The Secrets Behind Building a Powerful Brand with Naomi Simson

Naomi Simson is a corporate marketer and the founder of RedBalloon, an online powerhouse – the largest experience network in Australia and New Zealand. Think Amazon or Etsy or Alibaba but not just for physical things, rather for experiences. She was also a judge on the Australian version of Shark Tank and is the author of Live What You Love: When Passion And Purpose Change Your Life. 

Her insights offer a masterclass in branding, strategy, and business building. She left a highly successful corporate career, because she saw an opportunity that few saw at the time. Driven by a desire to create a business with purpose, she transformed a simple idea—gifting experiences—into one of Australia’s most recognized online brands. Starting with limited resources and a big vision, she pioneered the experience economy, building trust in a nascent internet age and reshaping the online retail sector in the region.  

In this episode, Naomi shares the keys to building powerful brands, staying in sync with customers, and managing culture so you can keep your company relevant in an ever-evolving market. 

In this episode, we cover: 

• How we should really be thinking about branding, as in what IS a brand? Her answer may surprise you, and it could change how you think about your brand architecture. It certainly did for me and for every business builder I’ve spoken about it since 
• Why one of the most important metrics that will determine the speed at which you scale is … customer acquisition cost 
• How brand equity is the key to reducing that customer acquisition cost 
• Why it’s important to understand what “job” your customers are “renting” your product or service to get done and specifically tips you can follow to make sure you are constantly in touch with what they want  

Let’s dive in with Naomi Simson. 

Thanks for listening! This episode is brought to you by Kaihan Krippendorff of Outthinker Networks, Verne Harnish of Scaling Up, and the team at Growth Institute.

Transcript

Welcome to the Strategy at Scale podcast brought to you by Scaling Up, Outthinker, and Growth Institute. Our mission is to cut through a sea of contradictory business advice and get to what actually works. We interview entrepreneurs and business builders who have successfully scaled companies across industries to extract proven high-impact strategies to scale the value of whatever you are building in this world. Let's dive into this week's episode.  

Naomi Simpson is a corporate marketer and the founder of Red Balloon, an online powerhouse, the largest experience network in Australia and New Zealand. Think Amazon or Etsy or Alibaba, but not for physical things, but rather for experiences. 
 
She was also selected to be a judge on Australia's version of Shark Tank, and is the author of Live What You Love: When Passion and Purpose Change Your Life. Her insights offer really a masterclass in branding, strategy, and business building. She left a highly successful corporate career because she saw an opportunity that few saw at the time. Driven by a desire to create a business with purpose, she transformed a simple idea – gifting experiences to other people – into 1 of Australia's most recognized online brands. Starting with limited resources and a big vision, she pioneered the experience economy, building trust in a nascent Internet age and reshaping the online retail sector in the region. 
 
In this episode, Naomi shares the keys to building powerful brands, staying in sync with customers, and managing culture so you can keep your company relevant in an ever evolving market. In this episode, we cover how we should really be thinking about branding as in, what is a brand? And her answer may surprise you, and it could change how you think about your brand architecture entirely. I know it did for me and for every business builder I have spoken about it since; why 1 of the most important metrics that will determine the speed at which you scale is customer acquisition cost; how brand equity is the key to reducing that customer acquisition cost; why it's important to understand what job your customers are renting your products or services to get done; and specific tips you can follow to make sure you are constantly in touch with what they want. Let's dive in with Naomi Simpson. 
 
Maybe you could just kind of outline your journey a bit. You know, you were in corporate marketing, and then you saw this opportunity. Maybe you could just start there and tell us what the story is. 
 
I always saw myself as I was going to have this big corporate career and be rushing around the city in my suit in my briefcase and that I would be the CEO of the largest corporation in Australia, you know. No shortage of ambition. But when I had kids, they're so cute. They're really cute. And I just wanted to spend a little more time with them, and I was working for a US corporate. And I didn't have control over my time at all, and I didn't have family around me. And I just thought, I am gonna be spending the next, you know, 15 or 20 years rushing, and I wanted to enjoy parenthood. So I thought I'd start my own business. And my first business when I left corporate life was a freelance marketing group. So fancy. That's me as a hard gun. No group, really. And what I found was it was either feast or famine. You know, I either had too many clients or not enough. And if I wasn't working, I wasn't earning. 
 
So it's not really a sustainable business model, and this is a long time ago. Literally, it was last century. But the biggest thing I found was I would do these fabulous marketing plans, which might have 47 action items over 3 years to build the brand, essence, and the story around a business, And working with primarily small businesses, what I found was that they just really wanted customers. Like, you know, that was really nice, but they would treat my marketing plan as a shopping list. You know? I'll do the direct mail and the brochure, and that's about it. And I thought that there must be a different model. And at the same time, 1 of my clients was from the UK, and he mentioned a business called Red Letter Days, which was a catalog and call center business. And by now, it was the turn of the century and the dot com thing was happening. 
And I said, well, I wonder if that could be an online business. I didn't know anything about it, but I do think, you know, we have so much stuff, and this is, you know, like, 20 years ago. It's even worse now. And also that it's always hard to find people great gifts. So I was like, oh, this could really work because Australia is a very big country with a very small population. 
 
So being a catalog and call center business was never gonna work in Australia, like catalogs have never worked in Australia. Because we don't have a big enough population. And so I set about starting it. But the real essence was these small business experience suppliers, they had no online presence back in the day. None. 
 
And, really, what I did was create a brand for a whole industry. And instead of somebody having to buy an expensive marketing plan and execute it for their own, part, I flipped the model, and then they would I was just taking a clip of the ticket. And so they were only buying customers effectively with effectively an agency fee, and everybody was very happy. All they had to do was be the best of experiences, and I would be the best marketer, and that would be a marriage made in heaven. And we were really specific about the game that we were playing, which was just about gifts. 
 
It was about gifting. Experience gifts. And and so, kind of, that's where it started. And, you know, this whole thing of having a lifestyle living with my kids. Well, they brought themselves up very nicely. 
 
They’re adults now and contributing members of society. So I didn't do such a bad job. But, you know, I think as a founder, we underestimate the level of energy that it's gonna take for a very long time. 
 
Sure. Sure. So maybe if you, like, double click into that. How did you recognize that experiences was an industry that could be branded or that it was an untapped opportunity? 
 
1 was a was fortuitous because somebody introduced me to their industry. I had been in travel. I've worked for an airline, and I worked in frequency and loyalty and all of that sort of stuff. And so I understood that people went to destinations to do things and for experiences. But the fundamental thing is that we wanna spend more time with people and to enable that, but you need a brand quality. 
 
Like, you if you just go on the Internet and say, oh, I'm gonna go jetboarding, you don't know if it's any good. And we've evolved more now because there's you know, star ratings and so forth. But even reviews, we're a little bit skeptic. But if you know that there's a brand that has reviewed it that puts its name behind it, you've got recourse, you've got a guarantee, all of that sort of stuff, it gives confidence. 
 
And back in the early days, part of it was just getting people to trust the Internet. That was a big deal. Like, people were spending a lot of money online for the first time ever. So that was, I didn't realize I was such a child boy as well. Had no idea. 
 
No idea. Like, marketplaces people think about them all the time. This is the first 1. First 1, and Australia had to build everything from scratch. 
 
Were you very tech savvy and so it was natural for you, or did you say that this was...? 
 
Well, I’d worked at both IBM and Apple. Even though I was a marketer, it didn't scare me. And so I think, you know, as a founder, you just stay curious and ask a lot of questions. And I'm not saying that I haven't had the wool pulled over my eyes and people rip me off or, you know, I've gone down rabbit holes and things haven't gone how they wanted to, but you just have to stay curious. And it didn't scare me. 
 
And I think that that I'm like, I can learn that. I can do that. I can understand that. It'll be you know, I have this innate sense of it's possible. 
 
So just talk to me a little bit about brand. There's so many different ways of thinking about brands. There's the brand promise. There's the brand pyramid of the functional and the emotional and the social. But, like, how do you think an entrepreneur should think about brands? 
 
Brand is the way people feel. It's the way people feel when they see anything that's associated with your organization, any touchpoint. And brand is held in the heart of customer. I always refer to customer as singular. It's never customers. 
 
It's always singular. Everyone's different. And, you know, too often, we begin to look at, you know, that as a conglomerate when they all act as individuals. We're being hired for different jobs. So you can't speak to them kind of as 1 conglomerate. 
 
But brand is held in the heart of the customer. It's relationships that build brands. I had no money when I started this business. I spent all the money on the platform. And so the only way to build brands was through partnership and through people trusting us, and that's where the kind of the hierarchy of purpose, BHAG, values came in. 
 
So people used to say to me, oh, aren't you worried that people are just gonna copy your business? And I said, they can't copy who we are. They can't copy what we stand for, and people did copy us. And how do I know they copied this? Because they plagiarized the website. 
 
How do I know they plagiarized the website? Because they copied the typos as well. And so it's pretty obvious. So, you know, they copy our terms and conditions, and then all the titles with it, and then they get a letter and go cease and desist. And all of them have gone. 
 
Like, none of them have stayed. So, you know, it is a long road being an entrepreneur. So that sense of why do we do what we do is really, really important, and it always comes back to human interaction. It always comes back to I made an impact today. I made a difference to another human being. 
 
It's always what we, how we contributed, not what it was about us. Yeah. 
 
And so how did you ensure because you weren't delivering the experiences, how did you make sure that the experiences that were being delivered were consistent with your brand? 
 
In the first, it was pretty hard, but every single person who goes on experience gets a how was it for you? And, of course, I used to read every single 1 because when you don't have many customers, it's very easy. And you know, I thought I started my business for a lifestyle. That was not the purpose. That's how we do business. 
 
We're a flexible employer. But the why came from reading those stories of what people were saying to us. And there's a man who said for his father's 84th birthday gave him a flight on the DC 3. And he picked him up and he drove him the 3 hours to the airport. He said his father was excited like a little boy going to a birthday party. 
 
And he said when he flew with him, he was truly embarrassed. When his father tried to pick up the flight attendants. And then on the way home, that's what dad’s do. It's gross. And he said on on the way home, his father shared with him that he'd heard the first DC3 flight on the wireless, and he'd always always wanted to be on 1. 
 
He said my father is a very quiet man. I'll always remember today as 1 of the days he spoke. So when you see the impact you have on humanity, That's what drives you. That's what drives your growth. That purpose drives your innovation. 
 
It drives your strategy. It drives everything. But you have to feel it. Like, truly feel it. It is not words on a page. 
 
It is not something that, you know, just somebody comes in and slaps a few, the solution to the blah blah blah. No, this is emotional connection to humanity. That's what we do. And so seeing the impact of those small businesses, we created a platform, and the platform keeps them honest because, you know, three strikes and you’re out buddy. If you get bad reviews, you're off. And so once they realized that we were gonna deliver them, customers day in, day out and just put money in their bank account. 
 
And all they had to do was be the world's best experience supplier. We do our job. You do your job. Then it's a match made in heaven. And now because of the material size of what we do, our customers are really important to them. 
 
So they look after them. So they get exclusives and better deals and because you're from Red Balloon... We never forget that impact, and that's what drives us. And we remind people over and over again. 
 
So how do you translate those stories, those customer stories into, I guess you would have to incorporate it into your brand story or somehow communicate it. So, do you think of a brand? Like I know you talk a lot about stories. Does a brand need to have a story, and how do you craft that story? 
 
Great brands have great stories that people remember over and over, and they connect with it. And allowing, I think 1 of the most important things is to allow customers and all stakeholders to be able to see inside the business and there’s real people doing real things. And often, especially in the digital economy, everything's so faceless. So being able to look inside the business is what... People always love to come and visit us. But I haven't really... I've told you the starting story, which everybody kind of knows and gets all you know, that's great, and you're a marketer, and you branded it so well, and it's red, and it's memorable, and, you know, it's a lovely story about where the name came from, which is from that 1956 movie, the book, The Red Balloon, which was a French story, and it's, you know, a moment of happiness. 
 
But, you know, it's 1 thing to start a business. It's another thing to scale it. I was I was fortunate to, I think I met Verne when I was, like, in year 2 or 3. And I've begun to take off, and we've done about 7,000 experiences like hardly any. And then just being able to follow a program because I had no roadmap. 
 
It just gave me a roadmap, and that allowed me to scale. But after about 10 years, we'd achieved our BHAG 2 years prior. It was amazing. Everybody was so excited. And then you kinda go, well, now what? 
 
What was your BHAG if you don’t mind me asking? 
 
Our purpose was to change gifting in Australia forever. And our BHAG was to serve 10 percent of the Australian population so that we would be statistically significant, which was 2 million by 2015. And we came up with that probably in 2003. I think it was 2003 or 4 I met Verne, but maybe it was 2004. And we'd only served 7,000 experiences. So it seemed almost improbable, but it was possible. 
 
And the scoreboard’s right in the middle, and everybody would come into the office and they’d go, oh, I was 1 of those, and they'd see it clicking over and so forth. But we got there 2 years early. In 2013, everybody was really excited. And then, but then you kind of have to pick yourself up, and you kinda go, oh, well, now what? Did we change gifting in Australia forever? 
 
Yes. We're the undisputed category leader. We are a household name. People now know us everywhere. So now what? 
 
And I think the greatest challenge for any brand is to stay relevant and to... so now people think they know what we do. They they're like, oh, yeah. And this is the real challenge is to keep the energy in the challenge and what we did then and why we did it was materially important it's evolved in terms of our contribution to community. So what happened was the business just began to plateau. We're serving an experience kind of every I don't know, 
 
3 or 4 minutes or something like that. So very different from the business. You know? It was customers, lots of customers, lots of customers for these small businesses. It was just plateauing, and it was getting more expensive. 
 
And I had stepped out of the CEO role I was sitting on the board, external CEO, OPEX was going through the roof. All of a sudden, he told me we're gonna make a loss. I go, we've never made a loss. What do you mean we're making a loss? And the cost of employment went up. 
 
By 30 percent in 1 year. And I was just, what are you doing? This is ridiculous. And fortunately for me, my now business partner, David Anderson, came back from overseas he goes, Naomi, you've got such a brilliant business. 
 
I just don't understand why, you know, you're in all this pain. I go, I don't know. And he goes, but let's let's flip it again. And he said, there's many businesses that get to 50 million and they can't grow anymore because the cost of acquisition of customers was going through the roof. And he said, so if we created 1 platform, We could roll up the Australian industry. 
 
We could roll up New Zealand. We could acquire all of these midsized businesses. And effectively, we've got different audiences. 1 platform serving to different audiences. So hub and spoke model. 
 
And but what that meant was we had to completely reinvent our approach. And the hardest thing for me was, I was also in business, I had separated from my husband who had half the business in 2011, and he was never gonna sell to me. And he said so. And there was no way he had the appetite for this. 
 
And he wasn't working in the business. And I've had my brain my personal kind of reputation associated with Red Balloon. And so we set about acquiring Red Balloon. 
 
Uh-huh. That's interesting. So Red Balloon Group acquires red balloon or... 
 
Big Red Group. 
 
Yeah. Big Red Group was created. 
 
So we're Big Red Group. David and I created Big Red Group, and we acquired Red Balloon as the first asset. And there was a few other things that we had inside that business. 
 
We had a recognition platform called Reddy. But, honestly, this previous CEO had launched a business called Wrapped, which was everything that we were against. And even though in the board, I objected, objected, objected. The rest of the board were like, you gotta support management if that's their growth strategy. It was a stuff business, everything we don't believe in, you know, shipping stuff from around the planet and delivering boxes, everything we don't believe in. 
 
And there's people who do it much better. Like, it's really, really hard to compete in that space. And so, you know, we we did this coup where David and I created Big Red Group. My ex husband never knew it was me. He thought it was another 1 of our buddies who was financing the whole thing. 
 
And then we went the day after Easter and let the CEO go and went through that business like a dose of salts and got rid of all of the fat and laziness and lack of focus. And I think what's also interesting is, you know, if you've only got 1 customer, they're pretty bloody precious. But people get to this and they don't realize what it's like if you have no customers. And so they take them from granted. They just go, oh, yeah. 
 
Customer shows up every few seconds. So when David and I acquired the business, we're serving experience, I don't know, every 3 minutes or something. And then we managed to get it to about 2 and a half, and then we started rolling up the Australian industry. But then we also streamlined everything, focused everything. And I think we serve an experience now every 18 seconds or it might even be 12 seconds because it goes up and down a bit depending on the seasonality. 
 
So we had a new purpose, which was to shift the way people experience life, which is far broader. We acquired Adrenaline, which is an adventure business, same product, I shouldn't say same, but it's merchandising, so 1 product management system. And then we acquired another business called Experience Oz. And I would say 9 out of 10 platforms in Australia and New Zealand, you know, if you're searching not direct with a supplier, you're coming to 1 of our platforms. 
 
We run Virgin Airlines experiences. We run all of the autos. We run... 
 
Really? 
 
Yeah. And they're all on our platform. And now what we do is even provide our platfform for our small businesses because it's really hard for them to stay up with, you know, user journeys and all of that sort of thing. So now we just provide them with a complete platform and that we market it, but then they can sell direct on their own website and we provide them with the e-commerce. 
 
 So that’s consistent with your purpose. 
 
Yeah. So we're a platform business. So there's a moment in time where you know, the wheels were falling off. I could've just stuck in gifting, but then I had somebody challenge me and said, if you thought differently, you could be really great. And we're ready now to take this business anywhere because it's a platform business. 
 
So the hardest thing with a consumer business is the cost to acquire customer and building brand. It's really, really hard. But providing platforms to people, and then you have people on the ground who have all of the relationships and personal connections, and we just provide them with the infrastructure. 
 
Okay. Got it. So they're doing the acquiring. And the delivering. Right? 
 
I gotcha. How do you think about which types of experience or which segments to focus on? Adventure... Like, you know, there probably can't be too much of an overlap. There’s probably some experience, some segments that aren't attractive, or do you debate which types of brand experiences to include in the portfolio? 
 
I'm not really involved anymore because I've realized we'd all be doing crocheting and orangami if I'm the 1 that's the head of experiences. Look, we have a massive team that works to uncover incredible experiences. And they just stay really, really close to the ground. And customers tell us, like, people are out there and they're like, oh, that should be a Red Balloon experience, have you heard of Red Balloon? 
 
And then we're getting people getting introduced. So on 1 of our team's channels, it's all just suggested experiences, and then our industry team goes out and works out and finds out. But that is our secret sauce. So, you know, there's plenty of marketplaces who scrape content or who just take feeds and so forth. But ours is all curated. Like, we just find really good stuff. 
 
And we're always seeking exclusives so that there's a real reason to buy from us because we've got stuff other people don't have. 
 
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When you do acquire a brand, what is something that your team does to increase its value? 
I mean, it sounds like you're curating. You have the platform, you're curating experiences. There's something that you're doing probably with brands as well. 
 
We're really, so this is about the value creation model, about how we're creating value from this asset because it didn't, it wasn't doing what it needed to do. The first thing is to find a clear air. And so each of our audiences and I'm gonna call them audiences rather than brands. And I'll tell you that because brand is held in the heart of customer, our job is to identify the key drivers for an audience and then speak to that so that they then feel that they are attracted to that and it does a job. So the 1 person could buy from many of our different marketplaces easily because they're different jobs. Red Balloon is about the gift, it's all about the gift. 
 
And it's about making people feel fabulous and human connection and, you know, the 5 year voucher and, you know, the curation and all of that sort of thing. Experience Oz, it's just about having the right product at the right place at the right price. That's our travel product. I'm going to the Gold Coast. 
 
I need to take the kids on some, to the movie world and to the jet boating and to the I'm just gonna organize my calendar when I'm there, and I'm gonna book it online. Whereas, Adrenaline is all about the adventure seeker who, an adventure for people means different people. For some things, it's hiking a mountain. For other people is jumping out of a plane. So it's making sure that we have that. 
 
And so that's very much something that people have aspiration to do. So when we're speaking, we speak about what the internal need. What's my internal need? My internal need is I'm busy, and I feel hassled, and I'm quite overwhelmed. And what's my external? 
 
What's my secondary problem that I need solved? I need a gift. My secondary problem might be I gotta take the kids to the Gold Coast and then book them. So when you speak to both your internal and the external problem then you're really gonna connect with with consumers, and that enables us to have different levels of conversation. So every audience has different stories. 
 
How do you say, you know, whether it is a a Shark Tank contestants or someone that you mentor, how do you advise an entrepreneur to figure out what the internal need and external need. What's the job that they are made for? Because entrepreneurs can often, you know, think it's 1 thing, but it's something else, or they wanna serve everyone. So they wanna serve lots of jobs. 
 
You know, 1 thing I used to hate on Shark Tank was when people come in and say the problem on solving is... because that doesn't answer the questions that I have. I have questions like on what authority can you speak to me on this subject? Like, why are you an authority? Secondly is, how many customers are there?  
How how can you find customers cost effectively? So it comes back to that old the, you know, the Harvard study, the Milkshake study, which is what is the job you're being hired to do. So it always came back to that. And if they could speak to me about job you're being hired to do because hired implies that people will pay for it. And so that used to frustrate me so much. 
 
Oh, the problem is that people need more, you know, organic diapers. I'm like, do they? I don't know. So that used to drive me spare. The only way to understand the job you're being hired to do is to listen. 
 
You think you know... So right now, Red Balloon has a massive business customer base. Right? Because we sell experiences to businesses. What is the job we're being hired to do by most of those businesses? They've all got this sustainability overlay. 
 
Now this was never around 20 years ago. Right? But they're kinda like, oh, gosh. We gotta do the right thing by the planet. We gotta do right thing by this. 
 
But, you know, so then we come along and we go, right. This is the job that Red Balloon is being hired to do. Number 1, less hassle, less logistics. So if somebody is thinking about buying hampers or merch, the logistics and the cost of transport and how much of that is gonna end up in landfill, not good for the planet. No logistics delivered straight away. 
 
So I'm speaking to the job that we're being hunted. Secondly, how do I support support local, regional, and rural communities in Australia? And small businesses because small business is under so much pressure here, and I'm sure it's the same elsewhere in the world. You get a small business customer, you give a small business to a customer, and it impacts the whole of that economy. So 1 of the things that we found out during the COVID was that for every hundred dollars that's spent in a rural community, more than a thousand dollars is spent with other businesses there. 
 
It's an economic driver, and we were able to demonstrate back to government, so they started investing in experience vouchers to get people out and about spending money. So that is 1 of the ways that we had economic impact. So that speaks to a corporate requirement. Thirdly, how do I get connection to country with our First Nations businesses. It's really, really hard. 
 
So we worked for years to establish our relationship with Welcome to Country, which is the social enterprise, which has more than 40 First Nation owns businesses. Big business can't access those. It it's really hard, so we enable that. Thirdly is you know, the amount of anxiousness and stress and depression is on the rise. It just is everywhere. 
 
We all need something to look forward to. So when I start talking about the job that we're being hired to do, these businesses can just tick a box, and it's a really easy kind of like, oh my god. I don't have to hustle. I've done the right thing. Whilst there's no commitment to carbon credits or anything like that, they had done the right thing on a number of different levels, and that's what's driving the growth for us in Red Balloon for Business. 
 
You can hear I’m still as passionate all thse years later. Where are they gonna retire me? Put me out to pasture. God.  
 
 
Speaker 0: No. There's a really important point though. 
 
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of businesses, we think that they're B2B  or they're B2B, but you sort of have a B2B2C, and the jobs to be done will be different from the b and the c. So when you identify what that job to be done is, what are some of the adjustments that you make in order to communicate and deliver the job to be done. I hear, for example, Welcome to Country. 
 

The business is the social enterprise, but it's allowing people to connect to country, to connect to our first nations, and to understand our overall heritage on it's really, really important to us. 
 
Yes. Gotcha. So there's a brand, there's a product. What else do you have to put in place in order to be able to deliver on that job? Do you have to have different people? Do you have to have different processes? Do you have to have different channels? 
 
I think the importance of starting the businesses does not have unique processes for everything.You know being able to deliver on those 4 things all came from listening. I was sitting with 1 of the this hot air balloon supply from the Hunter Valley. And we're having a cup of and this is in 2019. 
 
And he said, oh, I didn't know we're gonna grow out together. I'm gonna go, yeah. And he said, you know, that first year named me that we listed with Red Balloon, I had 1 balloon and 900 passengers. He said I now have 23 balloons and 19000 passengers every year. 
 
And so and he said for every 1 of those passengers, when they come to the Hunter Valley, they stay in a hotel. They'll go to a winery. They'll go to a restaurant. So until I sat with him, it never occurred to me. So that's how you find out. 
 
The job you're being hired to do. And if I hadn't have had that conversation and subsequent conversations, then when it came time to talk about economic recovery with the government, and could we help? We were able to demonstrate the amount of employment that we create in regional and rural Australia, employment, and that's the sort of thing that government is interested in. But if I had missed out with him, I wouldn't have known. And it's the same with well, we had a referendum here and which was defeated in terms of a voice to parliament for the First Nations people. 
 
And many people were left devastated, and many corporations are like, well, we still must progress our conversations and understanding. The next step for us is understanding more. And so but how did they solve for that? It's really hard. So if I can support that and I listen to the frustration that people literally have budgets set aside for these things and they don't know how to spend them. 
 
Let me help you send those budgets I say. 
 
This may be a question that's hard for you to answer because this probably just comes naturally to you. When you sit down with that person, what are the questions that you ask, or what do you do to pull out those jobs to be done, or those emotions, or those impacts, or those needs, or those stories? 
 
2 ears one mouth. I know you can't believe it in the podcast because I'm yammering on. But we like, you just listen. I think the number 1 characteristic for an entrepreneur is curiosity. Your ability to ask great questions, you know, that Liz Wiseman book the Multipliers, best book. 
 
I shouldn't say best book ever when you're writing a book. But, you know, just I think and so when I was on Shark Tank and looking at, you know, what I would invest in, I was always looking at who the person was. Like, did they have this innate DNA of curiosity and trial and give it a crack and let me see if that worked and what's my roll back? And it's okay. You know, we talk about failure. 
 
I talk, I don't like failure. I don't think that's a good idea at all. But a calculated risk is fine, you know, trial and error and all of that. So, yeah, just stay curious and learn to ask questions and listen. 
 
Yeah. No. We, you know, we love Liz Weisman and her work, and I hadn't thought about Multipliers as being a way to kind of prepare yourself to engage and listen and pull out those jobs to be done, but that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. I just want to take a quick step back and just talk about brand and story. 
How do you know that a brand has, how do you know a brand is strong? How do you know that it is creating a powerful connection or a powerful emotion or has a impactful story? 
 
Sure you can research and sure you can do brand tracking studies and all of those things. But I think 1 shift that really happened to us in our brand growth is we were always push push push. Could we be a partner with you? Could we put our vouchers in your program, whatever. Now people call us, and they wanna be associated with us. 
 
And that's the big difference, I think, is when, you know, you go from being a nobody's heard of us too. Oh, they're cool people and we wanna hang out with them because... And I think that that was kind of a a shift. But as I said, the thing that we have to keep doing up to 20 years is remind people the why. And because the why has changed over time, we have a far more important role to play now than we did when we were small like, literally thousands of businesses depend on us for their customers. 
 
Depend on us. So, you know, and that creation of employment. So we've gotta keep, we just gotta keep going. 
 
Yeah. So just turning that lens internally a little bit. You talk a lot about culture. So my question is, what how do you define culture? How do you think about culture? 
 
Culture is not something you do. Culture is an outcome. It's... I laughed once,t this woman who has never run a team, you know, somebody was just kind of in the group saying, oh, you know, people just seem to do what they want. They're not they're not focused. They're not listening. 
 
And she goes you just need to do that employee engagement stuff. It'll be fine. Oh, Jesus. Like, whatever. You know, tick the box. 
 
I think we create an environment, but people choose to participate or not. And it's really up to them. I don't run a kindergarten. If you show up because we put lunch or something, coffees, you're in the wrong place. Like, don't come here for that. 
 
And 1 of the challenges we have had is because we have such a fabulous product, and we do a lot of activities together. People just go, oh, this would be great. So I think the best, when our culture has been at its absolute best is when people are actually most challenged, but they feel a sense of accomplishment, and they overcame something together. And that all comes from making sure they really know what the north star looks like. And that the North Star is possibility. 
 
I remember years ago, we ran this a theme. Like, we were tiny. Like, really tiny. And we've never sold 5000 experiences in a month. Never. 
 
And I I said to the IT team, could you come up with a scoreboard that if we sell 5000 experiences this month. I will buy lunch for everybody. And their scoreboard was tins of baked beans. And every baked bean team represented 500, and they just put it in the kitchen. Hardly technical. 
 
Well, it was hilarious. Every time we put that next tip of baked beans up there, and the fear was that if we didn't get the 5000, they'd have to eat the baked beans. So, you know, we often overcomplicate it, but everybody played, and the outcome was that I did buy lunch for everybody. For a week. And then and the team was telling me, like, it was 10 of us, isn't it? 
 
And we all had lunch together for the week, which was also wonderful. So there was a, you know, a gorgeous outcome to that. So so I think often we overcomplicate things and we overthink things when actually some of the simplest and very human things really work well. 
 
Yeah. That's fascinating because I yeah. Having a scoreboard, I know that that is sort of part of the scaling up ethos, but there's so many ways to create that scoreboard. And that's a really creative way. What is something other than what we talked about before, what is something that you see entrepreneurs what kind of strategic mistake do you see entrepreneurs often make? 
 
They spend too much time focusing inward. They're just not out and about, and it worries me even now with my own business. You know, who's shaking hands, who's meeting people, who's going to network and stuff, who's just out there listening? And what are the listening posts? How are you getting, and Verne calls it Intel, But it's just like at some point, people believe their own bullshit, and they're just not out and about enough. 
 
It's too inward focus. And I think that that, you know, it oh, I've got this internal meeting. There's too many people in that And, you know, all of a sudden, there's a lot of people to make no decisions and oh, I just, that bothers me. A death by PowerPoint. We never had PowerPoint in our business. 
 
I'm like, well, it's in there now. Why do we have PowerPoint? And so that bothers me when people just aren’t out and about. No. Just maybe... 
 
Talking, listening, and... 
 
Yeah. 
 
Sending out. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. 
I think you've answered these 2 questions already. Just but if you have a different answer. In addition to jobs to be done, is there any strategic framework or marketing framework or tool that you have found particularly useful or that you tell entrepreneurs to educate themselves on? 
 
I think if you're if you're in a consumer business, but even in a b2b business, I really worry about the cost of acquisition of customers. And so the only way to protect from that is creating your own assets. So in terms of strategy and value creation models, it's what are your owned audiences and what permission do you have to have a relationship with them because most businesses... so 1 of the things that we've identified with all of the shark tanks and Dragonstents around the world is nearly a third of all the investment money that is made is just passed through to Google and Meta on cost of acquisition. You should never be giving up equity unless you're creating an asset. Like, unless you're investing that on an asset that is going to create more funds. 
 
So there has to be a different model. And so that's what worries me the most of how companies can work together to partnership. We've got the same audiences. Let's share them so that we can fight these big, ugly, nasty, global businesses who are taking too much money out of small businesses around the world. It's terrible. 
 
And that's what worries me the most and what should be a really strategic pillar in any businesses. This cost to acquire customers. 
 
So that how do you think that this is gonna evolve? I mean, that can't be sustainable. Right? So what what happens after Google or what comes after online targeting 
 
My concern like, obviously, Google and Meta and all of them have really, really great products. And, you know, they help you identify audiences who are interested and relevant. And my concern is the quantum of that. And my concern is, okay, I acquired this customer. I don't wanna have to then go back again and acquire them again. 
 
So how do I keep the ones I paid for them? What is the lifetime value of my customer? So it's not like I'm saying, of course, those platforms have incredible reach and power and sophistication and analytics and AI, all of which we use. And we love. I cannot be dependent on that. 
 
I have to have I have to be building my own asset, and I think that that's the piece that I think a lot of businesses just get addicted to it. And, you know, they spend 5 bucks 1 day get a customer, and they spend 10 bucks the next day, don't get a customer and they don't know what happened. It's hard. So that's that bothers me. 
 
I think we have time for, like, 1 more quick question, but you've mentioned lifetime value of a customer. And as customer acquisition cost, loyalty, profitability, not having to acquire it again is kind of all function of that. But that leads naturally to the idea that there are some customers that are more valuable than other customers. And, you know, that sometimes rubs up against customer centricity as being treat all customers well. How do you reconcile that or do you? 
 
You know, that's so funny. Because when I worked at the airline back in the day, it was regulated in a Australia and was deregulated while I worked there. And they never thought that a person on an aircraft should pay a different price than the person next to them because they were delivering the same product. 
 
Mhmm. Mhmm. 
 
Have you ever sat next to anybody in an airline and and said how much do you pay for your effort? 
 
No. No. No. Yeah. Yeah. 
 
So, you know, it was a complete misnomor. And as we know now, there is all demand pricing on all the airlines based on an algorithm and not 1 person on their plane has probably paid the same price as a person sitting next to them, and nobody even thinks about it. They it's just, you know, it's the way. So we kind of need to get over that. The other thing is customers wanna have different relationships with you. 
 
So some customers wanna engage deeply. And if there's 3 reasons why people buy, 1 is transactional. You're at the right place at the right time with the right product. Secondly, it's emotional. I feel better because I bought from you. 
 
I like to tell everybody, I feel better. I like this brand, I believe, and what they believe in, and I feel better. The third 1, which is a growth area, is I am better. The social reason. I am better. 
 
And so, really, if you can if you can speak to anyone of that, then and understand that at the different levels, then people are choosing how they participate with you. They will have a different relationship with you, and it's fine. I treat my business customers a little bit differently than I treat the people on the website because they're all self served. Whereas my business customers, I still have customers that I signed up 20 years ago, still buy from us month in and month out. They're pretty precious. 
 
Well, I've got many other questions, but we're reaching the top of our time with you, and you've left us some really tangible and both useful, functional, and emotional value here with your sharing. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. 
 
So my pleasure. See you on the other side. 
 
Thanks for listening to this episode of Strategy at Scale. Thank you to our producer, Oscar Perez, and our teams at Scaling Up, Outthinker, and Growth Institute. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I’m Kaihan Krippendorff. We'll catch you soon with another episode of Strategy at Scale.