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Insights, Marketing & Data: Secrets of Success from Industry Leaders
Insights, Marketing & Data: Secrets of Success from Industry Leaders
THE INSIGHTS FAMILY - Nick Richardson, Founder. From two beers to two billion data points: the story of The Insights Family. Building a SaaS proposition in kids research; secrets of scaling successfully; key considerations for a founder.
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The story of the pint that turned into two billion data points....well, two pints actually. However, since sitting down with a piece of paper in his favourite pub in Manchester in 2017, Nick Richardson has built arguably the world's leading syndicated kids' research company and recently raised a £5.6m funding round to fuel further expansion. Among other areas we cover:
- Nick's founder journey
- His tips for fund-raising and successful scaling of a business
- The market opportunity in the kids' research space
- Tools to help media planners
- Insights to guide licensing partners
- The balance between SaaS and custom research
- Why storytelling is still important within SaaS
- Moving from data reporting to predicting trends
All episodes available at https://www.insightplatforms.com/podcasts/
Suggestions, thoughts etc to futureviewpod@gmail.com
The story goes that I took all of that information and sat in my favorite pub in Manchester with a couple of pints of German beer Veltins and with a piece of paper sketched out what I know clients would need to know from my experience, based on advertising, brand management, licensing and so on, looked at how we could create a methodology which would have robust statistical significance, could provide it in real time or whatever else, and that blueprint for the business is still what our product is based on today.
Speaker 2Welcome to Futureview and you just heard a little part of the foundation story of the Insights family, started by Nick Richardson, who started the business in 2017 and recently raised a new fund raising around £5.6 million to drive further growth. As the name suggests, the Insights family is a specialist of fast growing company in the world of family insights and their growth trajectory is a great story, incorporates Nick's thought process on market needs, the desire to create an always on SaaS type resource for clients, the challenges of trying to fly the plane while you're building it, as he puts it, and, frankly, the stresses of the whole process and the importance of prioritization if you're a founder. So let's find out more. And onto the interview. So, nick, first off, thanks for joining today. It's taken us a while to organize, but great to have you on.
Speaker 1Yeah absolutely, and yes, it's been a somewhat busy period of time, the last 12 months in particular.
Speaker 2We're going to talk about some of that. We've also had a few technical issues, but we are here now and so I want us to get cracking and so, if you don't mind, I wouldn't ask you what's quite often the usual icebreaker. I ask people, which is something that's just not necessarily in the public domain, that people wouldn't know about you through a Google search or something similar.
From poet to entrepreneur
Speaker 1The two funny things which always come to mind which might not be expected, is I am actually a published poet. I had a proposed published and a frustrated racing driver. I had a season racing Ford Fiesta's a number of years ago and actually I'm very keen to get that going again. So you might be getting a sponsorship proposal through the doors in the non too distant future.
Speaker 2Those are brilliant, and so I'm so high on what. What are the poems? What's the subject matter for the poems there? No, are they poems about racing, or they're entirely disconnected.
Speaker 1No, completely disconnected. Any any poems about racing would be full of words which you wouldn't want to be hearing in a poem. But now, just generally about life. You know things like that. It's funny. All started off when I was primary school and secondary school and I wrote quite a lot and then carried on writing and it was something which you know as you get older. I'd like to pick up a game. I think it's a love poetry, I think it's it's. It's an art. Obviously it's an art, but it's something I really enjoy and I love putting myself in that particular mindset and thinking away and trying to try to make complex things seem simple.
Speaker 2Yeah, I'd imagine it encourages a degree of reflection, obviously. And then there's also the craft within it as well, in terms of the cadence and the scanning and all that type of thing.
Speaker 1Yeah, I've just always been a fan of storytelling and I think I will probably talk a bit about my career later. But at the end of the day, marketing data, insights, it's all part of storytelling, isn't it? You know you, you're a storyteller of sorts, so I think I probably part of me is a frustrated storyteller in some ways, and poetry is my very much, my creative release for that, and I think work is work in data and insights and my career is my, my, my, my business way of going about that.
Speaker 2Yeah, that is interesting and maybe we'll get on to that in more detail, but a lot of market researchers and consumer insights people. They do consider themselves storytellers. I'm not sure that all are, though. Yeah.
Speaker 1I mean, at the end of the day, we even I agree there will be certain people in the industry who are those data measures and evaluation people which are so important but at the end of the day, that data will get to a particular point where someone will then add their story onto it. If that's to to a board, to to seek investment for a new venture, or if that's to to to, you know, to go into a different direction with your strategy, ultimately there will be a story at some point which gets, gets around that, and of course, a lot of that stands for interpretation. But but it's a, it's part of the industry which I really enjoy, my, my inner geekness and in the industry's very much in the data set. But the how you bring that into a story and how you make that data come alive is, I think, when it's done properly, is is just so compelling.
Storytelling is still important within SaaS
Speaker 2So, nigga, I totally, totally agree, and I warned we might veer off schedule In terms of the insights family. You're building an assas model, so how do you monetize the storytelling piece of the proposition, because I assume for most ass models it's subscription based, as the name suggests, and it's often self service.
Speaker 1Yeah. So it's a good question and I think you know technology is obviously playing a key role to that book. We've got a. We've got essentially a diagram that we use, which I, which I can share with you, but essentially, how we do market intelligence, we believe there's a particular flow that we need to follow and that starts off with what we call our research segments of the pie that then go into the data segments and then go into the insights so we can work with clients shall we say quite, quite light engagement where they are, they have the reports of us, they have the portal where they can, they can go in and they can find things specific to them. But we can also hold their hands a lot more and give them things which are more curated, more personalized, and we do have a custom project capability capability in the business.
Speaker 1But at the end of the day, how we, how we approach the market, is probably slightly disruptive, but like a lot of disruption you know it's very much an evolution of conventional thinking is that we start off with our first piece of the pie, which we call industry knowledge, and my belief is that we've got to be an expert in terms of the challenges and the issues and the way that our clients are operating in those businesses.
Speaker 1So everything should start with our natural story about understanding our clients, businesses, and then we can explain to them about how we can help and the importance of kids, the importance of parents and families, which, which for some organizations may not be at the forefront of their mind and for the organizations who are more ingrained with it, having a solution like ours can be a whole, can be a game changer for them. So I think there's an element of storytelling how you market that, how you educate people, how you take people on a customer journey. But essentially, you know you're right that the data is at the heart of everything we do, but we have to, we have to make that come alive. There was a blank sheet of paper in terms of thinking what?
Speaker 2sector and that's what I was going to ask, nick I mean. So why the? Why the kid's sector in particular? Because we may well get onto this. Yes, I could see certain areas around kids if you can describe as a market whereby there are obvious great characteristics. Hopefully there are always going to be more kids, unless something really catastrophic happens. You know they're always going to change. There's always going to be a need for understanding, but it's also quite a difficult area to understand with various specialist companies in there and various challenges around gathering data. With those two factors influential and why you went to the kids direction.
Seizing the market opportunity for kids research
Speaker 1It was. So it's funny, like most things. You know, it was a sector that I was looking at. I had some understanding of having done my placement year at Mattel Toys, but really it came to a meeting with a guy that I'd worked with quite closely when I worked in Formula One and he joined a company called Super Awesome. A guy called Matt Lester, good friend, and he was explaining to me that they had just recently changed, restructured and got rid of their research team. They were looking for a partner and he was telling me about what Super Awesome were doing in the kids' space because of the changes in legislation with GDPR and how that, in many ways, was more evolution with large parts of data protection, but when it came to kids and young people, it was revolutionary. You know, from talking to people.
Speaker 1There was essentially a load of marketers who had had this not so secret formula that X-products, x-price point, with X amount of TVRs, TV ratings behind it. If it was good, it would sell X and if it was not so good, it would sell Y, and every year that formula was rinsed and repeated. But by 2017, a lot of people were scratching their heads saying why are we getting diminishing returns on this. Why is it not working as well, and so on. So it became quite clear to me that through further investigation, that there was no opportunity to get real time data. All of the information out in the kids' sector was either completely biased because a particular brand would be behind it or a particular stakeholder would be behind it, or, secondly, would be almost 12 months out of date before it was published or would rely on small data samples. That when you look at how media fragmentation has completely changed, how kids can shoot content, you know you can't just look at 12 million kids watching you know whatever on BBC one or whatever. Now it's a lot more fragmented. So there was a need to have a more robust data sample. So the story goes that I took all of that information and sat in my favorite pub in Manchester with a couple of pints of German beer Veltins and with a piece of paper sketched out what I know clients would need to know.
Speaker 1From my experience, based on advertising, brand management, licensing and so on, looked at how we could create a methodology which would have robust statistical significance, could provide it in real time or whatever else, and that blueprint for the business is still what our products is based on today. You know the businesses have all grown, pivoted in certain ways, but that methodology from that evening is still what underpins this business today, and we work very closely with academics and experts to help us kidify the survey. Because, you're right, you know, when you're interviewing kids as a particular skill, we spend a lot of time making sure we follow as the more guidelines in terms of how we go about things, in terms of, you know, best practice from question methodology, making sure it's not leading, and doing everything we can to make sure the data is as pure and independent as possible. And that's what we've done, and I think you know our purpose. You know kids will always be part of it.
Speaker 125%, or circa 25%, of the world's population are under 18. And I think it's, I think it's extremely sad that no one listens to that generation. Really, you know, we made it our purpose to provide them a voice and I think it's more more apparent than ever that that's important. So I just may finish that if you look at, without becoming political and going down a Brexit Caudesac, but by the time that the Brexit vote came out, how many percentage of people who voted either for or against would not be on this earth anymore by the time the legislation was passed? And how many of those kids who were under 18 and couldn't vote on something which is going to impact their future, putting more than any other legislation change in the UK for decades didn't get the chance to vote or won't listen to, and I think that's fundamentally wrong.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, as you said, it's not a political podcast. I guess that you couldn't make that argument around. Just, it's not specific to Brexit, is it? It's, you know it's, it's in relation to politics as a whole and voting age and that type of thing. But, Nick, to segue from that in terms of what insights family is providing and I do want to get back into like the survey component of it as well but can you just give a quick headline on what the product is and how it works?
Speaker 1Yeah, so I suppose if I divide it into two input and output. So we essentially survey circa 400 kids a week in each country that we operate in and those children are age and gender representative between the age of three and 18. Obviously, there's some evolution in questions that what we ask a three year old is different than an 18 year old and obviously mum and dad or guardian plays a plays a different role with those younger children. But essentially we have a 15 minute online survey 10 to 15 minute online survey which looks at all different parts of the of the kids ecosystem. So it looks at you know how they're spending their time online, what they're buying, what their interests are, and essentially looks at attitudes, behavior and consumption. So that's the input side. We work with respective panel providers to to collect that data and we don't have any of the personal data of the children ourselves. So, again, from a GDPR perspective, we're in a very great place.
Speaker 1That information then goes into our database that we built using using Python, and then we and my SQL and so on in terms of how the data is held, and then we built essentially our own portal, our own data visualization platform, which is is how we see the data and how our clients access the data.
Speaker 1So what we do with that, firstly, is every 12.
Speaker 1My belief is that before we give the keys to the to the portal to any client, the first thing we need to do is to help them understand what's going on, because if you're new to kids or whatever else, it is daunting, you don't know where to look at. So every month we provide produce a set of on track reports, as we call them, which provide a summary of what's going on in terms of attitudes, behavior, consumption. It identifies trends, identifies key changes at a more macro level and all of the data that we produce. In those reports you can click on the charts and then that takes you into the portal, which allows clients to go in and view, filter, interrogate and analyze the data however they want. So if they want to focus on kids in the Northwest of England, for example, or focus just on girls, or focus on kids who are Manchester United fans, whatever it is that they can then do that and then from that we build a series of more what I would call hand holding products which go into our curated insights.
Speaker 2So I mean Nick, I mean man United don't have the fans in the Northwest of England, do they?
Speaker 1We do, thank goodness, obviously one of them, and very proud that my five year old daughter is a friend of Manchester United boys and Manchester United girls, as she calls them. So yeah, very much alive and kicking still.
Speaker 2So I couldn't resist the little dig. So, going back to the input component over there and I'll go back the output element. So do you get pushback from prospective clients around the veracity of survey data, in particular for kids? So clients will push back for adults as well and get people don't say what they really do. There's too much social bias, so on and so on, and even more so with kids, where it's very difficult to extract sometimes the truth from them, particularly in a survey environment as opposed to qualitative. Do you have to deal with that issue with clients?
Creating kid friendly environments for insight
Speaker 1No, not extensively at all. Again, we spent a lot of time how we've developed the survey, the kidification piece, working with people far more intelligent than I am to ensure that it's not leading. It's not the rest of it. It's given in a way which essentially gets the kids. It helps the kids and also the parents play a facilitation role in the right way, and we test everything before it goes out.
Speaker 1And I also think that there's something which kids are just a lot more truthful it's not to say there's issues, but when you ask a kid a question, they answer like that, whereas we as older people can often take a few pauses to think actually, what does that mean if I respond to that way? What does that mean? And elements else? So no, I think that's a key part. I think that the one thing which we're always conscious of is when we're doing this is we've got to make the survey fun and engaging, because it's quite clear when we tested it is that some kids in the testing stage, early doors, thought it was a test and they were scared of, in their mind, getting things wrong. So there's a lot of work to make sure that the message is this is fun, this is not there's a right or wrong. This is about what you think so how did you do that?
Speaker 2What are some examples without giving away any of your ODE, ip or special techniques?
Speaker 1Look, there's lots of things and I would put them into, should we say so. There's elements in terms of the language that we use, how the questions are laid out, the colours that we use. There's a lot of soft elements like that. There's a lot of work done in terms of just setting the scene to those people, to the kids and also to the parents about this, and just testing and development on it. When we test it, we'll often get kids on a call and we'll see how they interact with it. We'll see how they respond to it and we'll take their feedback. If there's ever a question where they say, oh, this feels like a test, we'll work on that question specifically and look at how we re-engineer that slightly to do that. So I wouldn't say there's a hard and definitive approach, but it's lost a lot of soft things which perceptionally make a big difference.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's really interesting. I think we can certainly see it. And now, moving on to the output, so you've got the dashboard, you introduce that to new clients so they understand how to read the data, and then what else is provided within the service. Because, as we alluded to at the beginning of the conversation, you've got the dashboard, but then there are also add-on services and added-valued services to enhance that storytelling component that you described.
Speaker 1Yeah, so the really exciting thing and, I suppose, one part of the business journey which I was quite adamant on early, so we set this up in 2017. In 2018, we launched in America. We had a very little bit of funding at that point, but to me it was very clear that we needed to take this globally as quickly as possible. So any money that we made from the markets we had UK, us in those days, we looked as quickly as possible to then expand. So we're sat on a data goldmine of a continued data collected over that period of time probably around about two and a half billion data points, I think. We sit on in the portal. So what that allows us to do is not only visualize and the dashboards as you spoke about, but the exciting bits we're working on is what we call progressive data science tools.
Speaker 1So if I work in advertising, it is so useful to see where kids were spending their time and what was influencing them 12 months ago, six months ago, and also understanding what they're doing today.
Speaker 1But if I work in media planning, in a few months time I'm going to be planning Christmas 2024.
Moving from reportage to predictive data
Speaker 1So I really want to have an element of where do we think they're going to be at that time.
Speaker 1So a lot of the work that we're doing is looking at bringing the predictive data science tools in there progressive data science tools, sorry, I should say which will take the data we have and look to forecast what we think future trends will be and how things will evolve.
Speaker 1So that's something which we've got a really great data science team we're also working very closely with academics on, because it's important that we build a methodology which is robust enough to come up for scrutiny, and we've got our. We've had things like the media mix, compass and IP index out there for times which have been in a beta mode. They're currently back offline as we go through some more evolution and refinement, because what we do is we want to get things out. We want to get feedback from clients, who we work very closely with in our innovation community side of things, but we're always looking to try and, from our client understanding, build a custom solution suite which is pre packaged products, as I call them my favorite piece and look at building what I would call quick turnkey products which can give our clients what they want quickly without too much fuss, before we get into the more customized end of things.
Speaker 2And then recognizing that they are going through the next stage of their development. Are you able to describe, for instance, media mix compass in a bit more detail there in terms of how it works? And again, is that survey based or is that aggregating multiple data sources?
Speaker 1The tools are predominantly based on our proprietary data, but at times there might be an equation piece that we will do based on some API data for certain tools.
Speaker 1Well, how it will build it in that, if I look at media mix compass and it's been a while since I was in a meeting on this, so forgive me, but essentially we take different data points in our survey.
Speaker 1So there's a question based on frequency, a question on preference, a question on access and there's a fourth question which I'm sorry I've forgotten, but essentially we take those four data points and we built an equation around those to then rank the different media mix compass, the different media if it's social media, if it's gaming, if it's e-sports, if it's TV, if it's VOD, and so on by rank as to which media types have the strongest resonance with kids of different ages, different genders, and also by different interests. And then, furthermore, you could then go in to say if YouTube was number one for a particular audience group, you could then click on that and it will bring out the channel. So one of the things which I love about this is that KSI, for example, based on our media mix insights, is more popular with a particular group of I think it's tweens or early teens than all terrestrial channels in the UK combined.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's interesting. I can certainly see that. So if I play it back a little bit media mix compass that you are obviously asking kids about. You know the media they're consuming preferences, you understand what else they're interested in. So if you're a media planner you can say I'm looking for kids in a certain age group who are interested in football in a certain region or country or whatever it is. And I guess to the survey point, you're able to index the different forms of media against each other.
Speaker 1And I think just two things on that as well, which is one is that what we're also building with that tool is the fact that the consistency with the survey and the survey design is consistent across all the countries we operate in.
Speaker 1So, again, if you're a global brand and such as Mattel, who we work with across multiple territories, you have an ability to compare like for like, french kids alongside UK kids. Obviously the surveys are localized and language and so on, but that becomes really powerful too, because you can very quickly see. You know, in Germany, for example, we see a lot less tech and digital exposure from a young age versus, say, kids in the UK. But where these tools are becoming powerful is that by focusing on what we know that the advertising media industry needs to know, which is a six month view perspective, we're using our historical data, machine learning. All of those great things that academics and our team are pioneering from a kids place perspective is to start to look at what the forecasting piece looks. So the media mix compass that we'll be releasing later this year will have a forecasting element as well, where previously it would only tell you what's going on today. That's one of the key things that the team have been working on is building that forecasting piece.
Speaker 2Nicky, if it's all right. I wanted to switch gears a little bit onto your recent funding round as well. So congratulations on doing that, and I know from different angles that it can be a pretty onerous process. So, if you don't mind me asking, I mean, how long did the process take? Were there any bumps along the road?
Speaker 1Hey, there's always bumps, but no one died right. So that's the key thing now. I think you know we knew, probably about two years ago, that we needed to raise. We'd raised a little bit of money with some you know some investors which were based in the Northwest, who have been great partners and really love the business, but they were never going to be able to take us to the next level. So we identified that that's what we needed to do. But we needed to get our housing order. You know we were a triple digit growth for, I think, four years in a row and, like any business that grows that quickly with fairly limited resource, there's elements in the business which are not quite as developed as they needed to be, and maybe this tells you a bit too much about my personal life, but my analogy is it's a wonky barstool and you know each leg is, you know, needs to. We need to try and balance that.
Maturing the business after proof of concept
Speaker 1So there was a piece where, before we, we kept in touch with a lot of investors. They courted us, we courted them, we kept in open dialogue. We would give them regular updates, we would tell them about how we're achieving our milestones, how we see the business going. You know, key successes, key areas, but we essentially made some, you know, fairly large changes to the business we identified. We wanted to bring in a new CEO. From my perspective it's, you know, being the founder and the sole founder is obviously can work out very well financially but it comes with a huge amount of pressure and stress and everything else that comes with that. So I was quite key to find someone in who could take the business to the next level, working with me, with me still there. But you know now you know the days of setting this business up at 35, we know commitments fast forward, however many years. You know father of two, you know mortgage the rest of it. That wanted to take out some of that pressure. So we kept in touch with it with a lot and we'd identified a few who they would. We were very clear with what we wanted to achieve and what we were looking for and they filled that criteria and actually we got to a heads of terms pretty quickly with the one that we chose, which was BGF. They'd seen how we grow and they understood the business from keeping in touch with them over a quite large period of time.
Speaker 1And of course there were some challenges and some difficulties and the rest of it, but I think you know we're really we're really pleased to have got the partners such as BGF. They bring a lot of credibility to the business. They're a well-known investor. They are very founder management team friendly. I think you know there's some horror stories out there and I think I've not.
Speaker 1The people I spoke to who worked with BGF or even haven't worked with BGF have still been very complimentary about them and I think that their experience and what we need to do next in terms of our growth, in terms of America and so on They've been and got the T-shirt multiple times. So we like any process, there's always some small bumps, but nothing too untoward, and I think what I see now is a business which has the capital, the leadership team, which will be making a number of announcements over the coming weeks about some incredible people that we brought in, who will be known to the industry. We have everything in place to absolutely transform this business from a still a fairly young and you know we're a multi-million power business, but we're not, you know we're still under 10 million pounds so a business which will fulfill our criteria, you know, and be well on the way to a 20, 30 million 20, 30 million power business over the next three, four, five years.
Speaker 2So actually, nick, that leads into my next question, which is the sorts of KPIs that you're gonna judge yourself by. So obviously, some of those are gonna be financial, and you just alluded to some of them. What are the others? Or, for that matter, are you able to provide more detail on some of the you know financial metrics you're looking at?
Speaker 1Yeah, I think there's careful you're sharing too much, but you know, from a KPI in the business we use the OKR framework. That's something that we use across the team in terms of, you know, keeping everyone on track. There's a number of financial ones and I think there's financial ones will evolve too. You know, up until BGF coming in, we were very fixated on MRR and ARR growth. We were obviously fixated on churn figures and renewal figures and the rest of it.
Speaker 1You know Tom is a great CEO that we brought in Tom Williams and he is very much into the detail of how things are performing, focusing on those key KPIs that we need to focus on and bringing that level of reporting on.
Speaker 1So obviously, bgf will have targets and we have those targets in the business plan if it's a cash position, if it's a EBITDA figure, whatever else. But Tom and our new head of revenue who's just joined us, joe Timson, who worked for many years at GWI, we've got a really good team of people who are essentially building those out now. So there's a lot of things which are coming in from a customer success and from what I would call a SaaS metrics background that will be doing all the things that you would expect, whereas previously, if I'm honest, that was a part of the business which, 80 months ago, we identified we had to get match fit, yeah well, as you said, you used the analogy that you were building the plane as you're flying it, or you're trying to change the race car, maybe as an analogy from your past, as you're kind of going around the track.
Speaker 2I think many businesses do that, and so what are related to that? I mean, what advice would you give to other founders or senior execs if they're fundraising? What are the key things they should think about?
The importance of putting yourself first as a founder
Speaker 1Look, I think, from a founders perspective, don't lose sight of your original goals and I definitely did, and I think those goals might evolve or change, but don't lose track of what those original goals were. I think that's a really important part, and you've got to be selfish in these negotiations. But being very clear about what you want and what a good deal looks like and what a bad deal looks like is really important. Some of the terms which can go into, depending what stage of investment that you're at personally, if it's a bad leave, a good leave, if it's elements like that, to me it's just not worth the risk. It really is not worth the risk for some of the things that I've seen.
Speaker 1So, really protecting yourself. You're the individual who's had the desire to create a business. You've risked a lot and put a lot into it. It's really important that you protect yourself and become quite selfish. Selfish could be deemed as being a negative word, but I think you've got to look after yourself because, at the end of the day, you're gonna have a swarm of people around you from other investors and everyone else who's gonna be looking after themselves too. And I've done that multiple times before and will probably be a and because it's not as emotional to them as it is to you really important that you do that.
Speaker 2How did you go about doing that, though, because you are obviously your experience, but you're a founder and you're going through this journey for the first time, so did you have trust to people on hand to advise you and bounce ideas off, or bounce issues off?
Speaker 1Yeah, I think so. Probably not as much as I should have done, if I'm honest, and I think I'll be totally honest. So when I set this business up, one of the things which drove it is my dad, unfortunately passed away when he's 64. He'd always said we would spend a lot more time together as he got older because he worked a lot and the rest of it and he never got the chance to enjoy that retirement and I thought, by the age of 40, I wanna be in a position where I don't have to work. Now, that didn't mean being mega rich or whatever. It meant being able to be there for friends, family, loved ones, whatever the situation was home. To be in that position and actually by year three of this business, all I was doing was getting up at five o'clock every morning and going to bed at half past, getting home from the office from anytime between six on a good day and half past 10, 11 on a bad day, and that isn't sustainable. And it took a while to recognize that actually, the more people we brought into the business because we didn't have the expertise in the business at that time, because we couldn't afford the quality of people that we needed more people came into the business just made my job harder. It gave me more things to do. So it came to a point where, speaking to our chairman who had worked for momentum, simon, we spoke about that, we plotted it and him asking the questions what do you want? Why did you set this business up? And because you're in love with the business you do. It's like a child, it's your baby, you care for it, you grow it.
Speaker 1Because at that time we had 30 or 40 people in the business. I knew them all extremely well personally. Some of them were friends. I cared for them when we were looking in terms of how we'd have to restructure things like the stuff which I've heard other leaders do. We did. I sat down with every member staff about 40 minutes a couple of times a year to understand what do they want from the business. Could we give it to them? How could we give it to them? I cared for them like you would do family members.
Speaker 1But it got to a point where Simon mentioned me saying look, understand all of this and everything else. What do you want? And actually that became clearer. I didn't want to carry on in that way. It wasn't sustainable for me with the level of resources we had. So it took some time and some mentoring and everything else. And I look back and I'm upset with some of the decisions I made because I didn't necessarily see them at that time. Because I was running so hard I didn't have the time to reflect or to consider and I think the foundations of the business weren't strong enough. In the early day the growth that we had far outstripped our expectation and we always used to say we had a lot on aptitude and that was fine to a point, but actually it just kicked some of the problems down the line that we probably need to address early on.
Speaker 2I mean, it's really, really insightful. What's the difference? How do you not hire an aptitude? What's a different way of?
Speaker 1doing it. Well, what I mean by that is my analogy for this is always being championship manager, which, I have to say, I've spent more hours than I cared to admit over the years when I was younger. If you start off in the Vauxhall conference, you often sign a couple of youth players from some teams above there and you might get a couple of veterans who will work with you on a part-time basis or help you and you get a promotion and unfortunately, some of those players won't be good enough to take you to the promotion in the next league, to or whatever it is. You have to bring some players and I think in every stage of our business we've always had on the aptitude piece. But at the end of the day, if you end up in the Premiership with a load of players who are working hard and have got the aptitude but don't have the skill set to take on those particular roles, then do you know what you might stay up for a season, like Blackpool did many years ago in the Premier League, with a fairly unknown and unpopular group of untrendy group of players, I should say. But the second season you just get you're just not there, you've just not got the quality, and I think that's what I mean, that of course we still hire an aptitude, but we're hiring on skill, competence, experience and the rest of it. And because the aptitude of the, you know, of key people in the business no disrespect, and they were key people without them we wouldn't, we wouldn't be here. You know that. You know I will always be thankful for what they did in the business.
Speaker 1But you've, you've got to be that next leveling, to Get into a top 10, a European top four, and and to them would win silverware. You have, you have to have that. It can only take you so far and I think we did extremely well to take it as far as we did. But ultimately, the next part of the journey to become, you know, regular top four finishes and ultimately be the global lead. And we are a global lead in what we do and there's no one else that does what we do. On the scale, the feedback we have from clients would absolutely indicate that we're a go-to part of some of the biggest companies in the world. But we want to globally dominate this. You know we can. We've got all the, all the assets, all the capability, the vision, the product For what we're going to do, and with the people that we've just brought into this business, we can build something which is just Totally dominant, and and that's what we've got to do now.
Speaker 2Thank you, dick. I'm conscious we're overrunning and I'm taking up a lot, a lot of your time, so if it's all right, I'm. I might jump on to a quick fire round. Have you had any mentors and if so, what? What have they taught you?
Lessons from mentors
Speaker 1So my first boss at Miller's oils when I joined as marketing manager, steve Wolven, he was an absolute pleasure to work with he. He, I think, very calm, very calm guy. It was very studious with data and with numbers and Just just. I think it helped me navigate In the early days some of the politics around businesses as well as well in terms of you know that might be original, that might be your ultimate goal. Well, how you get there, you know it's sometimes it's not quite as quick as you want it to be. So he was a great person, a really good friend of mine, a guy called Eugene Tanzi who runs a recruitment business. We've had a few businesses together in the past. He's a couple of years older than me but just for you know, in terms of business acumen, how you go about things and just just how you are as a person. I think as well is. He's taught me a lot of them, a lot from him, and you know the failures we've had together or the successes we've had. Our current chairman, simon, being a big part of our journey, is the insights family, but more when I worked with him at momentum you know he was the MD for the business I learned a lot from him. He really enjoyed working with him. They were on a similar wavelength, different skills, complementary skills, but again, take a lot from that.
Speaker 1And then then there's been other people. If it's, you know, I wouldn't call myself a salesman. We'd have any aptitude to be a salesman. But see, you, see you have to be the best salesperson in your business. And a guy that I used a lot, ali Jama was, was a sales training we brought in and he mentioned a lot from how we, how we coach people, how we mentor people, but also bring in some of the, some of the what I would call the sales 101 Basic training into the business. They've all, they've all had pretty big impacts on me as a person, for different reasons.
Speaker 1But you just always, always learning. You know I'm a people person, so I love being around people. So some of my learning has been more On the job than what I would call a lot of, you know, formal training. I obviously went to university and exec MBA, whatever else, but they're people that I've really seen in practice take things which I'd, which I'd read, or In an academic or in a like a business leadership perspective, and really put it into place. So again, always be thankful for those kids and I think, university of the, the university I did my second BA with that. That was a real changing part to Having worked what? 15 years in corporate and being a long time since I was at university. So actually look at some of the academic frameworks then to look at the practice. Actually that was a real that that really gave me the, the, the confidence and the structure to go about building the business that we have today it's.
Speaker 2It's certainly been a great journey and In relation to being a people person, so slightly cheeky question, but well, giving your partner would say, your best and worst characteristics are what time's this going now?
Speaker 1Is it past the watershed? I think I. I actually think. I actually think what she would tell, what she would say to you my best, my best elements would also be my worst. So I don't know. Adventurous, always thinking, creative, kind would all be. Almost the things that she would also say Would be my, my worst things as well, but I think probably the the thing which she says a lot to me is that I have an ability to see things quite simply at times, which is a skill or whatever else, but I sometimes find it very difficult to appreciate. Others can't see things as quickly as me or can't go at the pace that I go up and I think on a bad day, you know that will definitely be something which causes some friction in the in the Richardson household, a lot less than it used to.
Speaker 2But yeah, it's, yeah, I think that's what she would say it sounds like you're evolving kind of pretty well and you've developed, you know, quite a lot of self understanding. So, nick, to just to wrap up, kind of final question on the insights industry as a whole what do you think the biggest changes might be in, say, five, ten years time?
Speaker 1I think the insights will, with the whole big data and and and all of it. It's so exciting what's what's been, what's been built, what what the future is. But I Go back to my background. I think there's a fundamental piece of really understanding what are you trying to, what's an organization trying to achieve with the data and remembering its purpose? And I think there's there's going to be an element of data overload. There's so much information out there. Helping people disseminate that information, make sense of it, get rid of the noise in the clutter, but also go back to what was the original Question or problem or element that we were trying to understand.
Speaker 1I see that getting lost. I see that getting lost in big data. I I sit in a number of meetings with either you know, all the other companies out there that we might be looking to either work with or or even buy in the future and have a look at, and I just see almost data overload and I think there's got to be an element where how we disseminate that, how we make it simple and how we, how we don't get lost because there's so much out there, especially when you're not in the kids space because of the, the, the restrictions that we discussed. How do you make sense of it all? And I think that that is a Skill which is a skill which needs to be developed. I think the industry needs to help people with that, because that is a that's a big problem, because you can get paralyzed by data quite quickly if you're always looking to make decisions based on on data.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean 100% agreed, and I would say that you should base your decisions based on data. But the flip side of this whole thing of data being the new oil or whatever I think is, you know, encourage people just to pump more data into the system, and Sometimes you need to recognize that what you leave out and what you ignore is actually more important than what you put in If you're going to get to concise, succinct decision-making. But I can rant on and on about that forever and I'm conscious with very overtime. So, thank you so much. Has been a pleasure talking to you, as always, and maybe I can get you back for another one at some point and we'll compare notes on the state of the world in the future.
Speaker 1Would love to. That would be fantastic. Look forward to that I.
Speaker 2Really enjoyed doing that interview with Nick. It's a fascinating business. Nick is a great interviewee and you can find out more at the insights family calm, especially towards the end. I thought we also managed to get some real texture around some of the struggles and personal toll that set out businesses can have on their founders An early-stage staff. It's a subject that I know resonates with many of the listeners of this podcast and it's one we're going to return to in future episodes. Thanks to insights platforms for their continued support. Thank you for listening and see you next time.
