BottomUp - Skills for Innovators

[00:00:00] hello, and welcome to the bottom up Podcast. I'm Mike Parsons, I'm the chief innovation officer at Qualitance and i'm coming to you from the work from home studio. And today is the second installment of our Revolut case study. Uh, we're going to look at the people side of things. The previous show we just did.

Product. So now we're into the people. And this is so fascinating because they have over 2000 staff and they started with just two, five years ago. And, uh, this might suggest why we think they might become the Amazon of banking. Now we learned a ton about how they are. Growing fast and building a product in quite a revolutionary, new way for the category in the previous show.

Today what we're going to get into is the people side of things. And so I want to break this down for you and really help you [00:01:00] understand, um, how team structures and culture and the way you work together really does affect the product. In fact, I would argue that only great teams can build great product and there's no way you can build a great product.

If you don't have a great team. Okay. Before we get into it, if you are interested in going deep on our case study on a not only Revolut but we work or you want to get any of our masterclasses, it's all free. Jump over to bottom up.io and you can grab everything you want there. Listen, tomorrow episodes of the podcast, take master classes, read blog posts, you name it.

It's all there. Okay, let's talk about people. Let's talk about culture at Revolut. Well, I had to think of like one idea that kind of captures how Revolut works, and I think it is best described as being very hard and fast culture. Uh, so what I [00:02:00] mean by that is they move very fast in a bit, uh, common to some of the early days of Facebook.

They kind of move fast and break things. In their case, they're very commercial. They move very fast. It's quite a high pressure, um, working environment. And I think that actually. If there was any of the four P's. So with them product, they're doing exceptionally well, we're going to learn about promotion and profit and as a bit of a heads up, they do pretty damn well there.

I would actually say that it's on the people side of things where they are most challenged and I think it's this hard and fast culture. So let's break it down and talk about what we think is at the heart of this. So I would propose to you, if you have like a hyper speed, you know, fifth gear kind of culture.

This means long days, long nights, often working weekends, working long hours, um, a lot of [00:03:00] stretch goals, um, in how you organize the team. You know, the thing that is the real truth that I think we can learn from Revolut is they had a lot of churn in employees in the early days. And I think it's specifically because of this culture and the truth inside of this is that a hard and fast culture,  has a very small talent pool that will actually have a good fit with the job said differently.

Out of every hundred candidates that might apply for a job. Even if they have the skills, it's the behavior fit around this hard and fast. It's extremely challenging and personally, when I think about all the teams I've been part of. A constant hard and fast culture, like it's quite unrelenting. And I think that very few people have the stamina to keep that up.

Most people need a bit more time and space. So Revolut is actually recruiting for a very narrow specific [00:04:00] segment in the employee. Kind of ask it. And I think that's a why. Hard and fast is not for all. I would even go as far as saying, harden fast is not for the many. Um, it's a really challenging our culture and at the heart of their culture.

I think this is where you see the deep motivational level of this hard and fast culture. I'm talking about. Is there what they call in the terms of their values, they call it getting it done. That's how they've labeled it. If you wanted to say that. Otherwise you could say it's all about ownership and you can check out all sorts of great authors like, uh, Jaco Willink is, is really good on extreme ownership.

But the point here is that you take ownership for the results and you never blame anyone else. You do whatever it takes to get the results across the line. And so they call it getting it done. So it's a very bold, very brave, very 100% [00:05:00] all in. And I think that's the real truth about the culture they created.

And when you go this hard, not only as yet, not for many, sometimes you can like the, the barrier between what is. Uh, the right thing to do versus the wrong thing to do. They can get kind of blurred. And what I mean by that is you can push yourself so hard. You can push the team so hard, the organization so hard, you can be so entrepreneurial that you can almost break things.

So I would actually say in the case of Revolut, they had some serious problems a couple of years ago around this and this getting it done. Culture really got them into some, uh, tricky, uh, shall we say, hot water. So I want to tell you this, a little story that kind of brings this altogether. And, uh, this was all exposed in a wired magazine article.

You can [00:06:00] find out more about just Google wide Revolut and, um, some of the things that they got up to in the early days. So here's how they used to recruit. This is crazy. So let's imagine you and I are potential candidates for a job at Revolut and we raise our hand and said, yep, we send in a CV. Hey Hi [me], Hey Hi [me] and we get a, an email or a call and they want to have a meeting.

So you do your first interview. At the end of the first interview, Revolut used to give out this task. They've stopped this practice after it was exposed, but they, this is what they used to do. They used to say, let's imagine you and I are the candidates. They would say, okay, Hey Mike, if you would like to continue in this process, the first thing you have to do is go and recruit.

200 customers for the platform. And if you go and check out our masterclass at bottom up, I actually have a screenshot [00:07:00] of the brief that they would send to be where you can see they like Revolut home tasks, required applicants for various positions to recruit new app users. 200 or more signups would be a very strong indication that you'd go into the next round of the interview.

Now, just so you know, if you've got the 200 it doesn't guarantee you a job. It doesn't even guarantee you another interview. This is where the hard sell and this hard and fast culture kind of gets a bit over the top and out of control. And that's what I was talking about before. That fine line. Between, you know, on track and where you get a little bit off track.

Now I want to say that this is how they used to do it. They've stopped this practice and what's really interesting is if you jump over to class door and you'll look at some of the reviews and you really have a snapshot of the entire company around culture right there on glass door. So they have good [00:08:00] advocacy and referral rate, and uh, Nicholi Stronovski gets a really good 81% approval as a CEO.

So that's good. And what's really interesting, they highlight two pros in two cons on Glassdoor about the culture. And these are all taken from employee feedback. The company is really fast paced, it's growing, and it gives you a good reputation. That was one of the first ones. The second one is you learn a lot, and so that's the upside of a hard and fast culture.

I mean, you just always learning. It's like really dense. But this is really interesting on the cons, which you know, almost dou...

Ep. 17 How Revolut cracked their Product: the Amazon of banking

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the bottom up podcast. I'm Mike Parons. And  I'm the chief innovation officer at Qualitance, and today we're going to be doing a case study on Revolut who we have called the Amazon of banking. So we're going to dig right into, uh, what they've been doing and see fundamentally what we can learn from them.

So to get you up to speed. These guys have been quite busy the last five years since they started. They have over 10 million users. They have over 800 million in funding. Evaluation is roughly a five, five and a half billion and they have over 2000 staff. So they're doing a lot of things right. I can promise you that.

I think they're moving into disrupting a very traditional market. So that's also very interesting. And I think that, uh, unlike the WeWork case study, I think these guys are pretty strong [00:01:00] across the board and showing all the signals that they are going to dominate the market. So what a perfect time to look in to learn to understand what they're doing so well.

Now as usual, we're going to use our famous bottom up, four P's, people, product, profit and promotion to understand their business. And the reason I really liked these so much is we get to look on the outside of the business, on the inside of the business. It's a very good way for us to understand what they're doing and really to try and try and learn from them.

So. For today's episode, we're going to get into the world of product. Let's dive in there, and I think the first thought that I have for you is this really is not just a good product. I think it's actually a great product, and the reason for this has got two characteristics. The first thing is it's solving a massive problem.

I mean, money is really important to get so much done in our lives. This is not a nice to have. This is [00:02:00] pretty much, you got to have this. And what goes alongside that so very well is this is something that you use every single day, whether your buying things, transferring, checking balances, traveling, you name it.

Um, money kind of comes up a lot. And so they're very lucky. I think of this very much like a venture capitalists, a wet dream. I mean, this is perfect for them. This is. Hey product, that solves a big problem and it solves every single day. So I mean, this is getting on the home page of your iPhone. I mean, this is a great product.

So let's have a look at the kind of five key pillars of what they're doing now. And I will say this, that they are releasing new features pretty quickly. So I think you can expect this to double or triple by 2021. So Revolut will help you manage your money, travel with these, uh, send money, uh, to friends.

[00:03:00] Um, they've got some good security phages and lastly, they've just really ramped up their exchange on cryptocurrency, so pretty solid start there and can, considering that they already have 10 million users, and it's a pretty phenomenal. Job. Now let's break down even further to some of the things that they're doing.

Some of the things that we can learn from how they're building their product, and you might want to put these features into your product to number one. The first thing that they are doing is they have a very clear focus on this thing, which we call that aha moment. And what that is, is they know that when you transfer five-year-olds to a friend, it's so easy, so far, so instant, so satisfying, but you're sort of hooked on their product after that.

You've really got it. And so they really focus on getting customers to that moment of transfer as quick as possible. And now if they do this, you know, they pretty much know that they're gold. And the real, um, [00:04:00] reminder in this product is it is insanely simple. And this enables. Both speed and ease of use.

Like you don't have to think too hard to get the jump down here. And sometimes when I look at how easy it is to transfer money on Revolut, I kind of feel like they've removed every single step or click that they could. Much like in the way Uber, for example, really tries to remove any data entry. Uh, you don't have to get out of your credit card.

So in that way, I think Revolut is quite similar to Amazon. Now, the next thing is that what they do super well is they have this incredible useful search. I don't know about you, but I find search pretty rotten with most of my banking products that I use, either for home or for business. And what they've done is they've done a couple of really, really good.

Um, industry practice practices, first of all, they start pre-loading results as [00:05:00] you type and they give you predictive search, meaning that as you're typing, I try to guess the word that you are are actually typing in. Again, these are little micro seconds, uh, that they are trying to cut out of the experience so you can get there as fast as possible.

So that search is really important and it's almost Google. Like. And the way you search now, why my banks don't make search, and it's such a straightforward, standard, uh, feature. It's just amazing to me that that Revolut have been able to come along and produce something that is just so simple and easy to use and so compelling compared to the industry.

Okay. Next thing. This is the third thing they do around product, which I think is super interesting is they've done some really interesting thinking around the product and how they want to build it, and it means that they can introduce new features really quickly and easily. I will come to how they, how they've actually engineered on the [00:06:00] back end to do that, but I want to stay with the front end features right now.

They offer a really compelling ease of use. When we moved to additional products or features, and this is what we call in the industry that cross sell. So in this case, it's very easy, easy for me to jump into, say crypto, um, when I'm just finished checking my balances and because they make this so easy, it's so seamless.

One app. What's really interesting is a lot of banks that I've used my investment app, it's actually a separate app to the normal banking app. Just a little bit of extra friction there. Revolut have have removed those, so they make crypto investing really easy. Now, I mentioned a little bit about, uh, the thinking in terms of backend architecture and how they think about the product stack.

Now this is the fourth thing that we can really learn from them. They call it banking as a platform. This is just another fancy way of saying end to end application. [00:07:00] So, um, I want to unpack this a little bit through an example. Um, and, and the starting point here is that they, they build, um, most of their core features, if not all of them themselves.

And they have very little third party dependencies. This gives them an, a couple of really key benefits. They are agile. They can release new features really fast. And, um, they understand the product stack. So if they need to, to change something in the way a particular feature works, say a credit check, they can do that with great control and precision.

If you're licensing it through a third party becomes a bit harder because you have to go with a third party now. I've got this great example I want to share with you. Uh, it's around a card fraud detection system. And in the case of Revolute, what they went and did is they went and built it all themselves and they called it Sherlock.

Now, what's really interesting about Sherlock is they built it in jus...

016 Digital Workspaces

 [00:00:00] Mike: [00:00:09] Hello and welcome to the BottomUp podcast. My name's Mike Parsons. I'm your host, and we are here to share with your skills, tips, tricks for innovators, creators, designers, builders, you name it. Anyone who's out there daring to create something new. I'm excited to share with all of you the fifth and final installment of our top five emerging [00:00:34] technology series.

[00:00:35] I've been doing this now for four years, picking the top five technologies. It creates so much conversation, argumentation. I love it, trying to pick winners. You know the reason I like it so much is it forces you to think through what's going to succeed and you keep on working on this and you just get better and better and better.

[00:00:55] So we've had a lot of exciting picks so far, we've had four. Here's our final one. It's called digital workplace or said better, if you want to be customer first, you need to be employee [00:01:08] first. So, if you want to learn about this or any other of our top five emerging technologies, head over to BottomUp.io.

[00:01:16] Everything's there for you to read, digest, sign up, get the master class, get the video. You'll thoroughly love that and everything else we've got on offer there. So, the digital workplace. What on earth are we going on about? Well, the anchoring idea for this is that, if you want to be customer-first, if you want to provide all these great, amazing services and experiences for your customers, we often neglect [00:01:42] the people that actually have to build, create, and support, maintain these experiences.

[00:01:46] And that's the employee. So, this puts firmly at the top of the table, the importance of the digital workplace. So, what do we mean when we say digital workplace? Like what are we talking about here? Mike? Well, it's the tools, the apps, the dashboards, and all of the services that we use during our day to power all of the experiences that our customers' touch.

[00:02:08] So this can be workflow management, process management, systems management, application layers, all of the web [00:02:16] service connections that might service a product or a service. That's what we're talking about. It's the ability for the team to get together and deliver these products and services, keep them going to maintain the beating heart of a business.

[00:02:31] So let's cut through all the hype about digital workplace and all of that. And let's get to the three big things that really matter that you need to know. Number one, when we talk about employees and working, there is a huge boom in remote and virtual working. Not only, you know, [00:02:50] the classic freelance,

[00:02:53] global traveler archetype, but actually even within large organizations, more and more they're seeing advantages in letting their teams work remotely. Perhaps not permanently, but definitely on particular days on particular projects. Remote working is huge. I think with the 2020 virus context, you're going to see a ton more remote working.

[00:03:13] So digital workplace, which we picked way before. Any mention of a virus has now doubled down on this one cause it's going to be huge. The next one is that business [00:03:24] overall is going through an enormous transformation. I mean, a lot of the catchphrase in enterprise circles right now is about digital transformation, which is firmly not only about delivering great customer experiences, but it's also about creating employee experiences.

[00:03:43] And, like the best companies, if you really understand that you've got to nurture your employees with the tools, the apps, and the services that they use, you're only setting yourself up to be able to better deliver [00:03:58] customer experiences. And this remote working and digital transformation are two things happening on the inside of a business that are radically changing the digital workplace. But if there was to be one thing that is causing those two changes, which I've left for last, it is the huge growth we've seen in omnichannel customer experience. Even if your business is not in retail like Amazon or not in search like Google, you're [00:04:32] kind of competing with Amazon and Google. Let me explain why. If we use Amazon and Google every day, we become enabled with a sort of a defacto standard that every experience will be as quick, efficient, elegant, and seamless as Amazon and Google. So, what happens is we, therefore, transfer these expectations into other categories, other use cases, other products, and services, even if they're not retail in surge.

[00:05:03] We still expect them to be as good as an [00:05:06] experience as those from Amazon and Google. And this is the big catch. Every business now has to deliver its product and service as good as Amazon does this because our customers are using them. And here's the real flip, on the inside, enterprise technology actually has to be that level of consumer-grade too.

[00:05:29] And way too often, we forget the employee. In fact, if you look at the data, it's almost a factor of [00:05:40] 1000 times more investment, this is the one number that counts, 1000 times more is invested in understanding customer behavior than is spent on understanding employee behavior. It's crazy, but yet the employees are the ones that have to create or the magic for the customers.

[00:06:00] So there is this huge opportunity with the digital workplace. So, let's do the pros and cons here. Okay, without a doubt, if you make a great digital workplace, your employees are going to be more engaged. [00:06:14] And what do we know? If an employee is more engaged, they'll stay better, they'll do better work, and they will go, and they will advocate about working at your company and bring other good people in. I mean, that's an undeniable, huge benefit, you know, putting employees first. So. Okay, if this sounding pretty good, Mike, what's the catch? Well, listen, the truth really is the digital workplace. That employee experience is sort of an emerging field because truth be told, most [00:06:48] businesses have neglected the employee experience.

[00:06:52] And so when we talk about creating great employee experiences, most companies have never met the employee user journey. I bet you they've mapped the customer journey, but the employee is something that's been neglected. So, if you don't know the journey, it's very hard to digitize. So, it means a lot of time and effort has to go into doing things for the first time.

[00:07:16] And as we all know, doing things for the first time is a bit harder than doing it the second or third, or fourth. [00:07:22] So we're getting like-new muscle memory inside of the organization. Enormously challenging time, effort, resources. You know what, that just equals one thing, money. And we haven't traditionally had a big line item for the employee experience.

[00:07:38] And that's why if you want to be customer first, you have to be employee first. Why this digital workplace is so damn hard because it's often a first-time adventure for the enterprise. So, there you have it. Digital workplace number five of our top five [00:07:56] emerging technology trends for 2020. Just to recap, we had number one was 5G networks.

[00:08:03] Number two was a prickly one. Mass surveillance. Number three, boundless automation for the collective cloud. I mean, these are some killer, killer ideas here. The last one, digital workplace, I mean, there's so much here. So, as you decompress on some of these topics, head over to BottomUp.io. Get one of our courses and masterclasses.

015 - Cloud

 [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the BottomUp podcast. My name is Mike Parsons. I'm your host and it is a pleasure to bring you part four of our top five emerging technologies. And here today we're going to give you skills to grow, design, build, create your new product, service, or business. That's what we're all about at the BottomUp podcasts.

[00:00:31] And today, our subject [00:00:34] is the collective cloud. That's right. You're probably very familiar with AWS, Azure, Google cloud, or Red Hat. You've heard about all these guys. Things are really cooking in the cloud. All these different clouds, both private, public, on-premise, you name it. It's all starting to come together.

[00:00:53] And that's why we've called it collective cloud so that it's part four of our top five emerging technologies. Now, if you're very interested in all of these emerging technologies, and you'd love to get the master class, the video [00:01:08] keynote or anything around essential skills for innovation, go to BottomUp.io and you'll find all the goodies you need.

[00:01:16] All right, let's get into the world of cloud computing. So, what is this thing? Well. Cloud computing is all about moving away from having all your applications sitting on a local server in your office, right physically next to you, and moving to our remote or virtual model where the server is actually online, as they say, in the cloud.

[00:01:40] So Google docs [00:01:42] is a great example of something we all used to do in Microsoft Word 20 years ago, 15 years ago, and now so much of our word processing is done online, in the cloud, on a server rather than being installed locally. It's a great example, and you're probably using a ton of services like Dropbox and so forth.

[00:02:02] Even of course, what we take for granted now are services like Netflix. They're all driven by the cloud. So, that's what the cloud is all about getting all that hassle kind of out of the office. I mean, [00:02:16] I even remember the excitement, Oh gosh. When was this? 1997 when we got our first web server. I think it was a son's box server, and literally we had a physical server.

[00:02:28] Nobody does that anymore. It's so amazing how web applications, in particular, have transformed how everything has moved to the cloud. So, let's cut through all the hype in the conversation and cut to three things that really matter about cloud computing or what we call collective cloud. 

[00:02:47] Well, the first thing that's probably come across [00:02:50] your inbox is the scandal around the JEDI project with the Pentagon. Now the Pentagon actually awarded this 10 gazillion Chilean billion-dollar project all exclusively to Microsoft. And well, Amazon, they were very upset, and this has been all over the place for a number of reasons. There was all sorts of Trump stuff involved, but it was also a pure-play.

[00:03:15] They chose one vendor and we see the whole movement to a collective cloud, which is hybrid cloud. Many different providers, many [00:03:24] different installations on-premise, off-premise, public and private. This JEDI contract has been huge in the cloud community because it was one of the biggest deals ever signed.

[00:03:35] So check out that JEDI contract with the Pentagon. Now, I mentioned Amazon, and when we talk cloud, you have to be talking about AWS, their web services division, which really pioneered this technology as a commercial offering. They're the market leader, but Hey, Microsoft is catching up as is Google. So, this is a very exciting place [00:03:58] because you've got a number of tech titans duking it out.

[00:04:02] AWS and Amazon leading the way, but don't count out the guys in Redmond and the guys at Mountain View, they might catch up. So, it's a very exciting couple of years in cloud computing and all of that competition, that's good news for you and I, because it actually means competition will drive new products and services.

[00:04:24] It will drive a more affordable service. And frankly, you know, cloud's pretty affordable, but it could even get more [00:04:32] affordable as that competition matures and the market grows. Third reason why we're all talking about this is actually the dark horse in this race is an old company. Yes, IBM. Now you might thought IBM in cloud, not so sure about that, but their recent acquisition of Red Hat has really brought a different idea to the table.

[00:04:57] Red Hat, a much more open source, IBM is becoming more and more so that way. So, we've got our very exciting, more agnostic [00:05:06] proposition coming into the market with huge power and distribution of IBM. I think this is very exciting for the collective cloud game for the cloud computing industry. 

[00:05:16] That's three reasons, the JEDI contract, AWS, all the big tech titans, including IBM, are getting in on this game. Let's see what happens there. But if you want to know one number, I love just picking one number. One number that tells the story already in 2019, cloud computing makes up 30% of enterprise [00:05:40] IT budgets. That's already 30% I can guarantee before we know it, it's the majority of what IT spends its money on because it is such a better proposition than having server racks sitting in the back of your office and trying to maintain, update, and create new products and services on top of that legacy infrastructure. Forget it. It's all in the cloud, baby. Now, let's quickly wrap this up with some pros and cons.

[00:06:08] Okay. Look, I don't work for any of these cloud providers, but I will tell you this is the ultimate [00:06:14] proposition. Cloud is faster, cheaper, better than its previous version of local native installed applications. I mean, almost in all cases it's a better proposition. So that's the pro. Now you're thinking, okay, my good luck finding a challenge with this.

[00:06:31] Well, it actually, I think it is such a paradigm shift in computing, actually, the biggest challenge for business is the lack of skills and expertise in running large scale cloud environments. I mean, we're talking about DevOps load [00:06:48] balancing. We're talking about a lot of, you know, weaving together a web of microservices, running across a lot of different platforms.

[00:06:56] This is no easy task and actually there's not a lot of people that have actually got much experience or expertise doing this and then cut it down. Like once you say, we're real serious about doing a large-scale application, serving hundreds or maybe even thousands of simultaneous concurrent users, you're getting into just a handful of people in any city can really do that well.

[00:07:18] So that's the challenge on the cloud computing side, but it will [00:07:22] all come good as the market matures because, without a doubt, cloud computing is faster, cheaper, better. It's super exciting. Now, with all that excitement you're thinking, where can I find out more information, Mike? Well, the good news is you go to BottomUp.io, sign up for one of our masterclasses or keynotes. Get all the information not only on the top five emerging technologies, but you know what? You can go and discover a whole bunch more, design thinking, future of media. It's all their BottomUp.io. My name's Mike Parsons. I'm your host of the BottomUp podcast.

[00:07:55] It's [00:07:56] been so great to share cloud computing with you. We'll see you for the last installation of the top five emerging technologies.

014 - Automation

 [00:00:00] Mike: [00:00:09] Hello and welcome to the BottomUp podcast. I'm your host, Mike Parsons. And as usual, I am here to share with you some essential skills for innovation, design creation, building good stuff. And today we're reviewing the topic of automation. In fact, I call it boundless automation, ubiquitous automation, and if you're [00:00:34] thinking, ah, well listen, I'm a creative type, this doesn't apply to me.

[00:00:38] It does. Because whether you're a consumer or an entrepreneur. Automation is becoming ubiquitous. It's essential to understand. It's the third part of our five-part annual top five emerging technologies. I really love doing this. This is the fourth year of my top five emerging technology picks. I'm really grateful to all the feedback I've had over the years.

[00:01:01] On all my different picks. If you'd like to know more about some of the retrospective picks, some of the winners and the losers [00:01:08] pop over to bottomup.io because you'll find all sorts of goodies there. Not only a full master class and keynote on this entire top five emerging technologies for 2020 but you can get access to a whole bunch of courses on design thinking, lean, agile, and innovation overall.

[00:01:25] So that's bottom up.io. Okay. Let's get into this boundless automation universe. Firstly, what is it? Well, it's really super simple. It's all about using technology to automate, especially these complex [00:01:42] business processes. Sometimes today we might find that those processes have a lot of manual work.

[00:01:48] They can be slow and inconsistent, and frankly, computers and robots can just do them better. So, what we're talking about is using automation to improve, you know, payroll, order processing, even a lot of marketing processes that have a lot of data, perfect thing to automate. So, when we talk about boundless innovation and boundless automation, it could be that classic kind of factory robot, you know, [00:02:16] Amazon or Ocado kind of vision that you have of just a few people and millions of robots.

[00:02:21] But it can also be software too. And that's what's so exciting about it. It's sort of a hardware-software play. So why is this so hyped up? What's going on here with boundless automation? What's behind the story?  Well, the real truth here is there one company has pioneered this perhaps better than any others, and that's Amazon because they have the hardware automation happening in their factories and distribution centers. And then they have the software automation happening in their [00:02:50] retail and online environments. It's the Amazon effect. They are just more efficient than any other retailer on the planet. And that's why with their championing of this cause everybody's talking about automation.

[00:03:06] They are the poster child of automation. They are absolutely killing it. We haven't even seen the end result yet. I can assure you that there are some super macro, long-term economic cycles for us to go through. We will see the true power of automation. Number two, why is [00:03:24] this so, so important? Well, it is hugely efficient, particularly in 2020 as we go post virus, we're going to see a huge push on efficiency.

[00:03:34] Automation will deliver. And the reason that automation is just so powerful is that it can take error-prone, slow human processes, and just do them better. And you know, the truth here is that the power of hardware and software automation can get so much done and deliver so much cost savings to the bottom line [00:03:58] of an organization in 2020 I'm sure that is going to be the number one driver.

[00:04:03] The third thing that's got us all talking about this and why we've picked it as a top-five emerging technology for 2020 is the whole conversation about job displacement and the job fears that people have about automation. Now in the master class that we've got on bottom up.io, you will see that yes, we did find the data that actually proves that there will be job displacement.

[00:04:32] [00:04:31] Without a doubt, there will just be some jobs that go away. We've been seeing that in manufacturing for years. But here's the thing. The world economic forum found that 75 million jobs will be displaced, but by 2022 automation will create a net new 133 million jobs. So, come on guys. We don't have to be so freaked out.

[00:04:53] There is an upside to automation, and that's why we're talking about it. So, the Amazon effect, it's hugely efficient and it's not really about job displacement. It's about job [00:05:06] growth. That's why it really matters. Now, as usual, I've got one number that matters and this one's going to blow your socks off.

[00:05:13] Deloitte found that by 2023 the adoption of robotic process automation, RPA, will be nearly ubiquitous in industry. 89% will have adopted this because it's so damn efficient. So just think about that. This technology is on track for ubiquity within the next three years. Boundless [00:05:40] automation, whether it's in hardware or software, you can bet your bottom dollar, particularly with the tough economic climate of 2020 this is going to be huge.

[00:05:50] So let's look at the pros and cons and sort of frame the boundless automation conversation. Without a doubt, the big benefit is this thing saves money for business. I think we've made a good case for that, but here's the con: automating a non-digital business is actually quite hard to do.

[00:06:09] And that's the big catch because often these processes have not been mapped. [00:06:14] There are no journeys. Nobody actually has a workflow. So, we have to capture the workflow as it is today. But then there's another job we have to ask ourselves rather than just how do we copy-paste what's offline and put it online, we actually have to ask ourselves, how can we make it better as a process, as a workflow with technology, and this is not easy to do. It's both left and right brain. It's creative, it's hardcore engineering. This is why automation, great proposition, great [00:06:48] benefits, but actually as you'd expect, it's going to take a bit of hard work to get the job done.

[00:06:53] So there you go. That's pick number three of our top five emerging technologies. It's boundless automation. It's this opportunity for us all to have a little bit of Jeff Bezos magic in our business, in our product, in our service. I hope you've enjoyed this. If you want to download all the goodies you can at bottomup.io, my name is Mike Parsons.

[00:07:16] I'm your host here at the BottomUp podcast. It's been a pleasure. I can't wait to have you on the fourth [00:07:22] installment of our top five emerging technologies.

013 - Mass Surveillance

 [00:00:00] Mike: [00:00:11] Hello and welcome to the BottomUp podcast. I'm your host, Mike Parsons, and as always, I'm here to share with you essential skills for innovators, designers, creators, builders, you name it, people building new products and services. And today we're reviewing the topic of mass surveillance. This is actually the second part of our [00:00:34] annual top five emerging technology picks.

[00:00:36] We've been doing this for four years now, and this one, mass surveillance is one of the trickiest. Now you might be thinking, what is mass surveillance? Well, I'm going to tell you everything, but if you want to go super deep into this topic and to many other emerging technologies and skills for innovators, head over to BottomUp.io and you can get a bunch of goodies. It's all free and you can grow as an innovator. All right let's talk about mass surveillance. Well, what do we mean by mass surveillance? Well, it's kind of two parts. The [00:01:08] online privacy world, you know, the classic, the cookies, they're being tracked online.

[00:01:12] And secondly, and equally as important is what happens in public spaces outside. That's the monitoring of civilians by video face recognition and so forth. Two big pillars, the on and the offline bit. No matter how you play it, this is a big, big topic. As emerging technology is put both online and, in our worlds, in our public spaces.

[00:01:35] There's never been a time where we've been under monitor and surveillance like we are today, [00:01:42] and that's why we've picked it as our second of five emerging technology trends that are essential to know about as a designer, as a creator, as an innovator. So, let's ask ourselves, what's all the hype around this?

[00:01:56] Well, there's probably three big things that I point out that make this topic du jour. Number one: Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. This really exposed what happens with our personal data and how users really don't appreciate when they sign up for those privacy terms. [00:02:16] What companies turn around and do with that information and this whole expose around Cambridge Analytica really demonstrated to us that our data is not secure. In fact, it gets shared with many different other online companies who get to leverage, utilize, and exploit that information. Now, the next big thing that's been happening is not only in China but even in places like the UK we're seeing this explosion of surveillance [00:02:50] cameras. When we walk around those cities, you will be surprised that there are some cities.

[00:02:56] Both in China and in Western cities where there are over 100 cameras per 1000 people. It's exploding. It's a way of preventing terrorism. It's preventing crime monitoring the social and public spaces. But this is happening everywhere. And if you look at that in the online world, nearly 80% of all the sites you visit will be [00:03:24] tracking you.

[00:03:24] So no matter where we go, at home, on the internet or outside or to work, we are being watched. And that's why it's so important to understand. And if you want one number. That points to why we selected this as something that has to be on the table, has to be in the discussion, is that this amazing fact found by Deloitte, which is less than 5% of online users actually read the privacy policies that they accept and agree to. 

[00:03:54] And what this means is we have no idea what's happening with [00:03:58] our personal data. And when we elect governments, we really have very little sense of what rights we've given them to have our data, to have our personal image. This is enormous. And this brings up this pressure cooker conversation about who owns our data, what are our rights?

[00:04:17] And this is why mass surveillance is critical to understand. And it's also, even if you're not in government, even if you're not an online publisher, if you have a product or service without doubt, at some point, there's going to be a transaction of data. And [00:04:32] what I encourage you to do is to be open, to be transparent and respect that data.

[00:04:37] And in turn, your customers we'll respect you. Okay, just to wrap up, what are the pros and cons around this whole mass surveillance discussion? Well, number one, without a doubt, this kind of surveillance both on and offline, it deters crime. It deters terrorism. I mean, it even improves safety and performance and delivery of public services and infrastructure.

[00:04:59] I got you there. But equally on the other hand, what's the big catch here? [00:05:06] It's our loss of privacy. So as citizens, we should be aware, but also as entrepreneurs, here's a chance for us to protect the data of our customers. And if we do the right thing by them, they'll do the right thing by us. 

[00:05:20] Okay, so that's it, mass surveillance. That's number two of a five-part series looking at the top five emerging technologies for 2020. I'm still pumped. I got three more to go. I can't wait to share them with you. If you want to know anything about these top five emerging technologies or anything about [00:05:40] skills that will help you innovate, then you should just pop over to BottomUp.io and you'll find everything you need there. I've hope you've enjoyed this short conversation on mass surveillance. My name is Mike Parsons. I'm the host of the BottomUp podcast. I'll see you next time.

012 5G Networks

 [00:00:00] Mike: [00:00:09] Hello and welcome to the BottomUp podcast. I'm your host, Mike Parsons, and I am so glad to be sharing with you today some brand-new skills for innovators. That's right, today we're reviewing the world of 5G networks. This is going to be big for anybody creating a new product or a service, and this is the first of five parts in [00:00:34] our annual top five emerging technology keynote. Now, if you would like to get the full one-hour keynote, you can do so at BottomUp.io. I highly recommend you jump over there and get not only good is about emerging technologies, but about design thinking. Lean and agile, all the good stuff, all the modern-day tools of innovation.

[00:00:57] All right, so we're talking about 5G. I think this is going to have huge implications on how we build, create, design, develop new products and services. Let's get [00:01:08] into 5G networks. Now, first of all, what are we talking about here? We're talking about fifth-generation cellular technology. The most likely situation is that you're listening to this very podcast on perhaps a 4G, maybe a 3G cell connection. And this delivers some, you know, pretty remarkable speeds if you think about having broadband in your pocket. But wait for this 5G, fifth-generation cellular technology, this is going to mean speeds of up to and including a hundred [00:01:42] times faster than 4G. This is massive and no wonder there's some hype, but when we do our top five emerging technologies, we try to cut through all that hype, cut through all of the noise to find out what really matters.

[00:01:57] Now, if you ask me like why does 5G really matter? I think there's three big driving factors that are getting 5G on the list to talk about and why I picked it as a top-five emerging technologies for 2020. Number one: fifth generation [00:02:16] cell networks are crucial parts of the mobile industry.

[00:02:20] Here's the thing. It works beautifully as another reason to upgrade AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, you name it. All the huge global networks need a reason for you to upgrade because we're on cycles now of every two to three years, we upgrade our device. And we move into a new renewed contract. So often the mobile carrier will dangle a new device, a new feature, a new speed through the [00:02:50] network, has a reason to continue with them.

[00:02:53] So everybody's got hooked on this three-year rollover model that has meant that we continually upgrade our iPhones. We continually upgrade our contracts with the mobile providers. So, this is why it is getting so much hype. You will have seen in 2019, everybody in the US all those big cell providers desperately trying to shout and scream about 5G as a reason to stay on their network.

[00:03:22] So this is reason number one, that the [00:03:24] hype is so big. Number two, totally different trajectory here, Huawei. A lot of concerns around a Chinese state influenced organization providing the infrastructure for many modern Western governments and industries and economies. So, no doubt, no matter where you are around the world, you've probably heard conversations, discussions, perhaps arguments about whether your government should approve that national 5G infrastructure should be provided in part or in whole by Huawei. And this has caused a [00:03:58] lot of conversation. This is an essential part of the whole business economy of the mobile business. We've got huge government security concerns coming up through Huawei.

[00:04:09] And lastly, somebody who's a little bit more off the radar but is super important why the hype is so big, is some of the health concerns that exist around 5G. Without doubt, there's certainly some concerns around radiation and the different radio waves that 5G uses in order to get those super-fast adrenalized speeds.

[00:04:30] So that's why the [00:04:32] hype is happening. First thing I want to give you though, after all of that to cut through it or is a number that matters. And if there was one single number that is going to make the point of why 5G's going to be so big, it's the Qualcomm forecast that in 2020 there will be 200 million active users of 5G.

[00:04:53] That's not 2021 it's not 2025 they're talking about. Ladies and gentlemen this year, but Huawei not to be outdone. They've actually countered that and said they believe [00:05:06] that China alone will have 200,000,000 5G network users in 2020. Look, it really doesn't matter who you're going to believe. The truth here is that so much infrastructure has already been put in place.

[00:05:20] The handsets are coming in 2020 it's going to be fireworks, and 5G is definitely one of our big picks for 2020 so just lastly to wrap up pros and cons. Well without doubt, what's the real benefit here for the user experience? We always bring things back to the user and I think [00:05:40] that finally, the promise of these rich services and experience delivered either in a remote or a virtual capacity will be able to happen with 5G.

[00:05:49] People won't need fiber to the home if they have a 5G device. People will be able to have great services like telemedicine, remote working. This could be really huge for 2020 particularly with all the remote working and work from home that has kicked off in the first part of the year. I mentioned earlier if there's a con to this whole thing, there's some real concerns around [00:06:14] radiation around all the different radio frequencies that are used here. I mean, the only way they can get these speeds is to get busy on a number of different frequencies with a lot of throughput. We heard stories in both the Netherlands and Japan of birds mysteriously dying around 5G towers.

[00:06:31] So yeah, there is a bit to be worried about. There's a lot of conjecture and conversation there, but the real impact here is regardless of the pros and the cons, one truth remains, 5G is going to be absolutely huge in 2020. So if you want to know more about [00:06:48] 5G, if you want to get the masterclass, if you want to download the whole keynote, or if you want to know about anything else, that's an essential skill for an innovator, hop over to BottomUp.io and get all the goodies there. I'm your host, Mike Parsons. It was great having you on the show today. We'll see you next time.

011 - Presentation - Survey Monkey - Tools and Technology

[00:00:00] Mike: [00:00:08] Hello and welcome to the BottomUp podcast. I'm your cohost Mike Parsons and as always, I'm joined by the presenter himself, Mr. Chad Owen.

[00:00:19] Chad: [00:00:19] I don't know why, but I always get a little sad when we reached the end of any of our podcast series, but we're going to leave you on a high note here because this is where all of your hard work finally pays off.

[00:00:31] Mike: [00:00:31] Indeed because the greatest [00:00:34] irony about this episode is that if you don't really practice the art of presenting surveys to others, then everything else that we talked about in the last six episodes goes to waste, doesn't it?

[00:00:45] Chad: [00:00:45] Yeah. And we'll just cut to the chase and give you advice. Don't pull up surveymonkey.com in a meeting and start scrolling through the results pages because that's not going to get you the results you're looking for.

[00:00:59] Mike: [00:00:59] No, no, no, because I think that what we have to remember, let's just assume that all of our audience are busy. They've got [00:01:08] surveymonkey.com open right now. They're getting all this great advice and, they're about to. Walk into the room and present. Everyone's like, so Chad, Mike, what have you learned right.

[00:01:20] The thing is that you know, we will have spent hours and hours and hours, days, and perhaps weeks working on this research. So, we'll have lots of the context and rationale and we'll be hanging on the responses of every single question. But the truth here is that you don't build products in isolation.

[00:01:40] You're often part of like a [00:01:42] core team, but perhaps there are stakeholders and sponsors and all sorts of people, third party partners, lots and lots of people, and let's say you've done a bunch of research using Survey Monkey and everyone's keen to like know what you found, the truth really is it's your ability to tell the story and just don't bombard them with numbers and don't read to them like in a rote manner.

[00:02:08] 42% of people said yes to question two. 38% of people said no to question [00:02:16] three. Because the truth here is, they have none of the real context insights and understanding. So, you need to be much more of a storyteller. And after years and years of learning, I think we've kind of cracked a very nice way for you to tell your story.

[00:02:30] So where does that start? Chad.

[00:02:32] Chad: [00:02:32] I'm going to call an audible here. I'm going to invert your framework here because you said something that fired the neurons in my brain. You said, you know, tell the story. So, I think rather than leading with the data and the numbers. Start with the recommendation of what you should do based on what you've [00:02:50] learned.

[00:02:50] And so if you can say, well, we need to test this thing in the market, you can say, well, we need to test this thing in the New York market because we had an insight from the data that there was, you know, strong scores in the Northeast. And we know that because, you know, 80% of people in the Northeast gave us a score of eight or higher.

[00:03:08] So, rather than starting with the data, you can start with the recommendation. It came from an insight from the data that came from the hard number. Does that seem like one potential strategy for sharing the information?

[00:03:20] Mike: [00:03:20] Bang on. Whether you, you know, lead strong or [00:03:24] you take them on a logical path, I think the real beauty is you can go either way. But the key thing is, be clear in what action you should take as a result of the survey. Because if you don't do that, everyone will deduce their own imagination, their own perception of what we should do, and you won't have alignment.

[00:03:46] Now, if you're working on a fairly big, ambitious early-stage product, you cannot afford for that misalignment. For example, I would be as bold [00:03:58] as using examples like this. We should only launch our MVP in the state of New York, and we shouldn't move out of New York until we get an NPS of 8.5 and above.

[00:04:13] Let me tell you the insights behind that. Like I would be really declarative in how I make my recommendations and then almost unpack that in the storytelling. Because when you do a big bunch of research work, there is so many nuances that could be [00:04:32] jumping-off points for people to go off the reservation and draw their own conclusions.

[00:04:36] If you want people to be aligned on the insights, you have to make strong recommendations and almost the very act of making a strong recommendation forces you to have good insights. And if you need good insights, you need to always go back to the data. And this is the three-part approach: have the data, have the insights, have the recommendations.

[00:05:00] I love the way you said it, like don't just open up Survey Monkey in the meeting, put it on the screen and say, [00:05:06] okay, should we scroll through? That is so perfect. That is like the worst meeting ever because someone says, stop, stop, stop there. Where did you get that data? Oh my gosh. We're off track.

[00:05:15] Chad: [00:05:15] And like you might get distracted by Survey Monkey's, awesome export features, and you're like, Ooh, I can just put this straight into PowerPoint. Again, you're missing the point of why you were doing this in the first place. Like go back to your research plan and figure out like, what you were trying to learn, and then, you know, use that data to make those strong recommendations just like you're saying.

[00:05:36] Mike: [00:05:36] I think this is a good sort of baseline. If [00:05:40] you're presenting key research findings, everyone in that room should have read and agreed with your research plan. I have witnessed people with really great ideas presenting research findings, and people have said, well, I disagree with the whole research approach.

[00:05:59] I don't understand why you did quant. You should've done qual. I don't understand why you did this. You should've done this another way.

[00:06:04] Chad: [00:06:04] Why didn't you talk to this customer instead of that one?

[00:06:07] Mike: [00:06:07] Right. But then you get in an argument about the means, not even the findings, and it basically [00:06:14] invalidates the findings because if someone says, I don't agree with the approach, so, therefore, I can't get on board with the findings, then you're sunk.

[00:06:22] Like as a product owner, you're sunk, like you're dead. Then you're also probably full of all this inspiration, excitement, and insight, and then you're like, oh, I didn't bring my defensive argument for the method of research because you're so convinced, but your stakeholders might not be.

[00:06:39] Chad: [00:06:39] This comes back to why we are doing these surveys in the first place, and it's to validate an idea, a hypothesis or [00:06:48] prototype or an MVP that you have. And so, you should be making these really strong recommendations for how you need to move that project forward and you can be confident in doing so because you have the insights from the data.

[00:07:01] Mike: [00:07:01] Absolutely right. And I think there's a real joy that you can find, looking at the data, asking them w...

010 - Results & Reports - Survey Monkey - Tools and Technology

 [00:00:00] Mike: [00:00:09] Hello and welcome to the BottomUp podcast. I'm your cohost. Mike Parsons, and as always, I'm joined by Mr. Results, Mr. Chad Owen.

[00:00:19] Chad: [00:00:19] So you spent all that time crafting the survey. You double, triple checked it. You gone and recruited your 80 plus-year-old fish owners in the UK and your results are pouring in.

[00:00:33] Mike: [00:00:33] There's a [00:00:34] deluge. You're swimming in it.

[00:00:36] Chad: [00:00:36] I see what you did there, Mike.

[00:00:37] Mike: [00:00:37] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know, I know. I've been working on that one. So, yeah, you're very, very welcome to continue listening to this podcast, but you will double up the value if you go to Survey Monkey.com and you're logged in there cause you'll understand some of the tips and tricks that we're giving or alternatively come back to this and listen a second time with your browser open.

[00:00:57] But this is all about helping you work out, what's the results here? How do I report it back? Because you got a ton of data. You might have a hundred, you might have [00:01:08] a thousand respondents, and we're now moving into the world of how on earth do we work out what's the story here and where do we extract the most value?

[00:01:17] Because, it's good if you've asked some insightful questions in your survey, but you can actually make the results great, if you know how to do one key thing, and it's a double-barrel concept. It's all about comparing and contrasting the results or the responses of users. [00:01:42] Again, you've got all these users, all of their responses are in the database.

[00:01:46] If you can compare them, and if you contrast them in the right way, this is where you can get amazing understanding of what's going on and you can do this almost forensic isolation of the key drivers of motivation, of intent of activity. What are the real pains that people experience with products and services?

[00:02:11] What are the gains they're looking for? You can often use this [00:02:16] comparing and contrasting, and it reveals magic. And Chad, this is where you and I just go OCD in Survey Monkey. Tell me, what do you love about getting into the analyze results tab of Survey Monkey?

[00:02:31] Chad: [00:02:31] Yeah so, if you're following along with us, the second to last tab when you're creating your survey is the analyzed results tab and you won't have anything here unless you've gotten some responses setting up your collectors. So be sure you've set those up beforehand. And really what Mike's getting at is don't just simply take [00:02:50] the data that you've collected in the survey and just export it and call it a day.

[00:02:55] Because what Survey Monkey allows you to do is both filter and compare the data. So, if we want to know the spending habits of dog owners versus cat owners versus fish owners, by clicking on compare in the filters area, we can compare all three of those and their spending responses, which is something that we could export into a pivot table and manually figure all that out.

[00:03:22] But Survey Monkey does all of that [00:03:24] work for you and it's really simple to set up.

[00:03:27] Mike: [00:03:27] And so the key thing that you can dig around and discover is whether there's, you know, causation between factors. If people live in rural areas, therefore they're 10 times more likely to do X, Y, and Z. So, you might have direct causation, or you might have what we call correlation between data. And whether it's either a cause or a correlation, the power of these insights is very [00:03:58] specific towards taking action.

[00:04:00] The things you should do based on the data that you've collected. We're going to deal with that in our last show on Survey Monkey, but what I really want to get comfortable with, in Survey Monkey in the analyzed results tab is you will see that when you click on filter and compare, you can do some amazing things.

[00:04:19] For example. You could say, I want to filter based on a particular aspect in my survey. I only want to see people that, and through social media, I only want to [00:04:32] see people that answered on a particular day. So, when we talk about filtering, this is your capacity to isolate something. So, let's say I asked people what their age was in my survey.

[00:04:45] Then I might want to filter out any results of 18 to 24-year olds. Or inversely, I might only want to see a snapshot of this segment of my customer base. So, what you do is you select, that question and Survey Monkey reloads the results.  only shows you the [00:05:06] answers of the entire survey from those who were in that filter criteria.

[00:05:11] Now, this is really interesting because as you're getting to know your customer, I just chose a simple demographic, but you can actually select a particular question. So, let's say we had a question. Let's keep going with the goldfish angle. Let's say you asked people about their preference on color for goldfish, and you want to identify like what's going on with all the people who love blue goldfish, so you could see only the answers from them.

[00:05:37] And this is the power of filtering. [00:05:40] You can just cut down your data and really see how things change between different segments, different personas that you may have screened into your survey. I mean, this is pretty cool stuff. Chad.

[00:05:51] Chad: [00:05:51] Yeah, and it makes it really fun and easy to highlight the most interesting results from the data. Or even tailored to the audience in which you're sharing it. So if you're the global director of marketing and you're going on tour, you don't really want to bring up your middle East and European and Australian consumer numbers when you're in the US so you can just filter out all the others and only focus [00:06:14] on US respondents.

[00:06:15] It can be as simple as that. Or you could say, I only want US-based, 25 to 34 greater than $100,000 of income, what device do they use? Android, iOS, or none.

[00:06:27] Mike: [00:06:27] So good, but it doesn't just stop at the filtering. Okay, so in the analyzed results tab, you'll see next to filter, right beside that is the compare filter, and this takes things next level because side by side, let's use the age question again. I'm going to choose the question, [00:06:48] which was what is your age?

[00:06:49] I’m going to compare 18 to 24 25 to 34 and 35 to 44 and then I hit activate. And then what happens is the entire results of my survey, are shown in three parts, every single question right next to each other, there's a chart for each of the age categories that I selected.

[00:07:12] I'm actually looking at an old survey we did hundreds of people filled it out, and I can see that 25 to 34-year olds on question three had a [00:07:22] wildly different response then the other two segments. Again, same thing here on the next question. What I notice here on the fifth question is that 18 22 to 24 we're way less likely than 35 to 40 fours on a particular question.

[00:07:38] This is gold because you can see all the variations and permutations in your customers, and this enables you to go, oh my gosh, I think our core audience is 25 to 34s. Or we know that the user behavior of those [00:07:56] 25 to 34 has a...

009 - Collectors - Survey Monkey - Tools and Technology

 [00:00:00]Mike: [00:00:08] Hello and welcome to the BottomUp podcast. I'm your cohost, Mike Parsons, and as always, I'm joined by the survey guru himself, Mr. Chad Owen.

[00:00:18] Chad: [00:00:18] Now, if you remember from last episode, I said that we're going to reveal my favorite feature of Survey Monkey here. So what do you think that a feature is, Mike?

[00:00:28] Mike: [00:00:28] I have [00:00:30] a feeling it might be about sending the beacon, lighting the fire and getting hundreds and thousands of people flooding into your survey and telling us what they think and what they feel.

[00:00:43] Chad: [00:00:43] Yeah. And Survey Monkey can do it for you. That's the best part. You don't need a giant email list. You don't have to buy a list or spam people. Survey Monkey does it all for you. And so, we're going to talk to you about that in today's episode on Survey Monkey's collectors.

[00:00:58] Mike: [00:00:58] Yeah. So once [00:01:00] again, if you are not able to get online and log into Survey Monkey while we're chatting, totally cool. You can listen along. You will get an extra boost if you are actually in Survey Monkey because you actually see the things that we're talking about, which will be a more powerful learning experience.

[00:01:15] If you want to double down and really learn, you can go to BottomUp.io and you can grab one of our masterclasses. We've done a whole masterclass on Survey Monkey that you can check out too. That'll take you right through, but we're just giving you some of the highlights here. [00:01:30] Let's talk about getting people to fill out your survey.

[00:01:32] Now, obviously, if you know your customers, if you have a customer base or if it's for employees or you want to survey your sports team or whatever, you can make a web link with Survey Monkey and you can send it out to those people. You can have Survey Monkey/Janessoccerteam. And when people go to that, they can fill out the survey.

[00:01:55] So when we talk about collectors. It's not only that way [00:02:00] that I just mentioned with the web link to bring people in. There's actually a lot of different ways you can get people to your survey. So you can push this directly into your mobile app. You can put it into Facebook messenger. You can even have it in an analog kiosk.

[00:02:15] Survey setups are when people come into your cafe or your retail store, you can post it to social media. You can actually, something I don't usually advise, Chad, is using the email collector where Survey Monkey [00:02:30] will email directly the people your survey. I think if you're going to do that, you actually want to use a professional mail service or if it's to a known group of people, just send it through your corporate mail.

[00:02:40] But I think we want to spend the most time talking about buying targeted responses. I think this is what is the icing on the cake, the joie de vivre for Chad Owen and when we talk Survey Monkey.

[00:02:54] Chad: [00:02:54] And one thing to not forget here is Survey Monkey tracks [00:03:00] everything, like absolutely everything. So when you get to analyzing results, you can even filter the information based on how you went and collected the information. So if you have a list of customers that you are manually, you know, sending through your CRM, the survey, and you're also buying targeted responses from the general public, you can compare those two different audiences inside of Survey Monkey.

[00:03:22] But, I don't want to gloss over this feature. That Survey Monkey will allow you to move some sliders and choose [00:03:30] some attributes of targeted survey takers and then recruit, pay them a nominal fee, and get them to take the survey for you. So without any work on your part, other than choosing some demographic and geographic information, they'll get them all of the survey takers that you will pay for.

[00:03:45]And 

[00:03:45] Mike: [00:03:45] so this is particularly relevant if you want to talk to non-customers. If you want to talk to people in different markets, let's say you've got a great product in the UK and you want to launch in Australia, you could do a quick [00:04:00] survey from the UK. Survey Monkey will recruit the people in.

[00:04:03] So if you've got a consumer product, if you want to talk to the general population in a market in a city, you can actually do so. And the beauty here is that Survey Monkey will recruit the people. And I would say, Chad, it's not perfect. But it's absolutely good enough to give you directional feedback. And what I mean by that is you will struggle a little bit to find [00:04:30] 35 to 55 medium to high-income professional executives using this tool.

[00:04:35] The reason why is because those people don't have time to fill out surveys during the day. But in general, it's a very good way to get a quick read. And I must say that when I've compared Survey Monkey's results to other real enterprise surveys, there is a definite correlation in the data. I even had time recently where the [00:05:00] US data that we surveyed on Survey Monkey was very close to the patterns and the insights that this big global brand had from surveys and feedback that they had done with their existing customers. So the risk, obviously in that situation was that we said, Hey, we've got all these insights about the American market, and then they go, well, all our surveys are giving different results. That would have [00:05:30] been really tricky to try and work that out.

[00:05:32] But the really pleasant surprise we had is the themes and the insights and recommendations, all ran closely together. And that was a really powerful moment for me when I realized like, wow, so they make you use gold because it's correlating well. So the people that they can recruit, they're doing actually a good job on recruiting real human beings to give real feedback.

[00:05:55] So it gets really interesting. I mean, it's been a really powerful tool for us, hasn't it? Chad?

[00:06:00] [00:06:00] Chad: [00:06:00] Yeah. For just a couple of hours and a couple of hundred dollars. You can get some, as you said, valid data that correlates to what you would maybe have to pay tens of thousands, if not hundreds, thousands of dollars for going, you know, to a professional research firm, or we had another client,

[00:06:18] they thought this was magic. They were like, oh my God, how did you get this information? And so quickly? we have whole teams of people doing this and here you're able to do it overnight and granted, it’s not the same kind of data, but it's certainly [00:06:30] directional and points you in the right direction when it comes to understanding, you know, customer sentiment.

[00:06:34] Mike: [00:06:34] Well, let's really break this down a bit and let's actually get into how deep you can actually get into this. So you can actually go into the Survey Monkey tool. And right now, obviously, we are in these collector’s area that we've been talking about.

[00:06:51] Chad: [00:06:51] Yeah. Collect responses and then the buy targeted responses, that's the key area.

[00:06:57] Mike: [00:06:57] Now, so here's the interesting thing [00:07:00] is you can configure this like crazy. So you load it in, you're going to get probably the following default settings, count...