Ep 107: Ash ElDifrawi is the Chief Commercial & Brand Officer for The Aspen Group

We have a very sophisticated and highly evolved internal communications function. It's a huge part of what we are. You know, something that Bob believes very strongly in the power of the Aspen community, Aspen Nation, Aspen Blue. It's a lot of great terms for it. I never say anything like it, to be honest with you. It's a powerfully connected sisterhood and brotherhood among the dentist and the team. And we do a significant, tremendous amount of internal communications in our internal sites. And we take advantage of that. And so we are constantly communicating with the field and the doctors. Welcome to episode 107 of Clicks to Bricks, the podcast about multi-location marketing. I'm your host, Rob Reed. Our guest today is Ash El-Defraoui, and he is the chief commercial and brand officer for the Aspen Group, which is a portfolio of health services brands, including its namesake, Aspen Dental. This is perhaps the only national brand in the dental space. So we talk about the unique challenges of building and supporting a dentistry brand from national TV spots and making emotional connections with consumers to SEO, customer reviews, and not surprisingly, a big focus on local marketing. Ash El-Defraoui, thanks so much for joining us on Clicks to Bricks. Thanks for having me. How was that? Was that good? Did I nail the pronunciation? That was perfect. You got it, man. Way to go. I'll have a few more cracks at it before the end of the interview. So I'm glad my first one was a success. So thanks so much for joining us again. First of all, where does this podcast find you? It finds me in beautiful Chicago in the West Loop. Ah, nice, nice. And that is where TAG headquarters is as well? That is the headquarters. I'm in the office, yes. Nice, nice. And everybody's back in the office. It's pretty regular schedule now? Pretty regular schedule. We're hybrid like a lot of people, but we like people back in the office. We're a very connected culture here. Nice, nice. That's great to hear. And yeah, you absolutely need that. There's no replacement for in-person interaction for sure. OK, so as we always do on the show, what is a fun fact about Ash El-Defraoui that most might not know? You're just going to keep testing yourself, aren't you? You can go with Ash if you want, but I like the bravery. OK, fun fact, actually relevant fact. So me and my son have a podcast that actually got really, really popular. And we started it back right after COVID when he was actually just 14 years old. It was his idea to do a father-son podcast. At the time, it's called Hold Me Back. And the idea was he was seeing this divide that was happening between his generation and our generation. And he thought, why don't we have a podcast that brings up really relevant topics and model a way that we can communicate better around those topics? And so it was amazing. I decided I would do it with him. It actually morphed a little bit into some parent-child topics. And it really was about how do parents and children even talk about really heated topics in a way that pushes past all our confirmation bias, divisiveness, and have healthy dialogue. That is a very fun and relevant fact. I certainly do appreciate that as a parent. But specifically generationally, though, it's always such an interesting topic, too. Would you consider yourself Generation X? I am. I'm barely. My son, he does call me a boomer. Just to get under my skin. But I missed him by a few feet. And so technically, I'm Gen X, and he's Gen Z. But as he says, I represent all the oldies. I know. Like the Gen Zers tend to group us in with the boomers. Yeah. Even he called me the great generation the other day. I got really mad. That's a little far. I think that's a little far. I can't believe he's even aware of that. Yeah. That's like, yeah. I mean, the greatest generation rocks, no doubt. I like so much respect for that one. But yeah, the Generation X gets kind of like almost forgotten about. You know, there's the boomers and then the millennials and Gen Z. And it's like, I don't know, man. I think we're a pretty significant generation in terms of like our impact on the world. But we just get kind of passed over quite a bit. 100% agree. Yeah. Okay. So let's jump in then. For those who may not be familiar with the brand, what is the Aspen Group story or the Aspen Dental? Or maybe kind of unpack that a little bit as well. Yeah. No. So interesting. So like most great companies, sometimes they start with just an aha by the founder, right? And ours was the same way. So our founder, Bob Fontana, he just happened to be the lens crafters. And he had one of those aha moments where he really liked it. He was like, wow, this is like really a better way to do eye care and lens care. And he's like, you walk in, there's lens in an hour, on-site labs, and a category that generally is kind of hard to navigate. And I think he was way ahead of his time to think about this, how it applied in different areas of health care. He saw this on the horizon of better access to care for more people. And he applied it to dentistry. He said dentistry is one of those things where similarly, it can be challenging. Now, I think it's important to note that for a lot of people, you and me maybe, dentistry sort of can work pretty easily. But for a large part of the population, it doesn't. It's hard to access good dentistry. And that's where always has been his focus, and how to democratize different aspects of care that for a lot of people doesn't work. And that was the seed of this idea that then he's grown to what TAG is today. Nice. And so does it definitely go after more of like uninsured people who don't have dental insurance? Or does that doesn't matter? I wouldn't say it's uninsured. No, there's a lot of our patients have insurance, and some pay cash, and some do financing. It's actually more patients who dentistry has not been an everyday part of their life. It might have been because of their circumstances, maybe socioeconomic circumstances. And they've always had to sort of put it aside. And it was one of those things where there was more important things in life for them to do to take care of their teeth that kept them from getting the care they needed. But at some point, they can't put it off any longer. And we call those the moments of truth for us, for our patients. And in those moments, our brand needs to show up for them in a way that can give them the access they deserve. So is that pretty much the point that one of your customers has come to where like, they just can't avoid it anymore? Like regular tooth teeth cleaning twice a year isn't pressing, right? You should do it. But like, you know, if you've got like pain, searing pain, that that's generally when you kind of your customers show up. Yeah. And obviously, we see our share of what we call general dentistry. But for the most part, our brand is really focused on those customers who are in those moments of need. And whether it's pain or some emergency or an event in their life that they want to be able to feel good about smiling. Yeah, those are the moments, those are the times when we need to really show up for our patients and be there for them. Nice. I think that just kind of really sets the table for the marketing conversation in terms of what you stand for, why you exist, how customers end up becoming customers, right? Yes. So let's start with your role then. Well, let's just like shift to your role. You've been with the company for the past four years. You started as Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer, which I think we were actually just kind of talking about a little bit there. And now you're Chief Commercial and Brand Officer. And, you know, of course, sometimes these titles have meaning, sometimes they don't. My assumption, kind of reading through it, is that they do have meaning for you. Can you share how your responsibilities have changed and maybe expanded through these different roles and titles? Yeah. And you're right about those titles. They can be a little misleading and it's a little bit of a title war out there. I think the more important part is when I first started, I was in that role for Aspen Dental, really focusing on that brand. And now my role is at the aspect of the tag level. And I think the biggest change for me in terms of my role is the things that I was able to come in and help the organization achieve from a marketing customer experience and center of excellence perspective for the Aspen brand. Then my role was to, how do I abstract that so we can apply those to a series of brands? Because now we're five brands strong across multiple different healthcare service lines and the world is moving so fast and that we need to be able to leverage what we learn in one brand across all the other brands. And so my role is really, how do I take that at the different level? Figure out, obviously, the idiosyncrasies at the different brand level because we're dealing with different categories. But there are some areas that require centers of excellence, things to share across the board, consumer insights that are relevant across the board, best practices digitally across the board, et cetera, et cetera. I keep going and the job is in a world that's changing faster than we can keep up with it from a marketing perspective. How do we give all these brands an advantage? And so let's get a sense for the full corporate structure and brands. So we've talked about Aspen Dental. What are the others under the umbrella? Yeah. So there's 450 locations nationally. A lot of those are dental. So we have dental, which has two brands, Aspen Dental and Clear Choice. Aspen Dental deals with a broader range of services where Clear Choice is really into the implant business. Then we have an urgent care business called WellNow, which is obviously urgent care you're familiar with. We then have a medical aesthetics business or med spa, some people call them, called Chapter. And then we have a veterinary business, which we just changed the name to Love It, which we all love, by the way. You'll love it when you get there if that's a veterinary practice. So those are the brands that we have out there. Nice. And they all fit that kind of profile, that same profile as dentistry when you got into them, right? Yeah. The one thing that's a little different on some of them, they're all about, every one of them has a similar mission around how do we get better access to more people. Now, as you can imagine, some of them are equally maybe emergent or have these moments of needs, but some of them are also a little bit more ongoing care. If you think about pets or med spa, some people want ongoing service. So building those long-term relationships are a little different than maybe in the Aspen business or the Clear Choice business. Yeah. And some very much kind of a luxury in some cases versus necessity. Yeah. Yeah. In some ways, you're probably thinking of the med spa business, that's a little bit more of a luxury. But I think for some people, the service is not just always about that. For some people, there are some aspects that might help with their health or weight or some conditions that they might have with their skin. But yeah, it's a little bit more discretionary than maybe when your mouth is having problems and you need to get in. Nice. All right. Well, I think for the purpose of the conversation, maybe we'll kind of focus on the dental brands. But yeah, feel free to kind of include the others. So are these all corporate-owned entities, stores, or are you guys franchising these out yet? Yeah, it's actually neither of those. It's a little bit of a different model for what we call health support organizations. So the reality is a lot of these dentists are owners of their own practices or starting to be or medical directors. And we supply all the services necessary for them so they can just focus on their patients. So technically, it's not either of those. It's sort of a hybrid model of how we support those organizations. Yep. Got it. Well, that's helpful to understand too. So then talk to us about what does the marketing funnel look like in the dentistry category? I think we alluded to it a little bit, but I think some might assume it's just being there when somebody does a Google search for some kind of dental procedure. But is it more than that, I would hope? It is more than that. There's a couple of things that make this really unique in terms of a marketing challenge. And I'd be curious if you actually come up with another analog to it. But because of what I mentioned to you before, this is not so much about ongoing every six month cleaning. It's really a lot of times about coming in and having some major work done. We have to always fill the top of the funnel. We have over 1,000 locations. We open a new location every four days. Some have been around 20 years. Some have been around two or three years. And guess what? We have to keep people coming through the doors every single day. And very few of them are repeat. So if you think about the need to constantly fill the top of the funnel, it's a very unique funnel. And as you can imagine, yes, we employ a lot of different tactics, structure we'll get into in terms of how we do that. But unlike any funnel I've ever dealt with, the pressure to fill the top all the time is very unique in this business. And yes, you need to be there in a moment of need. So you don't know when they're going to need you, and you have to make sure you're there when they need you. But they also, a lot of people, a lot of our customers or patients are going through a process where they have to sort of get to the point of deciding. So it's not just simple as being a Google search. They have to maybe know your brand. They have to trust your brand. A lot of them are doing research to try to understand about the service because it can be very expensive, and it can be very scary for some people. So it's not just about being there. It's about being there with a brand that they trust in those moments. So from that perspective, those two things make it unique. And I'll say the last one real quickly. The third one is a lot of our population, a little bit older, a little bit not maybe always as tech savvy. So we also have to be there in the ways they want to be there. So we still have a lot of people calling in. Just like typical health care, a lot of hospital systems, you have a much bigger portion of the call center. So we actually have to be available to them, not just purely digital, even though it's growing, but all the different ways that population wants to engage with us. Yeah. That was kind of like my next question around there's that bottom of the funnel. You know, you got to be there when the demand is there, when the Google searches are happening. But it's also a pretty significant brand building exercise that even before they get to Google, they're thinking about dentistry and you've somehow reached them. So talk a little bit about like what it takes to actually build a brand where, I mean, are there many other kind of national dentistry brands, right? No, no, they're not. Believe it or not, we have the only two, which is both a privilege and the challenge. And the privilege and the parts that are advantage, I'll be candid about both, is that, yeah, we can do national, we do a lot of TV national advertising. One of your recent CMOs from Portillo came on and said one of his beliefs, Nick, I think that was Nick, who came in and said, TV is not dead. For us, it's absolutely not dead. One of it is our population that we deal with, a lot of them, which I talked about earlier, whether you want to call them X or Boomer or the Great Generation, they still watch a lot of TV. And so we have to be there. So we do have the advantage where we can do national advertising for both brands, actually, while at the same time having to be there locally. And so there's some advantages you can take in terms of that. One of the challenges, obviously, though, is that you're branded. And you are connected with thousands of doctors across the country under one brand. So every experience, every bad or good experience gets amplified. And so we have to tell people all the time that they represent the shield. And unlike some of the other, quote unquote, competitors in the support organizations, which might not actually be consumer-facing brands, just back-end services, that they don't have that issue, right? If you have some local dentist who has a crappy experience with a patient and the patient complains, the whole brand doesn't necessarily get damaged. So we do have some pressure on us from a national perspective to really manage through those opportunities, which is, again, it's a great challenge, but it is the burden of having a national brand. And is there, I mean, so a lot of these are local owner-operators of these dentistry practices with your brand. And so that's the luxury and the challenge for sure. Yes, that's the rub, right? It's sort of an ask-and-tell balance, right? And look, we obviously hold ourselves accountable and everybody believes in our mission. We hold ourselves accountable, but at the end of the day, they're the practitioners and they represent the field. And so how do they represent themselves? We can help them with that, but ultimately, they're responsible for their own personal brand. Are they interested in doing their own marketing? Some of them are. I mean, as you can imagine, there's a wide variety of different types of practitioners. Some of them who, and most of them, I'll be honest, just want to take care of patients and would love us to do everything else. Other ones are very entrepreneurial. In fact, we do have a unique situation where we have owners, people who own multiple practices. We have 300 practice owners actually and partners, and they're entrepreneurial and they want to drive those business. So yes, we actually do have conversations with them sometimes in terms of how they can potentially partner with us in some marketing. We try to take care of most of that, but if they want to do some stuff locally and build their brand locally, we encourage them to do that too. Is there some kind of system where you're able to all communicate and collaborate with all of them? We have a very sophisticated and highly evolved internal communications function. It's a huge part of what we are. Something that Bob believes very strongly in the power of the Aspen community, Aspen Nation, Aspen Blue. It's a lot of great terms for it. I never say anything like it, to be honest with you. It's a powerfully connected sisterhood and brotherhood among the dentist and the team. And we do a significant, tremendous amount of internal communications in our internal sites, and we take advantage of that. And so we are constantly communicating with the field and the doctors. Nice. Yeah, that's important and not easy to pull off with the kind of footprint that you have and everybody kind of off on their own little island. Yep. Yeah. So with regard to filling that funnel and maybe without giving away too much secret sauce, what really works? Yeah. First of all, that's changing in real time. And so one of the things that really works, you have to test a lot of things, but I don't mind sharing in terms of where we're heading because it won't really surprise anyone. The combination of national and local works really well, but more and more, the emphasis has become on local because I know you're going to... This is one of your favorite topics, Rob, and I understand that. Music to my ears. Yeah. But the reality is, those are some realities across the board. Not only is Google sort of pushing in that direction from all kinds of things that they're doing, from their algorithm and their policy and local search ads and a plethora of other areas which are benefiting hyper-local focus. It's also the way people are engaging, right? It's micro-influences that are happening. It's local social media that's happening. It's our ability to be much, much more targeted from a paid social perspective. There used to be a world where you and I, us boomers or Gen Xers remember a world where you could have two forms of communication that would cover 80% of the population. Good luck finding something that went more than 10% or 5% now. So we are definitely moving towards much more digital. And by that, the definition of digital is pretty broad to me, including all the things I just said. Much more locally focused from an SEO perspective, understanding how to be much more relevant from the map pack, how to start scheduling on the Google SERPs, all those things that Google's encouraging you to do and invest in is where we're finding a lot of success. Yeah. We'll talk about it in a little bit, but you obviously have strong ties back to Google. So you're no stranger to that platform and company. So then what are you doing more of and less of this year than maybe you did in 2023? What's shifted? Yeah. And this is not really going to surprise anybody in terms of what we're pulling a little bit back on a little bit. Less on things like out of home, a little less on national TV, even though we still have a strong presence there. And a little bit more traditional, what I would consider traditional media, a little less on that. More on some of the things I just said. More definitely in terms of local search, more on influencer marketing, paid social across all the different platforms, which are getting much better at their ability to sort of target locally as well. Even more on local TV, connected TV, all those areas in which you can hone in really on certain DMAs and certain customers in a much more hyperlocal perspective. And we'll get to it in a second. I know you'll talk about it as well, but that includes things like reviews and affiliates and so on as well. So, more affiliate work, more focus on local reviews. All those things have taken a front and center for us versus more of a national, more of the national traditional advertising. I think, I mean, influencer is the one, influencer marketing is the one that kind of like sticks out to me as like, really? There's like dental influencers out there? But maybe not, but like... No, no, no. Look, it's a legitimate question. And the one thing else, the one little small footnote, Rob, is like, remember, we actually support and hire dentists. So, we have two customer bases, our dentists and our consumers. And so, our influencers span both those. But one thing that might be surprising to people, because maybe they don't think about dentistry in this way, is because our patient has come from this point where maybe they've haven't had the luxury of being able to have great dental care of their lives. They've gotten to a point where it really impacts the quality of their life. They can't eat the foods they want. They're ashamed of smiling. They might have isolated themselves more, covering their mouth all the time, don't go to events of loved ones. So, when we see those transformations, and you see how much it changes their lives, it is like hard to describe. Like, I tear up every time I watch some of our before and after some of those videos and the stories behind them. And as you know, those stories are what drive social media. That's the power and the juice for social media. It's those stories, and they're genuine and they're real. And it's not just the patients that go through them, it's the doctors that go on the journey with them. And that's why we do this. That's why we do this. When I interviewed here, I was like, dentistry? What? What? Back end dentistry? Like, I'm a consumer marketer. But Bob, he said, look, this is not dentistry. This is changing people's lives. I know it sounds great to say, but let me tell you, that's exactly what happens. Like, you spend a day in an office or watch some of our stories, go online and watch some of the stories. It's life changing. And that is the stuff that's powerful in social media. And they become influencers or they want to talk about that story. Right. Yeah, it's like we've had several automotive brands on the show. And I kind of look at them as like one of the kings of kind of like the emotional connection in their marketing. Their marketing is very emotionally driven. That didn't actually occur to me until you brought it up. But like that emotional connection in your marketing is probably pretty powerful, pretty powerful stuff for people to get motivated. Yeah. Think about the two or three things that create a lot of happiness in your life. A lot of it is, you know, eat the food you want and then being able to smile and things and those moments and share those moments. Imagine if you just can't do those. And it's pretty powerful stuff. Yeah. And then tying your brand to that. And that's what, you know, if you can reach somebody with that message, with that connection, even though they might not in the obviously maybe in the moment need those services when they do, hopefully that comes up. Like that's how you want to be associated brand wise. And one of the challenges from a marketing perspective, and you'll be able to relate to this too, Rob, as all marketers deal with this challenge, there's also very real pragmatic barriers. And in fact, our brand was built around this concept of access, you know, breaking down barriers to care, affordability is an issue, convenience is an issue, shame, emotional, physical barriers to doing it. But you believe it or not, a lot of people avoid it, not just because it's expensive or they can't make it happen, fit into their lives, but just because they're maybe ashamed. And so a large part of our brand, the cornerstone of our brand is breaking down those barriers for people. So they get the care they need, and we get them to the life that they want and get all the things pragmatic and emotional out of the way. And despite that, like you mentioned that like getting repeat customers is still a challenge, even though when you get them in for that one need thing, like it's still difficult to retain them. It's not a challenge, it's not that it's not a challenge, it's not, I was talking about particularly just from a how people think about marketing in the funnel and ROI, they think about LTV a lot, CAC to LTV, the whole shebang. For us, a significant amount for our patients, a significant amount of value creation from a pure business perspective happens in that first visit. And sometimes they're getting a new mouth, so they actually don't need cleaning or whatever because you might have implants or what have you. So it's really more around the value creation around that, more so than our ability to do follow-up care. The patients who do come in and see us for general dentistry tend to stay with us. It's just that a lot of our focus is not on that necessarily that patient. Well, and so obviously getting them to leave reviews, as you mentioned, is pretty critical. I mean, I don't think any of the my service providers hit me up more often than my dentist about leaving a Google or a Yelp review. It's like, I got to opt out of them. The notifications, I get the text, I get the email, they're aggressive about it. And it just says to me that this must really drive business for the dental category. So do you guys have a robust program for everybody when it comes to third-party reviews? Yeah, we do. Yeah, and you're right. And not surprising, healthcare, I think 86% of patients tell us that looking at reviews is the key part of their evaluation of this. So as you can imagine, in the word of mouth, think about people recommending you to the dentist, how big of a deal that is, or the opposite, which is even worse. And so, yeah, because of that, we come at this from a couple of two or three-pronged perspective. On the one side, in terms of the way we support across the broad platforms and part of our NPS program, we do, from a centralized perspective, support the offices by sending out those requests based on the patients. But then we also give them the tools locally in the offices and encourage them to do that themselves, whether that's through QR codes or whatever that they want to do. We encourage them to do that. We let them know the importance of it. We show them the numbers, which I'm sure you're going to ask me about in terms of the impact of that. And we try compliance. Like I said before, some people do it much better than others, but we definitely give them all the tools they need in order to do that. Yeah, and I mean, for a coffee shop, they like getting reviews, but we're talking a low-dollar item, hard to quantify. So with every review, with every 10th of a percentage point and a star rating, you guys, I have to assume you kind of have a good pulse on what that equates to in terms of a business. Yeah, we do. Not surprising to you, the correlation between business performance and reviews and NPS. NPS and reviews tend to be highly correlated, as you can imagine. That's good to know. Yeah, it is. And connected to revenue. Not only the revenue in terms of that, it's actually connected to all other kinds of metrics, literally even turnover, employee engagement, metrics which matter to us in terms of, as you can imagine, having over 20,000 employees and you want to minimize turnover and learning and all that stuff. There's a cost associated with that. So yeah, we show them not just the revenue impact. We show them all the impact of all the metrics they care about when they run their business. That's really encouraging. And also, it can't be easy, especially you're not responding to reviews centrally. That is on the... No, we do. Well, we respond to... I hope I don't get this wrong. Social team, I try not to do this. We obviously have a social care team. And so for things on social media, we tend to respond to ourselves. And the reviews, they can come in in different ways. And so there's certain reviews, depending on what the issue is, that can be handled centrally. And then there's others that we have to push clinically out to the doctors that they have to manage themselves. So it really depends on the nature of the issue, whether it has to be managed locally at the office level, or if it's us, it could be a billing issue or an insurance issue, which we would handle. If it's a clinical issue, we'd push it to the doctor. So it just really depends. Got it. Okay. So you're flexible in that regard. If it's just a five-star review with very little kind of text, you can just be like, thanks. But... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we like those. Yeah, we love those. Well, that actually is a pretty good segue too, because this, I think, especially in local marketing, this was the first area that I think that was impacted by AI because of the OpenAI API and ChatGPT, like the ability to actually respond to reviews. Have you guys thought about using AI to engage with customers yet through reviews or social? Well, the way we've actually let that happen is more through our vendor's use of AI. So yeah, so as we thought about choosing the right partner in terms of managing our reviews, we do talk or assess how much they've invested in that and using AI to help respond to reviews. I don't actually know the answer to that directly in terms of exactly how we're using it in the review aspect. I think that to this day, we're still mostly... Built into the technology of the platform, which we use BirdEye, that perhaps is... I think it is integral to what they do. But in terms of our personal responses, we still are very focused on very personal... responses to our to our customers. Yeah, I mean, it certainly makes sense, given the given the value of every customer and every review. Yeah. Are there any other areas where AI might be kind of impacting your your job or your marketing strategy in the in the short term? You know, it's interesting, right? I mean, one of the things that I actually really respect about Tag and our CEO is how pragmatic the organization is in terms of not overreacting or underreacting to sort of the different the stuff that's happening out there. And right now, what we're letting, you know, letting our functional leaders sort of drive how they want to sort of think through a little bit some of the AI tools. So I can tell you, yes, when the context of some of the things we're doing with creative optimization, SEO, and some of the tools, things we're doing there from a marketing perspective, that's primarily where I'd say we're using AI. And then some of the areas in which whether how far you want to extend the definition of AI into an enhanced machine learning and so on, we definitely use it in some of what we call revenue management or yield management work in terms of how we identify or ensure that the patients who have the highest need, emergent need, so on, make sure we quickly, as fast as possible, get them the care they need to help us understand who's really, who really needs us in that moment. So we make sure that we don't leave anybody out there sort of stranded. So we're trying to use some tools there to make sure we identify those patients to get them to care as fast as possible. Nice. Yeah. Operational efficiencies. OK, one more question before I we dig into your career journey. Do you have an unpopular opinion about marketing that you feel strongly about? I have a lot of unpopular opinions according to my team. Well, Nick took one of mine, which was TV is not dead. But yeah, I have a very unpopular opinion. I would tell somebody who's an aspiring CMO to not to have the word marketing in their title unless you until you know the CEO really, really well. So I've avoided it in my last couple of roles. I think that marketing, the role of marketing and the need for a CMO, quote, CXO, whatever you want to put in there, to succeed is happening faster than most CEOs, CFOs have been able to understand it. And so what I mean by that, for example, I, you know, I believe that as a marketer, if you don't own the customer experience, you then don't you can't call yourself a marketer because your product is your brand, not your advertising and so on. So I think there's still people out there who think marketing is a dysfunction, which is driving demand or doing advertising, where the reality is, I think marketing has evolved to an integral part of the overall customer experience and customer journey. And the decisions that you need to make as a marketer might have been left to a product individual or even a CTO, where I think now those decisions need to be really driven or at least code driven by the marketer or customer leader. So for me, whether it's customer experience, whether it's growth or whether it's commercial, I think for me, I think sending a message or even the chief, making sure the product organization reports into you or you have some strong influence over it. I think I personally believe that marketing, until people sort of figure out what it means, could be something that actually hurts you more than helps you in terms of your role in the organization. That's a good one. Yeah, that's a good one. I like that. Yeah. I mean, you got to be the champion of the customer first and foremost. And but yeah, because like previously, marketing was for the people who weren't customers yet. Right. Yeah, it was. That's right. Or it was kind of selling yourself short there if that's all you're doing. Or it was when you used to actually own your brand, which we no longer own. Your customer owns your brand. And if you don't, if you don't believe that, tell me the last time you bought a one star product on Amazon. You've never you've never bought a one star product on Amazon. No matter how great your advertising is or how great your marketing is, that's nothing will over ever come your product or your experiences. And so if I'm a marketer, what I care about is that more than the ads I'm putting on air. Nice. Well, OK, then let's talk about your what's kind of brought you to this point. And and that's kind of shaped these unpopular opinions. All unpopular. But profound nonetheless. So you had previous roles with Google, Gogo and Redbox, a pretty good a pretty good mix, I'd have to say. How did these how did these kind of set you up for success with with the tag? Yeah. So Gogo taught me the profound lesson that your product is your brand, right? We that brand went on an interesting journey of sort of transforming, which is the in-flight Internet. If you don't know what it is, it was the brand launched that brand. And it went pretty quickly from, oh, my God, this is an amazing thing. I'm in the air and to holy shit, this is slow and expensive. And, you know, I realized pretty quickly that you can't mark your way out of that. And so I learned at that point the profound lesson of that exactly that exactly that your customer experience, your product, whatever you call it, is your brand and that's what it is. And so you can't ever take that for granted and you can't mark your way out of that. So I learned that lesson there and it's been ingrained in me ever since. Redbox taught me that the concept of Moore's law is now applying to marketing. And, you know, the Moore's law being the idea that, you know, the pace of change and computing doubles every year. But the spirit of is that things are changing a lot faster than people sometimes adapt to it. And I think that's I talk to my team about this all the time, like context shifting is happening faster than most people are able to figure it out. And so you better be pretty darn agnostic in terms of what you believe or don't believe. And so I think people who are it taught me that a lot of people who are sort of trained as traditional or classically trained marketers, I'm actually starting to find that as a liability when I hire people, more so than people who come at it. Very agnostic in terms of what problem am I trying to solve and what is in my toolkit to solve it? And then Google taught me, not surprisingly, that talent trumps anything. You know, we got through a lot of things that people org structured our way, you know, one org structured change away from glory and and the matrixes don't work and all this stuff like, well, what Google taught me was none of that matters if you have the right talent and the right leaders. None of that. All that stuff is sort of just fluff. It's like all background, all noise. And so tying directly into Jim Collins, good to great, like you get the right people on the bus and then you put them after it. And so for me, that all comes together to sort of building, you know, these dynamic marketing organizations are really around smart people solving or ready to solve really hard problems. Low ego, high impact, no exceptions. Yeah, that's when I was running my company, we hired a guy to come in, a recruiter to come in and help us kind of formulate our hiring practice and strategy. And he had he had been had a lot of exposure to Google. And so we implemented like these kind of four main criteria for evaluating candidates. And one of them was general cognitive ability, which I think is another kind of way of saying talent. And it's like not experience in a certain discipline or certain area. It's just like kind of how good are you at just figuring stuff out and solving problems, whatever those problems happen to be. It hit me that I'd been doing that all along, and that's how I built my team up into that point. And it was just it was very kind of validating for me. And since then, that's like, OK, great. I was always doing it like Google did. That was always kind of like my biggest evaluated, you know, like if you had experience, like, I mean, the thing about my company is like we were doing things that nobody had done before. So couldn't actually find anybody with like domain expertise. Yeah, because it was new. Exactly. Like social media was for a while. People are like, I'm experts at this. I'm like, well, it's only been around for three years. I'm not sure exactly what you're expert in. But, you know, it's interesting you say that, like, you know, even though you name those companies, my DNA as a professional probably actually started when I was at McKinsey, because that's where I really, you know, I really learned, you know, learn low ego really fast there and you learn take feedback really well. But like I had this thing like I strived, you strive to be the dumbest person in the room. And I'm really good at that. I mean, I think it's happening right now. That's the way I hire. And that's sort of like focusing on that. Now, you need people, you need functional, you need people from the jungle. You need certain people. Eventually. Yeah, eventually you do. And you know, and the world is getting highly specialized in some areas. And so there's some areas where you just need that. But you got to find that balance. Otherwise you're going to struggle. Absolutely. How are you advising, you know, young marketers on your on your team in terms of their career, other than not having Mike marketing in their title? Yeah. You're not going to forget, I'm not going to let that one down. So I actually tell them that they need to focus mostly on impact more so than like functional achievements. And I make the joke to them all the time. Look, I've been in like hundreds and thousands of performance reviews. I've never these words have never come out of my mouth. Yeah, we got to get rid of this person. They've had too much impact on the business. You know, it's too much impact. So understand what that means. Define it really well for yourself. Understand what it means to the organization and be that person that is seen as the impact player. And it's small ways, different ways, defined ways and ways that are definable, measurable and observable and be that person. Think to yourself what that means. And all everything else from that will flow and you'll have a great career. That's my bias. Yeah, I think I couldn't agree more. You know, impact. Absolutely. That's how I've guided my own kind of how I evaluate myself often. It's just kind of like at the end of the day, I'm like, what did I produce today? Like, what did I do that's like tangible that I can actually point to say I did that today? Right. Like that's that's a great way to evaluate yourself. And by the way, like sending emails, that's not producing anything. It just doesn't work for more people. That's what it does. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's not that's not production. Any open roles on your team that we should share? Yeah, well, look, we always have lots of open roles. We're hiring a lot, looking for great talent. And yes, you can have marketing in the titles. Anywhere below the CMO, I have lots of titles with marketing in them. And so but right now we're looking for some really great whether digital commerce talent across the board. But those boomers who used to call dot com people, I can't believe that died as Gen X. That's a Gen X term for sure. Yeah, it's a Gen X term for sure. But people who really understand the journey, the digital experience, the digital front door, all the aspects of what that means from from a conversion rate optimization, CRO, UX design, UI perspective, more and more that it's growing for all our businesses. And so we're actually looking not just at the Aspen level, but across all the different brands. We're looking for talent there. Nice. Where should they go to explore that LinkedIn or the website? Yeah, you can go to our recruitment website or on LinkedIn. Nice. OK. All right. We are actually running short on time, so I'm going to give you one more question that we typically wrap up with. Are there other leaders or other companies in this multi unit enterprise space that you'd like to see featured on our show? Interestingly, what I love about your show or what I'm interested in is learning some lessons from something. So the brands I'm interested in are ones that I'm actually curious to learn some interesting lessons for them. So maybe the marketing leader of like Raising Cane, this chicken company, I'm curious how entering a very crowded, somewhat commoditized space, how they're going to win in that space. That's always interesting to me. I'm sort of curious about what Marriott's doing with Bond, like how do you take a bunch of different brands and how they've had success doing that? It's just something the challenge that we're actually looking at as well. So that's interesting. And then from a cautionary tale, I'm curious what the Warby Parker leadership would say, because I think that's a brand that actually has had some interesting struggles. And so I love to learn from cautionary tales as well. So those are three brands which I think have lessons embedded in them, which I would love to to learn about. All right. Note for our producers, let's get those brands on the show. Ashel Dufraoui. Thanks so much for joining us on Clicks to Bricks. Thanks for having me. This was so much fun. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share it on LinkedIn and to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, you can sign up for our newsletter at Clicks to Bricks dot FM for exclusive content and previews of upcoming shows. I'm your host, Rob Reed, and this is Clicks to Bricks, a podcast about multilocation marketing.