good morning marketers and welcome to the if you market podcast brought to you by mountaintop data, we are the only podcast that markets the ship out of it. I’m sky Cassidy and today we’ll be talking with Michael Osborne of Wonder. Kind about marketing as a non marketer. And let’s be honest, many of us, probably most of us Do not have degrees in marketing. It’s insane how many marketers in high level marketers started out somewhere else and that kind of found their way into the into the marketing realm. So Michael Osborne, he’s the president of wonder kind he has over 30 years of experience in marketing technology. So he’s experienced as a marketer now but well we’ll we’ll touch on his his early days probably mostly here. 

Sky 

00:00:52 – 00:01:24

Um he’s an established industry leader trusted by major brands Bloomingdale’s Hilton um santander bank. I hope I said that right. I don’t and he focuses on delivering excellent client experiences by leveraging, multi channel data and profiles. He’s also an expert in executive leadership, retail trends and sales and lead bizarre voice to its I. P. O. In 2012. I also heard Michael that you are um deep into barbecue. 

Michael Osborne

00:01:24 – 00:01:46

Yes, I’ve I’ve I’ve had the luxury of living in austin texas since 1998. Um and you know that’s that’s one of the barbecue countries or areas of barbecue focus in the in the United States. I’ve also just always enjoyed cooking and certainly cooking outdoors. So you’re you’re right if you if you want to pivot to barbecue. We can certainly spend an hour talking about that 

Sky 

00:01:46 – 00:01:56

cooking out. I imagine not a lot of people in Wisconsin are big outdoor cookers. You have to be in an area where outdoors is somewhere you want to be Orlando, you’re like, I’ll cook inside, no problem. 

Michael Osborne

00:01:56 – 00:02:03

I don’t know. You’d be surprised. I think there’s, there’s a lot of folks that don’t mind the cold when they’re cooking up something delicious outside. So you never know. 

Sky 

00:02:03 – 00:02:05

I guess if you can ice fish on the lake, you can barbecue, 

Michael Osborne

00:02:06 – 00:02:07

don’t do 

Sky 

00:02:07 – 00:02:36

it on a lake that could end badly. So it dawns on me, this show will be all about barbecue. Of course. Um, it dawns on me you’re in an area that’s known for great barbecue and I thought, wait, are you an avid eater of it or maker of it? Because it seems like if you’re an area where there’s a ton of great barbecue, it would just go eat the great barbecue. And if you’re an area where there was terrible barbecue, then you would be more of a cooker of barbecue because you can’t just walk out and get it anywhere, which are you. 

Michael Osborne

00:02:36 – 00:03:12

I think it’s a little of both actually. Um, and part of it is, you know, you get inspiration from when you go out and you try something and you figure out there’s techniques that others use that make that, you know, whatever that product is, whatever you’re trying to cook that much better. Plus there’s there’s just something fun about being able to do it yourself and you know, have have a bunch of friends over and enjoy a great time and everybody is enjoying the food because that’s what you made. Um So it’s it’s both certainly, you know, in texas, there was all kinds of great barbecue restaurants and I’ve been to all of them. I mean I enjoy them, but I still enjoy doing it myself, at least trying to replicate some of the great stuff I’ve had out at restaurants. 

Sky 

00:03:13 – 00:03:16

Yeah, great thing about barbecue is a lot of it. 

Michael Osborne

00:03:16 – 00:03:16

It’s kind 

Sky 

00:03:16 – 00:03:26

of cheap meat, You can have it, if you do it yourself, you can get really inexpensive meat. And this cooking style is really designed to take the worst part of the animal and make it delicious. 

Michael Osborne

00:03:26 – 00:03:34

Yeah, absolutely. That, I mean, a lot of the low and slow cooking techniques were developed around that so that they could take advantage of otherwise cuts that would go to waste. 

Sky 

00:03:35 – 00:03:51

The listeners are now thinking, wait, were you serious? This episode is going to be a barbecue and we’re getting the marketing in a second. I say, whatever comes into my mind, it gets me in trouble at home and abroad, but we will get to the marketing in just a second here. Um okay, so barbecue aside, 

Michael Osborne

00:03:52 – 00:03:52

let’s jump over 

Sky 

00:03:52 – 00:03:53

to the marketing, 

Michael Osborne

00:03:54 – 00:03:54

marketing as 

Sky 

00:03:54 – 00:03:55

a non marketer, 

Michael Osborne

00:03:55 – 00:03:56

having 

Sky 

00:03:57 – 00:03:57

started out, 

Michael Osborne

00:03:58 – 00:03:58

not 

Sky 

00:03:59 – 00:04:25

trained in marketing. Um I’d like to go over on this episode, some of your experiences in companies and kind of your growth and what you found out and um probably to a lot of the listeners to let them know like look, you aren’t alone in trying to figure this out and then here’s somebody who was in that situation and did figure it out and some some tips type of a thing. Um So where do you want to start off with this? 

Michael Osborne

00:04:26 – 00:05:07

Yeah, I mean I think, you know, you raise an interesting point about not necessarily being one but having to be one marketer and you know technically my roles in in individual contributors in individual contributing roles or leadership. You know, I’ve never been the CMO, I’ve never been the primary person on the marketing team, but I’ve been more on the sales side or the client side, which is invariably also a marketing role, particularly early stages where you don’t necessarily have a huge marketing team or a huge marketing budget. And you know, you’re always there’s you’re always selling, you’re always marketing, you’re always promoting your brand, your product, your technology, your company, whether you’re a 10 person startup or 1000 person scaled organization 

Michael Osborne

00:05:08 – 00:05:43

and I think that you know those roles blend together and end up working together very closely in in situations where they’re doing it right. Um You know, I think that there’s a lot actually to unpack around how sales and marketing work together. Um and how marketing is really something that everyone does, of course there are individuals that are super, super talented and brilliant at it. We’ve got a lot of those here at the company I’m with today wonder kin. Um but in my past we’ve had situations early days where we didn’t have that talent and we had to come up with it on our own and certainly, you know, learned through trial and error in some circumstances, what works, what doesn’t 

Michael Osborne

00:05:43 – 00:05:55

happy to share those kinds of stories? Uh It sounds like your listeners might be on that end of the spectrum as far as trying to figure this out before having all of the money to spend and all of the talent to hire in order to do that discreetly with people that have a ton of expiry. 

Sky 

00:05:55 – 00:06:28

Yeah, I would say when we think of some of the greatest marketers, one of the first names that comes to mind for me is always steve jobs and people think of him as a marketer, but the guy had no marketing training and experience. So a lot of this, uh I don’t, I don’t mean to talk down to getting a degree in marketing, I’m sure that’s very useful. Um and I’m sure many companies get get a lot from their employees to have that kind of training, but you if you don’t have that, you know, you could just end up being steve jobs and sorry about that. 

Michael Osborne

00:06:28 – 00:07:09

I mean if you think about it, what was, what was steve jobs so good at and you know, he essentially had the term reality distortion field coined for him and you know that that is at its essence marketing, right? You, you want to substitute someone else’s reality with the one that you want them to understand to see and to feel and you know, it was an experience to listen to him talk. It was not just him telling you the statistics about a product. I still remember watching, you know, the very early days of the apple events like when the iphone was announced and you couldn’t, you couldn’t help but get behind whatever he was saying and want to hear more and want to experience it. He, I think at his core understood 

Michael Osborne

00:07:10 – 00:07:33

that marketing is about communication of the full experience as opposed to simply an outcome, simply a goal, simply a number. He wasn’t looking for leads, he was looking for people to believe. And I think that that that level is beyond what we’re most marketing organizations and even marketers really ever get too. But look what happens when you do, it changes literally the world. And I think he did a great job of that. 

Sky 

00:07:33 – 00:07:36

I would also say he did a lot of hard work. 

Michael Osborne

00:07:37 – 00:07:37

Like if 

Sky 

00:07:37 – 00:08:21

you read up on the guy, um, he wasn’t just, you know, coming up with the catch phrase and then people did all the work, he had a lot of people with him doing a lot of hard work also, but you know, he was designing on the side and going at, at nights and to, to set up an apple store and figure out how is this going to be laid out, This is important, we need to like rethink how this whole thing works. Um, he didn’t just say somebody set this up and it, and it happened, he didn’t just have flashes of brilliance. Like when he was presenting, he would practice his presentations like Michael, Jackson would practice a concert. Like he was just constantly drilling over and over every little detail he wanted to make sure he got perfect. So 

Michael Osborne

00:08:22 – 00:08:22

a non 

Sky 

00:08:22 – 00:08:28

marketer doesn’t mean if you have a flash of brilliance, that’s how you’re going to get there. No, it’s probably gonna be trench work. 

Michael Osborne

00:08:29 – 00:08:59

Yeah, you really, you bring up a really good point, which is that attention to detail because experiences our, our, they’re born in those details and you know, he steve jobs specifically cared so much about the materials used in a product, the way that it looked in certain lighting situations, the way that it felt that the, the weight, um, everything had to be specific and you know, he was known to be a hard as he was known to be someone that would summarily dismiss ideas when he didn’t agree with him or completely scrap something and start over or scream 

Sky 

00:08:59 – 00:09:11

and cry like a baby when he didn’t get his way. So enough about steve jobs, I’ve heard the guy was a prick. So let’s, let’s focus on Michael Osborne here for the rest of a prick. And steve jobs. That’s your tag. Yeah, that’s 

Michael Osborne

00:09:11 – 00:09:15

not, not a, not a tough part of beat, but Yes, Yes, absolutely. 

Sky 

00:09:15 – 00:09:20

So marketing is a non marketer. Can we jump back to one of your early um 

Michael Osborne

00:09:21 – 00:09:21

early business 

Sky 

00:09:21 – 00:09:26

experiences where you were put into the marketing and just kind of tell the audience about the situation there. 

Michael Osborne

00:09:27 – 00:10:04

Yeah. One of one of the earliest ones where, you know, it was a company called bizarre voice that was founded and I believe 2005, I joined as employee number nine and at that time we did have a head of marketing, we had somebody who had come from Dell and had done marketing in b two B circles for many years, so we had some of that expertise already in the business, but um we were doing, you know, we were doing something completely different than what Adele had done, we were doing something completely different than my prior experiences, I was running sales. So, myself and and Sam Sam Dekker, the CMO there, we were partnered to go to market together and really had no team to start up at that time, we were just a handful of us 

Michael Osborne

00:10:05 – 00:10:43

and you know, I remember spending a lot of time working with SAm around. Alright, how are we going to get the word out about our technology that we’re going to market with, it was a ratings and reviews company and some simple concepts, people got it right away. But it was mason in the market at that time. It’s hard to believe, but most websites didn’t have product reviews and I remember sitting down and talking about some of the customers that we had already signed up and some of the results we had, you know, half a dozen clients live very early days. And I remember listening to the stories that those customers would say about what our services that we were providing and our technology, what those results, you know that we were driving for that, 

Sky 

00:10:43 – 00:10:55

right? So already trench work. Like you’re a lot of people don’t marketing. They think I’m going to create a google Adwords thing and then I’m gonna make some social posts like you are collecting and listening to the actual customer feed. Yes. 

Michael Osborne

00:10:55 – 00:11:34

Yeah, because I think, you know, the things you just mentioned, Yes, they’re valuable as channels and they can drive business results, but it’s a little cart before the horse. If you don’t know what you’re trying to say, if you don’t know what is going to inspire someone on the receiving end of that content to take action to engage, to get curious to want to talk to you about your product or service and once you figure that out, those, those channels are phenomenal for distributing that information for engaging and, and discovering potential customers. But if you do that first before you really know what you’re trying to say and why someone else should be passionate about it, just like you are, um, you know that you can just waste a lot of money and time doing that and, and if anything gets 

Michael Osborne

00:11:35 – 00:11:44

get a false negative where it’s like, you know, it’s not working, there must not be product market fit or this must not be of interest, but it might be, but you just might not be saying in the way that’s interesting. 

Sky 

00:11:44 – 00:12:22

So you’re finding out what they want to hear. So you can tell them that kind of versus saying, oh, I know it seems like a non market has an advantage in that sense then, because if you’re used to marketing, let’s say movie release or something like that. You have your template that you’re trained to do and then you have a software as a service product and you’re like, yeah, so we need to get on these radio spots and put up the billboards and then you’re like, wait, you have a template for a particular type of marketing. But a non marketer just starts with the product and the audience and has to build from the ground up. So you don’t, you weren’t basically trained improperly possibly for that product. 

Sky 

00:12:22 – 00:12:30

Um, you have to build from the ground up so you have this opportunity to not bring your marketing experience baggage, I guess. 

Michael Osborne

00:12:31 – 00:13:15

Well, yes, and and and it’s also it’s a good point that you raised, but it’s also about not necessarily just believing, okay, the way that I’ve done it and the way that it’s worked before, and the way I measured my success last time is the same way I should do that now. Um and certainly this is, you know, not against any market of its very experienced at all, but there’s there are systems and setups and data that would naturally be calculated to say market is a success or not. And I think early days in working with marketers specifically in a sales role like with SAM at bizarre voice establishing that the actual result that will save success or not was have we acquired more customers? Are they successful? Did we grow the business not? How many leads do we generate? 

Michael Osborne

00:13:15 – 00:13:20

Because you get that you get into this trap of like, well, we generated 100 leads, but sales only closed two of them, 

Sky 

00:13:21 – 00:13:24

but they were all bad targets and shouldn’t, then they 

Michael Osborne

00:13:24 – 00:13:47

might have been, or the messaging might might not have been what was really going to, you know, actually encourage the right buyers to engage it was encouraging a different set. And I think sometimes you can see things in and in kind of like atomic units and say this was a success. This part wasn’t, but really the end goal is acquiring more customers and having them. Really enjoyed the product or service that you’ve now given to them or you know, sold to them. 

Sky 

00:13:47 – 00:14:27

So marketing successes, sales reminds, before we started recording, I said something I didn’t think was related to this. I don’t know how it’s coming back around to this, but I had this thought today that on the quote, it’s not about the destination is about the journey. And I had the thought, well unless you don’t make it to the destination, then it was just about the destination is what everybody will tell you. Like, hey, you didn’t make the destination. Marketing is kind of the journey, but it’s like, hey, if you don’t make it to the destination of sales then forget about the journey. Nobody cares about the journey if it doesn’t grow. But we got a ton of leeds, look at all these things that happened along the way you died before you made it to Oregon. Who cares about the journey, 

Michael Osborne

00:14:27 – 00:14:50

right. I mean, they’re all interlinked right. The, the end result is the acquisition of more customers, the delivery of value, the services and the event. You know, the eventual value that you’ve provided each step along the way is critical if you’re terrible at marketing, but you have an amazing service, you’re still going to fail if you have an amazing marketing team or marketing skill set, but a product that doesn’t work. you’re still gonna fail, 

Sky 

00:14:50 – 00:14:52

You have to be good enough at everything you have 

Michael Osborne

00:14:52 – 00:14:53

to be and get 

Sky 

00:14:53 – 00:15:00

back to Oregon trail, You’ve got to be able to hunt. I don’t know if anybody got the Oregon trail reference, probably 

Michael Osborne

00:15:00 – 00:15:02

you’re Over 

Sky 

00:15:02 – 00:15:05

40, you got the Oregon trail reference. 

Michael Osborne

00:15:05 – 00:15:26

I also, I think it’s also relevant to say that, you know, you got to be good enough at all of it, but you also have to be getting better at all of it all the time because those, you know, those conversations that the marketing initiatives will drive you into the feedback coming out of them, whether they go really well or not, that feedback needs to be incorporated back into the message and going forward. 

Michael Osborne

00:15:27 – 00:16:01

If you just, you know, if you believe hard and fast, this is the right way to do it. I’m just gonna market this way for the next 12 months. Let’s see what happens without iterations without feedback. Without a closed loop. Uh, you’re missing out on so much potential benefit to your process overall. Um, and as you discover more and more of what customers really do care about what they don’t care about and you hone the details so that you, you make, those, those experiences that they’re going through as they’re working with you either from a marketing standpoint or in a sales call or eventually from a product, the better you make those experiences and the more value that you can deliver for them, the better that whole process becomes 

Michael Osborne

00:16:02 – 00:16:24

provided you’re incorporating it going forward. And not just saying this is the way we’re going to do it and we’re going to stay on this until, you know, it wins or loses. And I think really good companies do that. They iterate quickly. They figure out where the market is changing. They adapted to that and they’re able to continue to address customers needs as opposed to, you know, potentially never get there or become a laggard down the road. 

Sky 

00:16:25 – 00:16:31

I love that where the market is changing because even if your target audience is the same marketing, 

Michael Osborne

00:16:32 – 00:16:32

it’s like sociology, 

Sky 

00:16:32 – 00:17:03

it changes your audience. So you will saturate them with a message or something rarely do you find something in marketing that continues to work indefinitely. Because once it gets usually it’s the novelty of it that makes it work kind of. And once all your competitors and you are using the same technique, it’s going you’ve over fished that pond kind of. So even when you find the right way you have to change constantly. Something you said made me think the non marketers and marketers alike. So I guess I said the experienced marketers 

Sky 

00:17:04 – 00:17:38

um that are very good are probably also a blank slate in that. Yes, they know all these techniques and they have a lot of knowledge, but they don’t bring it all to the table as far as making their decisions based on previous experience, that part of them is a blank slate and most likely they’re coming in and saying, let me collect the information and then use that to in this use case to make the decision. So they have the advantage if they’re good of of having all the experience but not bring it on as as as baggage shouldn’t. He said constantly iterating based on based on the data. 

Michael Osborne

00:17:39 – 00:18:23

Yeah. Yeah. And I think there is a good point because I think what really good marketers bring is not the this is the exact way to do it, but rather the understanding of the why you’re doing it. Like I think of really good marketers as people who understand that the consumers experience is going to matter more than anything else that a customers delight from the product or service matters more than anything else. How do they get to that, how they communicate that, how they structure their technology, their programs, their techniques, etcetera to accomplish that is different with each company in each market, working with each potential audience and, and shifts over time. But really good marketers know that value and quality of an experience or product. 

Michael Osborne

00:18:23 – 00:18:59

Um, and the start to finish interactions that you’ll have with a brand etcetera are what matter most and they will optimize for that given the other factors involved in whatever it is, whether it’s a sas company like Zara voice for a physical product, like in apparel category, there are different techniques, there’s different experiential components, but overall the experience that the consumer of that product or service has with the brand is what’s going to drive the outcomes that you want. And I think good marketers bring that as a framework, as a concept, as a strategy as opposed to a discrete, do these exact things do it this way, every time it worked for me, last time I’ll do it again. 

Sky 

00:18:59 – 00:19:12

So I feel like I keep side tracking you like you’re getting into bizarre voice. You mentioned, hey, we had this marketer but, and then I take down some other Oregon trail um, diversion here. So can we get back to bizarre voice and, and in your story there? 

Michael Osborne

00:19:13 – 00:19:51

Yeah, for sure. You know, going back to the early days partnership sales and marketing essentially, we learned very early on and this is, you know, this is not rocket science but learned early on that what sold best were customer testimonials essentially. Um, and you know, it’s not, it’s maybe it is ironic that we were a ratings interviews company, but basically selling based on the reviews of our own services. Now they’re very, very different. B2B reviews are not what we were providing to technology or two brands rather. We were providing technology to write product reviews, but we use our customers reviews of us, not just the product and service, the value that they got from that, but also the experience they had working with my team for working with me or working with our Ceo 

Michael Osborne

00:19:52 – 00:20:18

so that those stories were what encouraged and excited and delighted potential customers to engage with us and take a look and listen to what we had to say and give it a try. Um you know that the early days were really learning about which testimonials we’re going to work the best, how we would communicate those. Of course, once we collected those and had a number of them, then it was okay, great. What is the best set of techniques and tactics? When 

Sky 

00:20:18 – 00:20:23

you say a number, how many are you talking about? So a listener would be like, oh I need to go out and get five or I need to go out and get, 

Michael Osborne

00:20:24 – 00:21:01

I think it I think it varies again by category because for a B2B software company doing, you know, very early days we had three or four and that was enough. Um today, if you’re marketing a product, you know, you see it online and you want you want to see 1000 reviews which with a 4.9 rating, you know, that kind of thing, it’s very, it’s different. Um and I think it just depends on the category of what you’re working on. But when it comes to, you know, specifically for like B two B and software companies and and sas companies in particular just having a handful, especially ones that are willing to speak live to a potential prospect. And that was something that we did very clearly early days was encouraged 

Michael Osborne

00:21:01 – 00:21:34

our, our earliest customers to be those kinds of advocates and and be vocal about what we were delivering on. And of course you, you can do things commercially like, you know, offer a discount in lieu of being one of the earlier customers and being one that’s willing to speak on your behalf. But you know, we also made sure to be like, great, tell them everything good, bad, ugly, all of it, right? Because you don’t want just a everything’s perfect. It’s amazing and it works great. Please buy it. You want to know. Well, you know, this was a little bit more challenging, but the team was great and worked through it or you know, that one time that it didn’t work, They figured it out and they screwed 

Sky 

00:21:34 – 00:21:50

1. But then they made it right. If all your ratings are just, this person is the best, this person is the best. It’s like, wow, how many family members do you have? You got a lot of ratings. You need the one that says they blew it, but then they made it right because you have to know you’re not going to be perfect every time what happens when something goes wrong? 

Michael Osborne

00:21:50 – 00:21:59

You want. Yes. And it goes back to that experience that a marketer is trying to create you want it to be um you want it to be amazing, but you want it to be believable. 

Sky 

00:22:00 – 00:22:01

Not, I 

Michael Osborne

00:22:01 – 00:22:15

mean, yeah, not unreal, right? You want it to be realistic enough for someone to say great. It will also apply to me because you don’t want to believe that that experience happened just at one time and it will never be recaptured. You want to believe it could be replicated or even improved on. I’ve seen 

Sky 

00:22:15 – 00:22:16

those case studies 

Michael Osborne

00:22:16 – 00:22:17

where You’re 

Sky 

00:22:17 – 00:22:23

like, Oh, let me tell you how I helped this client close $10 million 24 hours. Okay. 

Michael Osborne

00:22:23 – 00:22:25

I mean it’s not exactly 

Sky 

00:22:25 – 00:22:33

something fishy. You’ve got one weird lucky situation where you stepped in and then they happen to close the deal the next day. That’s not a case study. No, 

Michael Osborne

00:22:33 – 00:22:45

It’s not. And when you see the like, you know, 10,000 x returns on investment and stuff like that, it’s like that’s a lucky shot. I think most people would be very happy with, you know, 10 x return on that investment and that would be of course, great. But it’s 

Sky 

00:22:45 – 00:22:59

like the guy who won the lottery writing a book about how to get rich, you find out once you buy it. Like I bought a lottery ticket and there was a winner like, oh come on, help me man, this isn’t your process just because it happened to you. 

Michael Osborne

00:22:59 – 00:23:00

Exactly, we need 

Sky 

00:23:00 – 00:23:02

a repeatable process here. 

Michael Osborne

00:23:03 – 00:23:03

That’s right, 

Sky 

00:23:04 – 00:23:07

okay, so the testimonials having a good amount of them and like you said, 

Michael Osborne

00:23:08 – 00:23:08

depends On 

Sky 

00:23:08 – 00:23:24

how big your audience is. I suppose maybe .1 for what of your The audience is the number of customers you want to have. You should have testimonials for I don’t know if you want 300 customers. You need three testimonials. 

Michael Osborne

00:23:24 – 00:23:59

Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s it’s different again by company, by industry or whatever. Here here at one market, we we focus on delivery of results and value. We want to provide value for our customers and it’s it’s it’s not in a, well, in many cases, it is actually an explicit goal of getting a customer testimonial or a case study from every client. Whether or not we can use it whether or not it’s public. Whether or not it’s terrible. Doesn’t matter. But you want to have that level of passion for results so that no matter what we’re doing, we at least have those demonstrable examples that we delivered value for you. Right? So, you 

Sky 

00:23:59 – 00:24:02

ask every client doesn’t mean they’re going to give it. It doesn’t mean you’re going to use it 

Michael Osborne

00:24:03 – 00:24:18

for sure. We create them for clients. We literally, in our quarterly business reviews will say here’s the value that you’ve gotten, here’s what we’ve done to to work with you to get there Here are the things we want to do next and that’s similar to a testimonial in the sense that yes, it’s an example do they have to talk about it? You know, 

Sky 

00:24:18 – 00:24:24

you’re like, here’s the third grade book report where you just plagiarize this, change the words, the first person. It’s 

Michael Osborne

00:24:24 – 00:24:55

I mean, it comes down to making sure that we’re focused on providing value, right? That’s what that’s what we do. That’s our business. And, you know, we go so far as to guarantee it, but we want to make sure that the customers know they’re getting value from what we’re doing. And of course, that generates hundreds of examples that we can share with others if if they’ll allow us and if they don’t, that’s ok. But it also means that that customer when they’re coming up for renewal because we are a SAS business. When you’re coming up for renewal, it’s a lot easier when you can stay. By the way, We’ve delivered a ton of value cure all those times that we showed you. 

Sky 

00:24:55 – 00:25:01

And look what you said about us. Testimonial. Look what this person said about us. 

Michael Osborne

00:25:01 – 00:25:02

Exactly. 

Sky 

00:25:03 – 00:25:13

It’s you. Uh fantastic. So, testing you guys found with that company with bizarre voice testimonials were huge, I imagine. And for the people listening like, okay, yeah, I need to testimonials. No, no, no. 

Michael Osborne

00:25:14 – 00:25:14

The point is 

Sky 

00:25:14 – 00:25:38

they found that to be effective for theirs, For your company. It could be one of many different marketing channels. That is the most effective thing. If if Michael went from bizarre voice and said, here’s the formula and just testimonials are all we’re gonna do and every company he was ever in, he probably wouldn’t have had the success. That you probably wouldn’t have the success you’ve had since. I’m guessing that wasn’t your formula everywhere. 

Michael Osborne

00:25:38 – 00:26:22

It is different in each place and, and and you know, I I have had a career mostly on the Martek side of things focused on B two B um, so, and working a lot in retail. So there are a lot of things that yes, similar results will drive similar benefits, testimonials and case studies of clients value delivery. That’s universal in the sense that those things are beneficial in my world, which is B two B Martek software SAS companies. However, each environment has been very different at that bizarre voice. We were very new to that market. There was nothing else like us really and only one or two very weak competitors that’s smarter. HQ Different company down the road, tons of competition, lots of overlap in the way that we were perceived as what we do. 

Michael Osborne

00:26:23 – 00:26:59

And here at one Durkin, again, different right? Not a lot of competition but perceived perceived competition. Yes. So, you know, each one of those men great in the in the environment where there’s really no one else doing what you’re doing, you have to get people to trust that it’s a good idea to do it and there’s there could be fear and uncertainty and doubt around if it is at all in an environment where there’s a ton of competition. The markets validated. The concept is probably validated, but now you got to differentiate and you know, in Wonderkids market where we are very differentiated, but it can be perceived that we’re not, we have to do a great job of educating why we are. So each one of those has a different angle of attack really. 

Michael Osborne

00:26:59 – 00:27:38

Um and that means that yes, the case study is valuable here or it’s smarter or at bizarre boys. But the case study is used in a different way. It is we we tailor that message to a very different outcome because we want to differentiate ourselves because we want to dispel the belief that were not differentiated because we want to gain comfort and trust that whatever we’re delivering is actually a valuable thing, depending on that goal, depending on that overarching message and what we need in order to be successful. We might use the same units of value, like a case study, but we’re going to deploy them in different ways. We’re gonna talk about them in different ways. We’re going to market that in different ways. 

Sky 

00:27:38 – 00:28:12

And I imagine even if if you had stayed at bizarre voice the whole time, um that over time those techniques would have also changed because marketing is this constant flow. So it isn’t even just like you moved to another company, different situation, you move to another company. The last company also probably now has a different situation, a different market, different number of competitors? Like everything is changing? Um, type of a situation? So don’t, don’t think like, oh, I need to change things when I move companies, like likely you need to change things in your own situation from on an ongoing basis. 

Michael Osborne

00:28:12 – 00:28:41

100%. And a lot of times I think, um, just in general, people get, you know, maybe a little bit comfortable in the way things are, are working, especially if they find success and they just expect it to keep working that way. Really good advice. I was given by a board member, you know, three jobs ago, four jobs go, it’s never as good as you think it is and it’s never as bad as you think it is. So when you’re crushing targets and things just seem like they’re literally falling out of the sky. What are you not doing? Well, what are you not seeing? Because eventually that’s going to change. 

Sky 

00:28:41 – 00:28:42

That may slow down. 

Michael Osborne

00:28:43 – 00:28:43

You’ll either 

Sky 

00:28:43 – 00:28:50

saturate that or competitors will see what you’re doing and duplicate it and step into the space and yeah, I 

Michael Osborne

00:28:50 – 00:29:35

mean, something’s gonna change right? And when it’s not going well, that doesn’t mean throw everything away, start over, it’s just, it’s very different. So it means that as marketers as business people in general, you have to continually look at what’s working, what’s not and why? And think about where things are going to be in the next year, two years, five years as opposed to where are they right now And am I, am I doing it right for this situation only. Um, but you know, giving yourself the ability of the time, the, the space to think strategically down the road Is important to make sure you’re continuing to adopt and well, I’d rather adapt to changes in the market. And I think particularly in retail, I’ve seen this over the last 15 years. Um, retailers that don’t adapt to consumer trends changing failed 

Michael Osborne

00:29:35 – 00:29:59

and there are brands that aren’t with us anymore because of that. Uh, and they used to be popular, but they’re not today because they failed to adapt. Marketers are the same way. You know, if the, if the, if the world is shifting how the, how the information is gonna be received, what do consumers really want to hear? What do your potential customers think say do about your product, your service? Um, if you’re not adapting to that over time, eventually you will hit a wall, Especially when 

Sky 

00:29:59 – 00:30:24

you mentioned retail industries where it’s kind of what’s hot, what’s new, you can’t just sit on something because it doesn’t matter if you’re facebook, if you don’t go get instagram, the young people don’t want to be in the old people, they don’t want to wear the same clothes and not have the coolest clothes ever. You’re going to have this cycle because the kids don’t want to wear what their parents are wearing most likely. 

Michael Osborne

00:30:24 – 00:31:03

No, I mean, you bring up a great point generational is another, you know, entire category of consideration when it comes to marketing, how each generation buys what tools and technologies and services and information they seek. Um the mechanism by which they do. So I mean it, No one was shopping on an iPhone 15 years ago because it didn’t exist right? And now a lot of high percentage of a lot of our customers and sales comes through mobile web. Um and that’s a very different world, a very different marketing outlet channel than what it would have been 5, 10, 15 years ago and kind 

Sky 

00:31:03 – 00:31:45

of an unpredictable change except for, you know, there’ll be changed. I mean, just look at trends in business like open office spaces, It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s just people were in offices. So the backlashes we’re going open and then eventually realized that doesn’t make sense. Um you know, let’s get rid of meetings. Oops, meetings are kind of necessary. We had too many, Maybe we don’t have enough. It’s like you get these shifts of everybody’s in the office to everybody’s working from home too. You know, we need every back in the office again, things shift even when they don’t make sense just because somebody comes up with a new idea and a bunch of people jump on board and it can affect it could affect your product or service. 

Sky 

00:31:45 – 00:32:11

And so if you just try to be static, you end up, you know, being Kodak, you end up being one of these companies that didn’t look to change anything. So you said something early on feedback loop and it seems like this all comes back to, if you’re not constantly collecting information and willing to adjust, um, you’re going to be, I think you’re a big football fan, uh, it’s a, it’s a quarterback, you have to have a blank slate every time you go out, you throw an interception that can’t be in your head the next time you go out, 

Michael Osborne

00:32:11 – 00:32:51

yep, that’s, I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s it. Exactly, it’s not, you can’t remain stagnant. You can’t just assume that what worked before is going to work again, um, whether it is competition that catches on and, and starts to, you know, chip away at that or whether it’s just the market shifted and what used to work won’t work at all. Now, you have to remain constantly analytical of it. You have to remain cognizant of what could change and why. And you have to be experimenting at times trying different things to understand how those channels may play out and Even today vs five or 10 years ago, the change, the pace of change is faster because technology allows it to be, 

Michael Osborne

00:32:52 – 00:33:12

um, it’s, it’s very, it’s very easy for a brand new platform, a completely new concept of connection with consumers to literally start and, and become, you know, red hot within a year, within six months, within three months. Think of clubhouse. That was a huge deal all of a sudden and it just immediately changed the way folks were communicating and the way brands were trying to communicate, 

Sky 

00:33:12 – 00:33:14

Are we still on clubhouse? Haven’t heard of it? I mean 

Michael Osborne

00:33:14 – 00:33:49

that’s, that’s the thing like where is it today? You’ve got instagram, which is very different than what it originally started out being and now is a absolutely monsters channel for particularly earlier stage brands that really all brands to reach consumers and those things change so quickly that your strategy has to be able to adopt, adapt to that as well. And I think the really good marketers out there are constantly open minded and experimenting and trying things that are different and not just assuming, oh, that’s never gonna work or that’s just not the way I’ve seen it done. So I’m not gonna do that. Good marketers adapt very quickly. 

Sky 

00:33:50 – 00:34:18

It seems counter to like, I’m sure there’s some markers that have set up automation and it’s like if you don’t go back and look at your automation every once in a while, you may have a process automatically running that’s, that’s very ineffective now that was effective then. But you think, hey, I automated that I’m done with it, go back, look at your google keywords, go back, look at your email sequences, go back, look at your everything all the time. Um, so let’s get one more hit on bizarre voice, anything, any other takeaways from from your time, marketing at that company? 

Michael Osborne

00:34:19 – 00:34:40

I don’t I don’t think so. I mean, it was it was really all about the, you know, it comes back to the core concept of the content that was going to work, to deliver the right message and then the channels that we use to do that, whether that be in person events or, you know, distribution of those through just direct communication channels, like we would literally get on calls and talk about our customers results. Um, 

Sky 

00:34:40 – 00:35:05

you mentioned testimonials also, but you also talked about them as if they were references, you’re saying getting these people willing to talk. So did you guys use your testimonials? Just like we’re gonna put this on the website and here’s what they said in their name and company, or were those kind of handed off to sales to be able to have people reach out to? How did you integrate the reference slash testimonial situation? 

Michael Osborne

00:35:05 – 00:35:27

Honestly, both, they were, they were both. So we had the data and the examples that we would use to explain what we do and why it was valuable. And then of course, you know, we’re a selling organization inside of a software company. There’s always a bit of skepticism around whether that what we’re saying is the truth, what we’re saying is, you know, to your point earlier, just the one out one off example, that is really out of bounds. But everything else is kind of mediocre 

Sky 

00:35:27 – 00:35:40

or made up. I’ve seen plenty of sites that the template testimonial that came with the frame kind of Yeah, like, wait, I’ve seen this on five different sites. The same testimonial. This is not a real person. 

Michael Osborne

00:35:40 – 00:36:15

Well, exactly, exactly. And and the, the validity of having a customer talked to a prospect by themselves right there, There was no facilitation on our end other than helping them schedule or get connected. Um, and of course, you know, that the customer knows what we’re trying to accomplish, which is closing another sale, signing up another brand, but they’re not going to lie. If it doesn’t work, they’re going to tell them that. And we would encourage those customers to say, tell them anything that wasn’t good, right? Was was that part of the sales process? That was too pushy. Was it part of the onboarding process? That was great. Was there a time where you couldn’t reach someone in our organization quickly enough and you were frustrated? Like tell him that 

Michael Osborne

00:36:15 – 00:36:51

because if we went through something like that, we honestly, we’re still working together, you’re willing to do this. We’ve probably made right by you. Um, and that’s just reality, especially in B two B when you’re talking about software companies working with other big brands, like what we get to hear, wonder can you have to have that honest actual real relationship and you have to be able to communicate that and it doesn’t mean everything’s perfect all the time life is, but how you respond to those challenges, how you respond to mistakes, etcetera, really make the difference between what, you know, a potential customer and a current customer are going to perceive you as versus uh, somebody who doesn’t do those things well, right. And those are the, generally the businesses that don’t do well at all. 

Sky 

00:36:52 – 00:36:59

So what was in it for them? The references like, why did they bother to take a call or an email and then talk to these people? 

Michael Osborne

00:37:00 – 00:37:30

I mean, early days we did incentivize, but we stopped doing that pretty quickly. We didn’t need to, the results were pretty strong, very strong. And those customers had a great relationship with us and, you know, it’s kind of amazing. But people like to do nice things for other people when, you know, they’ve been treated well and they knew that, you know, they of course we’re gonna ask for those results were going to ask for them to do it if they said they didn’t want to, if they say they’re too busy, we get it, it’s it’s okay. But we had, we had, you know, dozens of customers and we do here today at one Durkin where 

Michael Osborne

00:37:31 – 00:37:43

they’re happy to get on the phone there there. They just said it, you know, blanket universally just anytime you need that, let me know And I’ll do it, of course we balance it as a company not to overuse one person over and over again because that’s 

Sky 

00:37:46 – 00:37:46

right. I 

Michael Osborne

00:37:46 – 00:38:30

mean they can’t do that, but at least they’re willing to take the right ones and you know, we try and do a really good job. I think we do a really good job of matching the right personality, the right subcategory of retail, the right relevance size of organization, nascent C versus established brand, whatever. So that there’s more context. That’s, that’s similar because, you know, if you’re talking about like a customer experience of Macy’s versus a much smaller brand new brand that is digital only, they may not see eye to eye on the way they should go to market at all. And that reference may not hold as much water for that. But if there’s similar style organizations similar in other characteristics, they’re going to take that and say, okay, great, this will fit for me to, 

Sky 

00:38:31 – 00:38:36

you need similar, but not a competitor where they’re like, yeah, let’s see, uh, 

Michael Osborne

00:38:37 – 00:39:04

once, once you get scaled up as a company like ours today, yes, you’re gonna have folks in similar categories. And you know, just because you’re an apparel retailer doesn’t mean your competitor’s styles are very different and where you focus on the market is, but there are direct competitors inside of our, um, you know, the client list. And of course we’re not going to ask those guys to speak on behalf of us for someone who they’d be competitive with. But yeah, you know, you get enough of those customers and if you deliver enough value, you’ll have a lot of those examples 

Sky 

00:39:04 – 00:39:15

picturing the Seinfeld scene where they show up and it’s like Seinfeld and his uh that the downstairs, I’m blanking on his name, guy, where they see each other and they’re always like, Seinfeld, 

Michael Osborne

00:39:15 – 00:39:17

I can’t remember the name. 

Sky 

00:39:19 – 00:39:27

You get when you get the person on the call with the uh testimonial, it turns out that’s who they are to each other like, oh crap Oops, no, we we 

Michael Osborne

00:39:27 – 00:39:29

don’t want that. 

Sky 

00:39:29 – 00:39:53

We don’t want that. You do not want that. All right, So we’ve we’ve hit on bizarre voice there, a ton of talk about testimonials. We’re gonna have to read, rename this, uh, the barbecue and testimonial podcast. Um, but I want to take a quick break. And then when we come back, we’ll hit on some of your other experiences as as a non marketer. And then what happened in those companies. And let’s see, you’re listening to the free market podcast, 

Michael Osborne

00:39:54 – 00:39:54

we’ve got 

Sky 

00:39:54 – 00:39:58

Michael Osborne on talking about marketing as a non marketer and we’ll be right back. 

Sky 

00:40:10 – 00:40:33

Welcome back to the if you market podcast, I’m Sky Cassidy. We’ve got Michael Osborne here talking about marketing as a non marketer. But before we get back to that, I want to dig into you a little bit Michael and uh and also into your company um wonder kind and what you guys do over there, what you’re doing over there, How you got there, can you give us a little uh, little story? 

Michael Osborne

00:40:34 – 00:41:17

Yeah, for sure. And you know, as I said before, I’ve basically been on the Martek vendor side. Most of all my really and I’ve worked in client services and leadership roles there, I’ve worked in sales running it from bizarre boys, I was Ceo at Smarter HQ Um and that’s actually how I got to wonder kin which was an acquisition at the end of 2020 of Smarter HQ was acquired by Wonder Kid. And you know, we’ve been in in the space together, Ryan Urban, the Ceo here and I had gotten to know each other at trade shows over the course of years and we did things very differently. We’re very different companies but in the same space, Smarter HQ had a lot of segmentation capabilities and could segment data in ways that allow marketers to then target specific groups of individuals very clearly. 

Michael Osborne

00:41:17 – 00:41:33

And Wonder Kid was a performance marketing company, taking email and now text messaging and those channels to a completely new level coupled with identification capabilities that allowed marketers to identify more of the users on their site. You bring those two things together and you have something really powerful that can 

Sky 

00:41:33 – 00:41:37

answer you guys were chocolate and peanut butter, not peanut butter and peanut butter, 

Michael Osborne

00:41:37 – 00:42:13

correct? Exactly that, right? And, and be by bringing those together. We’ve seen a lot of business benefit over the last year. The business has grown leaps and bounds. My role here at Wonderland is president and basically that means overseeing the commercial organization. So sales services, uh, our international offices as well as all of the operations functions that support those groups. So really customer facing, right, whether its prospects or customers to be or customers currently. Um, that’s, that’s what I do here. Um, it’s certainly the most favorite parts of my job. Like even as Ceo, it’s smarter HQ. I really liked being in front of customers. I liked being in front of prospects. 

Michael Osborne

00:42:13 – 00:42:24

Um, and as part of the leadership team here, that’s where I get to focus my time. So it’s, it’s a lot of fun. Um, and it’s, you know, it’s very, it’s retail. We focus a lot on retail, but we’re, we’re moving into other verticals as well. And 

Sky 

00:42:24 – 00:42:33

so listeners don’t listen to that part because because we’re podcast, but well when you say you focus on retail, you’re talking about the retail customers or the retail companies and brands, 

Michael Osborne

00:42:33 – 00:42:34

retail brands 

Sky 

00:42:35 – 00:42:35

to be 

Michael Osborne

00:42:35 – 00:43:11

very b to be absolutely, we’re not, we’re not direct to consumer, but we understand the consumer and do use that as part because what we’re doing is helping a brand deliver an experience that consumers that valuable that makes them want to become more loyal by purchasing more products from that or engage with that brand differently. Um You know, our our ceo is on record as saying he wants those customers to have the best possible experience when they’re engaging with that brand. And I totally agree with that. Um If you do that well, the brand benefits the customers. Bennett their their customers benefit and we as an organization benefit because we’re providing that service to those brands 

Sky 

00:43:11 – 00:43:31

because you’re selling marketing to them. So you really are kind of B two B two C. Because you’re you, what you really have to understand is the customer and how to how to how to make that interaction tough question for you. Chocolate and peanut butter. What meat does that go best with? 

Michael Osborne

00:43:31 – 00:43:48

Well, I mean, you know, there are a lot of barbecued dishes that will come with like a mole sauce which is chocolate based. So you can easily you can you can turn what sounds like a sweet product into something that would be served with something savory. For sure. Um peanut butter, that might be a bit of a scratching 

Sky 

00:43:48 – 00:44:10

my back in that one. I want you to come up with a barbecue that has that’s that’s a chocolate, not a dip, but a chocolate peanut butter barbecue. That might be too much. That’s what I said, the meat would be critical. It seems like you have to have a very savory meat to put that much sweetness on it. Um All right, so that’s that’s your that’s your personal challenge from uh from from me. 

Michael Osborne

00:44:10 – 00:44:11

Alright, 

Sky 

00:44:11 – 00:44:45

so get, let’s get back to the marketing. Sorry about that. I told you, I say whatever comes into my mind. Um So you had all these experiences with marketing, learning marketing, practicing the marketing. I’m sure you’ve had a lot of disasters and mistakes that you don’t want people to know about. But can you tell the listeners some things to watch out for when you, particularly when you aren’t an experienced marketer that maybe you learn along the way and said, Oh that’s probably taught in marketing 101. I wish I had known that. 

Michael Osborne

00:44:46 – 00:45:26

Yeah, I mean, so I’m gonna knock on wood and say I haven’t had too many catastrophic. So I’ve definitely had some, you know, misstep slash non successes failures, right? Um I can, I can go through a couple of those. I think honestly, the biggest lesson that I learned early on is If there is an experience, it’s, if a customer has a client right, a B2B brand that I’m selling to or that we’re marketing to has a phenomenal experience start to finish from the first communications through the process of actually getting them as a client to the process of getting them deployed or live on the technology and then utilizing it and getting value. If that process goes really well, 

Michael Osborne

00:45:27 – 00:45:36

they’re generally going to be a loyal customer, they’re gonna, they’re gonna let you off the hook. If something goes sideways at least once or twice, they’re, you know, they’re, they’re gonna trust that, you know what you’re doing and you’re gonna make better by that 

Sky 

00:45:36 – 00:45:38

and the first bite the first. 

Michael Osborne

00:45:40 – 00:46:25

Exactly. And and you know that you want to know when something doesn’t go right, that you do fix it, you’re on it, that you care about their value delivery. But by their benefit and the experience they have, If something doesn’t go well during that experience, they might still become a customer. But it’s very, it’s very difficult. They’re always going to have that kind of apprehension of belief and it’s not going to be the same type of experience. And I think sometimes marketers can focus on part of the experience as opposed to the details of the entirety of it. And for sas businesses in particular, that’s a recurring sales cycle. They’re always about to renew or about to terminate. They’re always about to determine if they want to continue to work with you. It’s not like they just bought the product 

Michael Osborne

00:46:26 – 00:46:57

and then whether they had a good experience or not, they may not be a return customer, but oh, well, I think in in all of those, even in that example, right, if the word of mouth about your product is not that great, then it’s going to be difficult for your product to gain in sales over time for you to grow your customer base and the experience of how they interact with you as a business, how they interact with you as a product or service. All of that makes such a huge difference. And it’s not so much that I didn’t know that because it’s kind of like, duh, you know, if it’s bad experience, they’re not gonna like it, it’s not gonna be good. I think what the learning was was more 

Michael Osborne

00:46:57 – 00:47:06

how easy it is for a good experience to give you that second or third chance, if something does go sideways and how easy it is for a bad one to immediately turn them on. 

Sky 

00:47:06 – 00:47:21

And I guess I’d say that means first experience, it’s the first impression like what is there immediate impression when they first deal with you? They’re either going to say, this is a bad company that maybe is then getting it good or it’s a good company that had a little hiccup 

Michael Osborne

00:47:22 – 00:48:03

well and that’s it, right? And that’s it. You want the perception of you as a business to be very positive, very strong and you want it to be resilient, You wanted to have the ability to survive A dent or two and that means that you have to really care about the totality of that experience. And I think companies like, like wonder qin where I’m at today do it really well. I think there’s some others that I’ve been a part of bizarre voice was another one that we did it well, but some others that have been a part of or an advisor for, or just known in market where the reputation is not all that strong, they might be kind of the only game in town for a while. But guess what? Competition immediately catches up to that. And if that reputation is not high, 

Michael Osborne

00:48:03 – 00:48:11

then it’s, it’s honestly, can be very challenging for that business to continue to be successful or to not literally just get lapped by competition. 

Sky 

00:48:12 – 00:48:12

So 

Michael Osborne

00:48:12 – 00:48:35

like, it matters about that, that full experience, It matters about how you think of your clients and what they’re experiencing from you. It matters that their customers are getting the benefit from it. Obviously, I’m speaking from like, you know, Osama B two B marketing Martek standpoint, but I think that applies to all kinds of businesses. If the experience by the customers, pat is bad, it’s gonna be hard to be successful. It’s, it’s really good. It makes it a lot 

Sky 

00:48:35 – 00:48:42

right. It’s gonna be hard. I mean, I’ve found we have a software as a service product and that first impression 

Michael Osborne

00:48:42 – 00:48:43

if people 

Sky 

00:48:43 – 00:48:57

come, let’s say, try your beta product and something’s wrong. It’s really hard to get them to come back and think it’s going to be different even when you tell them, hey, we’ve changed this or we’ve added a lot of new things. We’ve updated stuff. They’re not, 

Michael Osborne

00:48:57 – 00:48:57

they’re not having 

Sky 

00:48:57 – 00:49:19

that, they’ve moved on to something else. They’re not going to come and review your, you know, you give them food poisoning the first time. They’re not gonna come back to your restaurant, even if it’s under new management, it’s like, no, you’re screwed. They are not coming back, there’s other places to go and they have moved on. And yeah, that first impression is so hard to get people to have another look. Doesn’t matter how many new versions you come out with. 

Michael Osborne

00:49:19 – 00:49:21

Totally correct. I totally agree, totally agree. 

Sky 

00:49:22 – 00:49:24

And then I’d say also software service. Last impression. 

Michael Osborne

00:49:25 – 00:49:25

It’s what did 

Sky 

00:49:25 – 00:49:39

they get first? What’d you leave them with? Um God, we are really ate up the time here today. Um Any any last impressions you want to leave people with in an accidental transition there. But but before we go, 

Michael Osborne

00:49:40 – 00:50:18

well, I think, you know, it’s going back to the original topic. Marketing as a non marketer. I think it’s it comes down to understanding that we are all marketing and all selling at at all times when we are early days in our business and really, anytime you’re interacting with a potential customer or current customers, um you’re you’re you’re you’re you’re pitching your product, you’re talking about what you do, you’re passionate about it, but that totality of experience makes a huge difference and you have to remember to think about all of it, every interaction that they’ve got so that it’s easy for them to want to be a part of that, to want to have that experience and to want to talk about it with others. 

Michael Osborne

00:50:18 – 00:50:36

Um I think as you know, marketing as a non marketer just means make sure you’re thinking about that experience over time and of course, once you, you know, scale up and have a huge marketing team and whatever, there’s all kinds of techniques and things you can do but never lose sight of that. If your client experience is great, you’re probably gonna figure it out if it’s, if it’s poor, you gotta fix that first. 

Sky 

00:50:37 – 00:51:06

And from from listening to you here, it seems to me that um, getting the customer feedback to know what they really want versus what you think they want is is really important. Especially the closer you are to the product, it’s like unless you’re Henry ford or steve jobs and you have the advantage of being able to tell people, you can have it in any color as long as it’s black or this, the phone is the right shape and size and will never change because you are the only product on the market 

Sky 

00:51:07 – 00:51:27

that you know, ford makes cars in all colors now because competition came along and they had to like they can only be that definitive when there was no nothing else. You can only tell the public what they want when they don’t have options, once they have options, they’ll decide what they want. Iphones suddenly comes in all different sizes now because other options came along and people said, 

Michael Osborne

00:51:28 – 00:51:29

here’s what 

Sky 

00:51:29 – 00:52:06

I want. And Apple smartly said, oh, we’re not going to stick to this will never change our size thing, oops, this competition. Um, so yeah, be willing to get the information from the client and provide the client what they want, get that, get that feedback and act on it. I guess I’d say. Um Fantastic. Michael, Thank you for coming on listeners. You can find more of Michael on the show notes on this show, but you know, find him on linkedin. Um, what’s wonder kind dot c O for wonder. Kind, your twitter. Osborne Osborne. 

Michael Osborne

00:52:07 – 00:52:08

That’s right, yeah. I was 

Sky 

00:52:08 – 00:52:09

born by itself was 

Michael Osborne

00:52:09 – 00:52:10

taken. So I had to double it up. 

Sky 

00:52:10 – 00:52:28

Osborne Osborne, that the real Osborne is Osborne Osborne. All right. And um, again, we’ll have information on, on Michael and and on Wonder Kind on the show notes that if you market dot com, Michael anywhere else, you want people to find you. Anything else you want to know about yourself about Wonder? Kind, 

Michael Osborne

00:52:28 – 00:52:38

I know that that works. That’s it. That’s our website. Happy to. Happy to connect with everybody. I love talking about this, these topics. And you know, if I can ever help somebody, let me know. 

Sky 

00:52:39 – 00:53:03

Fantastic. And then, um listeners, please do share us, give us a good review. Give us a good testimonial reference rating, Whatever they call it on these uh, on these podcast things and on behalf of the Market Team and Michael Osborne of Wonder Kind, thank you for listening to the if you market podcast where we believe if you market the shift out of it with your own badass self, they will come.