Champagne Strategy

Sean Ellis, the OG who coined the term 'growth hacking' explains the key determinants to growth for both SaaS and traditional businesses. In under one hour, you'll find out the macro version of why this approach to growing any business is so effective. I really don't need to write any more here. If you are a founder, a business owner, a growth professional, product manager or marketer and you're interested in the non-BS side of the growth discipline - you need to press play. 

Over and out. 

Why does Rich Mironov disagree with Elon Musk regarding his statements about product? Is PLG a real thing or just another cult-buzzword? What are the secrets behind creating successful products which sell themselves? 

Rich Mironov is one of the OG's of the product strategy and management world. He started working for tech companies before tech was cool. Before Product Management was even a term. And his experience over the years has spanned decades. He worked on AI in the 70s. He was arguably the first to sell web.sql software and has one of the original blogs of the internet. 

So do great products sell themselves? How do you craft products to give them the best chance of commercial success.  

Essential listing if you are a founder, you work in product, work in marketing, work in growth or part of agile software teams. 

What is creative strategy? What is the secret behind award-winning agency, Thinkerbell and their ability to consistently push out creative that works. How do you keep a creative machine humming throughout the ups and downs of business?

We speak with the two most senior MD's from Thinkerbell, Katie Dally and Paul Swann to find out. 

Katie has over 18 years of international experience across Sydney, London and Cape Town. Currently she's the GM of Thinkerbell, Sydney which has seen 67% headcount growth in under 12 months, and just recently landed the lucrative Lion account. Past gigs have included a senior role at CHE Proximity which retained IAG, Velocity, Virgin and the Prospa account. She also formerly ran VMLY&R Sydney as Managing Partner, where her client list included Netflix, Colgate Palmolive and McDonald’s to name a few

Paul left university in 1999 and started a consultancy advising businesses on how to tackle the ‘millennium bug’ before he pivoted into web design. A boutique media agency role Soho in London followed where his love affair with advertising began and multinational exposure naturally followed. He moved to Australia landing a lead role with Naked Communications which quickly became a highly awarded and sought-after agency. In 2012 he became a Creative Partner at The Works, an agency which had success with accounts such as Optus and Rexona - quickly solidifying its role as one of the country's largest independent agencies. Paul joined Thinkerbell as Executive Creative 'Tinker' of the recently launched Sydney office. 

This episode delves into the determinants of effective creative, but on the flipside, explores the reasons why so many brands push out bland content - overlooking the effectiveness multiplier that could be leveraged with better creative.  

What comes out in the wash is a glimpse into the new dynamic that traditional advertising agencies are faced with. Do clients need separate agencies for creative, media and publicity? Or can this all be handled by one agency? Do clients need an agency at all? What are the determinants of successful creative work?

If you work at an agency or work client-side with them, this is a must-listen episode. 

If you are wondering how Vegemite started a war with Marmite during The Ashes series, or the story behind how the 'You're not you when you're hungry' Snickers campaign came about, then this is a must-listen.  

If you want to know how modern cross-functional team structures can work in a modern marketing context, then this is an unmissable episode. 

If you want to know how to leverage creativity to your advantage in your job role...listen to this episode. 

Did we mention this is an unmissable episode?

Is the best path to growth dependent on retaining the customers you already have, or by acquiring new ones? This is a major bane of contention depending on who you talk to, but today we're exploring Anita's side of the argument which is all about churn reduction strategy (a.k.a retention).

But in doing so, we talk about so much more, including the pivotal role the sales process plays into this whole debate, as well as customer success, support, brand and marketing. 

If you are bleeding customers, this is a must-listen. 

If your sales team are hitting quota, and your figures look strong, but customer's don't renew, and CLV is poor, this is a must-listen. 

What macro factors play into your figures and how much can you bend those mathematical ratios?

There's not much more to say. 

Start listening and improve your knowledge of how growth actually works. 

Oh and Earl Grey tea is tasty. 

But I can't help but think how many people have churned from this podcast now...food for thought

One of the main reasons companies don't grow and stagnate is because they fail to execute on their planning phase. 

There's many reasons why. This is an area we'll cover exclusively in this episode. 

It’s always nice when you stumble across people in strategy who have interesting backgrounds. The more diverse and strange the background, the better the strategist in my book. These people tend to be a wealth of wisdom and have a certain perspective that only comes off the back of diversity of thought which in turn stems from a diversity of life experience. Karim’s career so far is strong and broad with a solid foundation of both book and street smarts. It started with a double masters in computer science and energy engineering, before he moved into product strategy and management and consulting roles. His CV is impressive to say the least.

But then there’s the global context. To say he’s multicultural is an understatement. He’s lived and worked in 7 different countries which beats my measly 4.

And this global curiosity must have helped land a role at the business travel division of Expedia group. Here he led global projects to help create a customer obsession culture in order to drive business growth. Managing a 15m budget and bringing together over 7 different departments to make them more customer centric was no easy feat.

He’s just finished a product role at Safety Culture at the start of 2021, which is an Australian unicorn startup.

Currently, he’s in a senior leadership role at Cascade - a strategy software platform that’s focused on bridging the gap between planning and execution for multi-business unit companies.

And this is why we had to talk Connecting these two phases is one of the most challenging things a company will ever do. This whole episode is on just this topic. But by listening you will pick up so much more value.

You’ll learn why companies don’t follow through and what are the 3 main things that prevents them.

You’ll find out which things need to be present for strategy to work really well.

You'll find out why we’re both dismissive of bridging in external consultants into a grey-haired boardroom to do annual strategy days.

You'll learn which question you should ask yourself before starting any task which will instantly make you more strategic.

Find out the main things which prevent innovation and all the true hallmarks of innovative companies.

Learn why company culture is so pivotal and underestimated as a successful strategy driver

Karim isn't a boring person. So even if strategy isn't your thing, have a listen and I'm sure you'll pick up quite a few handy tips no matter what job you do. 

Ciao for now. 

Part 2 of 2. A continuation of the interview with Jennifer Harrison. Listen to Part 1 first. 

Part 1 of 2. How can companies like Tesla spend $0 on paid advertising and still sell billions of dollars of product? Well...they are very good at getting publicity and using owned media channels to their advantage. While this isn't possible for all brands, today we're talking to Jennifer Harrison to learn more about the power of PR and earned media strategy. Too much of what growth or marketing people are exposed to concerns, advertising or owned media.  But the world of PR is often a powerful, subtle, underrated growth-driver that works silently in the background. It's the key to a lot of brands' growth and many people can underestimate how persuasive it can be when building a brand that influences people to buy.

Jennifer, has not come from a journalist or PR background originally which makes her all the more interesting. She has a bachelor in economics, a bachelor of laws, and a masters of applied finance. This strong foundation of multi-disciplinary knowledge feeds into her PR prowess. While she mostly represents clients in the Property Tech and Financial tech niche. In this episode we talk very broadly, and get to bust all the myths in the industry. So if you want to find out the raw truth behind the things which actually raise your brand's reputation, then you need to listen to this episode. 

So what is PR? Is it a press release? And what are the secrets behind getting stories published? 

What is the demand and supply issue that many outside the industry are not aware of? 

Should you gate your content with a form? What should you include in your press kit? 

Which is better, an in-house PR team, a freelancer or agency? And what are the pros and cons of each?

All of these questions and more will be covered in detail.

Get your PR and publicity chops and press play now. 

Everyone client-side wants to know which channels or mediums they should be investing in. Because they want the ones which get the most ‘results’ for the lowest cost. Some will trust their vendor or agency to answer this question. But, if they want to know the real answer in a nutshell...well it depends. It depends on many factors. Factors which this episode will reveal - in detail.

Jonathan Rolley from Direct Response Media, specializes in a branch of scientific media planning which focuses on customer outcomes (the response). In this interview we’ll uncover the mistakes many brands make (even the biggest ones) and you’ll learn how to choose more wisely when allocating your media budget.

Along the way, we also uncover all the dirty, dark secrets of the media world which plague the typical agency client relationship. As well as challenge many myths and widely-held beliefs within the industry.

How does human bias play a large role in which channels brands invest in?

How do media agency planners hide higher-profit margin media inventory into your plan?

How does increasing brand awareness not result in increased sales revenue?

What step in the media planning process do most brands skip?

What perverse incentives drive agencies to push certain media over others?

This is a juicy interview and I ask many questions many are not game to answer. To his credit, Jonathan answers them all.

Take the red media pill if you dare and listen to this episode.

Everyone thinks the easiest way to grow a company is advertising or marketing campaigns. But, forging partnerships and creating distribution networks can be an exponentially more powerful revenue-driver. Why pay to temporarily leverage another entity's audience when you can do it permanently and share both the risk and the upside? 

Partnerships are the less-talked-about growth driver that every business, small and large can do better. Find out why companies like Nike, Canva, Disney, Pizza Hut, Booktopia and more...use partnership technology stacks to create a customer acquisition machine that provides win-win outcomes for everyone involved.

At it’s core - business is about the exchange of value between parties - It’s about the movement of money from one entity to another in return for perceptions of goods and services.

But, in the modern era of shiny digital toys, obsessions with content and posting on social media, this fundamental growth driver can easily be overlooked.

Running partnership programs used to be a messy, complex process. Not anymore. 

Today, we’re talking to Peter Bray and Ayaan Mohumad from unicorn tech company, Impact. They specialize in scalable partnership technology.

Their stories about how Canva, Nike, Disney and other major brands have been using their tech strategically as a marketing channel are fascinating.

How do you go about forging these relationships effectively?

How do you sell the business case of partnerships up the chain?

How can you turn a bad partnership program into a growth machines?

All of these questions and more answered in this episode.

Over the years, I've noticed the potential for teams and companies to grow, is often hampered by none other than a lack of operational hygiene. 

Most business coaches and mentors will simply give advice that largely boils down to perspective, mental fortitude and operational discipline. 

Often our perspective when working inside a business and industry can become warped.  We're inside the institution. We're part of the organization's culture. We're indoctrinated by norms and specific standard processes. But, where are the checks and balances? Who is asking whether that's the right way to do things? Are these the right jobs to do? Is there a better way to do it? 

Marketers will, by default, obsess over designing creative content and forget about the need to pierce human attention. Engineers love to write beautiful code and solve difficult problems, but can easily become disconnected from the customer. Meanwhile, product managers can obsess over feature releases, but fail to check if anyone would use them in the first place.

We can all get so caught up in our production bubble that we forget to reflect on why we are doing that work in the first place. Sometimes it takes someone external or above that ecosystem to set things straight. Sometimes that person is a really good COO. 

While some can view operations as a boring topic. I disagree. It's one of the most overlooked, least-talked about, underrated and powerful growth drivers in organizations, large and small. Sales, marketing, product, and growth included. 

So in this episode, we’re talking to Yaniv Bernstein a 10 year veteran software engineer from Google, former CTO/COO of Airtasker, a startup in Australia valued at half a billon dollars. More importantly, he’s worked at both large and small companies and now consults with clients all around the world.

This episode is essential listening for CEO’s or founders at tech companies. It’s essential listing for chief operations officers or other people in a managerial or operations role. But even if you are a small business owner or founder, you'll pick up some very valuable tips. 

We discuss what an operations manager does. How to set up measurement systems which avoid being gamed by employees. How to view operations as more than just an intranet full of standard operating procedures.  And how to keep teams motivated, on task and collaborating effectively, in order to get what needs to be done - done.

Why does poker have to do with good management?

Why is it so essential to understand Goodhearts law?

How do you get the most from your employees without making them quit?

All of these questions and more are answered by downloading or pressing play.