B2B Inspired

Purpose First: The Brand Playbook Behind KRS with Hugh Thomas

• BlueOcean | The B2B Agency • Season 2 • Episode 18

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How do you build a purpose-led brand that resonates deeply with your niche, and still scales internationally? In this episode of B2B Inspired, we speak with Hugh Thomas, Brand Manager at Kids Ride Shotgun, a New Zealand company raising the next generation of mountain bikers across the USA, Europe and Asia.

Hugh shares how clearly defining purpose has shaped every part of their brand playbook, from product roadmap decisions to choosing distributors, and how deep customer understanding led to their hit “Dirt Hero” campaign. As Brand Manager, Hugh wears many hats, and gives insights into brand building in international markets, the importance of getting out the office to understand stories, and building a career in an industry he loves.

For more B2B insights, ideas and opportunities, head to www.blueoceanagency.co.nz

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SPEAKER_00:

Yoda and welcome back to B2B Inspired, podcast by Blue Ocean, where we unlike the ins, outs, ups and downs of all things business to business here in Altero and New Zealand. From emerging trends of thinking to the inspiring real-world stories and experiences of smart and good people from within our ecosystem, we're here to help the New Zealand B2B community to become one of the best, boldest, and brightest anywhere in the world. Now, if like me, you live and breathe all things business to business and you're looking for a place to connect, learn and be inspired, you have come to the right place. Let's join Frey Sbaven over in the studio.

SPEAKER_03:

Kids Ride Shotgun is a purpose-driven company for the next generation of mountain bikers to help families ride together and inspire future riders. Founded by in 2016 by Dan Neckland and Tom Hayward, KRS was born from a desire to spend more quality time with their children.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks, Freya. Nice to be here.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, great. So first tell me a little bit about your career. I'd like to hear a little bit about you.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I did psychology at university, and I thought that I would be a psychologist. Did a bit of mental health work, quickly found an opportunity to work in action sports, which has always been my passion from a kid. So I ended up working for Monster Energy. And I spent, I think it must have been nine years there working my way through various different marketing roles, finishing up in an athlete manager role. So I was responsible for the ski, snowboard, and mountain bike teams there across Europe, Middle East and Africa. My wife's a Kiwi. So at some point we decided it was time to come to New Zealand and finish with the party life. And I wanted to live a bit more of a healthier, healthier life. Her family are from Tononga. So we came here and I started looking for work and found my way to Dan, who had this fledgling company selling this contraption I'd never heard of before, as I didn't have kids. Met up with him and yeah, was just really enamored by lots of attributes of the brand that they were building, the quality of the content and just the opportunity that the company had, I thought. So yeah, took a role with Dan back in 2018, I think, started off doing anything that Dan and the sales manager weren't doing. There was just the three of us. So that was customer support, sales support, social media. Yeah, and it's pretty funny to think back to those times when I would answer five to ten Facebook messages in a day and think I was busy. Um and yeah, been there six years, been through various marketing roles at the company, uh now responsible for the brand. Um I have a team that sit under me, social and creative, and then I manage PR and product go to market, still wearing a lot of hats, even to this day, I guess. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

What an amazing opportunity because here in Tauronga, we really are in the um, I mean, we've got the Redwoods so close to us, we've got Summer Hill, we've got the tech park, we've just got an amazing, um amazing platform for mountain biking right here in Tauronga. And you and I definitely share a passion for mountain biking. We spend a lot of time in the forest. I'm sure that I'm sure that you do too. Definitely. Um I think we're uniquely placed in New Zealand to be able to launch a um an adventure sports brand. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um we we try and leverage that as much as possible in our brand. And I think I think the ethos of New Zealand really, really flows through the team and what we do. Sort of we we talk about resilient parenting and not being helicopter parents like a fair amount as part of our brand. So um, as you mentioned, our purpose is to raise the next generation of mountain bikers, but the reason for that is because we believe mountain biking offers kids and families like really good learning and sort of parenting ethos and yeah, just that fall over, get back up, try again, the confidence that kids get from it. So I think that's a really Kiwi way of looking at things as well. Like being from the UK myself, I really love that about being here. So that flows through a lot of what we do, um, as well as just being, yeah, really connected to nature. And I think that that resonates with audiences who know New Zealand uh from that. There they might be familiar with the Redwoods. If you're a mountain biker, that's a world-famous destination. If you're a surfer, you're familiar with Raglan. If you're a snowboarder, you're familiar with Queenstown. So yeah, we're positioned really well, I think, for the for the brand.

SPEAKER_03:

And if you take a look at any of your brand work, the Instagram, you know, really does all of that work comes through. You've got beautiful, beautiful content. Um, and it's a a real brand uh that you've managed to build in the past six years.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03:

Um so you went global pretty quickly. I mean, uh, from the start of Kids Ride Shotgun, how many years did it take you to realize that you needed to branch into North America?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, uh Dan, Dan and Andrew, who was our sales lead at the time, were just just on that mission as I joined the company. So I think they were off to Sea Otter, which is um a global trade and consumer mountain bike event in Monterey in the US. They were going there, it must have been three or so months after I started to try and find a distributor for the US. So we had New Zealand and we had Australia, and we were operating from a single direct consumer website and shipping, shipping from New Zealand, I believe. Um, maybe New Zealand, uh, maybe Australia, sorry. We had we had 3PL as well. But um, yeah, North America was was really the next target market. It's uh a huge man and biking market, it's obviously a huge population, and it's uh I wouldn't say it's an easy market, but it's an easy market transferably for the brand. Like mountain biking works, English speaking, a lot of the brands are similar. There's a lot of synergy there. So I think we we probably could have stayed focusing on the home markets a lot longer, but the opportunity there was was really big. So they went to Seoda um with a handful of product and a couple of meetings lined up and yeah, came back and said we found someone that's keen to take on this product that no one's ever heard of before. Um, and that was really the start. I think we're I'm probably gonna get this wrong, but we're plus 20 distributors globally now. Um but the US was the real unlock and it's our our biggest D2C market um today. I think it's probably our biggest market overall, but um, yeah, Germany is huge as well.

SPEAKER_03:

So do you have boots on the ground in North America and in Germany?

SPEAKER_01:

We do to varying degrees. So we we oh I don't know if this is public knowledge yet, so you might have to cut it out. But we uh we've actually just offered someone uh a sales lead role in the US, and we have previously had sales managers in the US as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, and then in Europe we do have a sales manager there. At the moment, they're based out of the UK. Um, so the distributors do do a lot of the the heavy lifting for us, and we're we're starting to build out our in-market sales team.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

So the growth trajectory is is happening. Um once you leave New Zealand, you know, you you kind of touched on that you're an unknown brand, right? You really take someone to take a bit of a punt on on you. Um, and how did how did you go through that process? How did you convince a distributor to um yeah, to stock your first product?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think it's yeah, really, really interesting story. Dan in New Zealand, when before we had any distribution, him and Tom had made this this crazy product that no one had ever heard of before. And Dan just went store to store with it, putting it on bikes, demonstrating it to people. And I think the product was so aligned to a problem that Dan was solving for himself. He was the consumer, consumer number one, um, that his passion really, really came through there. And to this day, if you can find someone at the distribution company or the retail store that has kids and mountain bikes, this is an easy pitch, probably told off for saying that. But like you get it, you know, you understand the problem, you you can look at the imagery we have, you can look at the social content, the people around the world using this, and just be like, you you just get it. You get it straight away. So now with new distributors, it's it's a lot easier. We have a hashtag on Instagram with 15,000 mentions, and it's just a feed of kids having the best time ever using these products, and it's it's so relatable and so understandable for someone that's a part of that community. Um, that the rest of the stuff is is the admin after that. I think understanding the product proposition and value um, yeah, is really simple, especially if you can get someone that is is the target consumer or has has had children, and a lot of the time we hear, oh, I wish that was around when I had kids. That's a really common comment we hear. So yeah, I think that's that's probably the the alpha in the product.

SPEAKER_03:

That's remarkable. And and I was speaking about the launch, um, or I saw a LinkedIn post of yours about the launch of your new balance bike. Um, and it was surprising that it wasn't the brand, um kind of the top-level brand that was so popular. It was the it was the lo-fi video of you panning around, like tightening the screws, almost like ASMRing, the you know, like actually tightening and putting on the on the product itself. So you've built, you've almost built this um incredible brand. And then when you put the the robustness of the product behind it and showcase that in part of your marketing, it really comes through very strongly.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, the the new seat, um yeah, it's that it's constantly surprises me as we were talking about how interested people are in the product itself. Like as a marketer, I'm like, oh, it's all about the experience, it's all about the value that this product provides to the consumer. But online, people are just fascinated by how our product works, and I guess that speaks to the novelty of it, and that although we're doing really well, we're still probably relatively unknown, like outside of our very core demographic in a lot of these markets. So uh the new seat that we just launched had had a lot of novelty in the way that it functions. It was a two-in-one product, so it converted from a seat for young kids to a seat for older kids. And yeah, we sort of looked at that and were like, oh, should it be a really flashy high production value, or should we just speak to the the novelty of the product by showing this thing converting? Um, yeah, and funny, uh when I when I wrote that LinkedIn post, I was like trying to benchmark for myself to set my expectations on how this video would do. It's the first time we showed it to anyone, and I was like, ah, 50,000 views is the minimum I want, 100,000, I'll be pretty happy. I think it's at like 6.8 million at the moment. So it just, yeah, it went crazy and it it really like drove drove the whole campaign for us. So yeah, I was lucky, uh successful. I don't know which one to pick there, but of both, I think.

SPEAKER_03:

That's a really amazing story because um, you know, as you mentioned, the distributors don't just want the product itself, do they? They actually want to believe in the product as well along alongside you. Um, so when you're speaking about it being, I mean, you've provided everything that a distributor needs in terms of brand. What do you think that B2B businesses can learn from such a strong demand creation strategy?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think it's funny. We're a multi-channel, omni-channel business. So we have our direct consumer through Shopify, we have our direct consumer-ish through marketplaces such as Amazon, and then we have our wholesale business. So we have wholesalers in each of our key territories who they are our customer, they are the person that's buying the product from us, but they're not the end consumer. Like the retailer is their customer, again, not the end consumer, and then you get then you get to the end consumer. So I think one thing I've really learned from being at Kids Ride Shotgarden is you do have to put work into your customer from a B2B perspective, but the demand is really generated by the end end customer. Like the new seat that Evo was a great example. We had given our wholesale partners a lot of the information for the product, and it was quite a long lead time. Um, but we chose to start talking about it publicly very early to drive a lot of demand. And that was really effective in that we had our wholesalers phoning us being like, we've got our retail customers calling us asking for this product, and we haven't even shown it to them yet because people are seeing seeing the hype online, walking into their local bike store and saying, Hey, I've just seen this thing, I want one. And whether the retailers knew about the product at the time, hopefully, or not, they're then turning around to the wholesaler and saying, Hey, are you someone's someone's looking to give me$600, like, but I don't have the product for them. Can you help me out? And they're in turn coming to us saying, like, hey, the demand for this thing is crazy. We want to double our order, or you've told us we can only have a thousand, we want 3,000 because scarcity was a part of the play for this product. Um, so I think the focus being on the end consumer, like whoever that is for you in a B2B business and partnership, like that end consumer drives the demand, like full stop. Like if they don't know you exist and they're not interested in your your product or your service, it's very hard for you then to go and make that sale to your customer who might be another business. Like they need they need to believe in you, they need to understand the product, but ultimately they need to feel that pull from the market that if they purchase this, it's gonna get pulled out of their warehouse. Like it's no good us selling a thousand units to our wholesaler and then no one wanting them. Like that will be the end of that transaction, and we probably won't hear from them again. So, yeah, I think focusing on on the the end consumer for demand is really important.

SPEAKER_03:

So tell me about how your really clear purpose shapes those decisions because it seems like the purpose of kids ride shotgun really fuels a lot of that. So strategically, you've you've got your positioning and your messaging, they're all just so tight and locked down. So, how do you use that to fuel the distributor relationship and that end demand? What does it look like?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so we we've always had our purpose to raise the next generation of mountain bikers, and we've had um internal only views of why that's important. Recently, we did uh we did a lot of work to build out the rest of the brand compass, so adding in the uh vision and mission to that. So we have a full stack now. I think what's been really good about that process is we despite having a really clear purpose, we would still struggle with decisions like product decisions or channel mixed decisions. Um, because you don't have that North Star to really align to. So we we definitely had circumstances where key thought leaders in the business would have varying views on how this purpose would play out in real life, which did lead to tensions. So nailing that down has has been a really good, although difficult process for us. I think now, like you said, it it really can form the basis of key decisions. So, for example, in in B2B for us, um, we have wholesale relationships and there are big box retailers around the world, the decathlons of the world, or Walmart, who probably would be a really big revenue opportunity for us. But we look at that and we think, you know, our mission is to raise the next generation of man and bikers. We want people to mountain bike with our products. And we think if we put our value product into this store, who's the consumer in this store? Is it man and bikers? Or, you know, man and biking is a wealthy sport, that is what it is. You need a good amount of money for a good bike. Um, and these stores are value oriented, that's their proposition. So, yeah, that, for example, we we think about if if being stocked there does serve our purpose or not. And if it doesn't, we really question whether we do it. Are we chasing revenue or are we being true to our purpose? And there's times where you may choose to break that for other reasons, and it's not as simple as that, but that that might be a sales decision. Uh, on the product front, we've discussed um which products to make or how to position them, and that again is really guided by our purpose. Um, we want kids to have amazing experiences mountain biking so that they're passionate about it, so they grow up loving mountain biking and continue to do it for their lives because we believe it offers them such amazing things. Um, so we've toyed with products that are skills-based, so would help kids to learn to cycle. And we've had to look back at our purpose and be like, that's not what it's about for us. It's not about raising people who are good at mountain biking, it's about getting people excited and stoked on mountain biking. So, in product decisions, it's been really useful too. Um, and there's probably a ton of other areas where it's helped guide us, but yeah, I think being really clear, having the uncomfortable conversations about the lack of clarity if you have lack of clarity in your business about your purpose, um, is worthwhile. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Because you've even got a book, haven't you? Is it called Shred Till Bed?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A B C book that Dan wrote. So he's an author now, which is awesome.

SPEAKER_03:

That's so cool. Yeah, I can't wait to buy it for my nephew. Yeah, definitely. Definitely stoked on that. Um, but that seems, you know, like you say, it might seem like um a tough sell to write a book for kids. But if you've got that true vision and that north star, then actually becomes pretty easy.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, exactly. And that that bookends sort of the our product roadmap. So we we have the book that people tend to buy at a young age, or it's a really great gifting product. So there's a lot, there's a lot of other good reasons for this product, but ultimately it's there to uh make mountain biking relatable for very young kids. So they're fun animals riding bikes and they've got mountain bike terminology built in. It's a little bit Pixar and how it's like designed for kids but kind of fun for adults too. Like I love that about that product, but yeah, it's designed to get kids excited and like initiated into mountain biking as a culture. So again, like really clear purpose fit for why we made that. Yeah, it's cool.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, because it's hard, I think, in your product roadmap as well, as you mentioned, to make decisions about what's what's next. You know, like you've got the balance bike, which is you know doing phenomenally well as well. Um, what's next?

SPEAKER_01:

How do you keep expanding a product range that is yeah, very topical question for our office at the moment. So we um we had this this product roadmap that we are looking to complete next year. So we have a product that'll be coming out that's a backpack that allows you to put the balance bike in. So when you have your kid riding on the front of the bike, it's a really nerdy product talk now. Um, you can take them to their favorite spot to ride their bike, or you can go into the forest, or you don't have to use your car to transport a balance bike. So otherwise your kids either riding on the shotgun seat up front or they're riding their balance bike and you're really limited in what you can do then. So this product is the last sort of unlock in our in our journey to have a suite of products that gives parents everything they need to raise a mini-mounter biker. That's the marketing spiel. Um, so now we're looking at what what is next after that, and whether we have to expand our age, so we're zero to five as a category that we want to own. Like, do we want to step into pedal bikes and go larger than that? There aren't a huge number of key products that consumer research and talking to our customers has has flagged. So now we're looking at other Stoke products, as we call them, like the book that align to the purpose, but are AOV generating, so help with customer lifetime value. Um, are there uh partnerships we can do with other brands? That's something we're discussing at the moment. So we looked at helmets as another key first product that people buy. Um, we looked at that and we're like, oh, we can't do this better than the brands that are already doing this. It doesn't make sense. So we're looking to partner with a brand and do a collaboration. So there's there's plenty of avenues for us to bulk out our range. Um, but I think the the major question will be whether we decide to expand beyond five years or or stay in. And that that again is a focus question for me. Like we I don't believe we're very saturated in our markets, so there's a lot of work we can put into growing what we already have. Depending on your product size, product can be a distraction. Uh it takes a lot of time and energy for a marketing team to launch a product. So, yeah, constant conversation in our office is product or customer acquisition. Like, which are we going for? So, yeah, really fun topic. And I don't have a good answer for you.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I think that that uh topic is very relatable to a lot of businesses at the moment. Where do you expand? Where do you where do you move? I mean, you've got the world at your feet. Kids Right Shotgun really seems to just have a value proposition that is that is, like you say, relatable across across borders from Australia, North America, Europe. Um yeah, where could be next?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh we so we we're we have had distributor in Scandinavia before, and because of certain EU legislation that fell through, which we've that's some work we've done on to put legislation in place to make our products not safer, I guess, but um appear safer to consumers because they conform with existing regulation. Um so Scandinavia is a big one for us. Um, South America is really untouched. So we have a Central America Mexican distributor, we have a Chilean distributor, but we're not in Argentina or Brazil. We do very little in Asia, we're not in China or Japan. And there are places you really wouldn't expect. We have people ordering for Reunion Island from our website. So mountain biking really is a global sport. And there's certain countries which are more well known for it than others, like Germany and the UK are huge and they're great markets for us, North America. But yeah, you'd be you'd be surprised. It, like you said, really, really is a global proposition. And market expansion is another one on the checklist of how do we grow? You know, it could be not product and not customer acquisition, but let's let's just open new markets. And that's how we chose to grow in the early days by rapidly expanding new markets and letting the the product awareness sort of do its job. Um, that video sorry, a video prior to the the new product one, we had we had one that got to like 18 million views and it's just fitting the product to a seat. But a huge proportion of those views were from South America that we don't serve. We don't serve it D2C and we don't serve it B2B. Um so the demand for the product is out there, but it's just which which channel do you take, which which path do you take to to grow? Um, what's the path of least resistance? What's got the most opportunity? Yeah, it's yeah, great problem to have. We're very lucky.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, very exciting. Um has NZT helped you at all on that journey?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, tons, tons. We've had a lot of support from NZT. Um yeah, gotta give a shout to Todd, who's our account manager. He's he's been awesome. And then we use their in-market beachheads, I believe they call them.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, to get sort of market-relevant data and learnings from those guys. Um, so yeah, tons of support. It's been yeah, really awesome. We're we benefit from the IGF grants um and a bunch of stuff like that. So yeah, I'm sure we wouldn't be where we are without those guys.

SPEAKER_03:

That's interesting. There's a lot of support out there, isn't there, in the New Zealand business community.

SPEAKER_01:

It's amazing.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it has been phenomenal, even for a small, um, uh seemingly small town in Tauron. I think we I think we do extremely well. We've got some um incredibly large export companies, award-winning export companies, um, based here in Tauronga as well. Um so yeah, I'm just really proud of our business community.

SPEAKER_01:

Definitely, yeah. And I've had, I'm I'm fairly new to the community, but I've had a lot of support from from people like Carl, who you know, and um Jill, who does has worked with him previously as well. Those guys have always been open, open to help, and people are yeah, super friendly and willing to get involved and just want to see local businesses succeed. So yeah, the knowledge that's out there from people is is amazing, and people are so generous with it. So yeah, it's wicked.

SPEAKER_03:

What advice would you give uh a brand manager in a position like yourself, just starting in a B2B company and they want to reach more, reach more people? Um maybe let's say in maybe a bit more of a boring industry.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we we have it very easy. My my key my key takeaway is to really know know your consumer. Um, I think people probably don't do enough of this, and I probably don't do enough of this. But if you have a a niche, a focused group, you're not trying to be everything to everyone, like really understanding your consumer is is absolutely vital. Like whether you're going to their office and talking to them face to face, or you're on phone calls, or you're surveying, or you're using post-purchase data, like however you're getting that information to understand your customers' wants and pain points and what their motivations are for wanting your product, like whatever that might be. Like for us, it's you know, I want to go riding with my kid. Like that actually isn't it. Like when I talk to customers and I ask them why and to tell me stories, it's about confidence and resilience and like passing on their passion and seeing their kids do well in life. It's so much deeper than that, you know, and that feeds your marketing and it it feeds everything that you do. So, yeah, my advice would just be talk to your customers, like get close to them, understand them, be the voice in your company for the customer.

SPEAKER_03:

I I saw the phenomenal campaign that you launched around resilience. It was uh it was on Instagram and and social media, and it was um people get uh get um parents to send in the photos and videos of children who were maybe not succeeding at life, you know, they're not like you know, they're not doing jumps and they're not, they're falling over and they're getting back up and back onto their bike and and getting on with it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, exactly. And you you get that kind of information from talking to people about what what the real motivations behind your product use are, and then you can put that to use in your marketing, and then you're really talking to the deep down desires of your customers, you know, and you'll be you'll be more efficient, you'll be more effective. Yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, so I was gonna ask, where did that idea come from? You know, did that come from a group, kind of focus group that you had? Did it come from a customer idea? Did it come from, yeah, how did you how did you take that concept of resilience and then turn it into such a phenomenal campaign?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I good question. That was a while ago. I think, I think I'd just finished a bunch of consumer research where I've been I've been speaking to parents, like on the phone. Um, I can't exactly remember why, but I had I had this this need for a for an answer to a certain question. And when I when I asked people to tell me stories, we just had training actually about how to how to interview people, so it was fresh in my mind. And I was asking people to tell me stories about when they'd been riding with their kid, you know, and I had this had this guy tell me a story about going to a bike park with his kid on the balance bike, which was the product that we were trying to position at the time. And he was really nervous for his kid, and his kid was like, Oh, I want to hit this jump, I want to do this thing. And um, you know, he had to put his big boy pants on as a parent and let his kid try the thing, and his kid failed and fell over and hurt themselves a little bit, but quickly got over it and got back up and did it again. And that that moment when his kid did it for the second time, he had this like parental realization that this is what it was all about, and he could see his kid growing in confidence and the the stoke that came from that. So I think like consumer research really drove that insight that resilience was like a an important part of why parents were mountain biking with their kids, regardless of whether it was kids ride shotgun or not. Um, so yeah, and then we implemented that into um into the dirt hero campaign, asking people to send us like their their videos of their kids being dirt heroes, and that often meant um falling over. Like one one of the guys that um won a bike from us, his his kid was just repeatedly trying to to ride this hill um and falling over again and again and again, just getting up, getting up, getting up, trying it. And then the moment he did it was so so phenomenal to see in kids, you know, it's so relatable. Like I don't even have like children myself, but like you can't not see that and feel emotion and feel passion towards what you're watching. Um, so yeah, that that kind of insight is a real real unlock, I think.

SPEAKER_03:

So talk to your customers is the talk to your customers, yeah. And ask them stories. I think that that that question is sometimes missing in our in our communications and uh you know we tend to stick to the what challenges did you experience? You know, how did our product um serve a solution? You know, you kind of get stuck in those.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, people are phenomenally bad at telling you what they're feeling. Like I think there's uh I can't remember the quote, but people don't know what they feel and they won't tell you what they're thinking, and um you have to go a little deeper than that, and yeah, having. The training on how to interview people is really important for the tactics to get that out. If you ask them what their challenges are, they're gonna tell you what's at the front of their mind or tell you what they want to hear. But if you ask them a story about what was hard at their day at work today or what was hard using our software or you know, that kind of thing and get stories out of people, you'll they might still might not know what they've told you, but you'll be able to pick that out. You'll be able to infer from what they've said what they're really struggling with. Um so yeah, interview techniques, yeah, good one.

SPEAKER_03:

Big one, yeah, yeah. Um, what other resources have you leaned on just for our audience? If they, you know, is there any books that you really appreciate, any podcasts that you listen to, or at the moment are you just in the weeds of getting things done?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh I'm I'm I probably spend at least a couple of hours a week in either in the gym or driving, sort of trying to trying to upskill. I'm not a trained marketer, like I was psychologist by by training. Um massive fan of the Operators podcast, which is um a group they have two. There's a group of CEOs and then a group of marketing lead CMOs who just discussed their daily operation. It's such a like great look behind the curtain of a company. Some really nerdy stuff in there, but some broader stuff. Um I love that one. And then I'm just finishing Contagious by Jonah Berger. Um, and that's all about virality and shareability. Um, amazing book. Like, I've learned so, so much from that. So I think if there's someone in the in the business that's um in your social team or or you're leaning on that concept of shareability to get your message spread, like that's a great book. Um, other than that, anything by Seth Godin is golden. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Of course, of course, yes, of course. Um great, thank you so much, Hugh. That was a great conversation. I learned so much, and I love hearing the story behind Kids Right Shotgun. They're dear to my heart, love mountain biking. Awesome. They're um you're such a part of Todoma Business Community, and yeah, I'm stoked to see you hopefully at some next local awards. Yeah, yeah. Or out on the trails. Yeah, or out on the trails, exactly. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00:

That's that. Thanks for listening to We Do B2B by Blue Ocean. Now, Brace for CTAs. If you want to join and grow the community, make sure to subscribe wherever your eyes and ears absorb information. Don't forget to switch on notifications so you know when the latest episodes drop. And for more B2B goodness, be sure to follow Blue Ocean, the B2B agency, on LinkedIn. Now look, you know how this next piece works. The more reviews we get, the faster this thing grows. So please do for us what you'd hope your customers would do for you. Leave a review and share your thoughts. Let's stay connected and keep the B2B marketing conversation going.

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Dale Koerner

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