Esther
Good morning and welcome to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today, I'm joined by Andi Jarvis, marketer, podcaster, educator, and storyteller. And we're going to talk about customers. Most importantly, talking to your customers. So before Andy comes to talk to you, I just want to say he helps develop customer-inspired marketing strategies with companies using the voice of the customer to shape the future for his clients. He is obsessed with bringing the voice of the customer back into the room where marketers sit. So welcome, Andi.
Andi
Thank you for having me, Esther. It's a delight to be here this morning.
Esther
Yes. So before we hit the record button there, you did say that customers would be something that comes up because you're very passionate about customers. Obviously, businesses aren't businesses if they have no customers. But why do you find that is the most important thing to hone in on for a company's strategy?
Andi
So I think for marketers, there's a couple of things happened over the last decade or so. I'm much older than I look anyway, I should say. But what's happened certainly over the last 10, for 15 years as the rise of digital channels is that marketers spend a lot more time now behind the screens and a lot less time out in the real world of the company. And that's not to criticize what marketers do, but it's just the nature of the job means now we're looking at reports, we're having teams calls, we're online all the time. And it's even worse in e-commerce businesses because the customer could be anywhere in the world. So through no really fault of anybody's, what's happened is marketers are quite removed from the customer now. And if you go to LinkedIn, LinkedIn Learning, really good platform, and search for a course on running focus groups, I cannot find a single course about running focus groups that isn't aimed at UX professionals. Everything in that world is aimed at UX professionals, because now if you go into a marketing department in the team and you go, So who does customer research? And go, oh, well, there's a team who do market research over there? Or you're going to a smaller business and go, Oh, we've got a UX team who do this. Are you going to small companies? And they're like, So you run marketing? And I go, yeah, so who deals with... We don't do customers. That's someone else's job. And the clues right there in the name. It's hiding right in the name. Marketing, the first bit of that is the market. If you don't know anything about the market, you don't know how to do your job. And I think through a a combination of just circumstance more than anything, where we've got all the data we need, we've got all this information, but it doesn't tell us everything. But we're led to believe that all these ones and zeros will tell us everything we need to know about the customers. And it doesn't. People are weird. People are confusing. People are just odd, right? And These odd people, these weird people, these absolute lunatics, are the people who spend money with us. And if you don't get off your backside and get to the other side of your screen and meet them and engage with them and talk to them, you cannot do your job. So I use that information, the stuff the customers tells us, I use that to help inform and inspire the marketing strategy that I create for my clients. It shouldn't be revolutionary, but the more I do this, the longer I do this, the more I find it does actually sound a little bit revolutionary and stand me out from a lot of people. So it shouldn't be, but it is, unfortunate.
Esther
Yeah. Well, I've heard of a lot of people who start a business because they don't want to be client-facing. They don't want to be... It sounds counterintuitive to say, I've started a business, but I don't like doing sales, or I've started a business, but I don't want to talk to people, or... How do you get over that part of the talking, the putting yourself out there to find the customers in the first place?
Andi
I think if you are running your own business and you don't think you're going to be in sales, you're lying to yourself, and that's the only person you're lying to. Most businesses start quite small and have to... Some start with ridiculous investment and you bring someone in to do all that, but most don't. So you've got to do everything yourself. You've got to chase invoices, you've got to sell stuff, you've got to do customer management. That's just how businesses start until they grow. So You're deluding yourself if you think you're not going to do that. If you are maybe joining a business or you're moving to a different business to get away from your marketing podcast, then you're thinking, If I do this job, I'll get away from that, or I'll do marketing consultancy so I don't have to worry about engaging with all our awful customers. You're just getting a different set of customers to engage with. That's all. You've just got a B2B sale instead of a B2C sale going on now. I'm not necessarily being like everyone has to be an extrovert to be a marketer. 100% not true. Absolutely not. Introverts ask the best questions. Often, my wife's a bit of an introvert. She asks better questions than anyone I've ever met, mostly because she knows if she asks a good question, she doesn't have to talk so much because other people will answer. But So introverts ask brilliant questions. But you have to be comfortable trying to find ways to get information from your customers. And I do not mean in a written format, because we can get all sorts of stuff like that from any source we want. In an audio format, You have to find a way to get them to talk to you. And I think you just have to get comfortable with it. It's a bit like being a surgeon and going, I don't like cutting people open. It's like, well, you're not a surgeon then. Which bit of surgery do you want to do if you don't want to do the cutting people open? But customers are an essential part of marketing. And if you're trying to find a way to get away from them, you might want to try and find a way to get away from marketing and into something else.
Esther
And even surgeons need to talk to their customers.
Andi
Maybe not while they're under the knife.
Esther
No, no. Well, it depends.
Andi
Does this hurt?
Esther
Let's hope the answer's no, if they are awake.
Andi
It's a 1650s battlefield surgery or something like that. Drink the whiskey and bite down on that. It'll be all right.
Esther
So where do we find our customers face to face? So let's go back to the start. Somebody's opening a business and they want to do their market research. How do they do that without having customers in the first place? Where would they go? Who would they contact? Is the answer you?
Andi
So you've got two things, and it might sound like I'm nit-picking over the terminology. You've got that early stage idea validation, which is absolutely essential. But as long as you know that most of what you're doing at this stage is always a little bit finger in the air. And that's not saying about not using a proper process. That's saying about you're asking people what they might do, which is always a bit iffy ground to do. And what I would say at that stage, what you're better doing is ask people about their problems rather about than asking them to predict their behavior. But to go back a step, where do you find them? You start with a hypothesis. You start with an idea that you're going to test. So your business might be You might be selling accoutrements for people who've just got a new puppy, for example. It could be leads and little matching coats, and it could be whatever it could be. You might sell accessories for puppies. So you can make an assumption that, well, your target audience is going to be people who are buying a dog. You can then make some assumptions about the age group of those sorts of people, like the demographics or whatever. Do old people get new dogs? Yes, they do. Do they tend get matching rain jackets for their dog? Probably not. So you may be talking about...
Esther
It's a generational thing, isn't it?
Andi
It's a generational thing. So let's just... A broad assumption that you end up having done some research and talked to some people and looked online and found some additional sources and looked at competitors, that thing. Let's assume that you found your target market is maybe people between the age of 20 and 35. So you can then go out and run maybe some Facebook ads or Insta ads and just ask for people who, have you just bought a new puppy? Are you in the market for a new puppy? Would you talk to us? And we'll give you a £20 Amazon VAPT or whatever. And just spend some time, if you're not comfortable running a focus group, just do it one on one. Just talk to people and ask them questions. What I would say is The famous phrase is to avoid the three Fs, and I can see you going, oh, no, he's going to start swearing already. Friends, family, and schools, they're the three things that you want to avoid. People go, Oh, well, no. My sister was about to get a dog, so I spoke to her. The problem your sister, with the best will in the world, wants you to do well. So just tells you all the things that she thinks she wants you to hear. And friends and family, well meaning as they are, give you the absolute worst advice when you start a business. So avoid them. And schools is the other one. Avoid them as well. But get these people, talk to them, and don't say things like, If you were buying my product, how much would you pay for a matching rain jacket? Because the answer is, they'll pay the least amount of money and they'll buy it from Amazon. That's what they'll do. But what you want What you're trying to find is ask them what problems there are. How important is it to you to bond with your pet? Or is your pet part of your personality? These are terrible questions. I haven't really thought them through. But you're really asking people to understand what part their puppy What part is in their life. Is it just a dog? Is it because they want to go for walks with somebody? Do they live on their own and they want it for companionship? And you start to get all these things out and then you as the marketer use that to be able to create your marketing plan, your content or whatever based on that. And with perfect timing, there's a puppy in the man.
Esther
There is. And he's playing wreaking havoc here.
Andi
So it's really important, I would say, is just to talk to people who you believe might be in the market. But just remember what I said about that finger in the air bit. When the rubber hits the road, when you open the business and you find out, you might have built this on a very well-validated hypothesis that it's 20 to 35 year olds who are buying this stuff. But when you open, you might very quickly find out in the first six months, it's 45 to 50 year olds who are buying this, and they're all male. That might not be what you see. You have to stay nimble when you start getting the real data in and then keep rinsing and repeating that. But beforehand, find a way to talk to the people who your hypothesis tells you are the ones you want to sell to.
Esther
I like you said, you can find these relatively easily through Facebook, Instagram, social platforms like that, make a video, put it on TikTok, people reply.
Andi
You'd be amazed how much people would be happy to give you their opinion. Now, the other thing you hear a lot, all the time, all the time. But the other thing you hear with this as well is people going, this isn't proper research, you shouldn't be making decisions on that. You're going to get skewed samples and biased data, and it's only the people that really care who are going to talk to you. It's like, yes, of course it is. It's like this isn't new news to anybody. It's not a surprise. I've been doing this for years. It's really not a surprise. What you're doing with this is you're creating pots of interesting data and things that you want to look at and then trying to find a way to test that at scale. So a lot of the time I work with bigger companies who've got budgets. So we then go, right, we've now got five things that we think have come up from our conversations with customers. Let's go out and test this at scale and see with a survey with some quant data, see if we can get that back from 2000 people and find out which one of these five actually really matters?
And then we go, Right, actually, the thing that really matters when we've done it at scale is number two. So that's going to be the thing we're going to focus on first. That bit's a bit harder to do when you're a small company, but you don't have to do it. But at least you've got five things, and you just got to stay nimble to work out which one of those five is going to be most important.
Esther
So when you find more customers by creating effective marketing strategies, what is the process that you go through to do that?
Andi
To create a strategy?
Esther
Yeah.
Andi
I love a process, and I find... It's just been World Book Day, and I once wrote a blog about George's Marvellous Medicine and how it should influence how you do your marketing. Because George's Marvellous Medicine, if you've not read it, he makes a medicine and causes all the farmyard animals to grow. His dad loves it, wants him to do it because he can sell a little more for more. But every time he remakes the medicine, he ends up with a different size animal or the next grow, and then in the end, they shrink. I've ruined the ending for you. So I love a process because the whole point is if George had a process, he would have been able to repeat what he was doing. Now, we can't repeat everything in marketing, but I have a process. So data strategy, implementation, three steps. Now, there's different processes within those three steps. But data is the bit we're talking about at the minute. Talk to customers, understand what they're doing, use quant to justify and to check the quall that you've got, and then pulling the data that you've got from the company, from third party sources, government data, whatever it might be, depends on the client, right?
Esther
Yeah.
Andi
Pull all that in, and then from there, you can create a strategy. Now, a marketing strategy is really only answering four questions. So the first question is, what problem are you solving? And that might sound like a really obvious question or a really random question. I'm not sure, but it's It's a really important place to start because companies say things like, We want to sell more dog toys, or we want to become Scotland's number one dog toy seller, or whatever it is that they say. But actually, you've got to understand what that problem is. Is there six dog toy sellers in Scotland that are huge already? Or are there none? Is it a completely open market? Is this very easy to do? I'll give you a more relevant example. Sometimes I say, We've been selling online, we want to open a store. Okay, that's great. So the problem you've got to solve in the first year, you might be an established business, but you're going to open a store selling dog toys. You go, Right, okay, well, actually, we've got a different problem we need to solve here because our online business is about repeat business. It's about driving new customers, understanding their cycle, CRM, repeat business. We've now got to get walk-ups to turn up to a shop. We've got to keep this shop busy. We've got to... Right. Okay, so you've got a What's the different problem you need to solve there than what you did last year when you were just trying to increase repeat sales? So understand what problem you're going to solve. And then it's who are you targeting? Why are they going to buy from you? What are your objectives for this year? They're the four things. So I would say marketing strategy is simple, but it's not easy. It's just answering four questions. So if you've got the data, you can understand the problem you have to solve, and then you can answer those questions. And then you've got this bit, there's a chasm between strategy and implementation, mostly caused by strategists being... I'm not allowed to swear, so I'm not going to say... I'm not going to call them... I'm not going to call them... Idiots. That's the word I'll use. I'll lose. I'll go through my full vocabulary there. So a lot of strategists will hand you a piece of paper and be like, right, okay, here is your strategy. Tell you how wonderful it is. Hand you a big invoice and then leave. So you get this chasm between strategy and implementation, where strategists are like, oh, where the peacock's here, someone else has to do it. I'm influenced by a guy called Tom Crichlow, who was on my podcast a couple of years ago. He talks about strategy and stewardship, which is about taking down those barriers between strategy and implementation. It's not about just kicking it over the fence and hoping that people get on with it. It's about stewarding the implementation. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to be in there, writing posts yourself on the video shoots or opening the store and cutting the ribbon. It just means you've got to be part of what comes next. Because marketing strategy is an annual process. We've got a five year marketing strategy. Now you've got a one year marketing strategy. Because in a year, if that, everything changes. So it's about stewarding its way through there, being nimble and changing from there. Those three steps, really. Data strategy, implementation.
Esther
Okay. And of those three, then they have to talk to each other. They have to align with each other. Apart from the chasm between strategy and implementation, are there any other hurdles skills that you come across when people are going through the process?
Andi
Data is a problem because, and you have no idea how long I've decided or tried to chew over, Is data the right word for that beginning section? Because as soon as you say data, people think of quant. They think of ones and zeros report. We've got this from Facebook. Our Google Ads information's here. And you're like, That's great. People don't believe that quant All research focus groups, customer interviews. Is that data? Why is it data? It's a proper research theme. It can be codified. Just because you don't understand, it doesn't mean it's not data. So trying to get people to understand that this is part of the data process. And they're like, Oh, that's just talking to customers. No, no, it's research that forms part of what we do next. So that can be a bit of a challenge. And I think also the other challenge would be getting people to understand what strategy strategy is and what strategy isn't, because people often say, oh, I've got this great TikTok strategy. And you're like, have you? Which is. Or they will give you, oh, here's my performance marketing strategy. I put out this campaign here and I test it with this. And I was like, you're talking about a collection of tactics and getting people to agree on the language. And I'm not saying I'm right about... Everyone has a slightly different take on this, but what I would say is A lot of the time is, here's what a marketing strategy is, here's what a marketing plan is, and here's the different things. A strategy is what I've just said, answering those four questions. I would say that a marketing plan has the strategy as your first section. The next bit is the collection of tactics you're going to use to help you achieve those objectives? And then things like, so here's what we're going to do across the year. And then a calendar to go with that. So you've got we can put the calendar on the wall and see what activities happening and a budget and then maybe some of the bits and bobs behind it. So you've got the strategy, one-page strategy. So it's not the same as maybe the strategy document, one-page strategy. Tactics that you're going to do, calendar events and a budget. If you've got those things, you've got yourself a marketing plan. You can work with that then. So trying to get people to agree on terminology is often it's like, oh, we want a strategy. And I'm like, what do you mean by that when you say that? What is it you actually want?
Esther
It's almost like they're speaking another language, these marketers.
Andi
It is. Yeah, and it's something... There's a guy called J. P. Castling, he's a Swede, but he's a marketer. Well, he's not his business strategist these days, but he trained as a lawyer initially and he works in law for a number of years. And the thing you find in law is concepts in law have specific terminology. So if you say murder, that is different to manslaughter because it's a legally defined term. We don't have that in marketing. So I'm sitting here saying, this is what strategy is, this is what a marketing plan is. Someone could be listening and going, who is-
Esther
According to Andy.
Andi
What does he? Yeah. It's like the gospel according to Andy says this. I would say that that comes through research, experience, spending time studying, working with people like Mark Ritzon and various things like... Ritzon's MBA, not that I've consulted with him, various things like that. And you come and go, This is what strategy is. But if someone else comes and says it's something slightly different, I'm not the global authority on this, unfortunately. So the gospel according to Andy is only one gospel in this book. Yeah, yet. When I'm in charge of everything, I will be.
Esther
World domination.
Andi
That's next year, 2026 goals.
Esther
Well, moving on a little bit because part of your World Domination is your strategy sessions podcast. So you've interviewed lots and lots of top marketers on that. And I'll be next. What are some of the most surprising or counterintuitive insights that you've gained from those conversations?
Andi
Oh, right. So let me tell you about the one thing that stands out in my head more than any other thing that's been said on the podcast. And this is going to absolutely divide the room. Half of your listeners are going to be screaming at their phones on the sense that's going, How did you not know this, you absolute buffoon? And I believe the other half of your listeners are going to be going, Is Is that still a thing? I believe this is going to divide on gender lines with the women calling me a buffoon and the men calling me a man going, is that a thing? I had a guest on 2024 called Sherissa Anibaba. She had been brand manager, head of marketing for people like Speedo, Robinson's, Squash, various different brands that you'd heard of, that stuff. I asked a question at the beginning of the podcast, what one thing do you wish you'd have known 10 years ago that you know now? And she thought for a second, you get all sorts of different answers to that question. And she thought for a second and she looked at me and she went, I wish I'd have known that having a baby wouldn't end my career. I went, Can you expand on that a little bit? She was like, Yeah. She said, I put off having a baby because I thought, If I have a baby, my career is going to be over. I was like, Why did you think that? She was like, Because I thought that my employer wouldn't want me because I wouldn't be able to work late. I wouldn't be able to... And I genuinely was like, I thought that finished in the 1970s. I didn't think that was still a thing. I went and spoke to my wife. I was like, You never guess what Shereesa just said. And she looked at me and she was like. And genuinely, when I talk to other people about this, most men are like, But the world's not like that anymore, is it? And every woman who talks just stands there and nods and goes like, yes, you buffoon.
Esther
Yes, unfortunately, it is. And that's why you'll find that many marketing professional women are entrepreneurs and solopreneurs because then they can work around their family life instead of working for big corporates, which is a shame.
Andi
I sat here with my head and was like, why would you set up a system that does that? I know as a man, I am part of the system that benefits from that. But I was like, well, why would you create a system where half of your workforce is going to hit the point where they don't feel they can contribute and you don't value them? This is just madness. That's utter, utter madness. We're recording this the day before International Women's Day. I do spend half of my time looking at IWD stuff going, sweet Lord, things haven't changed since the '70s. It is horrific. Absolutely horrific. I'm rarely lost for words, and Cherisse managed to shut me up, and I was like, So, yeah, so that's one. And literally, I hate the phrase that lives rent-free in my head, but genuinely it does. A week doesn't go by when I just, you know like, how does that happen? How is that still a thing?
Esther
Well, okay. Talking about things living rent-free in your head, and those are trends, trending topics and things like that. What marketing trends or shifts are you currently most excited about?
Andi
Trends and shifts I'm excited about.
Esther
Or scared of.
Andi
Scared of. I'm... So, before mentioned, I'm older than hopefully everyone thinks, but I started marketing in a world where digital didn't exist. There was email marketing, and I remember learning about email marketing in my early days. I did a lot of direct mail. Millions of mail shots was one of the ways I cut my teeth in marketing. So you had a background, or I have a background in what would now be known as traditional marketing, measuring campaigns in ways that are connected to sale, because we didn't have the sophisticated ways. There was only companies like Mars and Coke had brand tracking stuff. We didn't I worked for a cricket club in the northeast, and we just didn't have access to this stuff. So you had to measure campaigns and look at what works without cookies and last click attribution and all this stuff. And it has felt like for the last decade or so, all the marketers have been the old men screaming at clouds going, It wasn't like this in our day. And then attribution, iPhone, Apple changed the way that you could track through there, which completely upset the Apple account and people's ads. And they It is changing in European legislation and all this stuff. And do you know what's becoming more important? Knowing your way around some old-school stuff and understanding what's impacting and maybe not being able to measure every single interaction is not the worst news in the world. Really looking forward to that being a thing again, mainly because I'm old and I'm like, Let me tell you about the olden days and we used to be like for us kids. And then I can tell all the old stories again and do it that way. So I'm looking forward to that and completely, just so I don't sound like an absolute old get. And I know it'll change at some point, but I'm really appreciating what TikTok is doing for marketers at the minute. There might be other issues with how TikTok is harvesting data from various bits like that, but Free organic reach on TikTok compared to... I've been posting videos on TikTok just to try and have a look at it, and it just completely outperforms Instagram, YouTube Shorts, Facebook, completely for organic reach. It's not going to last forever, so just enjoy it while you can. But it is really interesting to see how they're building a business around that at TikTok, as opposed to the way Instagram and Facebook have built their business model.
Esther
And what do you think the next shift will be? So you said about going back to old school and going back to more traditional forms of marketing. And in that, obviously, is the getting out there and talking face to face to your customers. Is there anything else we should be on the look out for or in the gospel, according to Andy, it's preordained?
Andi
No. Look, I think, and again, I'm not a Luddite, and These two points sit connected to each other. I'm not anti-technology. I'm embracing it. And people will go, Oh, AI is the next big trend. I was like, well, just follow that through and go a step further. What does AI mean for marketers? Or what does AI mean generally? Ai generally means you can get average or adequate answers to almost any question really, really quickly. Roll that forward. What does people creating average and adequate mean? And when we start incentivizing them by that, because we know that efficiency overrules effectiveness in most companies in the world, because doing things faster is better than doing things better. So keep rolling that forward, and what happens? The whole world is going to be full of adequate to okay stuff.
Esther
Mediocre.
Andi
Having to do my best not to swear the whole time here, but everything's good. So what's going to happen is the bulk of stuff is going to become mediocre. Now, you might argue more stuff out there is mediocre at the It probably is. But you could say maybe there's 20% that's going to be really, really good. But that's probably going to reduce to about 5%, if not less. So if you can be the bit that stands out, and how do you stand out? You stand out by being you, and you stand out by understanding your customers. Actually, the way to succeed, I believe in the next five years, in an AI world, in a world of accelerated content creation, in a world of reaching your customers faster, quicker, Keep or whatever, is actually really to tap into some of that old school stuff. And people say, how do we describe it? It's like, You don't need to worry about that. Your customers are telling you, Oh, you've got 30,000 reviews on Trustpilot. Well, I wonder what I could do with that. I know. Tell it to them. It's like, let's take all this stuff, all the old school stuff, match it with all the new schools, turbocharge how quickly we produce it, use the AI to analyze it all. Fantastic. Much quicker than we could have ever done it 10 years ago. But you've got to match the old and the new together. That's, I think, where the win is going to be. People who can do that, the old school and the new school, that's going to be, I think, where the win is going to be.
Esther
That's where the magic will happen.
Andi
Yeah, I think so.
Esther
Yeah. So user-generated content is something that businesses should be using and should be asking for. Because I put out a post on LinkedIn not so long ago said, When's the last time you asked for customer feedback? When have you had written reviews on your Google business profile? When have you had somebody email you saying, This has been absolutely fantastic and thank you very much. It may be, as a service-based business, it's much harder to get those because sometimes people don't want to know that you're behind the scenes and that somebody else is running their social media or doing their ads for them. Again, that's an older way of thinking. But even for product-based businesses, they sometimes find it hard to get good reviews. People are willing to complain all the time. You'll always have somebody that can give you a one-star review. But is there anything we can put in place to make it easier for the customers to come forward themselves, or does it have to be incentivised? Like you said before, get 20% off your next product if you give us this glowing review.
Andi
No, I don't I think it has to be incentivised. What I do think it has to be is, A, process driven, and B, done at the right time. And so it's really difficult to answer that question generally, because every business is entirely different. But there is a sweet spot and a great time to ask for a customer review. It's usually post point of purchase, but it's... It depends on the product. But if you think about it, so I bought a new washing machine not long from a retailer, an online retailer. And I bought it. I paid it. So let's say I bought it on a Monday and delivery was booked in for the Friday. On the Tuesday, I got an email saying, Thanks for buying us. Review the washing machine. Haven't got it yet. Wrong timing because it's not arrived yet. I've not used it. So if they can sync that information with their delivery team so they can go, right, well, it's arriving Friday. You've been a week without a washing machine. Why don't we send it on Saturday or Sunday? Then all of a sudden you'll have... Great. So It's always about the time of the ask. So having a process. Now, if people are in store and buying things from you, the timing of the ask then is very different to me if you're doing it online. If you're doing it online delivery, what product is it? How often they're going to... If it's a new mobile phone, people tend to get it, open the box and use it straight away. But there are other Amazon packages, I'm looking down here, that arrived three days ago that still haven't been opened because it's just not that thing. So it's hard to answer generally, but understanding the timing and play around with the timing. And the final thing I would say is if you've got a team, don't incentivize the customer, incentivize the team. So you don't say, right, okay, well, look, whoever gets the most reviews this month will get X. And you want to see people ask for reviews then. Can you just leave us a review on this? It suddenly changes how people... So incentivise the team, not incentivise the customer. I don't mind incentivising customers, but honestly, most people are happy to leave a review at some stage if you just ask them at the right time and you don't need to do it.
Esther
Andi, it has been an absolute pleasure and so many golden nuggets have been dropped. We did say before we recorded that we were going to mention your recent interviews and collaborations with the one-on-a-a-one.
Andi
Go on, go on. I'm getting excited just listening to you say it. Yes, Seth Godin.
Esther
But we ran out of time. No, I'm joking.
Andi
Let me do it really quickly.
Esther
We always have time for Seth Godin on this show. Tell us how that came about, what's happening. I know it's an evergreen podcast, but there are events coming up in the island of Ireland.
Andi
Yes, absolutely. Look, I got a shout I got to Trina Clark, who is an absolute legend. She runs Invent Events. I was speaking at her big marketing meetup in Belfast 18 months ago or so. But a month before that, I got this text message from her. WhatsApp said, Do you know who Seth Godin is? I was like, Do you mean a different Seth Godin? I mean, there is only one, isn't there? What do you mean, do I know who he is? Yeah, it was like, This one. And she was like, Yeah, that one. Do you want to interview him? Where? Who? What? So I rang her and she was like, Complete surprise to everybody. You can't tell anyone, but he's going to drop in and do a segment at Big Marketing Meetup. And I went, 'Get the fluff out of here. And she was like, 'No, it's true. So I then reread some books, listened to some podcasts, and basically there was me, Trina, and the AV guy who knew Seth Godin was dropping in, that was it. So I had to interview him live on stage. He's in the States, I'm on stage in front of a couple of hundred marketers in Belfast. I was like, 'Wow. ' But behind the scenes, before we did that interview, I spoke to Seth about this guy called Elma Wheeler, who, not invented, he's got this thing called Wheeler's Wish. It's about how you ask people for information will change how they respond to it. So I was talking to Seth about this because he was in my presentation. He was like, Elma Wheeler is a hero of mine. Is he? He said, Yeah. Zig Ziggler was my mentor and Zig was mentored by Elma Wheeler. I was like, no, really? He was like, Yeah. He says, Why don't you want to come on my podcast and talk about that? He was like, I would be delighted to talk about Elma Wheeler.
Esther
So they talk about the six degrees of separation and you've just narrowed it right down.
Andi
Right down, yes. I mean, I've loved Elma Wheeler's work for years and it's fantastic. So Seth then came on the strategy sessions. It is the number one performing audio podcast. So he's number one in the list of audio only, but he's not. I think he's number three, maybe number four on the all time because some other guests have done much better on YouTube than he has. So such is life, right? Such is life.
Esther
But people can go to the Strategy Sessions podcast and watch it to get Seth up the rankings.
Andi
Get him up the rankings. So yeah, it was amazing and tremendous. I loved every moment of it. And yes, and now we're doing workshops together, which are taking place. There is one in Dublin on the third of April, and there is another in Derry on the second of June. They're afternoon workshops, one till five, because Seth doesn't travel. He doesn't fly anymore because he also tries to save the planet. So he's diving in from the States. We've done one in Belfast already. I've been doing marketing strategy for nearly a decade. I've been in marketing for 20-some years. I learned so much in that session. I'm supposed to be hosting the session. I do a little bit of a presentation about the strategy sessions as well and what I've learned about strategy from podcasting for five years. Honestly, I was making more notes than anyone else who does. I was like, oh my, this is great. He's got such crisp insights and such a brilliant review of what's going on. And you get a chance to ask it. It's an interactive session. So our business is ABC, Seth, and we've got this problem and we're looking at this. What would you think? And he's like, okay, let's look at it this way.
Esther
So it's not a pre-recorded thing.
Andi
It is not pre-recorded. It is live. You can ask Seth Godin questions about how would you fix this in my business because it's A, B, and C. And it's like, this is gold dust. Do not miss it. Absolutely do not miss it.
Esther
Well, thankfully, the episode is going out before. And if there's tickets available for the Dublin event or the Derry event, do get your hands on them. Andy, thank you very much for joining me today. And I'm sure we can have you back on at another time because there's still so many things that we could go through. But at the end of the day, talk to your customers, get their feedback, get their insights, get their pain-points, and stop inventing it.
Andi
Amen to that. Amen to that. Thank you very much for having me, Esther.
Esther
Thanks, guys. We'll be back next week with another episode of Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Until then, bye-bye.
