00:22  Hey, welcome to another episode of the Growth and Scaling podcast. Today, we are so pleased to have with us a doctor. That's right. Dr. Chris Brown is here with us today. Will you please tell us who you are and what you do?

00:36  Hey Todd, it's great to be here. Thanks so much. So my background essentially has been as a management consultant. So I've been working with senior leadership teams for many years, helping them shape their organizational culture. So that's kind of been the focus of the work that we do at Market Culture and yeah, I'm excited to be here. So thanks.

01:00 Nah, I love guys like you because you see a lot of things that most business people don't see, which is from the outside looking in, what's not aligning your teams? So tell us some things that you see. I mean, who's your ideal client and what kind of companies do you work with? Is there an industry you work with? Give us an idea of your avatar.

01:20  Yeah, so we've been working with a range of industries across the globe. Our largest clients been Vodafone globally, so telecommunications firm, as well as companies that are insurance-based that typically aren't very good at customer centricity, right? So they're known to be not so customer centric and we try to help them change that.

01:41 That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, that is a problem with certain industries, isn't it?

01:48 Hmm, hmm. I think we've all had those experiences.

01:50 So what do you do? I mean, you go in and you do what with them? Are these companies, what are the big pain points you're solving?

02:00 So yeah. Yeah, look, so this concept of customer centricity is a pretty vague term, isn't it? And everyone's got a different perspective on what that might be. So the first thing we do is we've got an assessment tool that we developed in a rigorous way to try and understand what actually is customer centricity. What are the behaviors? What are the consistent things that companies exhibit that ultimately result in great customer experiences? And so we use that assessment tool as an initial deployment across them so that they can get an understanding of really how customer centric are we versus the best companies in the world. People like Amazon and Apple and these companies that we all know are really good. And that's it. That's it. It's a little bit like jumping on the scale, right. And saying, you know, how heavy are we and how are we going to now lose some weight?

02:48 Right. You know, it is hard to know where you're at unless you do some kind of an assessment. What kind of things do you do in the assessment? I mean, who should be thinking, if those listening, who should be saying, ah crap, I need to do one of those? Like, how do you make the people understand that this is something they should be thinking about?

03:05 Yeah, look, I think it's a blind spot for many business leaders, right? So particularly in a large organization, if you've got a thousand employees or more, how do you know, how do you really know how customer centric you're operating as a business? And there are blind spots in there that you want to uncover. And so the assessment allows you to deploy that across your employees and they'll tell you where they think they're doing really great work when it comes to customer experience and where they're not. And these are blind spots that the CEO typically doesn't have. And so there's a lot of new information that they would get that they wouldn't otherwise, right? Because it gets filtered through layers of leadership and that sort of thing.

03:43 Sure. So assessment and then what? What do you do to help them?

03:47 So, yeah, so the next piece of that then is, your first part's discovery. So, where are we right now? And then it's about, fundamentally, it's a leadership challenge, right? So, leaders that want customer-centric organizations need to sort of role model customer-centricity. So they really need to be the ones that are out talking to customers. They need to demonstrate to others in the organization how important customers are to the business. And if they're not doing that, then, we need to help them sort of develop some of those skills because sometimes, you know, it's just a bit of a skill set and overcome some of their own inhibitors to maybe doing that. Maybe they've got a finance background or a technical background and they're not suited to maybe going out and doing that. But,

04:31 The people person, right?

04:32 Yeah, that's right. So help them develop some of those things because certainly all people can develop some of those skills over time. So, you know, it's about role modeling, leadership and also ensuring that the mechanisms are in place in the business. So people are awarded for customer centricity. So they're the people that you hold up in the business.

04:54 I love it, I love it. Now that's fascinating because it truly is one of those things that a lot of people don't think about. And a lot of, you know, I've had a few people on this show who are CX experienced masters who come in and say, look, really, your customer service should be like your largest profit center of the business, right? Or a big revenue center. How do you help them develop those kind of awarenesses to their customer centricity?

05:22 Yeah. Yep. Yeah, look, I think what happens is over time, you know, as these businesses scale, we're talking about scaling today. One of the challenges is, you know, that, um, people become internally focused, right? They become more focused on tasks, processes, things like that. And what we want them to do is start to think like a customer again. So let's get them exposed to customers. What's it like to actually deal with your organization? You know, how does it feel to be a customer, try and put themselves in the customer's shoes again. And so some, some customer mindset activity, we'd call that. And, you know, the best part, the best thing to do is we've all had customer experiences, just think about one that you really hated. What happened? Try and diagnose why that why was that an experience you hated? What was it about that? And now think about your own business? Are we doing that to our customers too? Right? So let's not do that. Let's not do that, yeah.

06:17 What does that look like? I mean, is it very often that they see that, holy crap, I wouldn't wanna buy for myself? Or is it generally a mixed bag?

06:26 Yeah, look, it's a mix. It's a mix. I mean, most companies, they're not trying to create bad customer experiences, right? But these things happen. And so I think it's lifting the veil a little bit and giving them some new perspective and so on. It's not always easy to get to gain that right, you need some external input to be able to gain that and you need to step away from the business to kind of reflect on what are we doing? And if you don't, if you're just operating in 100% miles an hour, then you don't see it. So there's a little bit involved there.

07:01 100%, 100%. No, it totally makes sense, totally makes sense. So now we know what your business does and we know who you like to help. Tell us a little bit about your business. I mean, how does Market Culture operate? Are you international? Have you, you know, tell us about the growth journey. I mean, where have you come and where did you start and where did you come from on your own?

07:26 Yeah, so we started our offices in California back in 2004. So you could probably tell, yeah, I've got the Australian accent, I'm from Sydney originally, but we started in San Francisco. And originally we're just a management consulting firm. So we're taking on single clients at a time or two clients at a time. And they're pretty involved engagements. And over time, one of the things that we did to scale was we actually made a lot of our tools and methodologies available to consulting partners. So we are credit, we've got more than 120 partners around the world now, that actually can use some of our assessment tools to help their clients and help their clients actually improve their customer centricity. So that's been a sort of primary way that we've scaled is through accreditation in our tools. And then the second way that we've been working on the last year or so is then taking the tools a step further to where they're becoming more self-service, almost like a software as a service.

08:26 Interesting.

08:27 So that our partners can use those with their clients and our clients can, some of our direct clients can come and use those themselves also. So we're building more of that.

08:34 That's cool. So 120 partners that you've got to sign up as accredited partners so far. And where do you see this going? I mean, how many partners do you want to take on? Is it something that as they get accredited with your tools, are they then applying the principles or are you then doing any part of that on the backside?

08:57 Yeah, so our role then is just on the assessment piece. So we just help on that and that's where we're investing in technology. In terms of the partners we've got, it's like any sort of group of partners, it's the 80-20 rule, right? Where we've got sort of 20% of those partners that are super active and they're really engaged in doing a lot of things. And some of those might do one or two a year. I think that there's a lot more scale opportunity for us the use of the tool and that's what we're really focused on the next sort of 12 months or so.

09:32 captainscouncil.com

10:52 That's awesome. So really it's been a nice journey of building IP that works, accrediting people that can utilize that IP and help them grow their own consulting firms. And in return, you're gaining traction as an IP-based product.

11:11 That's right. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah. There is a book. There is a book. Thanks for mentioning that. You know, I forgot that. So in 2014, we actually released a book, which we call, “The Customer Culture Imperative”. And that's really a book that describes how companies actually change their cultures. How do they actually do it? How do they use the tools that we've developed to do that? So, we've got a lot of really good case studies in there of companies that have been able to do this. And it's not, I'm not going to lie, it's not easy, right? There's work involved and there's leadership involved, there's effort. Yeah, but it's doable.

11:49 Yeah, it's not easy. Now I've got a brother-in-law that's a culture consultant and I know that it's, I'm very familiar with what you're trying to do. It is not easy. Especially helping companies understand why they need this. So how do you do that? What is kind of the, what is the demand funnel look like where people are like, oh crap, our culture sucks.

12:17 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, but I think there's a few things. We've got two types of clients. We've got clients that have recognised that actually, you know, we were actually getting a lot of negative feedback from customers. And actually, probably, we should do something about that. So, you know, some companies will say, well, we don't do anything about it. And maybe they're in a market where they can get away with it, right? I mean, what are some trends that people see? You know what I mean? But it's those that say, look, we want to do something about it. We actually want to improve. And we think that if we do that, we actually can improve the experience. But fundamentally, we can improve the business, right? We can be a better business. We can be more successful as an organization, more profitable. There can be more growth from that. So there's that. So that's the trigger typically is the customers are not happy. They're getting complaints. The other side of it is we've got some clients that are actually good businesses but realize that they want to be great businesses and they want to differentiate around customer experience. So they really want to be seen as the market leader in customer experience. And if they want to do that, that's where the tools are really powerful and helpful for them.

13:26 I love it, I love it. You know, nothing is out of the woods. I mean, in terms of clients, businesses that are trying to grow and scale, and this is a message to all the listeners, if you're really trying to grow and scale your business, it is so hard to do it when your customers aren't having an amazing experience. I mean, you just need to think about how does that experience work in terms of them referring new clients, them growing their engagement with you. Like there's so many parts of building a positive customer experience that people are generally only focused on client acquisition, you know, and most of the time they think their growth strategy revolves entirely around more paid ads, more, you know, more commercials, more whatever they need to do to get in front of their target avatar. What do you say to people like that? I mean, how do you make them aware that this is a huge portion of their revenue?

14:20 Yeah, look, I think when we're talking to people that are more financially minded, we need to connect the dots for them around, you know, looking at the customers as assets, right? What's the lifetime value of the customer? You know, what's the customer worth to the business? And what, you know, what are the activities that we're doing to ensure that customer assets retained, right, and grown? So it part of it is connecting the those with a financial mindset to the customer and their activity and how that corresponds to the balance sheet and the profit and loss statement, right? So, you know, got to be able to show that that's important. And there are ways to do that. There's great, you know, methods that we can use to help them understand that. Some people get it intuitively, but others need to be shown black and white. Here are the dynamics when it comes to that and I think you're right, right? Most companies are focused on acquisition and that's expensive. Whereas retention's where the goal is, right? If you can retain a client and work with that client over time, that's a very valuable thing for you and your business.

15:34 100%. So we've talked a lot about your growth journey through accreditation, and how you've been able to get those referrals coming in from these partners and how you've been able to help nurture and grow them. What are some negative aspects of that? Is there a challenge that you didn't anticipate in growing into that model, and how did you overcome that?

15:59 Yeah, look, I think, yeah, one of the challenges is that it's pretty labor intensive in terms of, you know, workshops and bringing people up to speed. And so that's certainly been a scale challenge is how do you actually educate and bring people up to speed? 

16:15 Accreditate. Yeah.

16:16 Yeah, accreditate. Yeah. And so, you know, I think one of the ways that we've done that and part of, you know, the COVID sort of forcing function, if you like, was everything went digital. And so we went from, you know, face-to-face workshops that were very expensive to lower cost online digital accreditation programs. And so that allowed us to really make sure that we were providing the level of accreditation we need to, but do it in a more cost-effective way and with more access also to people. And also, you know, to be able to scale that more effectively as well. So in some ways that enabled us to scale a little bit more effectively, you know, leveraging technology. Yeah, yeah.

17:06 I would think so, I would think so. And what did you gain that balance though between, because obviously you're working with people and they're your customers in a sense, people like people interactions. Do you balance that now that COVID is over? How do you kind of blend the two models of virtual training versus doing these in-person meetups and accreditation programs?

17:30 Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it's a tough one to really figure out. I think there's definitely a strong need for people to come back together in person. We've seen a lot more demand for that now. Certainly here, I'm down in Sydney at the moment, but certainly in the US as well, we've seen that. And so, yeah, it's a tricky balance because that is, we've become used to being able to scale with technology and it's a lower cost option, but I think you've got to provide both options, right, for people and let them choose what's the right thing for them.

18:03 Very cool. I love it. Now this has been fascinating. I think that you bring such an interesting element to a growth journey for clients because your whole objective is to help people grow and scale through client satisfaction and building within that. And at the same time, you're trying to develop your own growth and scaling program. How hard has it been for you to kind of apply your IP to your business model.

18:34 Yeah, so I think that's a great question. I think that the...You know, the real challenge for us has been generating more and more awareness for what we do. I think you kind of hit on that earlier, right? The need's not a recognized need necessarily. Like everyone goes, oh, yeah, that's obvious. We need to be customer centric. And so, you know, part of our challenge is communicating the need and the fact that there is value in taking the time to do this. And so that's been a big challenge because we've had to create awareness in the market for kind of like an unmet need, right? Or an unrecognized one. Yeah

19:16 Unrecognized, yeah. It's like, do we take our leadership team to Mexico this year or do we work on customer centricity? 

19:25 Yeah. Yes. Yeah. No, exactly right. Exactly right. So I think that's been the biggest challenge for us is how do we overcome that? And that's through I mean, the way that we overcome it is just through having conversations like this. But having, you know, writing, publishing, doing those things, trying to get the word out there around what we do and, and how can add value and help people

19:46  I love it. I love it, love it. Well, what have you found in terms of, as you've kind of built and grown this business, and I mean, you've been doing this, obviously, for almost 20 years now, how has that journey, are there people that you've met, either clients or just people in your network who have kind of become mentors and leaders to you that kind of kept you focused on the end goal?

20:14 Yeah, look, I've been fortunate. I mean, I think that I've had a lot of great help over the years from people in different industries, in different, completely different worlds. And I think that helps to, it helps your own learning around different ways of approaching the market and different ways of doing things. You know, I think that particularly the last six years or so we brought in a new partner to the business that has a sales background specifically. So I'll call him out Sean. 

20:54 Awesome, awesome, smart.

20:55 Yeah. And he lives and breathes this and has done in the organization he worked in. So he was one of those very rare salespeople that really does take the customer on a complete journey from meeting their need to then making sure that they're getting value right through out the life of the journey of that customer with the company. And that's a very rare thing, but we've managed to have someone join the team that's part of, that takes that approach, lives it, breathes it, really manifests it. And that helps us keep focused as well. It keeps me energized, it keeps the rest of the team energized. So I think people can have a big impact. 

21:38 Well, that's a smart acquisition. 

21:39 Yeah, I'm very fortunate.

21:44 It's really great to find people like that. And you know, as you look out and as you think about over the past 20 years, clients that you've worked with, and I think a lot of people listen to this podcast maybe in the same boat, but how did they identify the need to work with someone like you? I talk a lot about on the show, the need to reach out to third party people who are standing outside their organization, who can kind of look in and say, dude, that's gonna hurt you, or hey, did you realize you could save a lot of money by doing this, or revenue could go up here. What do you see as the biggest red flags over the last 20 years that you say, that guy, that company is definitely gonna buy our services.

22:26 Yeah, yeah. Look, I think that the leaders that we generally work with are open-minded leaders. So they're people that are sort of, they're looking for ways to improve all the time. So they're sort of learning-oriented. So they're looking outside, they're saying, there's gotta be another way to do this. I mean, this is working well, but there's a way to improve it even further. And there's a way to kind of navigate this. So they're learning orientated, they're open, they're looking really for new ways to improve all the time. And so those types of people are the people that we work really well with.

23:11 Awesome. And I'm assuming you've got on your website a list of your accredited partners who people could look for in their own geographic area.

23:20 Yes, we've got that and a list of clients and different people we've worked with. We've been fortunate enough the last several months to be working with Harvard. So Harvard have invited us into to some of the programs that they're running with their clients and working with them. So that's a new exciting opportunity for us. So, 

23:45 That's huge, congratulations.

23:46 Yeah, yeah. So that's that's.

23:47 Well, hey, this is awesome. Honestly, this has been awesome. I love this type of conversation because I love when people like you have the skillsets, you have the IP, you have a process and a way to help companies overcome this challenge. And if you're listening to this show thinking, crap, how do I evaluate whether my clients are having a good experience or not? That is a huge, huge deal. Obviously you can do secret buyer stuff and you can do different experiences like that, but are you really getting a full picture? And I think that your assessment is the key to helping them understand what is going on and how they can move forward. So honestly, Chris, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate you.

24:27 Thank you, Todd. Thank you, I appreciate the opportunity.