort of experience something like that. And it's wonderful. You'll, you know, be on a website for your airline and you'll cancel your ticket and it will say this is how much money you're going to get back Would you like to do it? You know, like, like it's amazing how, how low our expectations are in some areas that we find it absolutely remarkable that an airline can tell us how much money they're going to refund us if we cancel a ticket or that allows us to sort of move our, our flight sort of with less than five button presses. So I, in short, I really like the orchestration of existing technology around real friction points and around new things which are somewhat delightful.

And what's a good book you read that you suggest everyone else look at?

I, I am terrible at reading books. In my entire life, I've read about three books and, you know, technically one of them was probably mine. I am a really big believer in sort of high density readership and I find that quite often books are really what could have been sort of five, 800 word articles sort of spread over 75 pages, 750 pages. So I, I follow people. I find someone like Rory Sutherland fascinating. I like the work of Tom Peters. There's a guy called, I've completely forgotten his name. He sort of writes interesting stuff about business transformation. And for me, I think there's a lot of work to be done about finding a media environment that works around you. And that often means following people rather than sort of publications.

Yeah, I do the same. I follow people.

Yeah.

All right, great. Well, like, as I expected, this is cool. We could have talked about a thousand more things, but I know we ran out of time, so. Thanks, man. I appreciate you being here and doing this with me. It's been a while. I've been wanting you to be on for a while, so. Thank you.

My pleasure has been, it's been an absolute delight.