Discussing Innovation and New Product Development with Neil Wilkins

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Transcript:

my guest today on the new wikins podcast is the founder of Apollo 21 Danny Nathan

now Danny's developed a habit of helping companies create new products and services and launch and scale new

Ventures um he's been called a product person a ux guy designer strategist marketer and a creative wow jack of all

trades expert in everything I think as you're gonna find out um as the founder

well we will see but as founder of Apollo 21 this is a company which Danny describes as sitting at the intersection

of being a business consultancy a product design studio and a venture

studio so we're going to be talking I'm hoping here about how to innovate how to

leverage Venture driven growth and for me really importantly because I hear

this a lot as a big big challenge particularly in startups or new organizations new businesses how to

remove barriers to scale and so we're going to go to all of these topics I hope and probably more in this

conversation so welcome to the podcast Danny thank you I'm excited to be here pardon me for interrupting your uh intro

there not at all I mean it was a big intro because there's a lot to share I mean wow I mean which one of those

things would you say kind of feels more like Danny Nathan than the others Ah gez

that's a really tough one to pin down uh you know Apollo 21 as you pointed out sits at a at a weird kind of unique

intersection point amongst uh a lot of different areas that have made up some part of my career and so in a lot of

ways Apollo 21 is sort of the culmination of God it makes me feel a little but a you know 20 plus year

career path that is zigzagged across uh everything from advertising to

technology to entrepreneurship and kind of all the little spots that connect the dots in

between so it really is everything that goes into maybe having just the the

embryo of an idea and then making that a reality and then then going through I

guess all of those kind of challenges the ups and downs the trials and tribulations and those pain points of

growing it because it's all very well taking something to Market that might be a great Innovation but then it's doing

something with it isn't it I mean do do you have a starting point typically when you sort of encounter maybe a new client

or somebody you're supporting is is there a typical moment where they might be struggling or looking for somebody

like you um folks come to us for a couple of different reasons uh the one

that that we hear often especially from more established companies is folks come to us because they have some sort of

problem often something that they have been trying to tackle for an extended period of time and either haven't had

luck with or just haven't figured out sort of the right combination of things to try to to crack it open um and they

know that technology sort of aligns to whatever that problem is and so so to

make that concrete we have worked with a huge variety of clients and verticals that range anywhere from uh remote

guarding and security to restaurants to financial services to sports and music and fitness and all sorts of things in

between and the the one thing that we have seen over and over again is folks coming to us because they know that

there's something that needs to change and they haven't figured out exactly what it is that needs to change and then

once they do figure that out how to build usually some sort of technology to

support that new idea new Venture new product line new Revenue stream Etc and

so um you know as an example we had a financial services client that came to us and said we're drowning an email can

you help and that that was the problem statement was literally we get too many emails and we can't keep up and so um

regardless of what the question or the problem statement is our process usually begins with some sort of discovery

period and we use that period to deeply understand the business from which that

problem or opportunity stems so that we can then dig in and figure out how to help come up with a potential solution

and so that problem could be anything from something that the company itself has articulated to uh we think there's

an opportunity to probe our customers to figure out what problem areas crop up in their lives that align to our business

so that we can build something new to to help them solve that problem and maintain the relevance of our company

product organization at the same time uh Etc and so when we get into that Discovery period usually that consists

of stakeholder interviews customer interviews often we will mix in like a design Sprint or some sort of solutions

oriented um Workshop where we really go through the process of okay you've told

us you're drowning an email well that's a problem it's pretty clearly in this case a symptomatic problem

let's figure out what's causing the problem of too many emails and the answer in that particular case was well

our entire process's email when you need this email that person when you need that email somebody else and so of

course when your entire process happens via email you're going to drown an email and so uh we ended up building for them

an entirely new uh piece of operational software through which we had figured

out what the top three processes were within their organization that were taking up the most time and causing the most problems and then we built that

software to align directly to those particular processes for that client so

that they had something a dashboard that they could sit down in front of every day and go okay I need to execute this

process I'm going to click a button here I'm going to enter all the information and then of course we built in all of the requisite Automation and everything

that was smart about well if this person entered this and it's for this client then it needs to go to this person for

approval and then this person for Action etc etc and so that's often the type of

output of our overall projects is something that solves a core problem

either for the company as as I've described in this case or for the customer which is then the entry point

into whatever that new Revenue line line might look like and that opportunity for scale that perhaps went untapped prior

to our involvement so I I love this idea of um the discovery phase I think as just you

know as a marketer through and through over many decades that is just such a a wonderful phrase to hear because that's

the real way of doing this rather than firefighting trying to just kind of

figure it out without actually asking or doing your background research and and then you know because discover is all

about evidence-based isn't it this is the the beauty of it is you've got something tangible to work with rather

than just guess work right and you know we are massive Advocates of the customer development process um to the point

where we try to involve customers in everything that we do at least where it's relevant and you know if we're

building software for internal usage then the customers are often the internal stakeholders who will be

sitting in front of it but once you get sort of over that mental hump the process actually becomes very similar

and so the idea of talking to people to understand what they need and where you can benefit them and so on and so forth

uh I feel like it's something that we talk a lot about in general as uh you know in the business world but when push

comes to shove it's one of those things that doesn't happen as often as it should and so um we make a very clear

point of you know getting in touch with customers understanding what their needs and their pain points are and we have

built our process around that customer development angle so that we understand

exactly what's going on so that we know what we're solving it at a given

point so I'm curious I I want to ask you the question directly Danny on this one

because I I've been a big believer certainly through my career when I had what I might term a proper job um that

actually worked for some big corporates big brand names um rather than the kind of you know wonderful life that I have

right now um and back in the day it was my philosophy that if I could jump around between a range of different

verticals at some point I would be more valuable as a consultant as a a business

Mentor as a marketer who you know you could kind of commission for me to come in do you do you find the fact you work

across many different verticals as a as a as a benefit when you're actually Consulting would you be bringing in

something you see in one sector into say where use the financial services angle

there to bring kind of almost fresh new thinking and energy into it because I find a lot of businesses tend to be

quite stuck well that's not from our industry we don't do it like that in our industry almost putting themselves on a

pedestal do do you think that's the wrong way of doing it do you see that too uh I think it's a natural human reaction

to thinking about something that we're deeply ingrained in and so I understand exactly how folks get to the point of no

no no we need to do it this way this is what works for our business but to answer your question I think that there

is value for us in having the experience across a variety of verticals for exactly the point that you've made is

you know we can I there is value in being uh as I like to put it the dumbest

person in the room and so when it comes to a client bringing us in to work on their business I I walk in personally

knowing that I am the dumbest person in the room when it comes to their business and you know we don't purport to come in

to be experts in the world of restaurants or financial services Etc and yes there is an argument to be made

that somebody who is highly specialized in that area who can walk into the room and understand all of the Nuance all of

the regulation etc etc they might have a leg up in terms of the discreet needs of

a for example Financial Services organization however they then begin to

fall into exactly the Trap that you're describing which is well no it has to be done this way because it's always been

done this way and the benefit of Us coming in and being you know the dumbest person in the room is a it allows us to

ask a lot of questions and you will hear us asking a ton of questions through our Discovery process because it is the way

that we become uh knowledgeable enough about a new area of business to actually

you know be dangerous and add value there but at the same time I do enjoy being the dumbest guy in the room

because it means that I can walk in and go oh well hello Mr Financial Services client you know when we had a restaurant

client we did this perhaps we should think about it and yes they might shoot it down they might think it's dumb they

might go well that doesn't really match our use case but it doesn't mean that there isn't value there and so by being

the you know the person who doesn't have the experience in that space it frees me

up to go well I don't know that we can't do this so I'm going to throw it on the table and and let's try it and see what

happens or at least talk about it and it gives us the opportunity to have the conversation around well why has it

always been done this way and just because it's always been done this way does that mean that we have to keep doing it that way or could we solve your

problem in some much simpler way that you've always just ignored because you didn't think it fit and so

I love the kind of mentality or the opportunity that comes along with that blank slate of I don't know I'm going to

come in and bring the technology expertise the execution expertise the go to market expertise the the expertise

that our team has learned over years upon years of building and launching new

products and Innovative new ideas for companies without having to worry about the you can't do that

moment is is that where Innovation starts then is is that kind of that

freedom almost that naivity because I don't think it's necessarily about being the dumbest person I think it's about

being maybe the con consciously naive let's put a real positive spin on it and iine inness dest is my term

so well actually I'm just being kind it maybe but I'm looking in the mirror here and thinking yeah Neil you've been in

that situation many many times I think we all have yeah yeah and if we call it consciously naive let's just call it

that so we're actually making a positive sort of affirmation this is a good thing to be is is that naivity is that is that

where Innovation comes from because I guess what you're trying to solve here is problems in a different way using the

processes using the systems and obviously then eventually the technology to solve those problems but it requires

a different kind of level of thinking doesn't it it definitely requires a

different style of thinking and and a different level of thinking to approach something with that uh that kind of

Greenfield mentality and so yes I like the uh the niev kind of spin on it and

yes I think that a lot of innovation starts there you know when we talk Innovation we talk a lot about

experimenting at the fringes and trying weird random things that haven't been thought of before and to your point the

more you can approach a an interesting problem with a unique perspective that

perhaps ignores some of the ingrained sort of solution uh basis that most

folks would look at it with that frees you up for that moment of innovation and

I I think that in my mind you can't talk innovation without talking about failure at the same time and so part of what

that niev brings to the situation is it allows you to be free to fail because

you're conscientiously trying things that uh come from a a unique place they

come from a different type of uh experimentation mindset and so I think

that bringing that conscious niit to the table and utilizing that as a means to

go okay let's just ignore everything that we already know for a moment and pretend that we don't know anything

except for what the problem is and perhaps who the customer base is how can we layer those two things together to

learn something new that might work and yeah it will often open the door for huh I never thought about it from that

perspective or I never thought to ask my customers that particular question and all of a sudden you've heard somebody

tell tell you something that uh puts an entirely new spin on the problem that you've been trying to solve in the best

possible way and it you know those are what I call the face pal moments of duh why didn't I think about approaching it

that way why didn't I think to ask that question now I have an entirely new track to go and explore and potentially

fail at but in failing you will also be learning and exploring and you know it's a it's a

um it's a growth process you know every failure leads to something new to try

gives you something new to experiment with and you know there will inevitably be more failures on the road but at the

same time you will be learning and drisking and figuring out exactly what your clients customers stakeholders Etc

need so that you can focus on building that so let's say I'm sat in a business

and I've got some challenges we've kind of semi identified what those challenges are and I'm thinking I need to get Danny

in because you Danny sounds like the kind of who's going to be able to sort of solve all of this and he's going to be able to kind of figure out where we

go next where we're going to take this and he's now talking about Innovation and that sounds exciting I'm totally up

for this but culturally I know when I take this back into my business there's

going to be resistance one we don't do things like that two we haven't got time to be Innovative because we've got

business to do three we'll be able to figure this out doing it the old ways

are there any sort of typical kind of arguments back or almost kind of

fuel if you like for somebody who's facing those challenges because they might want to be a sponsor of something

that you'd bring into the business but there's going to be culturally resistance where do they begin yeah we

see a lot of cultural resistance to uh the type of change that then allows a

company to Foster Innovation and to build that culture that is focused on Innovation and the the reality of the

difficulty around Innovation is that as businesses grow as they find product

Market fit they figure out what works they figure out what drives revenues for them ultimately the next step in that

game becomes optimizing for efficiency around the things that work and so once

you hit that kind of moment of product Market fit and you go okay we know what's working let's start adding fuel to the fire and double down on that what

you end up doing is focusing on specific spefic metrics for example um things

like uh quarterly returns and the growth of Revenue quarter over quarter for

example or the conservation of how you're spending Capital how efficiently

can we make the business operate so that we're ringing every dollar out of every penny that goes in for example and the

problem with that mentality in spite of it being overarchingly a good thing for a business to kind of learn how to hum

along and be become more efficient is that the metrics that support that efficiency are at direct odds with the

metrics that would support Innovation and that would help Foster Innovation within an organization and so if you

look at it if as a company your metrics and your goals are all focused on

driving down costs and time necessary and things like that while you're

driving revenues up you're going to limit the potential and the availability of funds to do the weird experience

ments at the fringes that I talked about a moment ago and so the biggest kind of push back that we end up hearing is well

how quickly are we going to see a return on investment on this Innovation work that you're encouraging for example and

the reality is that the investment in Innovation is a longer term perspective

on building the longevity for your company by creating things that

ultimately will help grow new Revenue lines that will help experiment with new business model models but that are going

to take time to create returns which is why for example the phrase Venture driven growth has become so popular over

the last few years as companies start to think about Venture driven growth what you're effectively hearing them say is

oh we're starting to consider how we might layer the mentality of a venture capital firm into our business directly

and so if you look at the way that VCS operate they're making tens or hundreds

of investments in what are effectively experiments and their world and experiment looks a lot like an early

stage startup but that doesn't have to be any different for a corporate organization um and the problem is that

you have to make lots of Investments because lots of those Investments are going to fail but over time you'll find

the one or two that don't fail that return so much uh at a far higher

percent of return than any of the failed experiments that they will make up for

all of your failures and probably then return a ton of capital on top of it the

problem is that it takes to five 10 years to get to that point as it does

for a venture capital firm to find Returns on their funds and so that dichotomy right there of how do we build

a company that is focused on efficiency while also building around the idea of venture driven growth that will allow us

to experiment and take big swings that will have big returns over time is where

that um that kind of cultural dichotomy comes into play around how do we justify

this what metrics are we using to determine that the use of capital that goes into Innovation is being well spent

and so often what we will do when we start working with new clients that are approaching that type of conundrum is

help them understand exactly what I've just explained in far greater detail because obviously we have a little bit more time to to dive into it um but then

also helping them understand what the changes are within their organization operationally I.E what metrics do you

need to be considering that don't align to the efficiency driven metrics that you're looking at today as well as

culturally how do you give people permission to experiment to fail and to

try things that solve unique problems ideally that they're discovering by talking to customers without feeling

like their job is at risk because if you're building a company that is based on efficiency giving people the

opportunity to spend money money on experimentation and customer development and things like that is a difficult

thing to swallow and so one of the ways that we equip internal stakeholders to

bring that back to the Sea suite for example is uh by running a two-day what

we call Accelerated Innovation lab and so it is a two-day workshop where we

will sit down with you know whoever the key stakeholders are that want to be involved in that process and we will

evaluate where the problems are in their operations and metrics today we will

help them figure out what the evaluation model looks like for the internal ideas

that might drive Innovation we help them structure a venture driven growth

approach within their organization so what does that look like are we building out an actual Venture fund are we

building out an internal Venture studio for example that is focused on doing the actual building what are the results of

those efforts do the resulting companies that we're exploring together get spun in or spun out of the parent company and

what are the qualifications for either of those paths so we help equip that person or that team with all of the

information that they need so that they understand how they can come back and make a convincing argument for the CFO

for example who's going no I need to know exactly where every penny is going and we're going to budget a year out etc

etc that was a very long-winded answer to your question sorry it's great it's no it's is so so valuable because I

think for for me and I'm sure others might have picked up on this I mean you know there are so many things to unpick

and there and as you say we don't have the time to do a level of detail that you would do directly with a uh W with a

client but I think for me one of the key things and I'd like to just double check and cross check this with you on behalf

of obviously the audience is this whole idea of process mapping because it feels

that what you're doing here is your you're kind of mapping almost a journey

um directionally strategically where we're going to be taking this but at the same time almost sort of unchecking

boxes where there's kind of things that aren't adding value it feels as though this is a real rationalizing everything

that we've got it's very holistic approach isn't it it's not just dealing with the one individual problem this is

looking very holistically across the business really it is and it the purpose

of this Innovation lab that I'm describing is exactly that is really the holistic view of

what do we need to be thinking about to establish a culture of innovation and to

Foster that entrepreneurial spirit that presumably got that company to where they are every company at some point

begins as that disruptive startup that was doing weird things differently and

eventually we just sort of uh I don't know we get so focused on

efficiency I was trying to come up with a fun word like efficien siiz or whatever but anyway uh we you know we

get so focused on efficiency that we can't figure out how to balance the world of efficiency with the world of

experimentation and so that's really what we're trying to bring to the table and it depends on what exactly the

problem is that we're trying to tackle so there's a very different conversation to be had if somebody comes to us with a clearly operational problem like we're

drowning an email or we need a new technology stack to support our remote guarding uh business for example verse

uh the open question of we talk about Innovation we know that Innovation is important but we don't feel like the

practices that we have in place today are supporting the type of innovation

that we want to help make a reality and that's where this kind of innovation lab comes into play is a little bit more on

the um Blue Sky side of the fence of what does innovation mean for our company how might we approach it that

aligns to our business and the idea here is not to come in and be as disruptive as possible the idea is really to figure

out how do we align the goals of innovation with the things that are working today within your organization

so that we can help you come up with a balanced approach that doesn't just take everything and throw out the baby with

the bath water but rather you know nods to or uh facilitates integration into

the workflows that are working today while kind of opening them up at the edges to go okay this is what we're

doing today it's efficient and it works for us but if we put a team in place

over here or if we allowed for this metric to be a little bit looser or whatever the case may be then we can

really come up with unique and interesting ways to expand on what the offering is and you know timing is one

of those things that comes up why do this today our business is working we're already growing with what we're doing today why should we bother and to me if

you are building a business today that is focused on finding the utmost efficiency in the thing that you have

already found that works congratulations you've built a working business and it is already dying that is the unfortunate

reality that the moment you stop figuring out what tomorrow will bring

and what doors you can open tomorrow to continue unblocking opportunities for

scale as you are continuing to grow that business then you've already become the

incumbent that you disrupted in the first place and so that balance is

intensely important really for the longevity of your company if you want your company to last beyond 10 15 20

years for example you have to figure out how to maintain interesting experimental things

that are going to continue to keep you relevant and continue delivering on solutions to problems for your

customers that is so key isn't it to to any kind of business that is let's use the word sustainable kind of going

forward so to be able to sustain either a position or to grow from a solid base Baseline you have to be committing to

this do do you see a pattern with when you kind of um exit from a particular

project for example do do you see it irrespective of the vertical do you see a pattern as to how much on an ongoing

basis a business feels it's going to commit its resources to Innovation so

I'm thinking budget I'm thinking people I'm thinking time is is there a typical amount I'd love to get your take on that

I I just make sure I'm understanding the question clearly Neil are you asking if there's a typical kind of amount of time that it takes to get to the point where

there's that commitment or if they're committing a certain amount of money help me understand a little bit more clearly ongoing so so beyond kind of

Apollo 21's come in we've got this great strategy we know what we're doing where we're going but Danny's also saying that

we've got to make sure that this isn't just a one-time activity we're going to do this for good so we're probably going

to get you back next year to check how we're progressing but actually how much time between now and then or into the

future and how much budget should we kind of be putting aside to this because it feels like this is a a proper

strategic commitment it is without question and I think that there are I

think there are opportunities to scale up and scale down these efforts

based on sort of the Comfort level of the organization but I agree completely in order to make this really a tangible

business changing effort it is going to require some commitment to change and um

I'm going to sort of back into answering your question here but we so one of our core operating principles at Apollo 21

is that we expect our clients to outgrow us and it's one of the things in my mind that makes us relatively unique a lot of

companies that are service oriented be that on the technology side or the Consulting side uh you know look at

their clients's cash cows or opport you know cash opportunities and they go okay we're going to hold on to this thing as

tightly as we can for as long as we can so that we can ring every penny out of it and again that sort of comes back to the idea of efficiency even for a

business of the the type that we run for example and we take a different approach to it which is again we expect our

clients to outgrow us because we know that to your point if we come in and we help companies understand the

opportunity for change if we help them establish what their Venture driven growth efforts might look like and how

to run those efforts in the future they're going to get to a point where they go okay it's time for us to go and

operationalize this in Ally you know we'll check back with you we'll call you in for the checkup in a year whatever it

is but we know that that point is coming and rather than fighting it and dealing

with clients who are you know frustrated because we don't want to let go we would rather work with our clients to get them

to the point where they're comfortable enough to tell us that they don't need us anymore or they don't need us for a

few months whatever the case may be and that process looks different for every client but it could be anything from you

know very teachable moments in a very clear road map that we then leave them with to go and execute and you know we

can come back in on a monthly or quarterly basis whatever it is for that core check-in um or it could look like

us literally building the team necessary to build the new product that we have

come up with together and then fully transitioning that team over to our client so we've worked with companies

that have no technology team whatsoever in place and by the time we're done working with them they now have a

technology team who has built their product that we've come up with together and now knows how to operationalize that

and they can then carry it forward and so generally what I find is that you

know we'll go through often a sequence for us will look something like um an accelerated Innovation lab which is a

two-day effort that then provides key stakeholders with the uh information and The Leverage they need to go and get

internal buy off on involving us that then leads to a discovery period which is usually about a month long that often

will then uh result in a road map of okay we see the opportunity to build

these three things here's what the first one looks like and here's what the MVP of that thing looks like we're going to spend two three months building that and

the reason that we work that way is that it then builds in checkpoints along the way where we go okay you know two-day

Innovation lab for example you don't like what you've heard no problem you know you don't have to work with this anymore we get through Discovery and

you've gotten more exposure to us and we've started building that trust and hopefully uh demonstrating our value

within that organization but again we're usually four maybe six weeks into a

discovery process and there's another offramp there if you don't like it if you feel like you've gotten enough from

it that you know how to run with it that's great you can go and do that then we get into a build period and we

purposely keep those build periods uh as bite-sized as possible so that at every

Point somebody has the opportunity to say to us either a this isn't working for us and this is why and we have a

chance to course correct or B this is working for us so well that we feel like we now know how to run with it uh we're

going to scale back with Apollo 21 but I don't know perhaps we're going to keep the team that you guys have helped build

for us and you know we're going to check in in eight weeks for example and just sort of see how that's going and so I

guess I'm sort of both backing into and not per you know not fully answering the

question here but um it's because it changes every time you know every company is different and how much help

and how much preparation they need to get to that point of we're ready to try it by ourselves is different and so we

try to be cognizant of that and try to build that relationship in a way where at whatever Point makes sense for your

organization we're there to help and you know you won't get push back from us in terms of oh but we have so much left to

do you know we were going to throw another scope of work at you for however much money um you know obviously we love

working with our clients and we want to make sure that there's an opportunity for Success there but we don't try to

just sort of drag them along for as long as possible but there feels like there's a word here which is a really key one

which is collaboration it feels like you're advocating kind of obviously collaboration with you guys but also

internal collaboration because those kinds of decisions those kinds of improvements that kind of dialogue

because you're going to be opening up so many conversations you know over over lunch breaks over coffee not just in the

more formal meetings this is going to stimulate a real new energy isn't it but is it the energy of collaboration is

that what this is all about uh it is that's actually a really good way to put it and I mentioned that uh you know the

expectation that our clients will grow this is one of our core operating principles uh we have three in total the second one is Relentless collaboration

so it is massively important and I agree it is not just limited to us

collaborating with our customers but rather helping them to Foster that kind of mentality internally and so I think

it is helping Foster collaboration within our client team it is helping

Foster that culture of innovation and helping them understand what that actually means and it's it's really

Bridging the Gap between talking about Innovation or talking about doing Innovation and really truly

understanding what it means to create your business in a way that supports that and then the last sort of I don't

know catchphrase that I always throw in there mentally is um fostering an entrepreneurial spirit and so to me it

is it's the idea that if you're going to imbue your employees with the

expectation and ability to be Innovative that then comes along with the sort of

entrepreneurial Spirit of I'm going to try new things I know that when I'm

coming up with an idea not only do I have the freedom to but there is now actually an expectation that I'm going

to experiment that I'm going to do the diligence and the research to prove that this idea is valid and valuable and

viable for our customers and our business and that then leads to

collaboration inherently because if I'm going to ensure that uh you know I'm GNA

make this up that my idea for a new marketing ch Channel aligns to our

business for example I'm going to have to talk to other folks on the marketing team I'm probably going to have to talk

to folks who are managing revenue for example to understand what the impacts

and budgets are for a new marketing channel I probably want to talk to my product team to understand whether this

marketing channel makes sense to them in terms of the product that we're trying to sell etc etc and so if you

can encourage people to think in terms terms of innovation and in terms of an

entrepreneurial mindset you're almost forcing them to be collaborative because they have to be in

order to make it work and in my experience it's great because it happens it happens organically because we're

trying to accomplish this and because I work in this department and I'm trying to get to here I now know that I need to

go talk to somebody in that department and that department and that department in order to make it happen and so the

thing that we want to have happen or at least I'm making the assumption that every company wants their employees to be collaborative um has to happen in

order to achieve the things that you have set out for them to achieve and so it's a it's a beautiful byproduct of an

entrepreneurial spirit and a culture of innovation it is isn't it and I think for me this is beautifully

summarizing what I'm kind of positioning in a lot of the work that I'm doing this new marketing mix so if I just Define

the old marketing mix says product Place price promotion it's pretty ugly in this

kind of this day and age whereas the new one how long it's been since I ran through the P's I know those pe's that

we all get so obsessed with as marketers but the new one which I think is actually sitting I'd love to test this

with you Danny actually which for me is kind of sitting beautifully in the in the model that you're describing is

product people process profit so it is all about creation co-creation of value

with all stakeholders optimization of process and creating kind of returnable

profit that you can then reinvest in the whole ecosystem right I've used a lot of cliches and words there but did do I

kind of make sense in your world by describing it like that because this feels like it's all about value isn't it

yes ultimately it is yes I think that I think that your new P's are far better than the old P's um I I almost wish they

didn't start with p's so that we could move away from the P's of we thought we had to you know fair

enough little bit of familiarity there you know all right new pe's instead of the old ones no I think you're absolutely right all of this comes down

to Value creation and it's value creation on both sides which is important to keep in mind because if

you're not creating value for your customers then you're not going to have customers and if you're not creating value for your business then you're not

gonna have a business and so yes you need to be mindful of the value exchange on both sides and I agree the idea of

product profit process and forgive me I've lost the fourth PR which is process

no I got that one product profit process people thank you thank you

comperative yeah exactly you know the whole thing that we were just talking about yeah exactly I have to keep reminding myself I see it in my mind's

eye and I think I have to can I go around that wheel and work it out every time yeah exactly exactly um no I think

that that's a far better collection of the PS of marketing that align much more clearly to the technology driven

entrepreneurially minded future that that we're describing here we've managed to talk for nearly 40

minutes here Danny without mentioning the letters a and I we've we've actually

achieved something quite profound here I think because most people are just talking AI right now and that's all they seem to be obsessing with yeah I'm more

than happy conversation how have we managed to do that and and does it apply to you or can you do it without AI

because this feels much more of a a human thing rather than something that necessarily is AI driven yeah all right

you've opened uh you've opened the Pandora's box of AI now um I yes I think

that you can do it without AI uh we've been doing this for years or at least up until you know 18 months two years ago

largely without AI do I think that AI is going to change everything yes without

question I think that we're headed for that future I think that we're in a weird uh inflection zone right now where

there is no question that we are learning what the capabilities of AI are and how they might impact our business

but in reality we are still too early for that impact to be tangible across

most businesses you know AI today is relatively limited to large corporations

that have the funds to go out and hire a team to experiment and build bespoke AI

products that are very specific to their business and we have conversations about this with our clients fairly often

around we need AI everybody's talking AI you know you can't spit without hitting AI these days um but we often tell our

customers that you're going to need Ai and it's good that you're paying attention to it but you actually don't

need it yet and where I find that a lot of our customers get confused is um a

lot of folks bucket automation for example into the world of AI and the reality is that we can get really really

far down some incredibly valuable paths for both businesses and customers

based solely on Automation and so this is what I was describing with the financial services platform earlier for example at the time that we built it and

this was um right at the beginning of the AI boom that we were focused on it and so you know we didn't come out of

the gate going okay we're building something new it's got to have ai in it instead we focused very heavily on Smart

carefully considered automation so as I said if a new processor request is

kicked off by this person in the organization a they only have access to

these specific clients because those are their accounts and therefore whatever they're doing automatically has to be

associated with one of those accounts we already know who the you know senior account managers are for those accounts

and so just by looking at those few factors we can already limit it to okay if Bob over here puts in a new request

that's related to XYZ Corp it needs to be approved by John Jane or Jimmy over

here because they're the only three senior account execs on XYZ corpse business and so just by taking the time

to think about okay when Bob creates something new send it to one of those three people we can streamline and

automate a ton of the workflows that people associate needing AI for without

ever getting into building a model or ingesting a ton of data for example or whatever it is now all of that being

said while we're doing all of that automation work that is relatively straightforward to accomplish

today yes we should absolutely be evaluating what data we have at our disposal how that data might be

leveraged in an AI capacity in the future what do we want from that data what would we like AI to teach us about

that data that is uh impossible or difficult or timec consuming to come up

with today and so we can lay the groundwork now while creating something

that provides value for the organization or their customers while also planning for what their beautiful AI future might

look like in a way that we know we're ready to execute on that AI future based

on clean streamlined data that has been prepped for that particular use case

that we know what types of output and questions we're looking for so that we can train a model appropriately to

deliver all of that based on the proprietary data and that's kind of our

approach to it right now is what can we do without it today so that we can prepare the foundations for doing

something with it in the future and that seems to be pretty fitting of where we're seeing most of our clients sit

outside of just trying out the off-the-shelf tools that are available like gemini or chat GPT or Claude or

whatever and the other big warning that we slap on those is just bear in mind whatever data goes in is no longer yours

and you have no idea where it's going to show up so don't export a spreadsheet of your company's financials and dump it

into chat GPT unless you're prepared those financials to become something out

of your control such wise advice Danny this has

been a great conversation I think you know for everybody listening here no matter whether they're facing challenges

or if the sun is shining and they just want to take this opportunity to scale because now is the time they want to put

the uh foot on the gas and really accelerate their business I think you know you've you've really outlined here

that there are some guiding principles there are some great kind of Frameworks but it is about working with an

organization like Apollo 21 I'm going to give you a shout out here because it is about working with you know guys like

you who will be really thoughtful about the process you're not going to be shoehorning them into something that

you've tried with a hundred other clients and you're just going to make them fit this is a real kind of

thoughtful process isn't it and I you know I really kind of thank you for you know staying true to that because I

think we need this in business we as marketers need it but I think business owners and you know anybody who's

looking to scale a you know a small maybe even side hustle and they're looking to kind of make this into

something is these kind of guiding principles that are so so important and you know the business needs more Apollo

21s I think every sector needs more Apollo 21s so thank you so much for your time and energy and the work that you're

doing Danny really really appreciate it oh thank you thank you for the kind words and for the great conversation

it's been a pleasure

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